Navy Seals Survival Story About Being AMBUSHED Will Leave You Speechless & Inspired | Jason Redman

And usually when there's a bad situation, there's a natural tendency to focus inward on the pain and the misery and all these things. But the reality, it's on you to take that first step. And and that became the genesis of this idea um that I now speak on, getting off the X. And and it is a victor mentality. It's a mentality that I don't care what happens in my life, I'm going to continue to drive forward. I'm going to figure out a way. And and that is the essence of what I speak on and what I believe in, the overcome mindset. Jason Redman, welcome to the show. Tom, honored to be here. Thank you. Dude, truly my honor. You're one of those people where I had to stop talking to you before we started rolling. So I'm like, hold on, we want to talk about this on camera. Yeah. But your mentality is insane. So you've got the whole overcome mentality. The book was phenomenal. Literally from like nine words in, I was like, I have got to meet this guy. Uh so really stoked to have you on the show. If you would, you've obviously been through a lot. For anybody um that doesn't know your story, give us like that quick thumbnail sketch so that all the stuff we talk about no bad days, overcoming [ __ ] not making excuses, they'll have some context. Yeah, Jason Redman in a snapshot. I um I don't know. I I guess I'm the epitome of defying the odds. I um I am a I'm not a big guy, so I'm not the average person that you would think would become a Navy SEAL. Um grew up poor and just had these big dreams of that's what I wanted to do. Everybody said you couldn't do it. Managed to do that. Decided at one point I wanted to become an officer. Many people said you can't do that. I did it and then I stumbled and fell and gotten myself in trouble. Almost got myself kicked out of the SEAL teams. Many people said you'll never come back. I actually believed I couldn't come back for a short period of time, continue to grind, reestablish myself, finally got myself back in a community where it's very difficult to come back from mistakes at that level. Um got my career back on track and right as I got it back on track, found myself on the wrong end of a machine gun in a firefight in Iraq. Um all shot up, face mangled, almost had my arm amputated and once again found myself in a situation where I was told you'll never be able to come back, you'll never be able to do this. Um and I did it. Uh although I was never able to be operational again, I learned like many of us find out in life that there is a new path and I started to walk that new path. Um So, and I've done it over and over again. I mean, I launched my own business and hit a major crisis in that business and you know, thought that we were going to lose the business and my professional reputation was damaged due to some false accusations uh and had to grind through that. Um so, it's I you know, at the end of the day my motto is overcome and that really is the essence of my story. Um if you don't mind, you put a sign on the door which you became famous for. I don't know if you can paraphrase it or if you actually remember the exact words, but um for context, you were you wake up in a hospital just [ __ ] up and in a way that I can't even begin to imagine. You have an acrylic version of your skull that shows how terrifying the damage was. I mean, it's crazy. I don't know how you survived. It's pure insanity. Yeah. Like people if do yourselves a favor anybody listening to this, go uh look at I assume you have it online people can see the I do. It's tough. We put pictures on. It's tough because of the way the acrylic, but yes, I I there are pictures on my website, you know, if the skull we've made the skull into art, you know. Yeah, it's crazy. So, you wake up after that has just happened and people are looking at you with pity. And so, you write something down. Yeah, um it was kind of a hard moment and I just and it is a defining moment and I think all of us in this life hit those moments. And one of the biggest things I try to talk to people about uh when these moments occur, when you get punched in the face with adversity or when people want to place you in the victim box, which is a big thing and I we are at a time in society where it's almost like people want to out-victim each other. Like, no, I'm a bigger victim, you know? And then we like encourage people to be victims right now. And I was in that moment in the hospital um and there were some people who really kind of tried to place me in the victim box. Like, oh, you know, these wounds are so bad, you know, what happens to our wounded warriors is so bad. They're never going to recover. They're never going to be whole. Uh they're never going to be the same. You know, and I remember when they left and and all of that. Uh the doctors telling me the amount of damage, potentially amputating my arm. I had no use of my left hand. I got tubes coming out of everywhere. I'm trached. They're feeding me out of a stomach tube. I was so weak from all the blood loss. I had to have nurses help me to use the bathroom. And on top of that, um I had just come back from this great I mean, a 2-year process of coming back from this leadership failure and building myself back up, finally getting my career back on track and to be severely injured and laying in this hospital bed and to have these people say, "You're never going to be able to do this." So, the greatest gift you have is you have a choice. You have a choice. That's the free will is one of the greatest things we have as humans. And I remember laying in that bed thinking to myself, like is this me? Like, is this finally the end? Um and I said, "No." I said, "Hey, man, you know the formula. The formula is you get up and you walk forward. And I think also how we allow people to come in to our circles. So, how close do you allow the negativity and how much do you allow the negativity affect you? There are too many people that allow it and then they start to feed off of it and then that's how you become that victim and sit on the X is one of the things I talk about. But in that moment I said no. Like I'm not doing it. And when my wife came back into the room, I motioned her and said hey, hand me my pen cuz I I couldn't talk. I could only write. And I wrote to her I said never again. I said I'm that's it. I I from this point forward I will not feel sorry for myself. I will lift others up. How many days in are we? Maybe seven. Oh my god. been about a week and and there were some things that had occurred. One, all around me I realized that there were young men and women. The average age of a wounded warrior in the military hospital is probably early 20s. I mean probably 22. So very young. I was 32 when I was shot. And I'd been through quite a bit of my life. I also had the benefit of having been through several different iterations of special, you know, SEAL training, Ranger school. I'd had to overcome some pretty big adversity in my life. I'd already developed a pretty good overcome mindset at this point. And all around me were these young men and women and I remember thinking to myself, man, like in the room next to me there was a young kid who had a traumatic brain injury who had no function with probably a 19-year-old wife that had just had a baby on the deployment. And I remember seeing them and and, you know, it's easy to look at yourself and feel sorry for yourself. And I was like, all around me are other people and they look to, you know, as a SEAL or as any leader in any capacity, whether you're a SEAL or whether you're a CEO, people look to leaders to lead, and I kind of just after the whole journey I'd been through from a leadership failure to fixing myself, I was like, "You've got to lead." Like, part of leadership is just your attitude in the hardest situations. And I And I told my wife, I said, "I will no longer I will not feel sorry for myself. I will set the example, you know, be the light in the darkness." And that's when I wrote that sign. And it said, "Attention to all who enter here. If you're coming in this room with sadness or sorrow, don't bother. Uh the wounds that I received, I got in a job that I love, doing it for people that I love, defending the freedom of a country that I deeply love. I will make a full recovery. What is full? That's the absolute utmost physically. I have the ability to recover, and I'm going to push that about 20% further through sheer mental tenacity. This room you're about to enter is a room of fun, optimism, and intense rapid regrowth. If you are not prepared for that, go elsewhere." And uh we signed it, the management, which I'm not sure why. I always laugh when I read that. Um you know, I've sometimes asked, you know, "Hey, do you think it needs an additional level of credibility or something?" Um but uh yeah, we are It was originally written on a uh regular piece of like printer paper. That's what I was just writing on. I have like 500 pages of this at my house from that time in the hospital. But couple days later, somebody else came in the room, and uh we had put that white piece of paper on the door, and they uh totally missed it and came into the room kind of with the same sense of pity. And I told my wife, I said, "Hey, I need something bigger, brighter, bolder with that people will not miss. I want everybody to read it when they came in." And she went and got that big orange-red piece of poster board. We transcribed it word for word, and it went on the door, and it was at that point that uh a New York firefighter took a picture of it and wrote about it, and it went viral from that point forward. All right, my friend, I have a big announcement. My incredible and talented wife Lisa is about to launch her new book, Radical Confidence. In it, she has managed to perfectly capture the process of how to go from feeling lost and insecure to taking control of your life and doing amazing things despite feeling fear, sometimes a lot of fear. Now, let me tell you, nobody knows Lisa better than me, but when I read Radical Confidence for the first time and heard her describe what it was like for her to go from having these big, exciting dreams as a kid to then as an adult scheduling her life around the TV shows that she wanted to watch, or how lonely and isolated she felt instead of pursuing her dreams, it was brutal for me. I would never say though that it was worth it for her to go through all of that just so that she could write something down that allows others to avoid it, but I will say that at least she was able