The Resilient Mind - Before You Give Up, Listen to This - MrBallen (Former Navy Seal)

Episode Date: April 25, 2025

John Allen, known to millions as MrBallen, is a former Navy SEAL who’s no stranger to pushing through darkness. After surviving near-death experiences and life-altering setbacks, he discovered the power of storytelling to not only process pain, but to help others find meaning in their own.Take action and strengthen your mind with The Resilient Mind Journal. Get your free digital copy today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/Download_JournalSubscribe to Steven Bartlett for more inspiring videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheDiaryOfACEO Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Resilient Mind podcast. In this episode, you will be listening to before you give up. Listen to this with John Allen. Get access to the Resilient Mind Journal by clicking the link in the show notes. Enjoy. I think it all starts with, you know, the family I was born into were like very successful academic people. So I was born in a town called Quincy, Massachusetts. It's just south of Boston Mass.

And, you know, my mother, father, and two sons. sisters are like brilliant minds in like the academic sense of the word just like brilliant uh you know my sister one of my sisters uh has gone on to win two Pulitzer prizes my dad's won a Pulitzer prize my this isn't even flex but to give you a sense of the people in my life my other sister like has a phdd and she like worked out of a Harvard lab my mom's professional writer and then there's me when i was growing up i uh i i could have done well in school you know but i didn't want to it was sort of like my form of rebellion was being a bad student willfully, and I would, like, go out and party with my friends

and just was, like, trying to be sort of, like, a bad kid in a way. And also, like, the town I grew up in was sort of a... It was not a place where academics really thrived. It's, like, a really working class, like, hard and tough place. I mean, Quincy's becoming much, much nicer, but it was a little bit of a tough place. And I sort of wanted to be, like, an edgy, like, tough guy. And so I'd, like, get into street fights and get my ass kicked.

and like I'd like stay out drinking with my friends. But what it did is it set me up for like colossal failure by the time I got to college. I got into college because my mom, the professional writer, wrote my college essay and my grades were horrible in high school. In fact, so bad that when I sent off my application, the school got in touch with me and they were like, hey, your grades are not really what we're looking for. But boy, that essay was so beautiful, we're going to give you a chance. And so I get into college.

I go to the University of Massachusetts out in Western Mass. like where a lot of kids where I was growing up, that's where I went to school. It's a big party school. And I just immediately bombed. First semester, like I got a 1.016 GPA, which it should have been like a zero. I basically didn't go to class. I was involved in this riot. So at some point, our football team, which was a team that no one cared about, even the people who went to the school, we didn't care about it. No offense to the minute men. They're very good now. But at the time, in 2006, they weren't. They made it to like this conference game or something. This is like not big time D1. This is like D1A. It's like very high level football,

but not going to be on TV or anything. And the college, the student body, again, they don't really care about the football team. But for some reason, when they lost this game, it just like instilled this need to riot on campus. And it was like concentrated in this one area of campus where I happened to live.

And I like went out there and I was like breaking windows and being this horrible kid and the security cameras everywhere. courting you. And it got to the point where at the end of the semester, there was like this witch hunt to find the people that had been involved in this riot. And there was like the website had posted the college police website had posted all these images of just faces of people in the crowd that were a part of it. And anybody could anonymously name people if they saw them. And it was like, everybody got expelled. And I found pictures of me. And I just got my grades back,

1.016. And at the same time, I'd been telling my brilliant parents, yeah, I'm doing great school, things are going really well, getting good grades. And I had to tell them, like, actually, it's the opposite. And I'm probably going to get expelled if I don't withdraw. So my dad comes out to the school and he, like, sits down with the dean who also says, John has all these violations of living in the dorm, like noise complaints and being a jerk. We're going to kick him out of the dorms. Even if he stays at the school, he has to live off campus. And my mom and dad are like, you're coming home. We're done with us. Like, you're an adult. And you can either, like, live at home and go to school or get a job, but like you're going to be an adult. And so I come home and I was 18. 18.

