[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] How can I see someone's level of integrity, for example, if I can't watch them in a myriad of environments? I can't get feedback from their peers who tell me how they are out in town, you know, who tell me what they do, right? Who tell me if they,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They just clean their stuff and leave, right? They don't help out. I have to, so some of these attributes do take a little bit of a long time to assess, but I think the beauty of BUDs and then this process is it is over a long period. And so we have all these.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We have time and we have different environments inside of which to see these because they can be in some cases contextual and even the ones that we're naturally high on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Sometimes we're just not. Sometimes we're on an off day, right? So even just one data point is not a decision point. You have to see it across some time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yes, I think we all do. We all do. And again, it's this idea, and so there's a couple ways. So when we start talking about the physiology of fear and the, the...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We all of us have, well, I think we're wired. First of all, our courage circuits are wired, so our courage attributes are wired, so we're slightly above boiling point. If we were to say boiling point is the average or our autonomic response trips, I think most seals, ours trip a little higher than boiling point.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which means we don't, it takes a little bit longer for us to get that response. But even when we do get the response, we also...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Pulling our hand away. You know, our brain takes over, pull our hand away. In most environments, however.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, we want to think through challenge and stress, right? We want to think through the environment. I think that's what we do. We manage our physiology, we keep our frontal lobe back online, uh, and we're able to start thinking through the process. And so, and I know all of us have this, and it's funny, you know, again, I've lived in Virginia Beach now for, you know, 22 years.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Same house by the way. And uhm, I have a seal who lives across the street from me. I have a seal who lives down to the right, down to the right and a seal who lives down the left. I remember my wife saying, you know, I'm so glad these, these guys are here.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because if something happened, I could go to them and they act like you act. And I'm like, what do you mean? And she's like, well, whenever something happens, they just calm down and they just start working the problem. And, and this is what we.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So we don't, we don't have less fear. We have just practiced the process of moving through the fear. Uhm, every time I jumped out of an airplane, I felt fear. But I just knew the, I knew and understood the process of going through that. Uhm, and part of that process is we understand what to focus on in the moment. We don't overwhelm ourselves. And we basically


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so, so I'm, I'm writing the next book right now. The next book is called Masters of Uncertainty. I'm going to basically walk through this process, but.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But it's, it's the idea where we say, okay, out of all of this, what do we focus on in the moment? How do we move our horizons? You know, we pick a horizon that we move to and oftentimes we pick the appropriate horizon so that we can actually move and it can be anything. It can be the next 10 seconds and serve and serve torture. It might be 10 seconds, you know, inhale. We get my, I'm going to make the next, I'm going to do the next meal.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But we pick whatever that horizon is. And so it's interesting, I was having lunch with a couple guys who I served with and


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In the squadron, of course we did a ton of these hey hoes together. And we're talking about hey ho and we're talking about like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Being on the ramp and it's an unknown DZ and you know for the audience an unknown DZ is like basically you look at a map and you're like oh that looks like a good place to land.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you don't have any other, you know, intel on. He's like, okay, that's where we're landing and you're hoping it's good. So it's, there's, there's some stress involved. And I remember he was, my body was like, yeah, you know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We're on the ramp, and I can remember, it'd be an unknown DZ, we have this mission ahead of us, all that stuff, and, and there's only one thing I'm thinking about. Just one. I was like, what's that? It's like, nail the exit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, that's the horizon. Nail the exit. And then once you nail the exit, the next horizon is, okay, pull my chute.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, that's the next horizon. Okay, what's the next horizon? Get on heading, right? I mean, so, and, and we, we are trained to think that way, and we do so in almost all areas and elements of stress, challenge, uncertainty. That's what we do, and that's what combat is, and we know that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, and there's neurology, right? What you're doing by doing that is you're, you're, you're deliberately engaging your conscious mind. You're deliberately bringing your conscious mind back in your frontal lobe back online.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To focus, make a decision, move, focus, make a decision, move. So I love this, so this idea of, of, I know Huberman and I have talked about this, you know, ad nauseam, but this idea of we, we have this, we kind of have this big picture. So you talk about stepping back, which is, which is exactly what happens. We step back, we open our aperture.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We start, we say, okay, what about this environment can I control in the moment? And then you pick something and you go like this and you, you focus in, you do that until completion, then you go back out again and you ask the question again.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And one of the things I loved against CQC was such a great


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, laboratory inside which, because CQC is this just extremely rapidly. You're going into a room with big focus, then you're focusing in, you're shooting, you're going back out, then you're focusing, you're shooting, and it just goes one after the other with that filler.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is exactly what we do in all environments and anybody can do this and this could be what I talk about and this is how we become masters of uncertainty because master of uncertainty is not, oh I,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I know all the environments. No, it's not about training into environments. It's about training the process by which you operate in an environment. And that's how you start moving through chaos.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, yeah, well I talk about there, I break, that's one of the attributes I break into a couple different things, right? And so perseverance is actually a combination of both persistence and tenacity. And with a little mental fortitude thrown in the mix, right? But persistence is, hey, I'm going to...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, do this thing, this same thing, until it, it's accomplished. I know it's, it's the rock, it's the stonecutter approach. I'm gonna tap on this rock a hundred times because I know in the hundredth first tap it's gonna break.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, tenacity is I'm gonna try something, if it doesn't work, I'm gonna try something else, if that doesn't work. And so, so you don't want a tenacious stonecutter, right? You'll never get the rock cut, and you don't want a persistent car mechanic who just checks the belts and checks the belts and checks.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But what perseverance allows you to do is allows you to modulate in between those two. And we all know that any environment might require either. Uh, and, and the, the kind of the mental fortitude piece is can I decide which, but uhm, but yeaah, it's this ability to just keep stepping through and modulate yourself as you go through.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And therein lies the secret to making through buds. It's not about being the strongest, right? You have to adapt yourself and, uhm, to whatever's going on. So, I mean, we're all, all team guys are high on adaptability, I think.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because we can, uh, we could just, the environment changes and we just, okay, how do I adjust? You know, you know, you don't fight it, you adjust to it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's a structure thing, right? So I talk, you know, we'll probably get into cunning. I mean, but this is, team guys, we all...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But it's this looseness that we approach environments to, because again, one of the things that you learn, and I always say, you know, people ask me a lot of times, how does, how do Navy SEALs stay humble?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I say, well listen, there are some seals who aren't very humble, but most of us, for the most part, are humble dudes. And I said the biggest, the most, the primary reason is because we're in environments that will kill us, right? I don't care what kind of swimmer you are. The ocean will kill you if you, if you turn your back on it, right? Same with jumping out of airplanes at 22,000 feet. I used to tell my guys, you know,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Somalia, a nine-year-old with an AK-47 and just pulled a trigger and just happens to aim will kill a 35-year-old expert Navy SEAL in a second with an un-aimed shot, right? So, so in a world where the environment requires