to capture the strategies that she used to break out of that rut, find her voice, and begin doing incredible things despite her insecurities and fears that she wasn't going to be good enough to achieve great things. So, while it hurts me to know the dark place that Lisa went through, I really am excited for people who are going through something similar right now to read this book. Radical Confidence is an instruction manual for how to become the hero of your own life even when you're scared to death. Look, I know better than just about anybody how easy it is to get off track in life or to just not have yet found your calling, and it's even easier for people to feel so insecure and unprepared that they don't even want to pursue the things that they want. But, what Lisa shows people in Radical Confidence is that the radical part is that you can accomplish extraordinary things even when you feel fear. That's what Radical Confidence is, being afraid and unsure and having a toolkit that allows you to still make massive progress. Pre-order your copy today because if If act now, you can claim the bonuses that Lisa has created for you at radicalconfidence.com. They're only available if you pre-order, so act now. Then, once you've done that, we'll get back to today's episode. All right, guys. Read the book and get ready to be the hero of your own life. Peace out. The whole time you were saying that, it just gives me the chills, man. It's really incredible. I always said that I if anything really traumatic ever happened to me, I would give myself 30 days to mourn. The fact that you went through something I couldn't even begin to imagine, and 7 days later you've already got that mentality, it's really incredible. Why though? Why cultivate that mentality? Why do you think that's more useful than a victim mentality? Like what what's the purpose? Cuz a victim mentality pins you to a specific location. You know, I I often talk about, you know, people that follow me know I talk about the X. The X is really a military term that stems from a point of attack. Um It can be an ambush site. It can be a target you're trying to take down. The flip side of the coin, if you get attacked, you were on the X. And and the victim mindset, if you say to yourself, I am not able to do something because race, creed, color, gender, you know, size, you know, where I came from, socioeconomic status, whatever it is. Any of those things pin you to the X. They they They give you an excuse to sit on the X because you're able to say, "Well, I can't do this because I'm a specific color. I can't do this because of my gender. I can't do this because of my gender persuasion." None of that really matters, and there's millions and millions of people It matters, but it doesn't matter because the reality is it doesn't matter for your ability to drive forward out of a bad situation. And usually when there's a bad situation, there's a natural tendency to focus inward on the pain and the misery and all these things. But the reality it's on you to take that first step. And and that became the genesis of this idea um that I now speak on getting off the X. And and it is a victor mentality. It is a mentality that I don't care what happens in my life, I'm going to continue to drive forward. I'm going to figure out a way. And and that is the essence of what I speak on and what I believe in, the overcome mindset. Um a victim mentality limits your success in this life. You know, you will stay wherever you are, and you will achieve the limit of what you believe, which you know, if you believe if you believe you're never going to get out of the neighborhood you grew up in, you're right, you will not. And if you're waiting for somebody else to save you, it most likely is not going to happen. And actually, what I have come to find over time is even if someone comes to save you, if you don't believe in yourself, if you don't you We can't drag anybody off the X. You can't drag a victim off the X, cuz guess what? They will climb right back onto it. It's only an individual that believes in themselves. And and I'm such living proof of that now having worked with so many amazing individuals who have been through incredible traumatic events, who stopped looking at themselves as a victim and and as a victim. And I And I looked at myself as a victim at one point. When I got in trouble as a as a leader, there was a long period of denial, almost 5 months where I saw myself as the victim. That I had been thrown under the bus. And it was all inward like, "Hey, you don't like me, and you don't like me." And the reason I'm in this bad situation is because um you know, because of all external factors, not looking internal like, "Hey, man, a lot of this is you. You made poor decisions. You didn't step up in the areas that you should have." So, that's why I believe um that we need to teach people, you know, and get out of this this this pandemic. I you know, not COVID, but the victim mindset pandemic, you know, the power. Greatness lies in every single individual, and the only thing stopping an individual from being successful is that, you know, it doesn't guarantee it. I will say that. But I tell you what will guarantee you never moving forward is if you buy into that victim mindset and just sit on that X forever waiting for some new miraculous thing to come along and save you. Cuz if you don't start that process, it'll never happen. Yes. I agree with that so violently that uh I I don't even know what words to put around it. And my thing is that I No judgment. I can It is all too easy to when something bad happens to you that really isn't your fault, to blame other people, to give away your power. And my thing is I don't judge that. I understand how easily somebody ends up there and how it really is unfair. Like there are unfair things in this world. It just doesn't help to stay there. And as you were talking, you kept saying move forward. And Andrew Huberman, I don't know if you know who he is, but just a phenomenally interesting guy, and he is a researcher, and his lab looks at vision. And one of the things they found is that moving your eyes laterally, so just literally back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, can break somebody out of um depression or anxiety because it mimics what your eyes do when you're walking forward. So literally ingrained in you is if you sit on the X, to use your language, and you're not moving forward, you build up that stress, that anxiety, the depression. But if you start going after the problem, you literally move forward. That your body's like, "Okay, word. We're solving this." And for years I've been saying action cures all. Now, that's a message to myself, right? That, "Hey, you're in a moment like overwhelmed. I see overwhelmed take a lot of amazing people down." And my whole thing is, "Dude, overwhelmed makes people stop." They they get paralyzed. Like, I actually had a guy who couldn't finish a sentence because he was feeling overwhelmed. And I was like, "Whoa. Like, it is such an And that's not a a slight on him. That's just where his mind goes, right? He feels overwhelmed and boom, it just clicks out of gear and he can't even talk." And so, once people realize the solution is to break it down into one small piece so that you can move forward. Because once you go after the problem, there is some deep-seated thing in your brain that goes, "Word. We're handling it. We're solving the problem." And it changes your neurochemistry. And like you said, action follows belief. So, if you don't believe you can, you you are right. And and you and I are right on the same page. When bad things happen And first off, life is not fair. Bad things happen to good people. Perfect plans suddenly in the blink of an eye can be ripped apart and just be totally thrown off course. And and it is this so many people in the victim mindset is a mindset, "Well, that's not fair." Well, you're right, it's not. But, guess what? Sitting there and and focusing all your blame and time on the fact that your perfect plan or something happened or your world got thrown upside down accomplishes nothing. Nothing. You still You still It makes you feel worse. Well, and it pins you to the X. Uh because what happens in that moment is it's human nature. And what's been interesting is these last 2 years, I mean, you you about being in my lane, uh you know, speaking and coaching to companies all across um both nationally and internationally and individuals, everybody's feeling the same thing. You know, between COVID, political division, you know, now you watch what's happening in Ukraine, everybody's feeling this overwhelm overwhelming impact, the stress, the pressure, and but it's been interesting that across all businesses and across all individuals, everybody's feeling the same thing. There's no hope. It's all outside of my control. There's nothing I can do. These are the common things. It's not fair. These are the common things that people feel. But when you decide to get up and drive forward, you know, um I think action cures all is what you said. I say movement is life. Um movement is life. Movement creates momentum. And the great thing about momentum is even if you step into another ambush or into another hole, guess what? Movement enables you to, you know, hopefully knock out of it. And with that movement, no different when I was in that hospital, when you take action, when you get off that X and drive forward, number one, it creates hope. Like suddenly, you're not sitting there in this pain and misery and dwelling on the problem, suddenly you're moving forward. You're like, I don't know what the future holds. Um for me, I wanted to I wanted to be a SEAL operator again. I wanted to someday hopefully command a SEAL team. Those things did not happen. But guess what? with that? Uh there was a different path, and I'll be honest, it kind of happened over time. Um so it wasn't like this instant thing. Um so I would like to say I kind of came to grips with it slowly, and by the time like the final nail got pounded into the coffin, I had kind of already come to grips with What was the final nail? So, uh with my arm injury, um initially, so step one was right in the very beginning they said they were going to amputate my arm. Uh thankfully, that did not happen and Did you tell them not to? No, actually what happened and you know, life has interesting twists and turns, you know, if you believe in God, I call it a God moment. There are others who may call it fate, serendipity, whatever it is. The lead doctor in charge of Bethesda, guy by the