So I come home and I, uh, I was living in my mom's basement in Quincy. And I remember the first couple of weeks I was home. I actually felt mad at my parents. Like, how dare they make me withdraw from the school, even though there's all this information that like, it's completely my fault. But I, I had like an epiphany when I was literally in my mom's basement when I sort of realized. like, oh, this is my fault. Like, I have created like a habit pattern and a way of thinking that's put me in my mom's basement with no direction. Like, I've been gifted all these opportunities that I've squandered. And something sort of changed in my head where it was like, I don't want to be a screw up. I don't want to be that. I'm looking at my family members as being so successful.

And I just was like, I can't be that. I'm suddenly becoming self-aware that that's the path I'm on. I'm going to be the guy that like floundered everything and didn't amount to anything. And so I just made it simple. I was like, I'm just going to like go to a local school, get good grades and like graduate from college. That's going to be my focus for now. And I did that. I went to a local school.

I got my grades up. I actually transferred back to the school that I withdrew from to finish out my, my couple of years in college. But the, it was like a drug, like having a goal that I was working towards, like doing something that was worth my time and like studying. I was like struggling with school. I worked so hard. I was in the library all the time.

Like, feeling, like getting to feel what it feels like to be working towards a goal and achieving it was like really addictive for me. And so by the time I was like in my last year in college, I actually ironically had no clue what I would do post-college. It was sort of like, well, the goal was just to graduate college. I don't really have a clue what's next. And I thought about briefly becoming a lawyer or something because I was studying philosophy in English because I like those two subjects and they sort of fit the mold. But I had always sort of had this drawing, this calling to serve in the military because my, just some friends of mine in high school went off to serve in the military in 2006, like they went to Iraq and Afghanistan. But I wanted to do something really hard in the military because they needed like a big goal, you know,

and like graduating college was this goal that I had achieved. And I was like, I want to do something hard in the military. And that's when I got turned on to the SEAL teams. And the cool thing about the Navy SEAL teams is virtually anybody can apply to be a SEAL. You have to have the right physical fitness. You have to be a citizen. There's a few things, but basically anybody can try out. But it's only those who survive the training that become SEALs.

And it's a really small percentage of people. And it just really was the thing that was like, wait a minute, if I do that, if I go through like this baptism of going through this rigorous training, I'll become a guy that will no longer be viewed as like the screw up in high school who sort of got it together with college. I'll be able to reinvent myself. I'll be able to serve in the military, which is something I felt the calling to do. It's a career that I can kind of progress into, and it's a big fricking challenge that's going to require a whole bunch of training and prep before I get to go. And so I kind of just shifted my goal from graduate college to become a Navy SEAL and everything fell in line. And then naturally after that I became a YouTuber, which is an even longer story.

But basically I became a seal and then I got hurt, medically retired, and then I basically posted something online that went viral. And I love telling stories, as you can see from this long intro. And I just kept telling stories and now I'm here. But it started with like setting a goal and achieving it. And it's, which sounds so basic. But I think a lot of people go through life just sort of doing stuff because they were told to or they just sort of fell into it. I found like setting a goal that's really consciously something you care about for whatever reason.

and working hard to achieve it, it like organizes your whole life. And so my life, starting with coming home from college and being in the basement, has been a series of set a goal and shoot for that goal. And that's all that matters. It's a harsh truth when you realize it's your fault, or a big part of it is your fault. But that's what self-awareness is, like taking responsibility for the good and the bad. I would say that when I was, you know, pre-basement moment,

I was definitely in the mindset of playing the victim. and if something bad happened, it was somebody else's fault and not taking responsibility for anything. I was the guy that would come home from school and I'd tell my mom, like, you wouldn't believe that we had a test today. Joey got a 50. I got a 65, but Joey got a 50.

It's like you're sort of like, that's the way you approach it versus like I failed the test. But when I sort of decided I would graduate college and organize my life around that and then become a seal, I realized that it's not enough to simply just say, I'm going to do this thing. Like, you need to own, like, the entire process. And, like, for example, in steel training, there were a couple moments where, like, I,

myself, failed miserably, catastrophically at, like, tests and opportunities to be a leader. And I just, like, squandered it in a way. So the way seal training works is it's very reputational. Like, as you go along in training, you know, it's like the closer you get to graduation, the closer you get to being a real seal. And so your instructors, those are active duty seals. And they're no longer viewing you towards the end of training as being just some like, oh, candidate. Now it's like you could be my teammate.