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Deep humility. And the ocean's just a perfect example. I mean, look, you surf, right? I mean, when you get, when you get churned up by a wave, what do you do?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You relax. You just let the, you kind of, you go with it. You don't fight it. You adapt to the water, right? And so, so I think this is a, a huge asset in, in uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In any type of uncertainty, uh, and just like you said, any of these attributes overindexed is a bad thing. Too much adaptability means you're limp noodle, right? Um, and so, in fact, what we're trying to do right now in the work we do with organizations, we're taking each attribute and we have about 46 now.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And we're actually defining, okay, what does too much look like? What does too little look like? Because it's a pretty cool project, you know?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, you gotta meet Hank. Just an awesome guy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was your troop SEA? Yeah, you may know him. We'll talk, we'll go offline, but uh, but yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Who you know, who, uh, I will say, because we, we mentioned him on the McCraven, Pete Van Hooger, um, when, you know, I mentioned him when McCraven was on, uh, I mean, one of the best officers. I mean, he was, and I was so fortunate, he was my CO when I was running training. Got it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And yeah, he used to talk about the two minute rule. And uhm, you know, he said, my grandfather taught it to me. And uhm, you know, if something bad happens, take two minutes and just, you know, wallow, swear, whatever you need, kick the dirt, you know, feel sorry for yourself, after two minutes, get back to work. If something good happens,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And again, people say, because I've put this on social media, I've gotten some people like, well it takes a lot more than two minutes. There's a lot of things in life that take a lot more than two minutes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To come back to baseline front, but, but the two minute rule allows you practice in those small tragedies, you know, that, that you might have, uhm, and practice the resilience muscle. And again, resilience is not necessarily growth or growth to, to grow from ex, something like that takes a little bit more effort.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and you can kind of, you can up that baseline with some other stuff that Tuberman and I were working on as well. Uhm, but resilience, if you can get back to baseline, you know, then you, you are,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're getting yourself back into a steady state where you can not start making decisions again. And I think that's another thing that Navy SEALs do very well is we get back, we get ourselves back to baseline. Uhm, sometimes to our detriment, because if we come back, because we might come back from a low so fast that we don't allow ourselves the appropriate healing time for that to happen. But, you know, again,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Sometimes we have to, if we're in a combat environment, you know, we have to get back, right? But resilience is also often conflated with perseverance, you know? But resilience is not perseverance. Perseverance is moving through and going through. Resilience is snapping back. It's that rubber band stretching and then going back to the original shape.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I keep going, but what happens is they slowly, they slowly fall into entropy there. So if you, if you're imagining, so the way you look, if people are imagining that line and that side wave.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You can actually have that, that curve start moving up and that line starts moving up, right? Yeah. So any one of these, one of the cool things I, I,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the way I actually distinguish these attributes is can they exist independently of each other? So can you be perseverant without being resilient? And the answer is absolutely yes. Can you be resilient without being perseverant? Yes. Uhm, so, uh, and there's manifestations of each of those combinations.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think, I think out of all the grit attributes, resilience is where a lot of team guys fall short and you actually see it in the, in the civilian sector with really high performers and there's a reason.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The reason is because high performers, to include team guys, love the, uh, love the feeling of getting


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Getting the shit done. Oh god, I got it done, right? What's the next thing? Okay, give me the next thing. Give me the next thing. And resilience, one of the things resilience requires is a recovery. It requires an assemblance of recovery to get back to baseline. If you maximize that recovery, you'll get to antifragility, but you at least need enough recovery to get back to baseline. A lot of top performers fall into the trap of not recovering. And we know team guys are pretty bad at that. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It gets complex, it's funny, you know, you write a book, and I recognize I wrote that book, and afterwards I was like, ah, this is pretty dense, and you have people who resonate with some of the details. My wife writer, she's like, there's too much neuroscience in here, I don't like that part, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Other people like, I love the neuroscience. I think when you talk about those definitions, it speaks to mostly that task switching capability. Our brains are focus points and we're hopping between.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they're my favorite because I think even though I would say


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The number one thing you need at Sealed Training, it's really the mental acuity.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So this is, this is the seeds often times of PTSD for those of us coming back from the combat. So uhm, I mean I'm someone who literally walks around New York City and I love New York City, right? I walk around, I notice everything. I notice dark alleys, I notice hands, I notice faces, I notice cars.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, everything. My wife's not next to me and she doesn't notice anything, right? And now again, let me just make sure I set the context. All of us have all of these attributes. The difference in each one of us are the levels to which we have each, right? So, so adaptability, right? Uhm, I, you and I would be a level eight.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We all, Seals tend to be high, high, high situational, pretty vigilant. And when you go to a combat zone, as you know, uhm, you're wired, I mean you get, you get high, I mean everything, you just notice everything, you're on key. And so when you go home, if you can't turn that off, that's when you're walking around New York City and it's like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, there's a guy like two feet behind me. I can't, and he can't, it's like, okay, it's gonna be okay, right? So, so I've, I've made, I had, I took deliberate efforts a lot of times to just freaking relax.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just to, just to recognize where I was being too hypervigilant and say, don't worry about it. It's going to be fine. Right.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, and in some cases just enjoy the moment of obliviousness, you know, uh, put my headphones on maybe a couple times, which is hard for me. Like, I don't like, I'm like you, I don't run with headphones because I usually, because I like the environment, but I see people running with headphones on the street. I'm like, what the hell are you thinking? I mean, you're going to get hit by that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's not happening. That's not happening. That's not happening. My sons do one, do the one earphone or headphone, but, uh, but anyway, I think, um, uh, situation awareness, again, too much is hyper, sees a PTSD too little. Well, I mean, you're not going to notice stuff and that's, it's important too sometimes, so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, threat, I think threat definitely, definitely affects this. And uhm, and this is where it gets, attributes get interesting because context matters. Uhm, and I think what, the best way to describe this in a general sense is where you default to, you know, and...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I just, I default to noticing, I mean just, it's just who we are, uh, I just noticed. Actually, Hubert and I, Hubert and I were joking about this, we were traveling, this was, well, before COVID, we were traveling to do a talk, and so we happened to be traveling together, and uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And we show up, and, and I'm just like, okay, we gotta go here, here, here, I know what's in my bag, I know, I get through security, like, everything's just, I just know, I've thought through everything.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I think I did TSA pre-check too. Meanwhile, he goes through the regular security and I walk over to see where he is, and his bag is completely opened up, the security guards take it, you know, there's protein powder and all that stuff. And we were joking about that because we're just, we're just constantly thinking that way, you know, noticing stuff. So, yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, and compartmentalization doesn't work without situation awareness. I mean, and that's, so what you're talking about is that that stepping back is you're stepping back, you're getting situation aware again, and then you're compartmentalizing and then you're getting a situation where this is that, that out in motion and they just work in tandem in the best way.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And a recognition that we just, we can't focus on more than one thing. I mean, we just can't. And so, and again, people will be, people will be listening to this podcast and say, you know, Rich and Jaco, you're full of it because I'm listening to this podcast and driving my car, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Engage in that new activity and so, and so it's really just about understanding where you are.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, so it gets, this is where it gets fun and a little bit complex is that the people who do this very well and what we've seen in our environments can, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because, because as they, as we monitor the environment, and, and actually, Huberman will, will testify to this in terms of the human brain.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I can't necessarily focus on two things at once, but it can keep awareness.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Of a second thing while you're focused on one thing and so, and so we keep awareness because if, if in that awareness the priorities change,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Then we task switch, right? And we were, we say, oh, now the new priority we're coming off of this, even though it's incomplete and shifting that is shifting to a new priority. So, so they, they, they can, they can dance. These attributes can dance with each other and I don't know what the optimal levels are for, you know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] These types of exercises can allow for, for a good, uh, practice of these.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is what, uh, again, the, the advantage, I mean again, I think you, you would agree with me, war sucks on all levels, uhm, but the advantage of being able to, uh, be in combat or, or be at these, these units where we're learning this stuff, uhm, if you're not doing this as a leader,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're out of the game. You're gonna be outrun. I mean, you have to. You recognize that this is your job. Your job is not...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Looking down the gun and pointing and shooting. I mean, I, I, I maybe kicked a couple doors when I was out in Iraq and Afghanistan because my job was tasking a commander. I was running the environment and my guys expected me to do that job because they, they said, hey, you do that very well, right? So, so the job is to maintain that awareness so that the guys who have to be