name of Dr. Dan Valachi, he was the head orthopedic surgeon, was a former SEAL. And when he came into the room and saw me and saw the damage to my arm, his entire team said we should amputate his arm, which was some of the original things that I heard. But Dan told me, "I'm going to figure out a way to save your arm." And he did. Uh although in the beginning, my arm fused in place. Uh I had so much damage that literally I grew this gigantic block of bone around what was left of my shattered elbow. Woah. And um Yeah, at one point it was growing so badly, it's called heterotopic ossification. Uh it's a byproduct of war, sometimes you'll see it in really bad injuries. Um but the bone was growing so badly that I was having pieces that were pushing against the skin and I said, "Hey, this isn't This wouldn't protrude from the skin, would it?" And they were like, "No, that won't happen." It happened. I had like this horn growing out of my arm. Woah. Um But anyways, Dan, uh who later became a friend, fought to save my arm. Um it was fused like this and one of the highest levels of medicine and I just give him so much credit and if you are a doctor out there, I hope that you will listen to this. Cuz sometimes I think doctors get a little overly confident in their abilities and they also don't want to admit they don't have know how to do some things or it's beyond their abilities. Um and I think at the highest levels of leadership, being able to get to that point is actually a strength and not a weakness. And Dan came to me after several months and said, "Jay, I'm at the limit of what I can do with your arm." It was totally fused. I couldn't bend it at all. We had all this had a you know, all this heterotopic ossification growth. I had a little bit of movement, but I still had some nerve damage at this point. And he said, "I'd like to recommend you to a doctor at Johns Hopkins, a guy I studied under. He's one of the foremost hand and arm experts out there." And I went to him and he looked at it and he said, "I don't know what I can do, but he said, 'I'm willing to try.'" And what he did was really pretty groundbreaking. I think it was one of the first times that he actually uh took the HO and actually ground it and made like this bone paste. He cleaned out, he rebuilt me an elbow. Heterotopic ossification. Yeah, sorry, the medical short term. Much better, yeah. Yeah, but uh he rebuilt it. it up and turned it into a paste? paste. And he used that to replace some of the areas like the head of my elbow, part of the head of my elbow was gone, part of the part of my humerus, both ulna and radius, the bones that come into you know, that makes a elbow joint were both shattered. And he basically rebuilt me an elbow. From your own bone? From my own bone, which is a big deal because when you start bringing in external parts, if you will, often times the body will reject it or it doesn't take. So by doing that, it it actually it was pretty groundbreaking. And and it gave me this much range of motion. Um this is great when you don't have anything, but this did not give me the ability to be an operational seal again. Uh with my arm like this, I you know, reaching, you know, we wear load-bearing equipment, your your body armor and vest and all these things that you carry carry your military equipment, you carry it on your body. Well, I can barely reach this stuff with this arm. Uh even clipping my helmet, uh I can do it, but it's a little problematic. Um so, I started to come to grips with, well, I may not be able to physically do this job, which if you I mean, people's lives are on the line. What was your wife saying through all this though? Wasn't she like, "Hey, I'd much rather you didn't go do this?" Or was she like, "If that's what you want, then I'm game for it." So, my wife was saying that. Which one? "If that's what you want, I'm game for it." Although inside, she told me she was terrified. And then then this is the mark My wife is amazing. I call her the long-haired admiral. She is incredible. I mean, Josh, you talk about a Spartan wife and a rock of our family and just such an anchor for me through everything we went through. But yeah, she allowed me um to go down this path even though deep down inside, one, she was afraid. She didn't want me to be operational again. But two, she didn't think it would happen. So, she kind of wanted to allow me to explore this on my own and to reach the conclusion and and I did. I I ended up going all over the country and meeting some of the best doctors out there and it was funny because doctors are confident individuals, some maybe arrogant, and they would be like, "Oh yeah, I can fix your arm." And we'd throw my X-ray up and like I'd watch the just the air get sucked out of the room. They're like, "Dude, I don't know how your elbow works the way it does, but there's like there's nothing I can do with that." I went back to Dr. Eglseder was the doctor at Hopkins who repaired my arm. I went back to him and said, "I need more movement to be operational." And he was like, "Going into your elbow was like going into hell. He's like, I will not go back in again. And he said, and let me tell you something, if you go down this road, he said, I don't know the outcome you will have. He said, you have a pretty good outcome. And I was like, yes. He said, there's no guarantee it will be better. He said, there is a high likelihood it'll be worse. So, um finally, I ended up at a a very highly respected hand and arm doctor out of Duke University in North Carolina. And when I went in to him, um and I had seen about 10 different doctors at this point that had all told me the same thing. And he sat me down and he just said, look. He said, you've had a great career. He said, you're chasing something that probably is not going to happen, and it's probably going to have a bad outcome. He said, if I if you were my son, I would not allow you to have this surgery. Wow. And I remember walking out of the office thinking, all right, this is it. You know, this this is the this is the end of this phase of my life. So, and I just kind of came to grips with it. But it'd taken a while to get to that. And I think I'd been mentally preparing for it. That's the part I want to understand. So, what is that Like, you start getting hints, okay, maybe this isn't going to work out. What's the story you start telling yourself? Was there a moment of like heartbreak again where you had to sort of regroup, or are you like just old hat, nope, I know better, and So, the way I operate, and the way the overcome mindset works funny. I actually had a coaching call this morning talking to a guy about this. I always look ahead at what is the absolute worst-case scenario. And I think that's a one of the great gifts that that the SEAL teams gave me. Um We typically in both training and in combat, we look at, okay, you know, this is potentially what can happen. So, now let's take that to 5x. What's the worst thing that can happen? Okay, now let's just squeeze a little more out, you know, let's go to 10-X, like, you know, the nuclear explosion occurs on this target, you know? I mean, it's a little extreme, but we we do we talk through that. And then we have a a a we we game a little bit of a plan. We don't get super deep in the details on this 10-X negative thing because the reality is you don't know you don't know what it's really going to look like. I mean, when bad things happen, when extremely bad things happen, whether in battle or in life, often time there are pieces of it that are what you possibly thought of, but usually when it all comes together, there are things that you just couldn't have predicted. So, I have always kind of lived my life that way um from a younger age after going through SEAL training. What's the worst that could happen? What happens, you know? So, having a plan for it is a thing that helps you deal with it. So, when I talk about the overcome mindset, there's two parts of it. There's preparation and awareness, part number one. So, we're always looking ahead at what's the absolute worst case. People sometimes say I'm a little sick because I have thought about what happens if I lose my wife. What happens if I lost a child? What happens if one of my children was killed? Like, that's heartbreaking to think about, but at the same time, at least if it ever happened, I'm not going to be so blindsided that I'm crippled into inaction, and that's part two is action. Preparation and awareness and action is what builds an overcome mindset, so that you're not sitting on the X forever, so that you know I I have to get up and move. I have to take action. And by looking ahead at worst case scenario, so for me, I'd already looked ahead at what does the world look like beyond being a SEAL. Talk to me about becoming a SEAL. It's one of those things that, man, I there was a documentary series like Bud's Class 268 or something like that where they show what that looks like. It It's insanity. It's uh it's excruciatingly difficult. uh You know, today my numbers may be a little off, but there's only about 12,000 men that have ever earned the right to wear a SEAL trident. That's it? That's it. Whoa. We're a very small community. And most guys when they come in, they stay. It's most guys stay for an entire 20-year career. So, that's why the turnover isn't quite as high. If you think about I won't get into numbers, but the graduation for each class is pretty small. So, every year we're only putting out I'll just hypothetically say maybe about 100 SEALs a year. And you're probably losing at least that amount who are retiring at the end of their career. So, the turnover is you know, it's pretty small tight-knit community. But to get there, it is You know, a lot of people don't understand that most SEALs are incredibly intelligent. The Navy has or the military has a test, the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery Test, the ASVAB. And in the Navy for an enlisted SEAL, it is actually the second highest score you have to have in the entire Navy, only below nuclear. So, if you go into the nuclear field, that's the highest ASVAB score. Second to that is the SEAL teams. So, a lot of people don't realize to be a SEAL, you have to be very smart. So, not everyone can try out? If you don't score high enough on the ASVAB, absolutely not. I don't care how physically tough you are. Because physical toughness is one aspect. We need thinkers. We need guys who you know, one of the things that typically weeds people out of SEAL training besides the physical, but when you move past when when you