Determined Society with Shawn French | Adversity & Mindset - Courage Unveiled: A Journey from Division I Quarterback to Military Service and Entrepreneurship with Chad Jenkins

Episode Date: April 1, 2024

In this conversation, Chad Jenkins, a veteran and entrepreneur, shares his journey from being a Division I quarterback at Army to serving in the military and transitioning back to civilian life. He discusses the impact of September 11th on his mindset and the challenges he faced in managing fear and overcoming obstacles. Chad emphasizes the importance of finding strength in faith and relying on a higher power. He also addresses the struggle of trusting and letting go of control. The conversation highlights the identity crisis many individuals face during major life transitions and the importance of doing the internal work to find oneself. This conversation explores the importance of emotional processing, healthy coping mechanisms, and teaching these skills to children. It emphasizes the need to address the root of problems and not just treat the symptoms. The discussion also highlights the significance of being present and fully engaged in relationships, particularly within the family. It emphasizes the role of parents as leaders and the importance of effective communication and assessment. The conversation concludes with a focus on the podcast 'Christ Over Fear' and its mission to share stories of healing and faith. Key Conversation Points: September 11th had a profound impact on Chad Jenkins and his fellow cadets, leading to a shift in mindset and a sense of purpose in serving their country. Managing fear involves acknowledging it, relying on faith or a higher power, and focusing on the things within one's control. Finding strength in faith and relying on a higher power can provide guidance and support during challenging times. Transitioning from one phase of life to another, whether it's leaving the military or retiring from sports, can lead to an identity crisis. It is important to do the internal work to discover one's true self and purpose. Emotional processing and healthy coping mechanisms are essential for personal growth and well-being. Teaching children how to cope healthily with their emotions and process them is an important aspect of parenting. Addressing the root cause of problems is crucial for true healing and growth. Being fully present and engaged in relationships is key to effective leadership and communication. Sharing stories of healing and faith can inspire and support others on their own journeys. Connect with Chad: Listen to his podcast- https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/christ-over-fear/id1659452256 LinkedIn- https://www.linkedin.com/in/chad-jenkins-4b0352158/ Website- www.jenkins-group.com     Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Sean French, what up? This one luck I let the pain inspire me. I put my all and everything I'm doing up until it's done. I'm me for the entirety. I put it in overtime. I'll be working.

Just know I'm a go for mine because I earned it. They watch and I know it's time. I confirmed. I confirmed. What's up, everybody? Welcome back. I'm your host, Sean French.

and this is the Determine Society podcast. I have with me today, a veteran and an entrepreneur. He's a former Division I quarterback at Army, and after Army, he spent four tours overseas, protecting our country, fighting for our freedom. He's a true entrepreneur.

He's a podcast host of Christ over fear. I have with me now, my good for it, Chad Jenkins. What's up, buddy? Man, I need you as my hype guy. You got me fired up. Let's go. Bro, I'm down.

I'm down, but dude, I'm going to tell you, I'm going to warn you, I cost a lot of money. Well, that's a good thing. That means you're good. It's like a pretty woman thing, right? Yeah, that's exactly it. It's going to cost you, buddy. It's going to cost you. No, dude, thank you for that.

You know, the true thing is, is like you don't have to create much hype when someone's done so many amazing things as yourself. So for those that don't know you or haven't heard your story, like, first of all, welcome, right? And then tell them, tell them a little bit about yourself, man, where you come from the little bit of your origin story and how it led you to where you are today. Yeah, man, absolutely. So, Sean, I'll try to give you a quick elevator speech, you know, not highly recruited out of high school, you know, kind of always the scrapper or undersized. But Army gave me a shot. And my senior year in high school was the year they went 10 and 2 and finished 19th in the country that year. they lost to Auburn in the bowl game.

So they were the highest recruited team, you know, the best team in Division I was recruiting me. So I was like, all right, I'm all in. Went there, started two games my sophomore year, and then ended up being the starter, junior and senior year. 2001, 9-11, obviously that was my senior year that Tuesday when we were at West Point. So that kind of drastically changed the projection for all cadets at West Point at that time, but especially us seniors.

And so I had already determined I wanted to branch infantry, wanted to be an infantry officer. So upon graduation, was an infantry officer, wanted to be surrounded by like-minded men. It was an all-male branch at that time in the Army. And really, that kind of catapulted all of us into the next five to however many years we served in the military after that after graduating.

So I did, I did four deployments. My first one was a year deployment from 2003 to 2004 with the 10th Mountain Division. And then eight of those 12 months were spent in Fallujah, was a participant in the first battle of Fallujah. And then when I got back from that first deployment is when I tried out for the 75th Ranger Regiment, which is a special operations unit in our United States Army and had three subsequent deployments with them as a platoon leader, ground force commander, and company executive officer. So then my wife and I, my wife and I got married, Emily and I got married after my first deployment.