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Target fixated for a little while can do so and understand that their backs are covered.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, and I would say this is actually one that I admit that I'm a little lower on. Uhm, because the people who are really high on learnability are the people you can tell how to do something once.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or show them once and they got it, right? They just, they pick up things really fast. And I, for me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What, well, it was buds, but probably more of the, the selection when I was going through it and we finished a day of training and there'd be guys are there clean their gear and go drinking. I'd have to stay back and like.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Let's think about what I did and make the same mistakes a couple of times. So it's really, it's an adjustment to where you are. Uhm, but if we're not, if we're not able to recognize where we fall on this particular attribute, it's going to be tough to actually metabolize these lessons.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] 100%. Well, so when I got to SDVs, you know, again, late 90s, we had, as you recognize when you're at SEAL Team 2, a bunch of the old Vietnam guys were still in the teams. Great dudes, most of them running training.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I remember we did a, we did an island trip, uhm, as SDVs, because we were going to deploy out to the Middle East. And so we're doing this insane, like, seven day hump or whatever, and they're, they're contacting us and things like that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they're contacting us in open terrain, middle of the desert, right? And they're like.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, peel right, or peel left. They're using Vietnam like channelized tactics in an open desert. And I remember thinking, that doesn't, it just doesn't compute right now. I mean, are there other ways to do that? And in fact, the teams started to see that too. I remember, you probably remember IMT, the whole IMT stuff, right? That came from, or at least,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When I saw it, it would seem to be born from this idea that hey, we need to start learning how to move in a different way because yes, some of these channelized tactics are great. They work for jungles, but you know, we need some different tactics. But this is the dinosaur mentality we always, you know, are combating.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm really appreciative because I never knew that. So I've, I've, I've learned that now after 21 years in the Navy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, it's from Dan Pink's, uh, book, Drive. Okay. So the intrinsic needs are those, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Those, you can almost talk about the physiological needs. I mean, the drive to drink is from a physiological need to, to, uh, to, because you're thirsty you need water. Extringent are those.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, you know, I need to, I need to make money to pay my rent, right? So, so they're just coming from the external environment. But, uh, but yeaah, drive, drive as opposed to grit, I mean grit I would define as that ability to kind of set and pursue those shorter term or acute challenges and objectives and then drive is those longer term


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You do, and, and so we, we, we, we throw those other attributes into our mix when we're doing this stuff with, with organizations, because all, all these attributes are meaningful, but, but they can be inert by the, by themselves.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I talk about in the book, you know, I've always wanted to be a pilot. And my dad was a pilot, my brother was a pilot.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, I know pretty much at this point I could fly an airplane. I know everything about flying. I've been through ground school a couple times. I mean, I know everything. Like again, I got my brother's sim and I could fly the thing, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I've never gotten my pilot's license. I'm confident I could fly a plane. I've never gotten my pilot's license, right? So there's a lack of initiative there. Uhm, and so initiative on its own is frenetic energy. I mean, you just, you know, oh, I'm just gonna go, right? But if there's no...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If there's no confidence, if there's no optimism, you're just, you're just expending energy and then optimism on its own. I mean, you and I could plant gardens and say every day that weeds are not going to grow.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and sure, you know, sure enough, three weeks later, weeds will grow. So, so optimism on its own can be inert. Uhm, and so it's really the combination that makes up the self-efficacious person. And, and if you have, if you have, uh, an optimal level of that, you will, that adds to your drive quite a bit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right, yeaah. There's a balance in it, but there's also, we can...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We'll throw a little cunning in there. We don't like rules, so don't tell me what to do. There's some rebel nature in there that I think causes guys like you and I to try for seals. And we'll talk about this, there's a little bit of narcissism too. Yeah, yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I wouldn't even say winning. I would say, I would say, and again, I think it's a, it's a level of performance. I mean, the high level athlete designs his or her entire day and system, uh, around being a hundred percent for the moment, right? It's, it's this idea of peak performance, a hundred percent for the moment. Um, and, uh, and so when they come into an environment where


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think you're onto something. Again, we can't dig into the minds of these folks. But this is again, I keep on saying fighting. Fighting is a sport you go into and you're literally going in


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And expecting to get hurt. You're gonna go, I mean the whole game is, you're gonna go from 100% down to whatever percent knocks you out, right? Or you knock out the other guy. That is a whole different mentality than a lot of other sports, right? And so I think, I think,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] These types of distinctions are really interesting to me. You know, you have to be careful you don't put labels on things, but uhm, I don't know, I like dissecting that stuff.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If we could figure those things out, then you'd start to be able to figure out who's going to make it through, I think. But you have to look at the whole, you can't just look at their


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And athletics, that's why the top athlete might have had a whole different context inside of which he or she just, just nugged it out and was used to being at zero and then they make it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It is crazy. I think part of that's the mythos though, because, because even, even reading about the training, you read about how we got


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You don't, you just don't experience until after you hit the beaches that first day.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was, I was in a group of, uh, again, good dudes that were in a company that were working for about 10 of us and they were all, you know, talking about SEAL training and, and, uh, and almost all of them were like, ah, I'd love to be a SEAL. I, I think I could do it. If I did, I think I could do it. I think I could do it. And I looked at them and I said, listen, there's 10 people in here. Okay.


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[Assistant] It's that difference between what I call outer and inner discipline.


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[Assistant] The discipline I talk about in the book is really outer discipline. That's making, uh, uh, choosing or deciding upon a goal.


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[Assistant] Uh, that the outside world has a say in whether or not you accomplish. Okay, that could be a Navy SEAL, writing a book, becoming a best-selling author, being a great chef, whatever, whatever that might be.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The outside world has a say in whether or not you can accomplish those. So, so the, so the discipline required to accomplish that takes a different level. It takes adaptability, it takes flexibility, it takes an understanding of you have to shift, you have to move, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But then there's self-discipline. Okay. Self-discipline, uh, speaks to those goals that the outside world has no say in whether or not you accomplish. So that's like me saying I'm going to eat healthier and I'm in Vegas next week. Well, I'm at the buffet. The buffet is not going to throw pastries at me. Okay. It's all on me. All right.


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[Assistant] Again, this is where it gets interesting, because I asked myself, can these exist independently? I have known.


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[Assistant] People who are highly self-disciplined, they have a routine, they work out everyday, they eat right, blah blah blah.


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[Assistant] They can't get a long-term goal accomplished to save their lives, right? I've seen people, I'm actually one of these, who's, I'm highly disciplined, like I can get audacious goals accomplished, you know, and I'm good at it, right? My self-discipline sucks. I have to work on it, so it was really hard for me, right? I always joke, it's like I don't even like to tell myself what to do, let alone, you know, be told.


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[Assistant] The best is a balance, right? But again, when you start separating these and seeing that they can live independently, you start really understanding your performance. And so if you have the, the ability to say, listen,


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[Assistant] I'm really high on self-discipline. Really high self-discipline people love structure. They love routine. Guess what's going to happen if you try to be a Navy SEAL or be a best-selling author or be whatever you name the outside goal. Your routine is going to get screwed with. You're not going to be able to work out one day. You're not going to be able to eat the same thing you want to eat, right? So, so that's why they fall out.


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[Assistant] The, the, the really well-disciplined person, people have audacious goals. We're really good at adapting. We're like, oh yeah, throw it at me now. I'm good bro, right?


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[Assistant] But like, now I say, hey, you gotta be structured. It's like, uuuh, don't tell me about structure. I hate that, right? And so, so obviously the, the, the, the best, the best is having a balance or at least understanding where you may fall high, run lower on those scales so that you can affect, you can affect each side, uh, uh, uh, or affect each side independently and get yourself to where you need to go.


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[Assistant] Someone, real quick, someone asked me about once, uh, about discipline equals freedom. What do you think about Chaco and discipline equals freedom? And I said, I said, he's absolutely right. So the only thing that we have to add on the tagline is discipline equals freedom.


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[Assistant] To be undisciplined, right? Uhm, because if you, if you discipline yourself to a degree, you allow yourself the freedom to once in a while be undisciplined, you know? And that's the dichotomy.


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[Assistant] In the book, and the difference between the two is, is really a, uh, an activeness and a passiveness. Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh,


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[Assistant] What I want to believe and I'm curious to find out why it's right, right? And uhm, and the leaders who are curious without being open minded stand the F by. Yeaah, it's bad.


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[Assistant] I just listened to that and it was, I totally agree. This is the idea of the devil's advocate. And I always said, Hey, I really wanted the occasional devil's advocate, but it had to be a productive devil's advocate. Not a, not a, just a, you know, exhausting.


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[Assistant] The cunning mind, uhm, approaches a problem and immediately asks three questions. The question it asks is, first, are there rules and boundaries? Second is, are they real or are they perceived? And the third is, if they are real, what happens if I break them? And then goes about looking at different ways. And that's exactly, it's one of the primary qualities of Navy SEALs, uh, is the cunning mind.


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[Assistant] We are not constrained, uh, by rules and objectives.