show, "Hey, I'm physically hard enough to do this." or "I'm mentally hard enough to do this." the next highest level of special operations is your ability to process information at an extremely fast rate. So, often times where you see guys who will fail out, especially when you start to get to the highest levels, our Tier 1 levels, it's when you are doing close-quarters combat training. So, when we take guys and move them through an incredibly chaotic environment, when you step into a room and there's all kinds of chaos in this room and explosions and gunfire and potentially a hostage or whatever it is, you have to process everything in that room in a split second and then start acting. You know, I have to take out that bad guy. We have a hostage there. We have to get over there to protect the hostage. I'm moving in this dynamic environment where and and a lot of people can't do that. So, it takes both a level of intelligence, it takes a level of I don't know, aptitude to where you can process information quickly. So, anyways, go back to the beginning of SEAL training and how you're screened, um you know, so one part is intelligence, uh the other part is a psychological profile, which they didn't do when I was younger. Uh now, I think the Navy's really trying to be more efficient in how we bring SEALs in. And then the last part is the physical. You have to be incredibly physically fit. Today, there's an actual draft. Uh there is a draft for young men to come into SEAL training. Um so, they look at your your intelligence scores, they look at your psychological profile, and then they look at your physical scores, and they put you into this draft, and then senior guys who work in our recruiting, you know, the SEAL recruiting command look at all that and they say, "Yeah, Tom, this guy, he meets the mark on all levels." And there is some external Let's get him to try out. him to try out. Just a tryout. Just a tryout. And they'll look at external factors, too. They'll look at There's certain things. What's your leadership aptitude? What's your they test that? Well, they look at what you've done before. Got it. So, if you are already doing leadership things in high school, that already says, "Well, this guy has natural leadership abilities." Or maybe you're already fluent in German. You know, maybe a bad language. Let's say Russian. Russian's a much better example right now. Uh maybe you're already fluent in Russian. So, we say, "Wow, this guy meets all our parameters and he already has a skill set that would be beneficial for us for the future." And then they try to break you. And then they try to break you. They So, you go to SEAL training and uh it has an 80% attrition rate. Wow. 80%. Wow. So, we select the hardest core [ __ ] on planet Earth and then we break 80% of them. Correct. That's crazy. Yeah. And uh so training is broken into three phases and the first phase is um um first phase is just designed literally to break you. I mean, it is just physically grueling. It is designed to be as unfair as possible. It is designed to put as much pressure, physical training. Uh you are broken down by the cold. You are broken down by lack of sleep when you get to Hell Week, which um usually you'll see a big exodus of people within the first 2 weeks of training. That's the people who are like, "Oh my god, what did I get myself into? What was I thinking?" And you'll lose a large part of the class in the very beginning and then it kind of settles and then when you get to Hell Week Hell Week is the the considered to be the hardest block of training in the entire US military and some people will even say one of the hardest blocks in in global military training. And Hell Week starts on on Sunday. You don't know when it starts. Um you you get put into a area where you're secured um and sometime sometime that day it will begin. Uh it begins with a bang. Uh literally. And uh and it will go until typically Friday usually. Uh and during that week you get no sleep. The The average student gets about 3 hours of sleep the entire week. Oh my god. Um, you are um, you're always physically doing something aside from when you eat. Um, you are well-fed during Hell Week, but you need to be because the average student is burning probably at a minimum 6,000 calories a day. God. Um, you're uh, you're cold all the time. You're wet, coated in sand. Uh, most people shave holes into their body just by being wet and running. Uh, you're carrying around, if you're not in the water in your boat, typically you're carrying the boat around on your head. It's not uncommon for the boat to rub uh, your head bald. Uh, you know, to rub the skin away just from carrying this boat around. It's not uncommon for your fingernails and toenails to fall off just because of the you're wet and just your body's not regulating once again cuz sleep at night allows us to regulate. So, your body starts swelling up. Um, so it is it is grueling. 80% of the class quits during Hell Week. Uh, Did you ever consider quitting? Oh, hell yeah. And if there's anybody out there who says I never thought about quitting, they are a liar. Uh, you know, David Goggins is probably the hardest [ __ ] you know, out there. But, I guarantee at one point he questioned himself. Cuz at the end of the day, no matter how genetically gifted Goggins is, he's still human. Yeah. But, the difference is you keep going. How How did you talk yourself into staying? I mean, if if that little seed of doubt creeps in and you're cuz I remember in the book you're like, "Oh god, the thought of a warm shower." Yeah. And they play it, man. Like, I remember on Tuesday night we were doing an evolution where we were down on a a steel pier. And guys out there that have been through steel steel training when I say steel pier all of them are like shaking with you know like oh my god it's one of the worst evolutions that you do. Um and it is it is just merciless. And and I remember they had the vans parked up above the steel pier. So when a guy would quit they would give him a blanket they would give him a hot cup of coffee and he would go sit in the van that they would have the lights on him and it's all psychological warfare and he'd be sitting there looking and you'd see all these dudes that quit in that nice warm van with their hot coffee as you were still getting your ass kicked freezing your ass off. So all you need to do was go up there. But for me I didn't I didn't think about it on steel piers. I thought about it several days later. It is unusual for guys to quit hell week after Wednesday and for most people in this life and what they're teaching you in seal training your mind can push your body to do 10 times more than what you think you can but most people will reach that physical breaking point where their their body is telling them I can't go anymore and that's when most people quit. If you can push through that point and you get to the I don't [ __ ] care anymore point like you you literally there is a switch that gets thrown and for the vast majority of people at that point it no longer matters what someone does to you. You will literally push yourself to death at that point and that's what we're trying to teach guys in training and so most of the time after Wednesday guys get to that point they flip that switch. I felt like I had reached that point but it was actually Thursday night and this comes down to in life sometimes we um we wrongly assume what the outcome is going to look like before we get there unrealistic expectations and that's what I did. My buddy had told me if I made it to Wednesday it gets easier. And um and it sort of does, but not really. Um, just what happens after Wednesday is one, you're pat you've been able to throw that switch, and two, it starts to slow down, but you don't realize that. You're so tired from lack of sleep. I mean, you're literally Yeah, it's like being drugged, you know, and you're just you're just continuing to push yourself. So, Thursday night, hard night. We had failed a whole bunch of stuff. My boat crew, you know, and it pays to be a winner. So, if you win, you get rewarded usually with maybe a little sleep or maybe an extra snack or whatever it is. And if you lose, you typically get punished. You're doing push-ups or God. Oh, yeah. You get extra You get extra. So, uh, and I remember one of the punishments was we were at the pool, and they had us standing on top of the 10 m, so 33 ft up above the deck. It was about 40-some degrees in San Diego. The wind was howling off the bay. It was a nasty night. And I remember standing up there jackhammering. And I looked down and I saw the bell on the back of the truck, and I was like, "I'm going to quit." Like, this sucks. Like, actually I thought like, "Make it Wednesday morning. It gets easier." And I was like, "Fuck you. I'm going to quit, you asshole." Um, but I stopped myself, and I think this is the key in this life. Like, you have to know Simon Sinek calls it your why. I call it what is your mission in this life. What is the legacy you want to leave behind? And you I think everyone needs to come to grips with and figure out what that is. Um, for me, I knew that my mission at that point in my life was to become a SEAL. And if I quit, it ended that. It ended that journey. It ended that mission. And I took a breath and was like, "Bro, like, if you go ring that bell, this is over. You will not accomplish your mission." So, I took a breath and I sucked it up and made it through. Uh, I told myself just make it to the end of the evolution. And in life often times it's like that. That's what we tell guys as they go through SEAL training. Do not look at the long road. Only look at when it gets really hard, only look at finishing that evolution cuz the the mind has this interesting thing that we can endure so much pain and misery for a period of time. But if we reduce it for just a short period, 5 minutes, you can do it all over again. It's just that mental physical break that allows us to have this reprieve where we're like, okay, I can go again if I have to. Yeah, that's man, that is something that just knowing that fatigue makes cowards of us all. That they are doing all of the things that are designed to break you, cold, lack of sleep, physical exhaustion, and that some people, a very select few, are able to continually manage their mind. And that's really the game. I mean, unless something breaks and you just can't keep going, this is a game of mental emotional management. And life is a game of mental and emotional management. But it really is like what Navy SEALs are able to accomplish. It's