There's not too many of us. And so it changes from you aren't going to make it to you better do a good job because I might need your help down the line. And I remember in the final part of training, there's this confidence exercise where they basically expose your class to tear gas, which is something that's pretty standard in the military. And the only thing they say is like this is a like it's all about mentality here. It's a confidence booster. It's going to suck. It's going to make you want to feel like you're dying from this gas. And it's like a long exposure.

And they set you up in this like square. You're all just standing. You're kneeling shoulder to shoulder, if you will, out in this open field on San Clemente Island in California. And all the instructors have their gas mess on. And they have these pool sticks like that you would swap like trash out of a pool. but at the end they have the CS grenade canisters and they're like, all right, they put their masks on, they fire off these CS grenades,

this big white smoke comes out and they hold out the pole and you just get covered in CS gas. And the whole, all you have to do is not run. Just stay here and take it. That's the whole point. And I ran. It was like a fighter flight instinct completely. It was like before I, and it was instant.

It wasn't like, oh, this is really bad. What am I going to do? What am I going to do? it was like instantaneously. I ran. I had to get tackled by one of the instructors because I was just out. I wasn't even thinking. It was like, and nobody else ran. This is the end of training. And so afterwards, it's like I was brought into the amphitheater. There's this little theater where they would teach us classes about ordinance and whatever. And they were like, Alan, stand up. And all my peers know I did this. All the instructors know I did this. And he just goes,

the main instructor, he's like, Alan, you're a fucking pussy. Sit down. He goes, you're a fucking pussy, and I never want to serve with you. And neither should your classmates. Sit down. And that was it.

And I had to, from that point on, for the rest of training, where these, like, it's almost like a bikini over my shorts. And it was like the worst moment ever, because I've made it so far into training. But I knew, and also, by the way, at this point, we weren't even home.

I wasn't able to go home to see my wife. We're out at this island for a month. You work seven days a week. You are in training until you're done. And the only choice was like, own the fact that you did that. Don't make excuses for it. Like, let this show people my actual strength, which seems funny because I did the thing I'm not supposed to do.

But instead of like running from it, literally, own it. Take responsibility for what you did and show people that, you know what? I'm prepared to show up for work every day. We're in these fucking trunks. and be looked at as a lesser than to demonstrate that I'm not. Yeah, I mean, I think that there definitely were some people that did carry that sort of like stigma into the teams. Because right after we finished this, we kind of went into the SEAL teams. But I do think that there was definitely some people that, and I'm not even tooting my own horn,

I really think this happened, that as a result of that moment knew they could like trust that I was prepared to sort of like, I'm going to take responsibility for me, I'm going to do what I'm supposed to do, and it be the best team that I can be, even at my lowest. you're still going to get the best version of me. And that doesn't mean I think I'm better than anybody else. It just means I'm an adult. And I think that's a big part of being an adult is responsibility is ultimately owning those mistakes.

And sometimes your mistakes are painful and public and awful. And that's the most important time to own them. And like you said, that's your opportunity in some ways, not just to rectify the mistake, but to become a stronger, better version of yourself. And I think that my mistake in college was a series of mistakes, my first semester of screwing it up and getting sent back home, but it was only when I recognized that it was my fault, and I had to own that, that I was able to graduate college and try to become a Navy SEAL. And then in the process, like, have the CS grenade happen, but in some ways,

that made me a better seal, you know? So I think that, like, in failure comes the best opportunity for success, which is something that I certainly didn't coin, but it's the truth. Every branch of, I think, basically every military in the world, this is a broad generalization, but it's, it's, it's, It's usually the case that virtually every branch of every military has some form of specialized unit that carries out special operations. It's the stuff that, you know, the call of duty video games and modern warfare, those are based on like the idea of specialized combat units that go out and do these kind of difficult and high-stakes missions.