And we kind of were counting to cat lives. And on the horizon for me was going back into the big army and looking at an 18 month deployment either to Iraq or Afghanistan. And we just determined that wasn't the best fit for us. We wanted to start a family. So that's what we decided to do. So I got out in 2007, about 12 months later, I decided to drop my packet for the FBI and became a special agent in the FBI and was assigned to the South Florida Joint Terrorism Task Force down in South Florida, where I spent four and a half years focusing on kind of the Islamic extremist groups here in the United States that were trying to conduct harm and conducted those counterterrorism operations down there. And then in 2013, it was when I decided to

to take off from the FBI and kind of pursue the entrepreneur side that you alluded to, started a security consulting firm. But then really where the meat and the potatoes happened, where the story actually gets, you know, a little bit more relevant, hopefully to guess, is in 2017, it's kind of, I had a personal, you know, personal crisis in my life. I'm not going to lie. We're really the Lord. I had already accepted the Lord, you know, at West Point.

But it wasn't until 2017 that he really, he got a hold of me and, all of me and I needed to go get help for for post-traumatic stress disorder from combat which I hadn't really hadn't really sat on and hadn't processed and hadn't done the hard work that that took so 2017 was a growing year for myself for our entire family but he saw us through that saw me through that and gave me another chance and another chance and another chance and really did the hard work there I would say mentally physically emotionally it was the hardest hardest challenge of my life but it was where the most work was done. And I'm thankful for it.

And really, 2019, we moved back to Ohio. My wife and I are both from here. And our kids were of the age where we could get back up here. And that's kind of where we're at today. Dude, amazing. There's so much to unpack in that quick synopsis of your background. And by the way, for the audience listening, I know you're sitting there on the edge of your seat,

wanting to interact and ask live questions. I wish there was a way to do that because, you know, I would want you to participate in something like this. This is incredible. I want to go back to September 11th. You know, I remember where I was sitting, September 11th. I was at Louisiana State University. I was in sports psychology class and I was a baseball player.

And then all of a sudden I heard, you know, hey, some planes went into the Twin Towers of the, Twin Towers of the, you know, the World Trade Center. And I was just a young, dumb kid. I didn't really understand. I'm like, what is that? You know, like, what is the World Trade Center? And I was really, wasn't thinking anything of it. I'm like, wow, that's just really unfortunate.

You know, there was a dual plane crash. Like, what were they doing so close to each other, right? And what happened after that was, and I mean, just knowing after seeing what the real aftermath was, like, wow, like you were completely off base. This is like something way different, right? So we start strolling down after class. towards the weight room in Baton Rouge, because in between classes,

we'd like to go there and get a protein shake just to replenish, right? And walk in and all the TVs, you know, had what was going on on the television, which I would presume probably 99.9% of the stations in the United States of America had the event that was going on. When it comes to what your family eats and drinks, you know your choices matter.

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and I'm sitting right across from somebody that had their own experience in it, that their life was changed dramatically and impacted directly. Can you talk to me in the audience a little bit about the mindset shift in that, right? Because you're sitting there, everything's good,

senior year quarterback, right? I'm not really sure what's going to go on as far as the trajectory of you and the other cadets. But like you said, when 9-11 happened, it changed everything. Can you walk us that moment and possibly like what you were thinking and the rest of your cadets that you're you know um just the the aftermath in the conversations yeah no um so i got recruited at army and it was it was a peacetime military

right there there wasn't i mean really mogadishu in 1993 was the last and that that was a major battle um for you know five days uh well it was a little bit longer time frame of being down there but that was the that was the last major conflict we had. And really, you know, that's how I got recruited to, hey, you'll come, you'll do five years in the active military, figure out what you want to do for the rest of your life, and then you'll go off and do that. That was kind of the sales pitch, if you will, right? Sure.

And then you have a big decision to make your sophomore year. So between sophomore and junior year, when you decide to go to class, your junior year, between that summer, the first class you show up junior year, now you're comming. it. Now you're on the dotted line. If you leave anytime up until, you know, that first junior class that you attend, you're good, you can leave, you don't owe the military, you don't owe the U.S. government anything. So obviously we had already gone to that junior class. But I mean, I think about the guys behind me who still, you know, as a freshman or sophomore, who then had 9-11 happen while they were there. And the majority of those guys stayed. The majority

he goes to say, hey, I bought into this way of life I'm staying. For us, it was already decided, right? For a senior, it's already decided you're going to be in it. But there was a sense of, if I could place it now, I would say anxiety, adrenaline, a tinge of excitement, not going to lie, when that was transpiring because we knew that, hey, that's the path we're going to be on. And that's the path you have to have. That's the mindset you have to have.

when you're getting ready to go into those kind of austere conditions. You can't have the passivity. You can't have, even though fear will play a factor. It's how you deal with that fear, how you're able to manage it, how you're able to mitigate it, to then go on the side of the excitement, the anxiety, the adrenaline rushes to keep that momentum going. I mean, that's obviously years down the road once we've been trained and ready to go into combat. But that day, that Tuesday, there was a sense of, I don't know, almost like an eerie, calm chaos, if you will.