really pretty extraordinary. And in the book, obviously, you go into pretty great detail about the firefight and everything. And you end up waking up after getting shot multiple times, but the most recent in the face, and actually getting up and I'm assuming with some help, but you walk to the evacuation helicopter. Walk me through that because when there's a point at which you're so tired, you're not really you anymore. I have to imagine that waking up from being knocked unconscious by getting shot, that there's a a moment where you have to like recompile your personality. And what was that moment like as you reorient yourself and have to decide now I'm going to keep going? So the the you know when I was I didn't So I knew I'd been shot up in the body. Are you in screaming pain at this point? No, I would I never screamed apparently. I mean my teammates said, "Yeah, dude, you were the calmest dude we've ever seen." My arm hurt a lot when I got shot in the arm initially and I continued to fire and engage. I thought my arm had been shot. already been shot and you're still shooting back. Yeah, because I I got I got stitched across the body. I took That's when I took I didn't know it at the time. I ended up taking two rounds in the elbow. I just knew I got shot in the arm. When you say stitched across the body, what do you mean? Uh I got machine gunned across the body armor and go across the body armor? Yeah, and and across my and then the two rounds in my arm. I also took rounds off my gun, rounds off my helmet, night vision tube shot off. Later when I was laying on the ground, I took a round off my right side plate. Um at some point some point during the firefight I took my helmet off. Why? Here, let me take this this this life-saving piece of equipment off, but for some reason I mean you know I was a little obviously messed up. So I took my helmet off and my helmet actually had a round through it. That's actually why the skull now has a hole. It wasn't actually in my skull, thank god, but it was in my helmet. My buddy the artist just drew it for creative effect. But um So when I was shot in the arm, it was super painful and I turned to try and move back to the only point of cover we had, which was the large tractor tire that was about 15 10 yd behind me. And where our guys had fallen back to and it was at that point that I guess I got shot in the face. Um, I did not realize it. As a matter of fact, the guy who saw me get hit and fall and thought I was dead. And I was unconscious at that point. Um, when I and we don't know how long, 5, 10 minutes maybe. The entire gunfight lasted about 40 minutes. Oh my god. Yeah, it was long and intense. Um, there uh, when I came to, I one, there was no stream. It wasn't like It wasn't like I woke up and was like, "Oh, has something happened?" Or like, "Oh, I've been out, you know, I've been unconscious." I woke up in like this fog. And I was trying to figure out what happened. Like I was laying there and like I don't I was just trying to like sort things out. And um, Are you hearing gunfire going off? I don't I maybe not in the beginning. In the beginning it was just kind of like this awareness that I'm still here. Maybe, you know. Um, I felt no pain. I felt no pain. I just felt like I was thinking through concrete. Uh, and then like the world started to come back. Like I was laying flat on my back and I started to notice uh, red laser beams traveling above me. Um, and I quickly realized that's tracer fire. Uh, machine guns uh, every fifth round in a machine gun belt has phosphorus in the gunpowder which, I mean, a lot of people have seen the news or we've seen movies and it looks like a laser beam going through the sky. That's uh, tracer fire from a machine gun. So, I had rolled over and was laying on my back like literally as this gunfight was happening above me. Um, so, um, I kind of realized, "Dude, you're still in You're in Iraq. You're in this gunfight and and you're super [ __ ] up." Um, but I couldn't quite figure out what had happened. Um, I think my first initial thought was don't sit up. Um uh important safety tip, you know. Yeah. Um and then at some point like it dawned on me there was something like my face felt messed up and I remember reaching up and I had gloves on and uh and I went to reach for the right side of my face and I felt my fingers go into like where my cheek should be into this hole and I was like holy [ __ ] like I've been shot in the face. Like holy [ __ ] my nose is gone. Um and uh I don't know. There wasn't any like oh my god panic or anything like that. There wasn't? I don't remember it. don't remember it. Uh I don't remember being like oh my god um in that initial moment it was just like okay, you've been shot in the So at this point though it's more dazed and confused than it is like calm, cool, and collected. I I will say that there was a lull in fire at some point. Like there was a lot of gunfire and there was a lull in fire and I called out to my team leader. Um uh Al is the name in the book, not his real name, but I called out to Al and said, "Hey man, how long to the medevac?" Cuz what I did know is I had limited time. I thought my arm had been shot off. Obviously, I'm bleeding profusely from my face um and I called out and said, "How long to the medevac?" And I remember him like astounded like, "Red?" Like I think they were shocked that I was still alive. And I said it again and he said, "5 minutes." I was like, "All right, I can hang on for 5 minutes." Um I think he told me 5 minutes three times, that son of a [ __ ] Uh um But uh 5 minutes, 5 minutes, 5 minutes. Yeah, exactly. I did feel that way at one point. Um so at that point I kind of started going through several thought processes. One, I um I knew I had unlimited time. Like, you know, we learn trauma medicine and I knew that you only have so much blood in your body and at some point, you know, if you lose too much blood, you die. I also knew the the physiological effects of what was starting to happen. I started to get really cold. I started to have limited mobility. I started to um it got harder and harder to think. And that process several things happened. Number one, I kind of got angry at one point and I was just like, you got to be [ __ ] me. Like, this isn't how I intended to go out. Like, this is how I'm going to die. Like, in this field, in this dangerous part of Iraq. And and it also made me angry that the enemy had got us. Like, I didn't want to give them the satisfaction of knowing that they had killed a seal. So, that made me angry. And then the reality of like, you're going to die here. And then I started to think about my family. And I thought about my wife. I have three kids. My son at that time was eight and my daughter was five and my youngest was three. And it was September, September 13th, 2007. Halloween was always like a big We loved Halloween, man. We loved decorating the house and you know, and and I remember thinking to myself, you're not going to celebrate Halloween this year. Like, and you're not going to be there for Christmas. And then like, thinking you're not going to walk your daughter's down the aisle and and that was kind of heartbreaking. And then I kind of shook myself out of that and was like, you know, [ __ ] that. Like, no. I I grew up in a pretty religious home. I think I kind of lost my faith a little bit over the years. But I in that moment I called out to God and I said, I need help. I need strength to go home. I need and like that. I can't explain this. Um I but I suddenly had energy. I suddenly had energy. And this thought popped into my head, stay awake to stay alive. Um and I just grabbed onto that and just said, focus on that. Like there's nothing else. You know, you're out of the fight. There's nothing you can do. You're like pinned down, you're in the middle of all of this. Uh so I just focused on stay awake to stay alive. At at some point in another lull in fire, my team leader ran forward and grabbed me and dragged me back. He got a tourniquet on my arm and they packed my facial wounds, uh hopefully to try and stem some of that blood flow. Um we ended up calling in the um we ended up calling in a a a fire support mission. Uh in the military, this is where an aircraft rains, you know, bullets or bombs down on the target. That night we had an AC-130 gunship, which special operations use a lot. Um Air Force Air Force uh Force Special Operations Squadron. And uh initially they said no for the first two fire missions because the in the military, there's something called danger close parameters. Um much smarter people than me uh figure out how far a bomb or whatever type of munition you use, how far both the fragmentation and the concussive blast go. So we know when we're operating around the world, if we're calling in whatever munition, we know this is how far we have to be. Those are called danger close parameters. Uh and they were like, you guys are so close, we will kill you. Uh and my team leader finally on the third call said, if you don't bring this in, there will be no one left. Uh we were running out of ammo. Like I said, 40 minutes is a long time to be in a very intense gunfight. Um he He we're running out of ammo. He said, I got three critically injured. Like, you have to bring this in." And it was at that point that the gunship said, "Okay." Um and my team leader did a very good job of how he controlled it, but we literally called fire right on our position. I remember when he was like, uh incoming. And what's interesting, that aircraft flies at a height that when the guns go off, you will hear it and then there is a delay um of a period of time before the rounds impact. So, you'll hear the guns go off Wow. and then there's a period of time that occurs. I mean, it's not a really long period, but it's Right. it's long enough. And I remember hearing the gun go off and then watching the rounds literally strike right in front of us and blow up over us. Uh and it took that um that initial machine gunner that had us pinned down, and there were actually two, but the one that was right in front of me uh immediately called out he was struck, he was in pain. Um and I remember him yelling out um you know, Allah Akbar, you know, he was calling out to his God. And I remember thinking, "Stand by. Like, here he comes." And sure enough, we brought in another fire mission that uh took that guy out and the gun went cold. Um it was the closest fire mission in the entire Iraq War. Um but it it it enabled us to come out alive. And my I owe my life to my team leader. I owe my life to my teammates