And so in the U.S., you have the Army, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the Coast Guard, and the Air Force, and each of them have like their like prospective special operations. divisions, like you have Marine Special Operations and Marines, you have the PJs, the Pararescue Jumpers and the Air Force. There's multiple. But of all these special operations units in America, of all the different branches, you could make the case that the most, and again, some flack from people that disagree with me, the most, let's just say well-known and potentially most skilled, and I say that carefully, because of course there are other groups like the Green Barades who are incredible at certain things. But the most skilled at,

multiple disciplines is very likely the Navy SEAL teams. And it's because the acronym SEAL stands for sea, air, land, so SE and AL. The idea is, even though it's under the Navy, which is sort of like maritime and water, the reality is that the SEAL teams are a special operations group that can insert into virtually any environment, sea, air, or land. They can also use multiple insertion platforms, whether it's diving, jumping, going in on land. It's like a highly versatile special operations group, whereas a lot of the other special operations groups, not just in the United States, but internationally, are kind of specialized in certain geographies. Like you have mountain warfare specialists.

You have, like, the Dutch have this incredible diving unit. But the seals are like, we do everything. And they also sort of came into prominence. They started in the 60s under JFK. They really came into prominence post 9-11 because they were being sent out into the Middle East, which is, you know, it's a landlocked place, but this Navy special operations unit was being very successful, carrying out, you know, kinetic operations all across the Middle East.

So it's like a very famous jack-of-all-trade special operations group that, especially after the bin Laden raid as well, that sort of made them celebrities. But even before that, they were very well known as, like, the jack-of-all-trade special operations group. And how long is training? How long does it take to get through training and pass the other end? Broadly speaking, I would say it takes about two years.

but realistically it takes a little bit longer. So you have, there's two ways to become a seal. You either go in as an enlisted person. So there's the enlisted component of the military, which is somebody basically without a college degree who just raises their hand and just serves. That's like the grunts of the world. Those are the enlisted community.

And then you have the officer side, just somebody who at a minimum needs to have like a college degree to apply. You go to like officer school. And in the seal teams, there's like a tiny, tiny number of officer seals. and a massive number of enlisted seals. But there are two very different pathways into training.

If you go the officer route, it's practically like a political appointment just to get an opportunity. Like it's so, so difficult to even get a chance to try out that what you get, and it's because there's just like a handful of spots available. That's really all it was. So you have all these people on the enlisted side who actually have college degrees and could easily, like, become an officer in the military who, let's say, have other opportunities that they could pursue with their college degree, but they want to be a student. seal and so you have this big number of people that are electing to go be enlisted to try out to be seals

and that's important because it makes the enlisted side super competitive you have like these professional athletes and you have like olympians and you have like the best college athletes and you have mma fighters and wrestlers and then like the random people like me who have no resume and you all just show up for the class in san diego that technically is six months long but there's like before you've been joined the navy you need to basically compete for a spot to even have a chance to try out. And there's a whole application process before you've joined the Navy

that can take years. And then let's say you get your chance as an enlisted person. They're like, okay, you're going to get a chance to go. Well, first you've got to go to boot camp. That's two months in Chicago. And technically you can fail out of it, but really you won't.

It's sort of like a suck it up and get through it. But then at the end of boot camp, at least when I went through, you go to this other school, which is like a prep school. It's another two months in Chicago. Mind you, you haven't even started training yet. This is like potentially a year of pre-Navy,

and now you're four months into like you're in the Navy, but you're not really in seal training yet. You go to this prep school where you like learn how to swim and run. You already know how to do these things, but professional coaches work with you. The Navy invests a lot of money in getting you really strengthened up and mentally strengthened because following the prep school, you go to San Diego where you go through what's regarded as like the hardest part of seal training, which is a, it's called Buds, BUDs. And it stands for basic underwater demolition seal school. And it's basically, imagine whatever you think of as boot camp, like military boot camp, make it not two months long, but six months long, because

most boot camps are about two, and make it like a thousand times more difficult. It's really the same concepts. It's like intense, grueling, physical, emotional, and mental torture for six months. And that's the part where everybody fails out and drops out. That's like the, if you made a movie about seal training, you'd really only focus on the six months of Bud's training. And in fact, you'd only focus on the first two months because that's the most physically challenging. And then once you finish that, you go to advanced training. You're still not a seal yet. It's another six months of learning how to actually do the job.

So Buds is like, can you handle it? Advanced training or seal qualification training is I'm going to teach you how to shoot a gun with surgical precision. I'm going to teach you how to jump out of a plane. I'm going to teach you out to use this technology because you need to know how to do the job. So learn the job. And then after that you'll go to like, or we did anyways.

I don't know if they do this now. You go to like a language school for a month or you'll go to like a medical school or some sort of school to give you additional qualifications, and then you go to your team. And so all told, you have about two years from, I want to be a Navy SEAL to I am now a Navy SEAL. Two years is usually the mark. The thing that stands out, honestly, and this is what is pretty universally true, although there's some outliers, is the folks who show up to Buds, the candidates who show up to buds that have like an incredible resume.

There was a guy that showed up to training who literally played for the Arizona Diamondbacks. He's like six foot five, looks just like a god. And he's so humble. Like he's this big, strong professional baseball player who I actually have a memory specifically of playing with his character in a video game. And like there's other people who are like professional football players and all that. And he washed out so quick. And a lot of the other guys with big resumes like the sports and big accomplishments,

they typically wash out really, really quickly. And it's not because they lack the physical to do. do it. They don't. They definitely don't. It's that if you, and this is generalizing, because this is not true of everybody, but let's take the guy who played for the Diamondbacks. So this person is used to being, generally speaking, the very best person at what they do, their whole lives. And it's not because there's anything wrong with them. It's just sort of a truth. That's how you became a professional baseball player. That's how it works. In Buds, your instructors don't fucking care about who you were. And it's like a point they make.

They don't care at all about what you've done before. In fact, if they even suspect that you think you're special because you have some bullet point on your resume, like playing for the Diamondbacks, they will torture you and see if you really got it. They will single you out and specifically make you feel terrible and tell your class to like, look at this guy. You can't even do push-ups. You play for the Diamondbacks. You can't even do push-ups, even though the guy's doing push-ups just fine. But it's like, look, that doesn't even count. That doesn't get.

Do another one. get in the water, do this, do that. It's a mind game. But the guys like me, who I went to Buds and I'm like, I literally am a joke compared to the people that are here. I wasn't in great shape relative to my peers. I'm certainly not a professional athlete. The only thing on my resume is, well, I nearly flunked out of college, but then managed to graduate college. That is the extent of my resume. I played a little baseball in high school. And so for me, I have very little to lose. Like, either I'll make it and that'll be amazing and I'll get to do the thing I want to do, or I won't, and people will say, that's about right. The folks that go in that have the resumes on some level,

they expect to be really good, even if they're humble, and everybody in their personal lives also expects them to make it through. Because who wouldn't? He played for the Diamondbacks. Expectation, basically. It's brutal. And the course is too long to simply gut your way through it. The level of physical discomfort that you experience in buds is so unbelievably high

that it's not you got to want to be here. That's the way they say it. You got to want to be here if you want to make it through. It's you need to have something to hold on to in your brain that overrides the discomfort. And it can't be, oh, I need to make everybody else happy. I need to live up to expectations. Maybe that's strong enough for you.

For most people, it's not. Like when you are at your absolute lowest, like what do you hold on to? And it's for people like me, it was like, I have to prove myself to the, like to myself. I want to prove to myself that I can do this hard thing. Like it was not even about serving in the military. It was accomplishing this goal because I've set my mind to it.

And I want to believe that I'm the guy that can set goals that are hard and achieve them. And so in my worst moments, I would go to that place where I'm like, this is worth it to me. But for other guys, it's not. And so at the end, when you graduate, you look around and it's like a rag tag group of like short, sort of weird looking guys that don't in any way embody like what you would think of as like, I mean, some guys do. Some guys are unbelievable studs. But it's like a rag tag group of guys that just didn't quit. And a lot of it is because they had some sort of chip on their shoulder that internally drove them. And it allowed them to persevere when things got so bad because things get so bad in butts.