Interesting. Interesting, man. You know, you mentioned something interesting about fear, right? And this is something that I think a lot of individuals struggle with, including myself, right? If we get scared or we're fearful of something, we can judge that and give ourselves some sort of shame, right? At times. Now, I think being fearful is perfectly acceptable in certain situations. situations, right? But how you deal with that fear and how you overcome it is the other thing.

So I want to ask you, how did you manage your fear and overcome your fear in that moment? Because again, like you said, the mindset, you already had your mind made up. You subscribe to that way of life, but you're still a human being, right? So how did you, what are some of the strategies that you used to overcome your fear? And specifically why I'm asking you this question is because I want the audience to be able to put themselves, in their own fear right now and deploy the strategies that you're talking about because a lot of us aren't dealing with the fact that we have to go overseas and have people shooting at us, right? We're dealing things in our own little lives.

So if it can work for you, why can it work for some of us? Yeah. Well, you know, you immediately asked me that question. What pops in my mind is one of my last, oh, it was my last deployment. My last deployment, I specifically remember being. behind our striker vehicles we were getting ready to do a ground assault force gaff is what we would call it so we were driving to our target that night and i specifically remember being where the ramps down and you get ready to load onto the um onto the striker vehicles to then head out on the mission and just

and i would do this every time i have this vision right now of it but i mean i would do this before every every mission we go out and i would i'd take it to the lord and uh i'd say a quick prayer hey lord give me the strength. I would tell myself this. This is what I would tell myself during those times. If tonight's my night, then tonight's my night. You've already written my name in the book of when it's going to happen. I can't control that. What you can let me control is how I respond in the austere conditions, how I lead my men, and how I make decisions tonight. Give me those strengths. Bring my men home safe and let us go do our mission tonight. But my ticket's already written. If it's tonight, it's tonight. Let me go be bold. And I would tell myself that every, or pray that to him every single time before a mission.

And for whatever reason, after I got that out and after I did that, I mean, it wasn't long. It wasn't with a bunch of dudes. It wasn't with my guys. It was just by myself. And it was like that was what gave me strength to say, okay, we're going to go in. Now, were there times still on target where, you know, the spider sense has come up and the fear creeps in? Absolutely. But having that and that repetitiveness and that continual going to something bigger than ourselves.

Because I can tell you this, also on the flip side of that, there were times and there are times even today when Chad begins to try to put the reins in and Chad tries to rely upon himself, I'm going to falter. I'm going to fail. I can't rely upon myself in every situation because at some point I'm going to run short. and I'm going to have to have something greater than myself that I can fall back on. For me, it's him. For me, it's Jesus. That doesn't have to be everybody's case. I wish it was.

But for me, during that time frame, for me, now, I still experience that, Sean. But that's where I go for the strength because I know I've landed flat on my face when I've relied upon myself during some of the most challenging times of my life. I'm just super impressed by you, dude. You know, I'm loving this conversation and I, you know, I'm thinking of a lot of different things while you're speaking. The one thing I'll tell you is for me, it's Christ as well, right? And what I will say is I do a terrible job of giving things to him. And, you know, I know conceptually he's my dude. You know, like, you know, I gave my life to Christ in 2001, 2001-ish.

maybe 2002. I was in I was my first year at Louisiana so it was 2001 and baptized everything did all that there. I find myself, I'm not in combat, right, but I'm surely in a fight, right? We're all in fights in our lives, whether it's we're looking to overcome a disease or we're looking to fix our marriage, have a better relationship with our children, start a business, be the best salesperson on the planet. It's all a fight, right? It's all some type of, you know, because you're going to fight with external things. You're also going to fight with your most inner demons and your most limiting self-beliefs. All the while, though, we all have a tendency at times to try control it all and steer the ship. I am so guilty about that. I'm doing it currently in a few

different ventures that I have going on. And so, you know, I'm just being vulnerable with you and saying, like what tips do you have for me and other individuals that know the way, but are still deciding like, hey, I know the way, but I'm just not going to trust you because I, because I know better because that's what it translates to, man,

you know, let's be honest. Yeah, it does. Well, here's the thing, Sean, you're not alone.