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[Assistant] Yeah, it's, so, so Hank and I talked about this, uh, we're having coffee, and it was actually in the context of the, the recent controversy of, of, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Of the students that steal training using, using substances. And, and, and the, the common, uh, thoughts for most of us is like, that's, we feel like that's stolen valor, right? I mean, if you're not going to do it the way you're supposed to do it, then that's stolen valor. And, but there's a reason, right? Because this is different than cheating. And what we came up with, right or wrong, but I like your thoughts, is that if you're cheating and it's hurting the team, it's bad.


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[Assistant] Right? Uhm, if you're cheating in a context to get the team to accomplish a mission, right? That's different, right?


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[Assistant] What we, what we were looking at in that conversation about substance abuse is you are, you're doing, you're, you're cheating the, you're cheating the process by which we will understand that you can go to combat with us and do anything we need you to do, right? Because you're, you're giving yourself physical, whatever you're doing, right?


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[Assistant] Uhm, so, so you ain't cheatin' your tryin' is about, is about looking at the problem differently.


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[Assistant] Again, there's benevolent cunning, right? That's Oscar Schindler.


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[Assistant] There's, there's malevolent cunning, right? That's Bernie Madoff. I mean, so, so, so even being, uhm,


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[Assistant] Uh, divisive or, or devious, right? You can do it in a benevolent way. And these guys who, I would be curious, I mean, the guys who ran around the, the berm without the log, they probably got beat up because, you know, the instructor's like, but they probably, you know, the instructor's probably like, actually that's a pretty good idea right now. Because they're seeing, they're seeing some different ways of thinking as long as it's in service.


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[Assistant] The team. Selfish cheating is where we draw the line.


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[Assistant] What baffles my mind is the guys who are doing it, they haven't got it. Cause it's not about looking good. It's not about winning it. If you can win everything, great.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I cooled off faster. So my buddy who's running, who's in first phase told me a story. He said it was hell week and they were doing this evolution hell week. I can't remember what it's called. I think it's called a double up where they run, they have the class run two miles and then when they have a certain time to do it and whoever fails that time has to do it right over.


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[Assistant] Do it again, right, immediately, do another two miles. And he said, uhm, this class, it was, this class, they were basically, apparently they, they got in Word and all that stuff, they were super prepared, right? They go to this two mile run, they, every single person passes, it was like, holy crap, every single, except one dude, and this dude is like way far behind, he's just like struggling.


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[Assistant] As the whole class passes and they're sitting there and the dude finishes and they're like, okay, you know, um, tell this dude who's, who's, um, who, who didn't pass. Okay. Um, you know, go, go over there, get some water. You're going to do it again. So he walks over to the class, the class kind of circle him, huddle around him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] About a minute later, the kid comes back to the instructions. Hey, I'm quitting. I'm going to DOR, right? So he quits.


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[Assistant] And so my buddy goes to the class leader and says, hey, uh, you know, what, what went on there? I was like, well, you know, we, I don't know. He just, he, we, we were all prepared to win that. And, you know, he, um, you know, he didn't, he didn't live up and we kind of, we felt like it was probably his time. He's like, uh, my buddy's like, um,


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[Assistant] So this is, this is thinking outside the box, right, in a different way, right? So it's, it's this idea of, are we breaking the paradigms of our thinking? Because this is what SpecOps was designed with FirstPace, and this is how we,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We, we, we conducted the war. I mean, I remember we were changing tactics all the time to try to stay ahead.


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[Assistant] Uh, because, you know, we had to, you know, and so I think the cunning mind used benevolently and used in service to others is a huge asset.


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[Assistant] Yeah, first question is, are there rules and boundaries? Second question, are they real or are they perceived? Third question is, what happens if I break them? If they are real, what happens if I break them?


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[Assistant] It's healthy skepticism, and I think that really is a valuable asset, healthy skepticism.


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[Assistant] I got a, I got a copy of the DSM-5, which is the psychological Bible, so I want to make sure I was


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[Assistant] Looking at this correctly, in the DSM-5 they have a couple pages on narcissism and the disorder and they have nine criteria in there that you read like sentences and the idea is if the doctor reads these nine and five and the patient can say yes to five or more.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Then the patient is, is, is considered disordered, right?


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[Assistant] And so I started reading through these nine and as I read through them, I did not have five or more, but I was not innocent of all that I was reading. And so I said, okay, I asked myself the question, why did it become a C in the first place?


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[Assistant] And it was because, you know, all those things exist, but I wanted to see if I could do something very few people could do. Uhm, and the idea, and the other thing is when you look at the neurology, the neuroscience of this, uh, an infant that's getting recognized and adored by its parents is getting bursts of dopamine.


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[Assistant] Uhm, it's the impetus to some very audacious goals that we set for ourselves. It has to be metabolized in a healthy way and the way we metabolize it in a healthy way is we surround ourselves with people who tell us the truth. You can always tell the disordered


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[Assistant] So we can set, so, you know, a lot of people wouldn't argue the fact, and we could debate this, but that Hollywood is generally considered a narcissistic, uh, town. Uhm, but you look at some of the most, kind of the healthiest, most stable Hollywood actors and actresses, uhm, they are people who've surrounded themselves.


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[Assistant] With people who, who they're just normal around, right? And so, and so we just surround ourselves with people who don't put us on a pedestal, who tell us the truth, who keep us humble. That's our teammates by the way. That's our wives, if we marry the right person.


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[Assistant] Uhm, and we can really use narcissism to create advantage because why else would I want to be an ABCL? Why else would I want to write a best-selling book? Why else would I want to be the best surgeon, the best athlete, the best teacher, whatever that is?


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[Assistant] The idea is understand our humanness. Recognize our humanness. Don't, don't ignore it. Don't pretend it's not there. Just recognize it, embody it, and try to metabolize it.


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[Assistant] Yeah, and honestly, like confidence, I almost tend to sometimes separate confidence because I consider


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[Assistant] Arrogance the opposite of humility. Uhm, and confidence and arrogance the way I talk about those when I, when I


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[Assistant] Talk about organizations is, uhm, is arrogance is, or confidence is I know I can do this. Arrogance is I'm better than you.


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[Assistant] Uhm, confidence is internally focused and arrogance is externally expressed. Uhm, and so obviously confidence is quiet, arrogance is loud. Arrogance almost always comes from a place of insecurity. And so, and so you can have a very very humble, you can have a very very confident person who is very humble.


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[Assistant] Right, I mean most of the masters out there that we, we've, we've, we've encountered are very confident but also humble and humility in my, in my mind is really just a, it's not a,


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[Assistant] It's not a deference, it's really just an understanding that I always have something to learn. There's always someone who can teach me something and I'm open-minded to it.


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[Assistant] Yeah, that's right. And so, uh, and so, so people, so, so a lot of these, a lot of these folks, again, if you, if you look at the studies, a lot of the top, like entrepreneurs, like the very successful, they're a little bit higher on the narcissistic scale, but it's because those endeavors required a little bit of that.


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[Assistant] To get it going, kinda kinda to spark that, but if you wanna keep on going, you just have to manage it.


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[Assistant] I think it is, and uhm, and overlooked quite a bit. I mean, you know, I, I always define uhm, team guys, especially team, team guy leaders, but I think team guy holistically, holistically as, as the best guys having


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[Assistant] You're killing a terrorist and the next second you're caring for, you know, mother and kids, right? And so it's a dial. But, um, but if we don't as leaders take, uh, take the time to


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[Assistant] If someone doesn't feel cared for, uh, they don't look at you as a leader. What's interesting about these attributes is that, you know, when I got out of the Navy, I saw a good friend of mine, Simon Sinek, uh, author, he linked me up with a great leadership organization called the Chapman, uh,


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[Assistant] Get in front of these audiences as we say, just ask a question, what do great leaders do? And we'd have a flip chart next to us and we just have people yell out things and we just make a list of about 25, 30 things.


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[Assistant] No matter where we went, the list was always the same stuff. Always, it doesn't matter what country, what, what state, what generation, it was always the same stuff. And always within the top 10 were those five, were those five things, selflessness, accountability, empathy. Empathy a lot of times was number one, you know, or number two. So, um, so it matters to.