uh and I owe my life to that Air Force AC-130. Um but during all of that, all I focused on was stay awake, stay alive. Hello, my friend. You know that I believe success requires you to see failure as the ultimate learning tool. Success requires you to be disciplined and gritty and to never ever quit on your dreams. I say all of that because one thing is certain, the road to achieving your goal is not smooth or linear. I wish it was, but it's not. It's going to be bumpy, sometimes scary, some days you'll take two steps forward and slide 10 steps back. And that's why success also requires you to know how to pull yourself out of a rut and get unstuck fast. Life is short. You can't be messing around with your goals. You've got to make progress every single day. So, I've pulled a class from Impact Theory University called how to get unstuck, which you can watch for free with the link on your screen or by clicking below. When you join me for that free preview of that workshop from Impact Theory University, I'm going to teach you my strategy for how to understand exactly where you need to be going, how to identify the obstacle that's blocking you, and the best way to make the most progress towards that goal and keep your momentum. All right, click that link and let's get to work. All right, I'll see you on the inside. What did you use to stay awake? Like, what did you focus on? Like, man, when you're tired, you're [ __ ] tired. And when you've been shot, that's like a whole different thing. I focused on belief. And and and you know, So, you're picturing God? Um no, I had this strength suddenly and I did I don't know. I believe that I have that I believe that if I went to sleep, I'd never wake up again. So, that was one thing that I was like, you will not go to sleep. You cannot go to sleep. I wanted to see my wife and kids again. Uh and then the other thing I knew I had seen a show on uh TV called Baghdad ER. And it basically was um it was a trauma show that showed military doctors. And I and Yeah, I just want to say, if you were a military doctor or you were a medical personnel for the military, uh even there are a lot of civilian doctors who volunteered and went over to the war to help. I just want to say thank you. Like, I would not be here if it wasn't for this incredible medical care and and some of the greatest advances in trauma medicine happen in war. It's an It's an unfortunate byproduct, but um we we learn uh from these grievous injuries and doctors figure out incredibly creative creative and new ways to save us. Um in this current war, in the Vietnam War, the the the If you were injured on the battlefield, you had like a 70% chance of dying. Oh. It was because we had not Some of the medical advances and also the way we had staged our medevacs was not really effective. Uh Secretary Robert Gates was One, the military was very forward-thinking, but Secretary Robert Gates was also very forward-thinking and how he created a grid network of whenever any missions were happening in in Afghanistan or Iraq, they basically laid this grid of medevacs prepositioned all around. So, if um so, if individuals were wounded, you were within what they call the golden hour. You know? So, I knew that um and I also knew that the doctors were good enough that if you showed up at the hospital, I remember hearing that statistic on that show. Uh if you showed up with a pulse, you had a 90% chance of surviving. Wow. So, those were the facts I held on to and I just said, "Stay awake. Stay alive. You have to show up to the operating room alive." Because if you do, uh there's a good chance you'll make it. How have you dealt with the aftermath of all of this? I I don't know if you've had PTSD or anything like that, but what have you done to mitigate that? I did have PTSD. Um obviously, I had a lot of nightmares uh in the beginning. Um um and there was right back in the firefight or you back in the hospital? Like, what's the The the the the the the firefight. Um although, there were some really weird things. I mean, um so, yes, after one of my initial surgeries at Bethesda, and this isn't really uncommon. I'm not the only one this ever happened to, but out of one of the surgeries, I came to freaking out, attacking people. Woah. Um, and I was literally back in the firefight. I was trying to find my gun. Um, and they had to, you know, restrain me and like calm me down. Um, uh, brought my wife in. Uh, that was the only time out of a surgery I remember that happening. Um, one of the nights in the hospital, I was really struggling with sleeping. Uh, so they gave me some sleeping medicine. Uh, and I had the most bizarre like, the dream was so vivid that to this day I still remember it. But what I dreamed was that, um, it had all been a dream. That it hadn't really happened. Um, and and then it got really weird because then I dreamed not only had it happened, but I was actually injured worse. That I was actually paralyzed from the totally paralyzed. Um, remember the Metallica song, um, Oh my god, what is the name of it? Where the guy is, basically can't talk, all he can do is blink in the video. I can't remember it, but that's basically what I in this dream is what I I was enduring. It's It was just bizarre, but it was also really disconcerting because it was bad enough that in my mind I had to accept I'm all shot up and this happened, and then I have this nightmare that I'm actually worse. Um, so over the next several months, definitely PTSD. I had sleeping problems, I had hyper-vigilance, um, all of these things. Um, some things uh, I learned to to deal with it a little bit, and some things I started to to to get help. I hit a breaking point. Um you know, I think one of the problems in this life many of us think that we can do things all by ourselves, especially if you're a type A you know, gung-ho guy uh special operations military guys, police, fire. It's why I speak a lot to these groups because we think that we need to be tough and do these things on our own, but sometimes, you know, it's okay to get help. It's okay to say I'm struggling, especially mentally. And um it was a few years um after my injuries, we had a lot going on in our life. We were moving, but I was really struggling mentally. Were you being open with your wife about it? No. I had kind of pushed her away. I was heavily drinking. I was self-medicating, uh which is very common with our wounded warriors and people that have been through trauma. And finally, like I said, my wife, long-haired admiral, uh we were working on our relationship but right now, and actually this story is a key part of the beginning of the book. Um finally, one day we were going to an event. Um I had started a nonprofit while I was still in the military. And we were going to an event, and she said, "This isn't working." I was like, "What are you talking about?" And she's like, "Whatever you have going on is not working. Like you're damaging our relationship. You're it's impacting me. It's impacting the kids. And I worry that you know, all these things that we've seen where wounded warriors relationships end in divorce, like she's like, "We're moving that way. Like we need to fix this." And she's like, "You need to fix this. Like you need to get help." And I think that was a shock, uh cuz here I was thinking I could fix it on my own. Like, "Oh, I can you know, I'm tough. I'm hard. I'm you know, I'm the overcomer." Um and and I didn't. Um so, I went and saw our command psychologist and said, "Hey, I'm really struggling." Um and she she recommended me some different things. So, I started all kinds of different treatments. And this is one of the big things that I I encourage people, if you have been through some level of trauma, whether it's sexual trauma, mental emotional trauma, childhood trauma, whatever it is, there is no everyone is different. Our minds all work differently. So, something that works for me may not work for you. So, you really don't be discouraged if you go to one thing and it doesn't work. You may have to explore some different things. So, I ended up doing hyperbaric treatment. I ended up doing something called magnetic resonance therapy. I ended up doing something called stellate ganglion block. Um the first two I know, that one I have no idea what that is. So, stellate ganglion block is a they inject kind of a numbing agent into your main nerve that goes up to your brain. Oh. And a doctor discovered it in the '60s, but there are some medical doctors, specifically a SEAL, I believe his name Shawn Mulvaney now. He's a doctor now and he has had tremendous results and they've started doing it with special operations guys. One of the problems that we have is you operate at such a high fighter flight level that at some point your body kind of breaks, your mind breaks a little and it kind of gets stuck in that mode. And it gets to a point where you're just kind of numb to the world. Like, you don't have highs, you don't have lows and what they're finding is that that stellate ganglion block is almost like a computer reboot. Um it doesn't work for everybody. It worked for me. One treatment or multiple treatments? One treatment worked for me. Some guys go back and get another treatment. I one treatment, like I was really struggling with sleep and I started sleeping better. I cut back on the alcohol. Um so, that made a difference for me. Um So, uh and I also got a service dog. And my service dog really helped me also. Uh now Why? Uh you know, I just think um it makes you focus on something beyond Was it Is it taking care of the dog? Unconditional love? it's unconditional love, you know? I think he just you know, he was always there for me. And uh now He's a long-haired German Shepherd, Karma. He's actually named after the city where I was shot in Iraq, Al Karma. Interesting. But um I don't take him everywhere anymore. I feel like I'm I'm good, you know? I don't I don't um I don't struggle with those things anymore. There's one last part that I that I think has made a big difference, and that is I I hit that event head-on, meaning I talk about it all the time. And a lot of people don't want to talk about traumatic events uh because they hurt. They're traumatic. You're reminded of the event. You're reminded of whatever happened to you, or the loss of someone around you. Um but that's a dangerous thing to do. Uh what happens and my my friend Jimmy Hatch, James Hatch, is a SEAL who was wounded. Uh he wrote a book called Touching the Dragon. And Jimmy really struggled with PTSD and the mental wounds of war almost to the point he was suicidal. And he had