I mean, that's a daily struggle that I face as well. I still face that. That's why I said even to do this day, I try to grab the reins and take back over. I think there is a little bit of the, alphaness in that, which I don't want to completely diminish as well. There's a little bit of alphaness that he's giving us, right? He wants us to be those guys out there, being bold,

pushing the envelope, you know, being on the edge. Like, I think, I think that's oftentimes why a lot of dudes who aren't there yet in their walk, they're like, I don't want that. I don't want to follow the dude who's meek and turns of, you know, is kind of, you know, is kind of not. not bold and audacious. Like I think we've, we've neutered Christianity for men way too often to be quite honest. And I think there's not too many ones out there who are willing to be, you know,

who are on that edge of like right where he wants to. Because that's where he can do the work. That's where he can be dangerous. And, but I also will say this. So, and I wasn't even thinking of this when we had this conversation. But last Friday, I got the chance to talk to my sons.

middle school, their fellowship and Christian athletes group. Yeah, FCA at the middle school. It is great. It is, man. It is. And I couldn't believe how many kids were there. I was actually floored. And it was, it was an awesome moment.

And I actually, I shared a war story. But the reason I shared that war story, because I shared in that moment, I didn't know who I was after this tragic event took place. I really was lost on who I was. And I have a sheet. I'll share it with you. this i don't know if you you know show notes or whatever but it's it's 28 verses and it's who who am i you know and it's it's 28 verses of what what the bible says we are who we are you know

not what we say to ourselves not what others say not what our parents not what our coaches not what our teachers not what our business partners say about us who does he say we are and man i have that i have it on my desk i have it right here i have it somewhere yeah right here It's this she right here. And I keep it on my desk so I can read, this is who I am. And this is where I have to go. I mean, I'm not, hey, I don't have it. He does.

He's got it. So that's where I have to rely upon. And that's why it's, I mean, it's got coffee on it and everything else. But it's where I keep on my desk because I often have to go to that. Well, I surely would love a copy if you have it in a way you can scan and email it over because that's something. It's funny because you talk about who am I? Like, I don't know if I told you this, but my TED talk next week, which by the time this airs, it'll probably sound weird. So March 23rd, I'm at TED Talk.

And it's about identity crisis. It's about that moment that athlete retires earlier transitions to real life and has to embody a different part of themselves. Because, again, one version dies, another one's born. And we don't know who we are while we're playing sports. We're going to have a hard time with that transition. So it's funny that you mentioned that because that. That is something that I'm seeing at any level, whether it's, you know, you stop playing in high school or college or professionally. Especially, I mean, baseball players, man, like we're so wrapped up and, you know, that's who we are.

Right. We are baseball players. It's what we are. No, it's what we do. Right. But oftentimes when that career is over, I remember sitting in right field corner, man. Right field corner. right after we got knocked out of the college world series in 2003.

And I was immediately so scared, Chad. I, brother, I was crying. I was in tears. And a lot of people that were in that moment probably thought, well, I'm crying because the season's over. You know, we got swept. We got beat by Cal State Fullerton and then, you know, South Carolina. And yeah, while I was upset, a little bit of the tears were we didn't get it done.

We didn't win the national championship. and I'll never get to come back to Omaha and play. But the biggest thing that I was crying about is because I didn't know who I was. And this happens more so in life than not. I mean, like, even with if you're just a young man, you're married and you have a child, now you have identity change. Your dad. It happens.

So I want to talk a little bit about an identity crisis, man. I know, you know, we can go to the word. about who does he say we are, you know, but we also have to do the work, right? And what are some of the things that you would offer up to somebody who is facing that transition in their life to where they don't know who the heck they are? Southwest Florida is one of the most beautiful places on the planet to live. For those of you that are thinking of moving from other states to come to Florida or even just moving to a different part of the state, I want you to think of a big, beautiful luxury home. Contact legacy.

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We teach techniques to cut out the negative self-talk and unlock the full potential. Imagine stepping into the box when it counts the most and feeling totally confident in your ability, feeling invincible instead of insecure, ready to seize the opportunity instead of shrinking from them. That's the mindset I help athletes. about it. Don't waste another minute on comparison and self-doubt. Take control of your mindset and become the confident, unstoppable competitor you were meant to be. DM or comment below to get started with Edge and transform their mental game. That's a really great question. I want to also piggyback off your point. That's the difficult, you nailed it on the head with professional

or college athletes or even if you're a high school athlete and you're not playing in college anymore. But that's the difficult thing for military transition as well right now. Yeah. Not just right now. I mean, it's been since, you know, since the end of time, since warfare. But transitioning from, you know, that military mindset to then into back into, you know, society, if you will. That's why so many veterans are struggling in that. So.

Let's talk about that. Like, we get on that. Because I think, I think right there, like, I don't, it doesn't matter to me. at what angle we take on that, you know, as far as, because I think it's all real, right? And the whole point is is appealing to everybody. But I want to specifically talk about that soldier in military transitioning back to real life and the things that happen. Because major awareness needs to continue to be, you know, a light needs to be shined on this, right? Because a lot of these military professionals, they come home and they don't seek the help.