I mean, not just to like shamelessly cycle back to this idea of responsibility, but I'm going to do that. Before when I first got to the basement, I've just arrived, I was really, not even able to see what a mess I had made of my life. It wasn't like I knew I had screwed up and was blaming other people. It was more like my default setting was this is somebody else's fault. Somebody did this to me. Like I actively remember being furious with my mom and dad for making me withdraw from college when I literally was about to get expelled. I had a terrible GPA. I couldn't afford to live in the dorms. I had shown no, there was no evidence to suggest I would succeed in college. It wasn't until I was like home in the basement and the sort of like living in my mom's basement with no direction that I just sort of naturally happened.

I was like, wait a minute. It's you. It's not them. It's you. And it seems so obvious now. But it took falling to the bottom. And also, by the way, kudos to my mom, because she's a single mom. She didn't give an F.

She was not like, don't worry. You'll figure it out. She was like, no, you're going to get a job or you're going to move out or whatever. and you're also going to pay rent while you're here, and that's it. Like, this is your fault. And at first I'm mad, but it's sort of like it became this arduous thing I had to overcome. So it was like no self-awareness, none, and genuinely blaming the world for my problems to, like, probably, if anything, an extreme on the other side where, like, if you haven't

already noticed, I'm talking about the CS gas thing that I mentioned to you earlier, that's something that if that happened to other people, I don't know if they talk about it as such a public platform, especially just in the SEAL community, like reputation is such a big thing that even talking about things that other people know about, but that cast you in sort of a bad light reputationalally, I think people would stay away from saying that, you know, like, but for me, I view it as a strength to highlight not only the things that I'm good at, the things that I've made a mess of and screwed up because it shows other people that I'm secure. So it's like, it's ultra self-aware and secure in my image, the opposite as the basement.

kid and it took basically falling to the bottom being home, no new opportunities in front of me. Other people are off at college succeeding and here I am in my mom's basement for it to sink in that like if you want to fix this, you have to start with saying it's my fault and then do something about it. And it worked. Well, I think that part of the reason or I should say this is more of a general statement that kind of answers this. I in a way was fortunate because when I hit rock bottom, I am a person that does not

have what is it called paralysis by analysis. I'm sort of an impulsive person for better or worse. And so for me, it's like once I hit that rock bottom, it wasn't hard for me to sort of quickly find a good North Star, which the first one was college. I'm going to do college, right? And then when I was nearing the end of college, by this point, I sort of righted the ship at this point, but I wanted a new goal. It was like, oh, seal training. That checks some boxes. It's like, I want to serve, check. Like, it's a super hard goal. Check. I'll have to work for it. Like, it offers me a chance at reinvention and rebirth. Check. Okay, good. Like, I jump to that. That's what I do. I think there are plenty of people, and I'm, this is my guess. I don't know if it's true, who maybe have already

hit Rock Bottom and they want to make a change. They know it's their fault or whatever situation that they know they've contributed to it. But they don't know what to do next. And there's so many choices. Think about it. If you're at Rock Bottom, in some ways, you have every choice. in the world to make. And I think that one of the things that I certainly preach when I talk about this at all, which I guess in situations like this, is you don't need like a perfect idea. You just need something that checks enough boxes for you to be worth doing. So for me, it was like, okay, I'm in my mom's basement. I've done this to myself. I am the reason I'm not at school. I'm the reason that like my parents are embarrassed about their son. It's my fault. What do I need

to do? Okay, well, I should, I should graduate school because that that demonstrates that what happened at UMass is fixable. I can graduate school. I can do it. I'm not dumb. I can do that. Okay, fine. Got to go to school. That was it. It's like it checks a box. So do it. Yeah. I mean, and also you got to figure it's sort of like a self-perpetuating problem too where if you, let's say you've hit rock bottom, even if you don't know it and you're like, oh, I want to fix my life. I want to do something with my life, let's say the kind of generic rock bottom. Well, let's say you get paralysis by analysis and you're not able to sort of like pick a path and you go nowhere that only reinforces the idea that you're you screwed up again but you haven't there's just too many choices and you're

allowing too many factors to be at play here jaco however he said it is dead on and there's another way that's talked about in the military which is an 80% solution now is oftentimes better than a 100% solution tomorrow and it's all about like speed over certainty in the military it applies a lot times. But that's the way I think people should generally, not always, but generally look at their lives if they haven't quite built anything yet, whether they're at rock bottom or just starting out, like they're young people, or whatever age you're at, if you feel like you need to make a change, like you said, the pain of staying the same is greater than making a change. If you're at that point, you kind of know it, think about what matters to you, whatever it is. Like I like to equate it

to when you're in the shower by yourself and you're just having unfiltered true thoughts, like ask yourself, what do you really care about? Like, honest to God, like, forget what society says you should care about. Let's say you really just want to be famous. And that's the actual core. And you don't even know why, but that's what you want. Well, guess what? Listen to that part of you. It's not vain. It's a thing that matters to you. Similarly, if you're like, I want to be just rich. Great. If that's a real motivation for you, like at your core, in the shower, it's just you. If that's really what drives you, great. Those are boxes. that must be checked for something to be worth doing.

So it's like have your shower thoughts and be real with yourself, like what do you really actually care about? Not what society says, not what you want your family, none of that stuff. For me, honestly, the reason the seal thing really paid, I wanted to do it ultimately is I wanted people to say, that's John Allen, the Navy SEAL.

Because to me, it was like I had been the black sheep in my family because of me, I had discovered this, but it's like, oh, his sisters have done this, oh, his dad's done this, his mom's done this, and then there's, there's a lot. John, I wanted something that sort of overrode the mediocrity and failure. And I felt like, what better thing? What more honorable thing? And it also, I wanted to serve. That's another check. It's a big goal. That's difficult. That's check. But ultimately, it was like, I want people to know that I became

a Navy SEAL. That mattered to me. And you know what? It flies in the face of what Navy SEAL instructors tell you, which is you don't want, you shouldn't do this because you want to be a Navy SEAL. You should do it because you want to serve the country. And like, that's true. And what else are you going to tell your students? Yeah. But if you really want to be real about it, you've got to find your real motivation and that that box must be checked. Must be checked. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that ultimately, exactly what you said, if that box goes unchecked, you might in your life eventually convince yourself that you never needed to check that box. But at some point, at some point in your life, when it becomes too late or you're about to die, you're on your deathbed, you will have regret.

And I can actually speak to a specific instance in my life, which I had checked a box by this point, but I had one that I hadn't checked. I was in Afghanistan in 2014, and we were in this alleyway, and a grenade came over the wall, and it detonated next to a whole bunch of us, and I nearly bled to death. And I have this moment where I can't pull the tourniquets off of my kit that are rubber-banded to my chest for quick access to stop the bleeding. But I was so weak in losing my vision or in the middle of this gunfight, I couldn't get them off. And I realized as I'm sitting in this alleyway in the middle of this horrible place in Afghanistan, like the town was very kinetic and dangerous.

And I'm waiting to either be shot by the enemy, who we know is in the other side of the wall that could be coming around or I'm going to bleed to death or there are RPGs being fired blindly in our direction. It's like I'm about to die. 100%. I'm actively bleeding out or I'm going to be shot. And all that was running through my head, there was a couple thoughts. There was one that was kind of funny now, which was, I was like, hmm, I wonder if my obituary will say Jonathan Allen killed an action or John Allen killed an action. So that was going through my head. But I also, in addition to that, I had this really acute sadness that I hadn't started a family yet. I didn't have kids.

I was married. We've been married for several years. And my wife and I, we'd sort of talked about having kids. before that deployment. But we were like, oh, we'll have time. And I'm sitting there in this alley bleeding to death or expecting to be shot to death. I'm at the end of my life. And it was like, holy shit.

I wish I had a child. Yes, that's horrible for the kid. They lost their dad. But, like, that was a box for me. I wanted a family. What was the first thing I did when I survived this and got home? We started a family. You know, so it's like, that's sort of an extreme example.

But I do really believe that a lot of people have boxed. that are going to go unchecked, but to your point also, just try to do it and fail. And believe it or not, you actually checked the box. Thank you for tuning in. Continue strengthening your mind by listening to our other episodes.