to go to a mental hospital. He writes about it. Um but what he describes in this best description I've ever heard, I recommend anyone who were anybody who's ever been through trauma to read this book. Um He describes the trauma that we go through like a dragon. And and it lives in your mind. And most people, especially type A people, but just humans in general, we have this natural tendency that we want to push those traumatic events back into the back of our minds. And we we end up locking this dragon in a box thinking like, "Hey, if I ignore it, it you know, I can just continue to live my life and it'll be all great. I'll just pretend that didn't happen. It's just this bad thing." The problem is it's a dragon. I mean, we've all seen Game of Thrones, man. Like dragons will bust out of that box and they will torch the city. And that's what happens is uh if you have not dealt with it, at some point there will be a trigger where that dragon breaks out of the box and it eats you. Um so, what Jimmy talked about is you got to learn to touch the dragon. And I believe for me, talking about what happened and and sharing it with other people um has made a difference. And not only that, like I tell other wounded warriors and other people, you learn to own it instead of it owning you. So, you learn to get off that X, if you will. And that's why I encourage that. Um I think it makes a difference. And it's made a difference for me. I think A, telling that story is cathartic and now people they can relate to it. Uh frequently when I speak, people will say, "Oh my god, I can't relate to that firefight. Like that's just mind-blowing." But I tell people, "Well, yes and no. I mean, the reality is no, you may be not be able to directly relate to bullets and bombs, but everybody has the bullets and bombs of life. And what's interesting is when the human body goes through a traumatic event and goes into fight or flight mode, it's not like the body goes, uh "Hey, ratchet it up to gunfight mode." It it it's it's just goes, "Hey, this is a crisis." And what's interesting is if you were in some major life crisis you've been in and we hooked you up to all the medical devices that measure brainwave activity, breathing, respirations, all these different things, and you hooked me up to one in the middle of that firefight, we would look very similar. Trauma's trauma. Yeah, who it's a so true. I think there is definitely something to be said for amplitude, but you're absolutely right that people are going to grab onto things, they're going to have a dragon, you know, from whatever they've gone through. Partly depending on the story that they're telling themselves about what happened. That's why I love your idea of no bad days. Um in fact what does that mean to you exactly? So, no bad days came about from my skull and um it is it's about perspective. Um we live in a world where it's easy to get caught up in the mundane, uh especially in first world countries. Um it's easy to be upset that your Starbucks they gave you the wrong order and it, you know, they misspelled your name. Um and it's just funny that people totally get caught up and I just hear it all the time people say "Oh my god, I had a bad day." And and I'm always curious, you know, I'm like, "Well, tell me about it. I want to hear about your bad day." And 90% of the time when people tell you that a bad day, it's nothing. It's a schedule disruption. At that at worst, it's a schedule disruption and usually it's even less than that. Um I have seen true bad days. I have experienced true bad days. And so when I look at that skull, there are several things that give me perspective and why I kind of led to say, "Hey, no bad days." Um I I was a pretty good SEAL. Uh I made some mistakes. I messed some things up in my career. But there are a lot of friends of mine who are dead, who are phenomenal SEALs, you know? Uh Adam Brown, Kevin Houston uh Nick Check Mike Mcgreevy, Eric Christensen. These guys were phenomenal SEALs. Um and they're not here. You know? They'd give anything to be here. You know, their families would give anything to be here. So, I look at my skull and say, "Why are you still here?" And and it makes me say, "You don't have room to complain." Like, you don't have You can't sit there and be like, "Ah, this is a bad day." It doesn't mean that I don't have hard days and tough days. I mean, I do. There are times, even when I'm in my recovery, like I remember crying my eyes out several times, like, "This sucks." Um, but yeah, it also made me get off this ax, go. Like, you owe it to these guys who are no longer here. Like, you got a gift to come back. And really, everyone in this life, it is a gift. If you wake up in the morning, it's a gift, man. Um, especially if you if you won the lottery and were born here in the United States of America. You know, where freedom and opportunity are there. You know, and really, it does. We come full circle to the the victor overcome mindset, you know? If you wake up and you think to yourself, "Hey, man, I'm going to drive forward. I'm going to take this gift. Today, I'm still alive. I can affect change in my life by driving forward, by working on something, by doing something productive. Lead, produce, protect." Those are the things that I talk about. Um, you can make a difference. And and that's where I just say, it's not a bad day. If I'm still breathing, it's a good day. And it's up to you to make it a great day. Hard days, tough days, that'll happen, but no bad days. How do you deal with like big problems now? So, what I love about your story is that it it isn't even like just the firefight ends up being the only thing you've been through. You were You went through the hardship you already talked about with leadership and having to redo that you cover in the book. I mean, it's it was like a really big deal. And so, maybe small potatoes compared to what ends up happening, but it was a big deal. So, you go through that, then you've got um, recovery, which Jesus, I can only imagine the years of grueling physical stuff you had to go through that. Lawsuit, um, you recently got sick like and almost died. It's like, good lord, how do you how do you use that mindset time after time, thing after thing to rebuild? It doesn't get easier. Is everyone just as hard? Everybody's human. Uh, so um, so what I tell people is, yeah, you may not be a SEAL, but the the character traits of humans, I've been all over the world, we're the same. I don't care if you are in China or Russia or Ukraine or, you know, uh, New Zealand or Colombia or Peru. Um, humans operate the same way. We we want to, um, we want to be productive. We we want to, um, have validity in this life. We hopefully want to live in a peaceful environment as much as we can. And, you know, we want to raise our families and, you know, um, so at the end of the day, leadership, teamwork, your ability to overcome adversity, all those things are are within us. Now, you may not be able to do it to the SEAL level, although I would challenge that you could condition yourself. It's you don't It's amazing what you actually can do when you really start to push out of that comfort zone. Um, so so often I meet people who when they something negative happens to them, they are upset and, oh my god, I can't believe this happened to me, you know, they have that victim mindset. And I say, well, yes, it sucks when bad things happen. I I'm the same. When I, you know, when I got really sick, I will not tell you I won't say that in the moment I was like, yay, this is so great. It really sucked. too. Yeah, I mean, dude, that um they could not figure out what was wrong with me for a while and that was terrifying. Um So, in the moment I wasn't like, "Hey, this is so great." But, I will say by pushing through and getting to the other side, that's what makes you better. That's what enables you to overcome the harder moments in your life. If you always choose comfort, then you will not be ready for these hard moments when they come. I tell people, you can't just flip a switch and turn the overcome mindset on if you've never grown it. No different than muscles in our body, no different friend than um financial muscles, no different in learning how to build teams and lead. We have to do those things. You have to go through those experiences. You have to learn how to deal with the hard times. And um so, be thankful for those moments and keep grinding through. It may not be the outcome that you wish it would be. Um and that's another thing that you have to come to grips with. Um same thing in my um you know, when I was injured, I never got to go back and finish my career uh the way I wanted to, but there's always a new path. So, I look at things now from um if something bad happens, how do I just keep driving forward? I try to I try to look ahead at everything I have in my life and think about, well, what is the worst-case scenario that could happen, you know? What's the worst-case scenario in my business that could happen? What's the worst-case scenario in my family that could happen? What's worst-case scenario in my health? Um and I think about those things. I don't dwell on those things and that's a really important thing. Um I just accept the world for what it is, not always the world for what I wish it would be. And then I plan and execute. So, you know, uh planning and awareness and then action just to drive forward. So, um that's how I've lived my life. That's how I believe it's helped me to continue to drive forward. So, you know, I tell people do hard things. Um and it doesn't have to be, you know, I love Goggins, but Goggins takes things to such an extreme level and I think some people can't relate to that. The average human is like, I don't know if I could do that. And I'm like, I don't know if you necessarily have to. Uh I think this life is about balance. Um I I describe it as uh in the Overcome book is the pyramid of change. So, we're in our comfort zone. How do we move up just a little in any aspect of our lives? Whether it's in our business, whether it's maybe with our family, whether it's physically. Well, the how you do it is let's just say you're at a 10, well, let's just bump up to a 12. And in in doing so, it's a little bit uncomfortable. Well, it doesn't have to be it doesn't have to be Navy SEAL kicking the nuts uncomfortable. Uh it just needs to be a little bit uncomfortable cuz when you're in that zone of discomfort, that's where you're growing. You're learning to deal with discomfort. You're learning to get a little better. And guess what? At some point when