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[Assistant] Cause everybody has the same and when it's spent you can't get it back. Uh, and so when you, when you spend time to help another, uh, they will feel cared for.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, and one more quick note. This is really important. Empathy does not require agreement. Uhm, and, and we have to understand this. And our country could, could do, do right by understanding this. So here's an example. Uhm, we were in Iraq.


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[Assistant] And, uh, we saw an unfortunate event that happens unfortunately too often. It was like a 12 or 13 year old kid attempted to fire a rocket propelled grenade at a convoy. And, you know, unfortunately got killed doing so because they can't have that happen.


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[Assistant] I remember a bunch of us, team guys, at the end of the day, we were around a fire, like we always do out, out over, overseas. We were around the fire just chatting and this thing came up and.


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[Assistant] We, we kinda said, well let's, let's walk this thing back for a second. You know, this kid.


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[Assistant] One day, the bad guys come and say, we will give you a hundred DNAR to go fire this rocket propellant grenade at this US convoy.


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[Assistant] Every single one of us Navy SEALs said we would be that kid. If we had been in that environment, we would be that kid, right? That is empathy, right? And that's empathy without agreement. We don't agree with what the kid's doing or what the kid did, but we can totally put ourselves in that person's shoes. And so, so the act of empathy does not require agreement. It really just requires effort.


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[Assistant] And there's a difference, uh, because another attribute is generosity. And we have that in our, in our kind of a full attribute list, but there's a difference between generosity and selflessness. And the difference is that risk factor, right? Generosity is, can be done without risk and that's fine. It's great to be generous.


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[Assistant] Selflessness is at risk. There's, you're putting yourself at risk in some way. And when people see you doing that, they, they tend to say, this is someone I want to follow.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And this, by the way, is the only time you can use leadership as the noun. Leaders go first. They go first in behavior, right? You model the behavior you want to see more of, and then you reward the behavior you want to see more of. If you want more empathy,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In the, in the people you are, that are in your span of care, you


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[Assistant] Model empathy, and then you reward empathy. And that's the problem. If you don't understand that, you're not gonna, cause people will automatically, you know, they'll, they'll do what you, where the rewards, you know, flow and they'll, they'll do what the boss does, right? If they, if they, if they feel good about it. So that's the only time you go first as a leader. So.


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[Assistant] That's your compartmentalization loop going on too. I mean, it's really effective. And one of the things I do want to highlight here, and I didn't say this earlier, a great way to determine whether something's a skill or an attribute is to ask a simple question. That question is, can I teach it or can it be taught?


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[Assistant] If the answer is yes, it's probably a skill. If the answer is no, it's probably an attribute. So, so someone could come up to us and say, Hey, I want to learn how to shoot a pistol and hit a bullseye. Well, we could take out someone up to the range.


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[Assistant] And teach them how to do that in two hours, right? Someone else could say, I want to learn how to be more patient. We can't teach you how to be more patient. And so to develop an attribute you're low on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Requires a, uh, it requires three things, a knowledge that you need to develop it, a motivation to develop it, and then a deliberate, a deliberate effort to step into environments that test and tease and develop that attribute. So if you want to develop your patience, for example,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Go find environments to test and tease your patients. Whatever that looks like for you.


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[Assistant] I'm gonna pick the longest line of the grocery store stand in. I always say have kids, that'll develop your patience, right? But the reason why I bring that up is because I want to separate making decisions with decisiveness. Just making decisions is a skill. You can actually teach someone to make better decisions and how they gather information. It's a skill that can be taught.


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[Assistant] Decisiveness adds a speed and efficiency factor to it. And some people are just higher on the decisive attribute than others.


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[Assistant] It's rare, I don't like to be definitive, but it's rare that leaders are looked at as leaders if they are indecisive. There are some people I've served with and served under who are really great decision makers.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But it was a long project. To get them there was a painful process. You're like, oh my gosh. I mean, and again, it just didn't feel like leadership.


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[Assistant] Uhm, it also means that we don't necessarily have to be high on every attribute. In other words, I use stand-up comedy, right? The stand-up comic who's too high on empathy is not going to be a very good stand-up comic, right? So being too high may be detrimental to what you want to do in your specific niche.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But bottom line is, when you start looking at developing these things, if you find that you just can't develop something, that means you adapt and you adjust. I mean, and they can start playing off of each other. So I think I remember, uh, in fact I think I remember hearing one of your


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And he just wasn't getting it, so basically he pulls the loudest guy over and says, hey, tell the guys to do this, right? That's adaptability. He's using his adaptability to buttress his low.


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[Assistant] Whatever loudness attribute, you know, whatever. And so you can, some of these, so, so for example, uhm, low adaptability can be buttressed by high open mindedness, right? And you can actually, you can even out your performance that way. That's why understanding these levels in yourself and your team is really important.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And by the way, a buttress to decisiveness, right? You can't be effectively decisive if you haven't buttressed it with accountability because you have to look at those decisions and say, okay, was that the right decision? What are we doing? Did we need to make a different decision? So incredibly important.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, and the hack to that, the hack to that is if you encourage or you allow someone to make a decision to do something,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Automatically makes them accountable, right? They own that in a way. You know, the other thing I tell leaders all the time because this is something that sometimes


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, and that's really important because I've had leaders who delegate both and it's not good. I mean, it's not good. They, they, they, something goes wrong and, and they, they back away, they push away. It's like, no, no, that's.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We're always accountable. Now, I'm not saying that, you know, cause some people are like, well, no, the people you're giving responsibility, they're accountable to us. Yeah, sure. Yeah. But you are still accountable. And by you owning it, it just, it's the behavior you're modeling that they need to see more of. They will also own it in their own way, but, but we can delegate responsibility. We cannot delegate accountability.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One of my favorite Metallica songs. So one of my favorite albums is Injustice for All. One of my favorite songs is, um, Eye of the Beholder. And the line in that is, you can do it your own way if you do it how I say.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, well the other, the last thing I'll say on accountability, because I don't think I mentioned it in the, in the book, is that, uh, especially for leaders, accountability allows control. It allows you to take, when you, when you say,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I own this, and sometimes I've done this quite deliberately, even though I know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I had nothing to do it. I just take it. I say, I own this. This is my fault, right? I take the steering wheel. As soon as you place blame, you're given the steering wheel to someone else. And so, uh, so accountability allows for taking control of an environment and starting to steer it the way you want to steer it.


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[Assistant] The only reason why I need to say it, I need to mention is because, uh, the guy I talk about in that chapter, Brian McCabe, uhm, he's a deeply authentic guy and he loves and has been to several of your musters.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And how, I mean, you've seen these, some of these folks, uh, you know, and I will, I'll just say as an example, because I've seen officers, uh, who are, you know, sticky sweet to the, uh, the senior leader who comes and visits, they're just like, like apple pie, and then they turn around, they're tyrants to the people underneath them. Uh, it doesn't build trust. It doesn't build trust.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alternate personalities, undercover personalities. And I told him about the work I was doing, he said, Rich, this is really interesting because when we help someone develop an alternate personality, we always make it consistent with who they really are. Because what we found is that even the best actors on the planet,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, a couple times. Yeah, right on. Yeah, so, we'll have to, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, yeah, I'll, uh, I'll tell him to let me know and I'll let you know if he's coming, so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, again, I think I took that from the teams. I remember that being one of the attributes, uh, for, for SEAL candidates. Yeah. So.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, I will misquote the dilemma, but what I will say is we have to remember integrity subjective. Uhm, in other words, in accordance with the group, uhm, doing


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The right thing for a Cub Scout troop is going to look different than doing the right thing for an ISIS troop. And I would submit, and this makes people uncomfortable when I say it, so I will say it right, if you have a Cub Scout who steals five dollars


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That the group's gonna sort it out. And we found this in the teams. I mean, the teams, sometimes those, those less well-run groups, uhm, uh, loyalty will supplant.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Integrity. And that's not right either. And so, and so, uh, leaders need to be diligent about defining what do the right thing looks like for a group, for an organization, behaving those ways, right? Because if you're not going to behave it, you're, you're sunk as well. Uh, and then that, that, that will define the integrity for the group.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think I said you've studied your ass off of this thing and you see this kid cheating, yeaah, and on the cell phone, yeaah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, but these team ability ones are fairly straightforward. I mean, they really are. They're not rocket science. And the reason is because we all know what makes great teammates.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Arrogance kills teams. It really does. And arrogance, much like narcissism, is like a vampire staring in the mirror. You can't see it in yourself. Uhm, and so, so I always tell people, be, beware of it in yourself, cause we, we're, we're victim of it sometimes. Uhm, and then if you are a leader and you see it, uh, in your, so, actually, arrogance was always a trigger for me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, I just, just hated seeing, I mean, every time I saw it, it'd just trigger. And I was, I was actually with a buddy of mine and his name is Josh Waitskin. Do you know Josh Waitskin? Yeah. Yeah. So Josh and I would have lunch in New York a ton of times when he was still living there. And, um, and we were talking about one time we were talking about triggers, things that trigger us.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I said, uh, I said, oh, it's arrogance for me. And he's like, ah, that's interesting. He's like, when I see arrogance, I immediately think insecurity.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, I used to tell my JOs, I used to call it the irony of leadership, right? I used to tell my JOs, you're, if you're doing your job correctly, you're working yourself out of a job. You're creating a unit that can operate without you. And that takes humility. And, and quick story about Hank and I, we were out in Iraq and we were talking about some of the stuff and we said to ourselves, you know, if we're talking about growing all our leaders and if we don't, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If we don't do anything about it, we're not walking the talk. And so we said, you know what we should do? We should have them, we should send them on an op without us. And so sure enough, we-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, one of the team leaders takes the GFC position, another takes the TRPG position, they go out. Of course it turns kinetic. And it's like, stuff's going down.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And Hank and I are sitting in the jock and we're looking at each other like, man, if this goes bad, we're done. Like we are done, you know, but it's about, I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's being humble enough to then have the courage to grow your leaders. I mean, if you don't,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you're not allowing them to do what they need to do and, and make decisions and, and, and, and have confidence in doing it without you, you're gonna, you're, you're, you're, you're,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're not creating a team, you know, and the other, the collateral effect of that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Was that they got back and the team leader that had my job, the ground force commander, he takes his headphones off and throws them at me. He's like, I never f'n wanna do that again, right? Cause of course, GFC, you're like, you have like 5,000 things going on. Uhm, so they have an appreciation for what you bring to the team as well, right? So uhm, but, uh, but it takes humility. It takes courage and humility.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's what I miss the most. It's what I miss the most. I mean, the, the, the stuff that guys would say. Oh, so, uh, so, uh, a friend of mine, you probably know him, but anyway, he's, um,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was telling me, I was talking about this, he was like, you know, we were on our way back from an op one time and, uh, we were in the helicopter and the helicopter started going down. Started like having a malfunction and crashing. We're sitting in this helicopter and one of the dudes looks at us and says, well, I guess we're not going to have to clean our weapons tonight. And everybody bursts out laughing. It's like, that's what I missed. You know, it's that dark humor.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, the idea, the idea was uhm, that these polarities, uh, can both imply success. Uh, so in other words, the, there are highly successful people who were patient, there are highly successful people who are impatient. And, and same with the other ones, and, and, and the idea is on a team, this is when, this is when polarities matter, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The best teams have representation on either side, right? My wife and I are a great example. I am typically a patient person. My wife is typically impatient, right? That's worked beautifully in our 23 years of marriage, right? Because when patience has been required, I step up. When impatience is required, she steps up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and so, so whether it's patience or impatience, uhm, whether it's competitiveness or non-competitiveness, which really was interesting because I've never been a competitive person, you know, even when I was captain of the lacrosse team.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Whether we won or lost didn't bother me very much. In fact, I used to fake being upset because I was like, uh, it would probably look bad if I'm not, if I'm not like swearing or something. Uh, I thought that would be a detriment to me when I went to SEAL training because like, oh shoot, I'm not competitive. But what I recognize is that


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The competitive mind tends to think in a finite game, right? It tends to place rules and boundaries in an environment because you can't


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Win or lose unless you have rules that define win or losing. The non-competitive mind, there are no rules, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We both know that combat or military operations, in fact, any type of teaming requires both polarities. Sometimes it requires running up the line and winning, right? Sometimes it requires thinking outside the box. And so those are two. And then the final two, which I thought were interesting, I was really


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To be quite honest, trying to figure out what it was about seals.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That distinguished us, and I was kind of landing on this vanity piece. I was like, is it vanity, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I was almost going to use vanity, but the problem with vanity is vanity...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We don't want to look bad for our teammates. We just don't. And it pushes us to do things. It pushes me to jump out of an airplane at 20,000 feet, which I never otherwise would have done, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So that can actually power you in certain good ways. Obviously too much is bad, too little is bad.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But then the opposite, right? The Asusias. I don't care what anybody thinks. We've seen those people, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That these are iconoclasts. They start their own movements. They're the people who's like, I don't care what anybody thinks, I'm doing this. And typically people start to swarm around them. So, uh, so my wife and I are like this, like I have an elevated sense of fear of rejection. She doesn't care what people think and we, we, we blend together beautifully, right? So, so these polarities should be looked at as, hey, if you can have each represented.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] High on either one is not a bad thing. Have each represented and you'll have a really balanced team.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So the tool, the tool, uh, is for the first three categories, grit, mental acuity, drive, and the reason why it's the first three is because those can be self-assessed. We, we have just finished a leadership and team ability attributes tool.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, it was difficult, it was challenging. Okay, that makes sense to me. Uhm, and so the assessment tools can allow you some, some sense on where you might stand and where your dimmer switches might lie. And then it really takes some self-reflection to, uh, to really get that dialed in.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yes, because, well, I guess the part that comes before that acronym is place yourself in the environment where the attribute is being tested. And then you're going to feel stress and challenge come on. So as you feel that stress and challenge, then you, then you slow down.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You think, you know, you, you, you, you reassess your performance. You can use that acronym to kind of say, okay, you think again, this is what we just talked about, you know, engage your conscious mind and create your frontal lobe to start examining your performance in the moment. And you'll start to understand and develop it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeaah, so the next one's called Masters of Uncertainty, which is really what I always define SEALs as. Individual teams that could drop into complex environments and figure it out. And uhm, and I'm gonna, I'll lay it out in about six steps.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Step one is understand your attributes. Uhm, step two involves your identities. The identities we, we define ourselves. Step three is our beliefs.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that's kind of understanding yourself because we all, all of us who do this habitually know those three things about us.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then the, uh, the other three steps are in fact the tools, uh, actually a lot of the stuff that Teberman and I have worked on, the tools that allow someone to actually engage their own physiology to start stepping through that. And again, it's about, um, it's about a process, right? We can't, uncertainty by definition cannot be predicted. And that's not what we do, right? It's like, oh, you seal your,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, no, we're experts at the process, right? We understand when things go into chaos, we slow down. We start working through the process and start figuring it out. And it's not always pretty, right? Sometimes it's decidedly ugly.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's the process, so I'm gonna see if I can get that kicked out here by the end of the year.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, I'm about a third in, but it's gonna be a shorter. I'm gonna, I'm gonna take a, uh, this is a, this attributes is a very dense book. I'm very proud of it, but it is dense. Uhm, I'm gonna do a much shorter version, so do it a little bit quicker, so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Not much, I, I, I need to do more but as you know, we're, I mean, we, it's, it's somewhat antithetical to our normal behavior, but uh, but yea, Instagram, Instagram mostly, LinkedIn, uhm, and then Twitter occasionally too, so. And you have Facebook as well. Facebook as well, yea. It's all on the, and it could be all found on the website, so you can find it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, it's, uh, it's, it's literally, it's, it's accessing your, uh, uh, trigeminal nerve, which is linked to your vagus nerve and it's, it's...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, after Buds, I was. Yeaah, we were fairly, well, we were fairly even. He didn't play lacrosse, he played like a year, but uhm, but we were fairly identical and then I went to Buds and yeaah, just, I got really thick.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It usually, it typically skips a generation, or it skips a, yeaah, it usually skips a couple, so, so like, uhm, my sons might have twins, right? Uhm, it skips down some. Interesting.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hey listen, I just, first of all, what you all are doing, and since the day one, I think the leadership stuff has always been sound, like I told you, I think it's very simply put and digestible, and I think I'm always excited when I can hear guys take


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I wanna sit and tell a bunch of stories, uh, because the combat part is, you know, it's, it's tough. It sucks, right? So, but we can extract some goodness out of it. So, so thanks for doing that and, and thanks for having me. I appreciate it. So, I'm glad, and I'm glad you're either, but I was thinking about, you know, I knew you were running training on the West Coast and, and, and some of the ways you ran training that I heard was like, well, it's, I mean,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He's testing out. I mean, if a guy can't get a run done before getting contact or something's getting thrown into the mix, that is attribute training, right? You know, and I think that's uh, so it's exciting that you read it and it resonates.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because he does have a very calm, it's why his meditation app is so great. I mean, it's uh, it's very soothing. I sent him a book, so I don't know if he's ready.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, Jaco and Echo, thank you so much. It's great to be with you again, and especially the fact that Jaco, you wrote the foreword to this book.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In which you, uh, quote Colonel Hackworth. So anybody who has any knowledge of leadership in terms of famous people.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To have the forward mention that I have some redeeming qualities in the eyes of both Colonel Hackworth and you, uh, it doesn't get any better than that. So I, I am just so honored to be on the podcast again. Thank you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I, uh, obviously because I was the only Asian, uh, perhaps I did but I never felt that way.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, you know, the neighborhoods in Chicago, the people who lived there were


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A community, regardless of your ethnic background. My best friend was Jewish, I had Catholic friends, I happened to be raised Protestant, uh, but every neighborhood had a basic core, which was your local grocery store, your barber shop,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Your local bar, which was the most important church. I mean, Chicago has so many.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, parishes, Catholic parishes, Protestant churches, uh, Jewish temples, uh, but


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I went, I was born and raised, as I said, in Logan Square, northwest side of Chicago, and I went to, we went to a Methodist church, right up the street, literally it was on the same, same street, maybe two blocks away, and every Sunday,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We would put on our Sunday best clothes, that's what you used to do in those days, and we would walk to church as a family.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that was, other than school, that, that really was, I shouldn't say other than, it was the center.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Of my life at that time because, you know, every Sunday we go, I joined the choir. I really was a choir boy. And I actually, in grammar school, I sang a solo on local WGN TV.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With our youth choir, uh, but I was in Cub Scouts, I was in Boy Scouts, the pack and the troops.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We're sponsored by our church. I mean, the church was so important and that led me


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To, you know, the model of the Boy Scouts for God and Country.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so that, that was the found, part of the foundation of my life.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Sure, the, the, uh, Japanese word for generation is say. Okay? And to count in Japanese, one, two, and three. One is ichi, two is ni, and three is san. So ichi, ni, san.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Ise is a combination of ichi and sei, which means the first generation.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To come to America. So those were the immigrants who were born in Japan but they came to America.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The second generation, keeping in mind, ni is two, ni say,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The immigration pattern for the United, for the Japanese to America


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Was an anthropologist's dream.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because they all came here at the beginning. It was a wave from Hawaii and from Japan.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In about the late 1800s, early 1900s, maybe a two decade period of time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Where they came in, but then by the 1920s or so,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There was, uh, anti-Japanese feelings already mounting. Yellow parallel, uh, uh, journalism, uh, by the West Coast papers, the Hearst.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Doing terrible things to white children or white women. And so there was a lot of, but what happened was it was more than that. These Japanese immigrants were extremely industrious.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, they worked hard, and they saved.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they were able to change a lot of the-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Here in California, a lot of the farmlands and orchards were developed by Japanese before the war, before World War II. And, uh, you know, there was jealousy about that. Now what most people don't know is that


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Japanese nationals were prohibited from owning land.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In the United States, okay? But the Japanese were smart. What they did is they purchased land in the name of their children. Because they were citizens. So they could, they could do that. And, but there was a lot of jealousy. So when the war broke out, it was very clear that


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The hysteria from Pearl Harbor, and by the way I should point out that the FBI


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That was one of the reasons they were put in camps, because they said there would be a fifth column movement.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Where they would be spying for the Japanese and they would be pointing out the weaknesses in our defense, you know, our, our forts. And so there was not one case of nises or ises.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Of espionage ever proven against them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yes, and that was, that was kind of a cool story. She, she was, well let me get back to my dad first. The reason he came here, he was born in Japan in 1900 and his father


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, kind of, uh, I would say squandered. He, he, he came from a relatively well-to-do family in rural Japan.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We were from a place called Yamanashi, which is a prefecture in Japan, right near Mount Fuji. Okay? In fact, my name, Mukoyama,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Mukho means over there, and yama means mountain.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] From my father's backyard, every day, he could see Mount Fuji. I mean, it was, you know, really beautiful. And so, when people ask me, what does your name mean? You know, in English, well, having been an English major,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Rather than saying, you know, the mountain over there, I say, yonder mountain. And so anyway, my, my grandfather,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Invested, I guess, in the Japanese future market or something like that for sake, I think. And he, he lost like half of the family fortune or, you know, assets. Still, he still had a decent amount, but so 1901, he,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Books to the United States. And the idea was to make enough money to come back, you know, with honor back to


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, my father's born in 1900, 1901, his father leaves, stays in the states for 18 years.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Leaving, by the way, his wife with five kids, right? And so, when my father turned 18,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My grandmother said, you get on a ship and you go to states and you get, you know, your father to come back.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So that's what he did. He got on a boat, landed in Seattle, and my, my grandfather was in, uh, uh, Kearney, Nebraska.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And he was the head, he was a pretty sharp guy, and he was the head of a Japanese labor group working in the sugar fields.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, uh, very successful. And so my father said, you know, I'm on a mission. You know, mom says you gotta go back. And so they moved to Denver, Colorado. Okay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The real neat thing about this was my grandfather was a Christian. This was highly, highly unusual for a Japanese at that time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't know because I never met him. He died before I...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, came of age in Japan, because my father was successful. He did get him to go back, but the neat story was when they moved to Denver, my grandfather purchased a boarding house.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the boarding house was at the end of a kind of a rail line where miners used to


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, go to the boarding house, you know, they work in the mines and then they come.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, the boarding house had, like, waitresses, you know, it was a, so they had a, uh, a restaurant there, uh, whatever you want to call it, where they fed the miners. But the, and they had waitresses, you know, that would, would wait on them. Well, the waitresses turned out to be more than waitresses.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so, so, you know, but my, my grandfather, you know, had, had enough money. So my father said, you know, it's time to go back. And he went back.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, but my father said, I'm staying. And, and he, he was very unusual for Issei. Most Issei are, were very, they came from rural areas, uh, they weren't highly educated.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, and they were introverts because they were learning a new culture, they didn't know the language.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My dad wasn't like that at all. Here he is, he's 19 now, and he's in California, and he sells cars, he sells insurance, he worked as a


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Was, she was born in Madison, Wisconsin. Okay. And, uh, they had, they had like a small farm. And, uh, and I don't what drove my grandfather to do this, but right at the beginning of the depression,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He moves the family to Oklahoma. You know, the dust bowl. And sure enough, she lived through all, she did read Pearl Buck, you know, and she, she said she nailed it. You know, that's, that was what they went through, you know? And, uh, so she's, she lives through the depression and all that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So now comes my father, right? He's in Chicago. Somebody knew her family in Oklahoma and introduced, you know, introduced them. Because in those days, there were anti-interracial


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So he goes to see her and


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, you think, and especially in those days, they had arranged marriages, where it was kind of a given, you know, that, well, my mom was born here.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One of the few Japanese American families in Chicago before the war. There were probably three to four hundred total.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, during, after the war, because of the camps and the relocation of Japanese Americans who were in those concentration camps, uh, and by the way, they were not death camps, but they were concentration camps, your normal definition of


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Concentrating people of a certain race or ethnicity behind barbed wire with machine guns facing in, not facing out. And so when they came back after the war out of the camps,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, and actually during the end of the war, uh, there were so many jobs in Chicago, it was a good place to come.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But there was no organization set up to do that, so my father and my uncle and


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Some of the Issei who were in Chicago formed a, what was called a mutual aid society. Uh, so when people came out of camp, they would get them apartments, they would find them jobs, they'd get their kids in school, you know, that type of thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, I, we, you know, we never owned a home. We always lived in an apartment building until, you know, I was maybe 20 years old, but I was already out of home and, and, uh, and,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We, our strength was our family and our culture and our values and, and, uh, the gift shop was how, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, my father was able to pay for our living. Really. There was not enough money for college for my brother or I. And we knew that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That was our lot in life. We didn't, we didn't complain about it. We said, okay, we gotta go out and earn it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, just like my father was earning, you know, and he, he gave me a great gift about


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so, my father owned this gift shop for about 30 years. It was a small.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, they sold things like figurines and lamps and ashtrays and dishes and, you know, small things like that and, uh, it was open six days a week.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, on Monday and Thursday nights until nine o'clock. The other days were nine to five. And it was just our family who was running it. We did have one employee who was one of our neighbors.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, and by the way, Japanese, I, I, I know enough Japanese to be dangerous. Okay. Which, which.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Our parents did not teach us Japanese when we were younger.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because, there were really two reasons. Number one is they would be able to talk to themselves in Japanese.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And we couldn't understand what they were saying. Anybody who's a parent would love to have that type of a thing. Uh, but the other thing was my brother's older than I, he's six and a half, seven years older. So he was a young.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Boy, during the war when Pearl Harbor hit and everything, okay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It wasn't the latest craze to go around speaking Japanese at that time. So they didn't teach us Japanese. So the only Japanese that I really know, believe it or not, I learned at the University of Illinois. And I studied my heritage. Because see, when I went to U of I,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was going to be an officer in the United States Army. Uh, initially I wanted to, I wanted to be a chaplain.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was so, I, uh, cause my faith is paramount in my life. And as a youth, uh, I was very active in our youth activities and I wanted to become a minister, but I was also in junior ROTC.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I love the military and I know we'll talk about this, but the samurai tradition is, is huge in the Japanese culture. Uh, in the Japanese culture, the warrior is at the top of the culture. Unlike the Chinese culture where, where the, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The academician is the, the scholar is at the top of the culture. Okay. But in the Japanese culture, it's the warrior, the samurai. And so, you know, those two things, uh, I, I decided I was going to join the army and I was going to be a chaplain.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's how I was, cause I, I didn't know what God wanted me to do. Well, that didn't turn out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, and, and I decided to do the army thing. And I'm a fairly focused guy, so once I decide to do something, I, I pretty well, when I went to, I would, when I went to university, if it smelled, looked like, or moved like military, I was in.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, as I say, I've been so blessed and I have so many people, you know, God puts


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, you know, I was, when I was in the army, I was blessed to have great NCOs who made me look good. And I had commanders who mentored me, didn't cut my head off when I screwed up and I had my fair share of mistakes. And, uh, I just had other people.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In my private life, who came at the right time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, it just, you know, perfect example is my wife. My wife is Korean.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm from a Japanese heritage. Anybody who's studied history will know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That the odds of a Japanese guy marrying a Korean woman on a scale of 1 to 100 is a minus 50 and yet God put us together in an incredible way, a very short period of time of courtship and


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, she was here, believe it or not, in California. I'm in Chicago. Now get this great catch that she got, right? I had come back from Vietnam. I was unemployed. I'm living with my parents, not in the basement, but I was, I was living with my parents, right? I don't have a job. I'm in Chicago.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, she is in San Jose, California.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With, uh, it's sponsored by an American family.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Somehow I was able to convince her that I had some kind of redeeming qualities, so she fell for it. And I tell people I'm not, I've not been a salesman in my life, but that was the best sales job I ever did.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I had this all planned. I'm, I'm pretty good on when I set, when I determine a mission and then studying how to get there, you know, and so I was going to be a chaplain.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I really love the samurai stuff, right? Sai said, I know what I'm gonna do. Instead of what most chaplains do, which is they go to university, then they go to seminary, and then they join the military, and they get a direct commission.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I wasn't gonna do that. I was gonna go to university, go through ROTC, go through infantry training.


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[Assistant] And get qualified as an infantry soldier, go to airborne school, ranger school, if I could, which eventually I couldn't, but, uh, you know, I was going to be, you know, an infantry officer, and then I would go to seminary.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, but by, I felt that by taking the same training as my soldiers, that I was shepherding, that I could be more effective, and plus it would give me some street cred.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, with the soldiers, if I walked in their boots, you know, nobody gave me a break when I went through my training. I mean, you know.


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[Assistant] You know, and so, uh, that was my plan, okay. Then what happened was my denomination merged, I'm Protestant, my denomination merged with another denomination.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they had some doctrine that I just didn't agree with.


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[Assistant] So now I was in a catch-22 because in order to become a chaplain in the military, you have to be endorsed by your denomination. I wasn't buying


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, the answer I thought he was saying was no. You know, and...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But that's not what it was. It was weight. It was weight. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, as I said, I didn't have enough money. My parents couldn't fund our education, right? So, you know, as a teenager, I got a summer job as soon as I could. Uh, my senior year in high school, I worked at a warehouse in Chicago.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Monday through Friday, 5pm to 10pm.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And Saturdays, eight hours. Okay, so 33 hours a week, my senior year in high school, just so I could earn money so I could go to college. I still had to take out a couple loans, but at least it gave me enough where I could do that, and so I'm


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm at the University of Illinois. By the way, my first two years were at the University of Illinois in Chicago.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And into, into Chicago, uh, but it would take time, you know, to, to build, find a place where to put it and everything. So, so-called temporarily, it was at Navy Pier. And so, it was...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was kind of fun because we used to joke about Harvard on the rocks and the only school that could be torpedoed. And by the way, the pier was five-eighths of a mile long.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I know that because the men's gym was on one side and a lot of my classes were on the opposite side. So I had 5 eighths of a mile to go between classes. You know, you get what, 10 minutes between classes? And so, uh, but it was a great education because they knew the university was coming.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A lot of PhDs agreed to teach, even though it's just freshmen and Southmore students, okay? I never had, you ready for this? A graduate student teach me my first two years. They all had PhDs. Now that was good news and bad news. The good news was,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, they all had PhDs. The bad news was they all had PhDs. The bar was so high.


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[Assistant] That the dropout level was two thirds of the students dropped out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh yeaah, that, that was, but you know in those days,


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[Assistant] That, that was what most guys felt like doing. Uh, they felt, you know, because our parents were the World War II generation. And they had served.


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[Assistant] You know, you either had a father or uncle or grandfather or cousin, somebody who had served. And that service...


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[Assistant] value was inculcated in our, in my cohort generation.


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[Assistant] And unfortunately it was also the beginning of


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[Assistant] Of, uh, you know, the sixties where you, you had it starting to go the other direction and people were just, you know, booking the Canada, uh, uh, you know, doing things so they couldn't, they wouldn't have to be, they wouldn't be able to perform as, and so they couldn't pass the physical.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, that also holds true for my faith. Uh, I am a Christian. I make no excuses for that. In fact, I'm very blessed and


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[Assistant] I tell people, especially younger people, that if you become a Christian or a person of faith, there is evil in this world. And there is a guy called Satan.


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[Assistant] And you can deny it all you want, but the fact of the matter is that if you are a person of faith, you're gonna be attacked.


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[Assistant] You have to understand that we are in spiritual warfare every day, every moment of every day, and we need to cling to our values and our faith.


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[Assistant] And that'll get you through anything because, uh, God is always with you. He doesn't desert you. I, when I was in combat, I never worried about my personal safety.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Cause I knew, if God was gonna take me, I'd be in a better place.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, you know, I could go down and concentrate.