They think they got to go it alone. And I don't think that's right. I don't think they should have to deal with that alone. Yeah, you're right. Well, and here's the thing, though, you said it as well. And I think I said it earlier as well. It's doing the work. You know, I went through 62 days of Ranger School.

I did four combat deployments. I went through West Point. I played Division I college football at, you know, 510, 175 pounds. Physically, I've done some demanding things in my life that's been asked. Nothing. Don was more difficult, more demanding than when I was in that point in 2017 and said, hey, now I've got to look at me and I've got to internally reflect. And I've got to go back to some stuff.

And I've got to look at those events. And I've got to sit on that. And I've got to process that. And I've got to go through that. As agonizing as that is, especially for men, because we typically can. just put up the walls and continue mission and think that we can just plow through those events. And it doesn't have to be combat. It doesn't have to be some, you know, crazy event. It can be, you know, a divorce as a young child. It can be, you know, dads hitting the bottle too,

too much as, you know, when you're a kid. It doesn't have to be some crazy story. Now, some, you know, my stories are a little bit unique to me. So that's what they are. Maybe that's why they resonate with people. But it wasn't until I reflected and sat on those events. And actually, I did cognitive processing therapy with a psychologist at the VA. And it was each of the combat events. I had to do two combat events that really bothered me that I would never talk about, that I would never share.

And I had to go through 12 iterations of each of those. And probably the hardest point in time was when I had to write. them out. I had to write the entire event out and then I had to read it to my psychologist. I remember the first combat situation that I wrote about. It took me about four and a half hours on a Saturday and I wrote it out and it was seven pages long and I was by myself in a library in Jupiter, Florida, writing it out and it was awful. It sucked. It was horrible. And I got to, I got to the VA on Tuesday and I read it out loud. I was a hot mess. I had all these emotions crying, you know, going through all these ranges of emotions that I had never gone through as a male,

you know, an adult male because I, you know, could train myself not to cry, could train myself not to do all that stuff. Now they're flooding, right? She's like, good job. This week's assignment is I want you to go back and I want you to rewrite it and I want you to rewrite it with more detail and I want it to be longer this time. So the next iteration nine pages long going back through but what that did was it unlocked all of the emotions that you know men aren't good at you know going through and sharing and and dealing with and it really put i mean i you know in the military a lot of times you talk about crawl walk run you'll do something that you're training to do whether it's a three to five second rush and you do it crawl and you do it really

slow and then you walk through it and finally at the end you can you can run and that's really what I was doing. I was doing the crawl, walk, run on learning how to identify my emotions, accurately describe them, feel them, process them, and then share them, you know, healthfully. So that was kind of what was going on in that. And so that's what I did. All I can give you is what was the recipe for how I kind of got back to where I could have these health, like even, you know, my son, thank God, literally, Jesus stepped in when he did and rerouted me because I was kind of given that tough love like, hey, son, he was like three eight, you know, suck it up, drive on, you're good, man. Boys don't cry.

All the falsehoods. And I'm not saying we don't need to train our men how to be our young boys, how to be masculine, But part of that masculinity is being able to cope healthfully with our emotions and knowing how to process them and get through them. And know when, hey, there is a time and a place where you're going to be safe in this house and you can share your emotions. And mom and I will be here for you. And then there's other times when you're on that sports field, man, you need to turn it on and you need to be at the high point. And there will be a time to come back and decompress. But that time is not to melt down when it's, you know, third and 12 and you just threw a pick six.

That's not the time. But that's the time to get ready for the next series, right? Yeah, because you're fixing to go back out there right now. Yeah, right. Yeah. So, I mean, it's all that. But I'm just thankful that he did it to me in my life. Jesus did it to me where I could go in.

I could focus on that. And then hopefully, because that's our only goal as parents, right? Is, you know, oftentimes you'll hear people say, oh, don't make the same mistake twice. No, I don't like that statement. Don't make my mistake once. If I can share it with you what not to do, don't make my mistake once. don't make my mistake once, right? And that's our goal as parents is where we screwed up, where we fell short.

Hopefully we can pass it on to them so that they can maybe be ready to navigate that challenge a little bit better when they face it. God, so good, man. You know, what we're really talking about is going to the root of the problem, right? So to your point, doing the work, writing it out, getting granular, starting at seven pages, making it long. and longer and longer and longer. So you can go through all the ranges of motions that you need to go through, get them out so you can heal. Now,

a lot of times what we like to do when we're struggling is treat the symptom. You know, and I had an interesting, I had a really good friend on my show, Dr. Rob Kelly, interesting conversation, incredible. And he was just talking about,

you got to go back to the scene of the crime. You have to go back to that scene of the crime and do the work in order to heal. heal properly. And I don't think enough people are doing it. And my theory is, and myself included, it's because it hurts too much. It is painful. So I commend you. I commend you on that, right? Because, you know, doing that type of work is the only way you can lead your family. If you don't, you know, what does that look like? That three-year-old that you're telling to suck it up is now 10 going through some real life stuff. And,

now daddy's insensitive and doesn't hear him, right? So I just, I mean, I think that's amazing. And, you know, in our household, you know, we, we don't teach the boys don't cry. Like, we don't teach that. I want, I want my son to cry. Like I, but I also want him buttoned up chest, chest, you know, head up and chest back in public. You know, when he's playing baseball and I want his chest up, you know. But when he gets in the car, he can meld

down all he wants. You know, we can have that conversation. Um, so man, just a little, you know, I'm off in the weeds now, but I just, you know, I really wanted to address the fact that, you know, we're talking about addressing the root of the problem because I want to drive that point home for the audience, you know, it's not about the emotion, right? It's not about the trigger or the fear. It's about why. It's like what happened? When did it happen? Who did it happen with? and going back to that moment and working through it. I love all those points. I love how you pull that out from me sharing that,

about going to the root cause. And I also think we've got to talk about it. I mean, we've got to talk about, you know, men are really good at, you know, covering it up with other things. And it can be a multitude of things, whether it's, you know, whether it's the bottle, whether it's, you know, drugs, whether it's, you know, unhealthy relationships, whether it's work, you know, we can, we can ingratiard ourselves and hide from, oh, I'm just working all the time, you know,

and we can check out and be absent. And I love your point about the family, man, because so often I was stuck on still longing. When I didn't know my identity, I was longing to get back to leading that Ranger platoon. I was longing to get back to leading those men and those dangerous missions. And you know what? The greatest Ranger fire team I could ever be in charge of is my wife and my two kids. The greatest team I can ever lead is right here in my own house. Like how effectively am I doing that?

Before I go out and chase trying to lead others and be this somebody to somebody else, no, let me lead here. Let me do this right. And then when and that's that's a continual. That's a continual spectrum, right? It doesn't end. But I think so often we get focused on leading others and going out, or at least I did, that I really needed to be refocused on who the true Ranger fire team, I was getting the privilege and honor to lead. And that's my household. Dude, it's a great point because we all want to lead others, whether you're in the corporate world, army football team, baseball team soccer, whatever. It doesn't matter, right?

We all want to lead others. But, you know, when you're a father and a parent and a mother as well, and your ability to lead the people in that house is going to tell you everything that you need to know about how you can lead others. Because here's the thing. Here's the thing of what people don't understand. And to your point here, the people under your roof, your two beautiful children and your beautiful. wife, they want to be led by you. Now, wanting to be led by you and your ability or capability to lead them effectively is completely independent. Right. Now, if you can't do that, how are you going to go out there and lead somebody in corporate America or go lead somebody else when they don't want to be led?

Most people don't want to be led because they haven't healed on their own. They haven't gone back to the root of their issue or their trauma to be like, okay, well, this person is just trying to help me. So I think to your point, man, it's important that you got to cover, you got to make sure your house is in order first, man. Mm-hmm. You know, absolutely. You know, you're talking about the cover up. The, you know, men can cover things up quickly, right? It could be, like you said, working too hard. It could be pornography. It could be drinking. It could be

just, you know, staying out too late because you're trying, I'm trying to make more money for the family. I mean, I've been caught in that. You know, like I grind my butt off because I want to provide my family this, this financial freedom to where we can pick up and just leave whenever we want, right? But that's my definition too, though, right? That's my definition of what I want because I didn't have that when I was a kid. And so we all go through things in life and we start leading and we lead our families based on our paradigm and what we see and how we want things to go or how we want things to go or how.

we feel they should go. But I want to encourage men out there that are listening right now. You don't know what your family wants or needs from you unless you ask. You have to ask. If your kids say, you know, Daddy, I know you work a lot and we appreciate that, but I'd rather have you home more. I mean, your kids are telling you right then. Like, what you think is important isn't necessarily important to them. And I think that more parents can learn more from their children by just asking. So I like to do check-ins with my kids. Hey, what am I doing great? What am I doing poorly? What do you need for me? I love that, man. It's like a, it's like an assessment, you know, like a 360 assessment where you get your, you know,

who's above you, who's, you know, your peer and then who are you leading. And, and those are the ones that you get the actual, I bet you get the best feedback, you know, from them because it's unfiltered. It's real. It's their vantage point. Oh, man. I got so mad last night. I got so mad. I'm not even joking. I like my alpha and my ego kicked in right away. And it's different because a lot of people, you know, just don't admit when those when those times happen. Oh, I'll admit it. Or I'm sitting there. And we had just got done with dinner. And my wife was brushing our seven-year-old's hair, right? And they're fixing to get ready for bed and go nine night, all that good stuff. And right then, I don't know what happened. My wife said, who's the grumpiest in the house? And my seven-year-old went like this. And I felt her looking at me.

And then I saw my wife's face. I'm like, first of all, that's ridiculous because I'm not the most grumpy in this household. Second of all, you set her up for that. And three, one day, you're going to regret that because I'm not going to be around. Right. You can call me grumpy, but you know what? That's why I'm grumpy. That's why.

And I'm not grumpy. But I should have taken that and been like, well, I don't agree, but why? Like, what do, how do you see me? You know, so I lost an important, you know, opportunity to lead. Because now if I go back, it's not as powerful, right? But dude, I'm not perfect. I'm not perfect, but I'm going to tell you right then. Like my daughter, my seven-year-old thinks I'm the grumpiest one in the house.

That's great, man. But I didn't ask for it. I didn't ask for it that time. Give me a heads up. And you know what? I've done that before, though, too, where I'm like, oh, man, that was such a missed opportunity. And like, why did I not do that? We've got to be careful on that front, too, because, hey, the opportunity will present itself.

You've got the awareness, obviously, of recognizing. man. I think that's what, you know, are we fully present when we're with our kids? You know, are we fully present just in society and gym? Am I fully present when I'm working? Am I fully present when I'm at the house? Like, uh, you know, so I think being fully present and just having the awareness of like, okay, I miss that one, but next time I'll be ready. I think that's huge. Being present. Brother, if you got like a bottle in your refrigerator that's labeled, um, presence, send one over, right? because I think it's the hardest thing to be because as we get older, right, we have more things on our mind. We have more stressors. We have more fears, more anxieties. And I find myself thinking

about things like, you know, when I'm on the phone with my wife, she was like, are you there? I'm like, yeah, yeah, I'm good. I'm good. You know, there's, there's moments where I'm just completely checked out. And it's not because I'm not interested or disinterested in what my family's saying. It's like, I'm trying to come away. Like, I'm in my own mind trying to connect. the dots or get through the labyrinth maze. Do you ever find yourself being that way? Oh, yeah, no. And it's, you know, we're so,

not stovepiped, but, you know, we're very men are like very one to me, where women can like talk about things. I mean, this is psychology where they can go from one point to another and bounce all over the place. And that's just kind of how their brains are wired where men, we're more like, you know, silos and we can't do that. And so if I'm not, if I'm not in, you know, that presence of mind of where she's at, then yeah, it's, it oftentimes I have to

bring myself back to your point because I'm checked out and I'm not focused on where I need to be focused at that time. No, that's a good point. The silos, right? If I'm not in that silo and my wife comes up to me and wants to talk about a certain aspect, but I'm thinking about something completely different, I'm not going to be able to give her what she needs, you know, because, I mean, that's just hard for men to do in general, you know, mixing the fact that, you know, the high level ADHD, like I can't do it. Like, I literally can't do it. I need to focus on what I'm doing right now. And then you can ask me to walk the dogs or something. It's really funny, though, because like, I don't know if you're this way. But for me,

if I'm doing one thing, the last thing I want here is, hey, babe, I, I, I don't care if it's feeding the dogs. I'm like, I need to focus on this task because if you distract me, I'm cooked. Just I can't. I shut down, man.

I shut down. No, but I don't say, I think that's more how our brains are wired, though. And I don't know what the cause is. You might know that more than I do. But that I think men in general are very,

I can't think of the word. I'm not trying to think of compartmentalized. There we go. golly, we're very compartmentalized on how we work. And I think it's effective at times. I think it's effective like in combat. It's very effective. I was very compartmentalized on mission.

Like that was the only focus. It didn't matter. I mean, I didn't have any other care in the world except for, you know, that hour and a half. And it was laser-like focus and all of my men, laser-like focus. But then we've got to be able to come back and then, you know,

kind of decompartmentalize, if you will, I think, especially in here in society here. Maybe that's the difficult thing with professional athletes. You know, they can't decompartmentalize. They're still stuck in that, you know, my life and how great it was when I was at the peak of my, you know, professional performance. Well, I think it's an interesting point, Chad, because, you know, we talk about decompartmentalizing or leaving your, you know, proverbial suitcase at the door at the mailbox. Very hard for men to do.

It is very hard for men to do. And I don't know what it is about us, but like, you know, if I have a certain experience throughout the day that really bothers me, I'll think about it when I'm picking up my kids. And I'm blessed, dude. I get to go pick up my kids every day. Like, how cool is that, dude? Right. I get to go pick up my kids from school every day.

And but there's times when I'm driving home and there's talking to me. And I'm not necessarily listening. I'm thinking about the thing that happened an hour ago and how I could, you know, do better so that way I drive more revenue into the business to help my family. But again, going back to my previous point, all my kids want to do is tell me about what Sammy said at school. And I'm not doing a good job of decompartmentalizing things. And I think men really struggle with that. I think they do. And here's another thing that I'd add to that.

because I had often heard at times like, you know, leave your suitcase at the door, right? Leave your briefcase at the door before you come in. Don't bring any of that into the house. Now, I actually don't agree with that either. And I think there's opportunities that are age appropriate, obviously, with our kids. But like, or even with like our wives, I remember Emily, she used to. hate it when I come home from FBI or the Army because I'd be like, it was good.

Yeah, it was good. Everything's good. Everything's good. My thought was I don't want her to know all the crappy stuff that's going on, but she was just wanting some type of connection, right, of like trying to be there for me and trying to, you know, be that person that could listen and maybe help me navigate or just be a sounding board. And I think our kids, too, if we're not letting them know that like, hey, you know, it was a difficult day, this individual on the phone, it was just a difficult call, and they kind of got under

my skin, I lost my temper, and that wasn't good, and now I'm navigating that. Man, now we're teaching our kids that it's not just them that's going through that. We have those as well, and now we're actually sharing with them kind of our lessons learned as they go. And I think I have to continually work on doing that. My son's great. Hey, dad, so how was your day? And just instead of giving it, oh, it was good.

Like I try to find it. It lets me do a quick reflection on, okay, how was my day really? And then what couple of stories can I share to kind of elevate and enlighten that, you know, enlighten that, you know, conversation a little bit more, which I think is opportunities for us to do that. It's a great point. You know, I found myself, you know, because I don't know if you noticed about it, but also in a payroll company. So if I'm dealing with one of my vendors or dealing with a client or even internal

operations and something really ticks me off, you know, they'll say, hey, what's wrong? And I'll find a way to talk to them about it, right? And let them know what's going on as much as I possibly can to where they can understand. And then also, this is why I'm reacting this way. And, you know, that way they know I'm dealing with certain things that they're dealing with, like, to your point, like, they're going off of reactions throughout the whole day. And they don't necessarily have the tools yet to to filter those things, right? And to handle some of intrepersonal issues that they're having with friends or bullies or teachers, what not. They don't know how to advocate for themselves yet.

So, you know, it's important, you know, as a parent that we're able to walk our children through how we're handling certain situations. So look, man, we've got to lay in the plane here. We're running down on time. But before we hop off, man, please talk to the audience a little bit about your podcast. I'm definitely going to link it in the show notes. your website and the show notes, and just how they can connect with you and hear your show. Man, I appreciate that.

I wasn't expecting that. But it's Christ over fear is the name of the podcast. So it's on all your major podcast players. And then YouTube channel, Christ over fear. LinkedIn page, Christ over fear. And it's really not difficult. It's having veterans on the show who are willing to share their story or wherever they're at. I've had guys on who maybe aren't there with their relationship with Christ.

And I think that's a valuable story to hear as well. But it's for those to share their story in Christ, wherever they're at and what he's done in their life. Because I don't think, sometimes I think we could reinvent the wheel. But I think when we focus on what he does and what he's brought us through or where we're at the current time, man, it can. be such a powerful tool to help somebody who maybe is one to two steps behind the individual that they're hearing the story of and bring them along. So we are, we're getting decimated as a combat veteran community with suicide. It's still the number one epidemic taking, taking veterans.

So it's, and I'm a firm believer. I think you can probably know that by now, Sean. I think the root cause of true healing comes from Christ. And so if it can point and be a light for somebody to navigate that and gain some insight that's raw, transparent, real, that's the goal of the show. Dude, I love it. Thank you for sharing that. I do have a guest for you that I like to throw. Okay.

Awesome. Awesome. Amazing man. Matthew Hadden, fitness coach, veteran, combat veteran. I think you'd really like his story. I think it'd be great for your community. Well, I appreciate that. I'll take it.

Absolutely, man. But you heard them, guys. Christ over fear. Chad Jenkins, amazing human being, combat veteran, husband, father, podcast host, entrepreneur, friend, you name it. If you guys got anything out of the show today, which I'm sure you did,

please share it with someone that you love or someone that you feel is going to need to hear this episode to move forward in healing and leadership in their life. We love you all. Thank you for listening. Until next time, stay determined. Southwest Florida is one of the most beautiful places on the planet to live. For those of you that are thinking of moving from other states to come to Florida,

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It eats away at you and destroys your confidence. I've been there too. Feeling like I didn't belong on the field with my teammates, but it doesn't have to stay that way. I used to compare myself to everyone around me. I thought that no matter how hard I work, I'd never be as good as the other guys. It killed myself to me.

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