you go from 10 to 12, it becomes your new comfort zone. And then now I'm at 12 and I'm like, huh, let me go to 15. And you just I think top peak performers in this life, um that's what they do. They're always pushing just a little higher. Most people try and go from 10 to 100. And it's so overwhelming and it's so painful to try and do that, they quit before they ever get there. That's why New Year's resolutions never work. What makes for good leadership? Uh awareness. Uh self I think self-awareness and understanding um that it's not about you. Uh that's where I failed as a young leader. I was about me. Uh, and also understanding that your your rank or title or whatever um, accolades you have, they don't contribute to leadership. They do because of the experience, but just because you wear the title CEO or lieutenant, um, or whatever it is, that doesn't make you a leader. Um, when I failed as a young leader, to come back, I really had to come to grips with who I was, my strengths and weaknesses, and that I had really placed myself at the top of the equation when it really should be the mission or the task, and then the men or your team or family, and then you're last in the equation. Um, and it doesn't mean that you don't take care of yourself. You absolutely have to, but, you know, in that leadership spectrum. For me, everything I teach is about it starts with you. Um, you know, so I teach three rules of leadership to the companies and people I work with. Rule number one, lead yourself. If you structure, discipline, positive attitude, how well do you take care of yourself, balance, you know, physical leadership, mental leadership, social leadership, um, emotional leadership, and spiritual leadership. Um, because if you do that, it lends itself to rule number two, how well you lead others. Uh, if you naturally, if 70% of leadership is how well you lead yourself. The greatest leadership advice I ever got was people will follow you if you give them a reason to. That's rule number one. Good advice. And it and it works. I mean, I had convinced myself when I failed no one would ever follow me again. And probably one of the best SEAL leaders ever, um, who had been a mentor of mine told me, "Jay, people will follow you if you give them a reason to." He's like, "I don't care how bad you messed up. It is human nature. If you are excelling and you are setting the example, people naturally will follow you because we want to follow winners. We want to follow leaders. We want to follow victors. And uh he said, you know, and this was at Ranger School where I was at a tipping point of wanting to quit and leave. And he said, go back to that course, crush it, and come back to the SEAL Teams and give the guys a reason to follow you. So, rule number lead others or I'm sorry, lead yourself, lead others. And then rule number three is lead always. And this is the the it's the harder part of the equation because when the storms of life come along, it's natural for us to turn inward and focus on the pain and the misery to focus on the ex. Um but really it's at that point where you're needed to lead the most. And um and and you know, that the sign on the door is kind of a good example of that. You know, in that moment when I could have easily said, hey, hey, man, you you've got an excuse to sit here and feel sorry for yourself. Um but it doesn't accomplish anything. So, this is where that lead always um really kicks in. Now, one thing that I think I understand about the military is that you know, if you're breaching a door or something, you go in, all hell breaks loose, that people also have to know when to follow somebody else when one guy has a better view or read on the situation or whatever. How do you think about that? Uh it's building you know, it's building teams through trust. So, um that's one of the other principles I teach something called learn to lead. So, it's an acronym. E is engage teams through trust. So, as a leader, um building a team that you trust those individuals. So, and and pushing those levels of leadership down. I mean, really efficient great organizations are not built because, you know, there's this one all supreme, you know, the ISRON who's controlling everything. Instead, you build teams where you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that hey, we've given you the training, you've displayed the aptitude, you know the right and left limits, and guess what? You're going to go execute, and I trust you to do that. And uh I think really good leaders um the best I'll give you a great example. Um my boss when I came back into my platoon after I gotten myself in trouble, he sat me down and said, "Jay, he said, I know what happened. He said, I don't care. He said, all I care about is where you go from here." He's like, "I'm going to I'm going to need you to follow me at times." He said, "Another times, I'm going to push you to lead." And he said, "And when those times come, I expect you to step up and lead." And he was a phenomenal mentor. Because one of the things he did, and this such a great trait of leadership, if you are a leader of an organization or a team, often times we think we need to do it all ourselves. And sometimes doing, you know, especially if it's an opportunity where maybe we're in the spotlight or something. And we had frequent opportunities in training where we would have complicated scenarios where he could have looked like the hero, if you will. And I think he recognized opportunity, and he would say, "You know what? I'm going to step out of this one. I'm going to go hang out with the training instructors. Red, you're in charge. Go." And it did several things. One, it built my confidence, it built my trust, and it built trust within the team. So, it allowed him to be able to see he has the ability to do this. So, now in the future, he's like, I can send Red Red off to go do complicated things, and he's going to execute. And it built trust with the guys, cuz I had damaged my trust and credibility. So, I really give him a lot of credit, and I think that's a really high level of leadership. Now, that really is incredible. Being able to um not need the credit. There's a quote, and I don't remember who said it, but it's incredible what you can accomplish when you don't care who gets the credit. I think that that is a really powerful element of leadership and that's something we talk about here at Impact Theory is, you know, look, we're trying to do something just ridiculously large. And my thing, I tell the team routinely, I'm not smart enough to do this by myself. I wish I was, like that would actually be really cool, but unfortunately, I am not. Uh so, I have to use a very different style of leadership. I need to empower people because there are times where I'm in a given thing, I'm not the right person to follow. And so, we need somebody that has expertise in that thing and we're all going to say, "Cool, they've got the right idea." And that doesn't mean that we don't battle out the ideas, um but it does mean that I'm not afraid to follow somebody who's the right person to lead at that moment. And that's been something really interesting in my marriage cuz my wife went from a traditional housewife to an entrepreneur and wanting to um really be equal in the business and through skillset, she earned that position. And it was very easy once it was like, well, she's amazing at, you know, these areas, she's the right person to lead, of course I'm going to follow. And so, when you get into that kind of thing where you can dip in and out where you're always prepared to lead, but you're also, if there's somebody that's, you know, in in a better position or they have more knowledge or whatever that you can slot in behind them. And one of my superpowers is that I've never been afraid to sit at somebody's feet and learn from them. And that that has really helped me. I I would agree and I think that humility at one point in my career, what got me in trouble was ego and arrogance. I thought I was the best leader since, you know, Patton or somebody, I don't know. You know, just super arrogant and it and and now yeah, we're always learning. Like I've I've had companies like write down, "Oh, we're bringing Jason Redman in as a leadership expert." No, like I know I'm not. I'm a student of leadership. I've I've learned because I've been around a lot of good leaders. I've seen bad leaders. At one point I was a bad leader. And yeah, it's a journey that never ends and that's what's really cool about it. You know, you might have experienced something years ago where you had very similar circumstances and the solution that you came up with worked in that scenario. This scenario could be very similar, but you have different people. And people think and do things differently. So now that solution doesn't work in this scenario. And that's leadership. Figure it out. How do we How do we get to that solution? No doubt. Speaking of leadership, where can people follow you? I'm at jasonredman.com. So and I'm on all the socials. LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube. And I really focus on putting out, you know, positive content. There's so much negativity on social media now. Um you know, politics is a is a dangerous road. I try to stay away from it. I have my beliefs, but I really just want to focus on how do I help people to be the best version of themselves. How do I teach you that you are not a victim, you are a victor. But it starts with you. Like you have to get up and drive forward. So that's the content that I put out on my social media and obviously there at jasonredman.com you can find those links. That's where my books are. That's where coaching is. Overcome? Overcome and we just released the Point Man Planner which is a it is a 90-day planning journey journal on how you define your mission in this life and how you stay on course, how you get off the X when problems come. And then my wife and I are working on a relationship book right now. Can't wait for it. Yeah. That'll be amazing. Thank you. Dude, your book blew me away. I am so glad we got a chance to hang out today. Gave me the chills so many times. I absolutely love the way you think. It's incredible. Thank you. Guys, can't recommend this one enough. Read the book. It's extraordinary. His content is amazing. You will love it. And if you take his advice, it will actually make your life better, which is the highest compliment I can pay anybody. And speaking of compliments, if this content is adding value to you, make sure you subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace.