Coleman Ruiz: Overcoming Physical & Emotional Challenges | Huberman Lab

Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life.

I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and

Ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Coleman Ruiz.

Coleman Ruiz is a former Tier 1 Navy SEAL special operator.

I think it's fair to assume that most of you have never heard of Coleman Ruiz before and in fact

it was part of his former life job description to be largely covert such that only his family and friends really knew what he did for a living.

He is however now living as a civilian and the reason I invited Coleman on this podcast was

essentially to tell us his life story which of course includes his time in the SEAL teams

but includes so much more that I'm certain is a value to everyone.

Today Coleman shares with you his remarkable journey from childhood through his teenage years into the military and some of the things that

happened during his time in the military which then informed his post-military civilian life and

what it is to be a father a husband and somebody who has experienced

tremendous loss at various stages of his life as well as tremendous triumph.

Indeed if ever there was a life that could be framed within the context of the so-called hero's journey

it is the life of Coleman Ruiz.

Coleman Ruiz's life is one that embodies focus and pursuit, family and friends and love all the things that we think of in terms of having a rich life

but also one that includes many unforeseen tragedies.

Many unforeseen challenges both internal and external.

Coleman also shares with a rare and extraordinary degree of vulnerability the extent to which challenges in life both

external and internal have helped shape him as a human being what follows is a discussion that everyone, male, female, young or old and regardless of position in life is sure to derive tremendous benefit from.

Before we begin I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

It is however a part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public.

In keeping with that theme I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.

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And now for my conversation with Coleman Ruiz.

Coleman Ruiz, welcome.

Thank you. I'm very excited to see you.

It's great to have you here.

I'm guessing most people are probably not familiar with Coleman Ruiz.

So let's start at the beginning.

Where were you born? What was the context of your home life?

And maybe let's get up to maybe elementary school, middle school, and whatever top contour or deep details you want to get into.

Yeah, we're all ears.

Okay, I'll bring us up to seventh grade because I would say that was probably the first big inflection point in my life.

I grew up in New Orleans in a suburb called East New Orleans East, we call it.

And have older sister, two younger brothers.

But that was a welder.

My mom was a dental assistant and we had a couple of boxers in the dogs.

And we had a very modest, very modest upbringing.

Over-dramatize it.

But admittedly, sometimes we got cheese from the lady across the street who didn't want her welfare cheese.

And it was one of those.

I could tell my parents were fighting for every nickel.

But it was great.

My cousin grew up across the street from me. He's exactly my age.

We had that at least some of my memory, Andrew, of it was.

It was very pleasant.

I learned later that you forget a lot of things in your childhood or unpleasant.

But my initial memories when I started thinking about this kind of thing.

And as you and I have discussed, getting professional help.

And you started to learn a little bit more about your childhood.

But I remember it being very pleasant.

You told me about your background and skateboarding and stuff.

We skateboarded the neighborhood.

BMX was a big thing when we were kids.

It was very much a rat the streets upbringing.

It was a park behind the neighborhood we would cut through the fence and go, you know this kind of thing.

I played football and baseball and very normal in that regard.

Went to the neighborhood school.

And then in sixth grade, I went to what was my high school.

But it went it went fifth through twelfth called Holy Cross High School in the Lower Ninth Ward.

Which that spot is now vacated because the school I went back after Hurricane Katrina.

And then the whole school had to be moved.

And I went there in seventh grade.

And it was a hellacious start.

I mean, it was detention after detention, you know, fist fight after fist fight.

And damn near.

Were you the instigator of those fights?

Probably some.

I definitely fell in with the wrong crowd initially in that sixth and seventh grade years.

And I wouldn't say it was so extreme.

Like it was complete mayhem, but I was definitely on, you know, problem situation number, whatever when my parents were called in.

And it was kind of the last straw thing.

And I got cut from baseball.

My grades were fine.

I was always a pretty good student.

It was just teenager shenanigans.

And then I went out for wrestling.

Can I just pause you for a second?

So on the the violence part.

I'm a little bit of experience with this, but violence can come from trying to protect others.

Yeah.

Instigating.

It can come from the wildness just trying to, you know, see what it feels like experimentation.

And any number of other things all the way to pure sociopathie, which we know you are not.

And weren't.

Do you recall feeling something inside that inspired this was it for attention?

Did it feel good afterwards?

Can you recall what it was about?

I think it was the wildness thing.

And you're honestly, it wasn't.

I mean, I believe I don't have a malicious bone in my body.

Like we all have that in us.

Obviously my profession later in the military, you know, I was able to activate that.

I feel like I still can.

And I was certainly able to in sports, which is why that seventh grade year was really pivotal.

But even now it's funny.

It's even funny you ask about the wildness because.

Let me put it in movie terms like one of my favorite movie scenes of all time is in the movie The Town.

When Ben Affleck walks in the room, Jeremy Renter is the, you know, his partner.

Essentially any walks in the room and he says.

I can't tell you where and I can't tell you when any pauses in Jeremy Renter takes maybe a three second pause and he says, who's car we taking?

He doesn't even ask, you know, he's just.

They're just wild and excited about doing something wild.

I don't promote like going hurt somebody.

Of course, were you the Aflexer of the Renner and Aflex, excuse me, or Renner in that?

I was.

I feel like I was mostly the Renner.

Put it this way, if you have some good idea this afternoon, like let's go fucking try this, I'm good.

I'm ready.

And I think it's just exciting.

You know, I hate rules.

I hate being told to do.

It's one of the things that was so frustrating about the military.

The rules are in place for a reason.

They're written in blood.

I get all that.

But we're so constrained sometimes.

I think that was just all coming into fruition that seventh grade year.

And I enjoyed going wild.

Like it was just fun.

And frankly, we weren't.

These fist fights in this trouble wasn't like going to get some kid.

Those other kids wanted the wildness too.

You know, and so.

But the school didn't want that.

And then I went out for wrestling that year.

And I could put it all into the wrestling room.

And it was awesome.

Before we talk about wrestling and why it was so meaningful as a channel for you.

A little bit of neurobiology.

Rouse, I wouldn't be.

Great.

Andrew Huberman.

There's a really interesting phenomenon that one observes in both animals and humans.

Which is that somewhere around adolescence.

Mm-hmm.

When the hormone surge begins.

But even before that, there's a phenomenon called dispersal.

It's very different than fighting per se or sexual activity per se.

It's a literal dispersal from one's home environment or an animal's a nest.

In which animals and humans and where animals after all start forging new environments in a very,

as you point out, chaotic way.

It's not organized.

It's a little nuts.

And it.

And biologists and neurobiologists in particular have observed changes in neural circuitry that.

That drive this.

So some of its hormonal, but a lot of it is the brain.

Taking all this input that one has been exposed to.

Some earth, food, others, social interactions.

And starting to essentially throw the different paints, the different colors of paint together

and just trying things.

Yeah.

Some kids are more prone to this than others.

Certainly has a hormonal component.

Boys and girls tend to do this differently, but they both do it.

And psychologists and neurobiologists see this as a fundamental shift in our underlying circuitry.

So just a little bit of food for thought to put what you just described in context.

With that said, tell us about wrestling.

I mean, Andrew, in many ways, like I said, that was the first inflection point.

It was like immediate, I mean, immediate uptake within a week.

I knew this was my thing.

Maybe maybe the first practice.

What do you think it was?

So when I was younger, my aunt and uncle, when I was like seven years old,

they started taking me to road races.

And I'm sure, just running races, one mile and five K races, when I was really small kid for you to run.

To run with them.

They were into the road racing thing back in the day when it was brand new, you know, the 80s.

I'm 48, so I was born in 75, so I was seven, you know, eight years old at the time.

And I was into like, obviously, can I win this race?

I just, the pain of the effort was so comfortable.

And then, this is kind of silly, but like I won the PT competition at like the Boy Scout staying in Audubon Park.

PT is physical training.

Yeah, physical training.

Training is good training.

And so I won like the, whatever, when I was young and Boy Scouts or something.

And then it just snowballed.

Then I was just like the physical activity still today is, I mean, someone said,

you're really in love with it's, it's that.

And so when I walked into the wrestling room, it was so extreme compared to anything outside ever done.

Football, baseball, whatever.

I never really liked any of those sports.

I played them all, but I didn't like them.

And always my dad wrestled in high school and college.

And we were, we were, you know, always rough and tumble in that regard.

And I haven't had a couple of buddies in the teams, you know, who obviously were college wrestlers.

There's a lot of wrestlers in teams and people would always joke about how we're so handsy.

And you know, our hands are always on each other.

And that was just a thing for us.

Like I loved the close contact.

I love the fight of it.

What I really love about combat sports because I boxed in high school between wrestling seasons was the respect.

Tell me more about that.

You just don't have, there are some, of course.

Like you can see guys hyping it up and doing their thing in UFC these days.

And that's totally fine.

But for the most part, if you have fighters of any type, like in a setting,

when they don't have to do, you know, the stuff for TV and whatnot,

they respect each other because, and they respect the effort.

And because you know what it takes, and you know how hard it is to face another man

in the middle of a mat with no equipment and nowhere to run and no timeouts

and no one to tap in, that's extreme, you know.

And it may not seem like high school wrestling is extreme, but as you just mentioned,

something about, you know, development, when you're 14 and you're facing another,

like that's the first time, is someone trying to take your life?

No, they're not.

But it feels that way.

And then you go and you put in all these hours of training and you don't eat during the week

and you run stadiums or you run levies and, you know, firemen's carries and all of it,

while you're not eating and making weight and you're in the sauna,

and it's just a very tough thing to do, combat sports.

And I love the respect that it engenders between the people who do it.

I think it was Sam Sheridan who wrote a fighter's heart, an excellent book.

For anyone, male or female, any age who's interested in the human spirit,

I recommend a fighter's heart because it's about the different fight sports,

but it's really about the path of self discovery that occurs in various martial arts.

And as you said, like, especially boxing is very gentlemanly.

You touch gloves, you start, you know, then the, you know, the bell goes off,

you go to your corner, like it's, you know, sometimes people lose it,

bite off people's ears and I was like that, but, but for the most part,

the sport is very structured.

As you were doing this, what was happening with school?

Did it help your academic studies?

Did it keep them more or less the same?

And how did your family and your peer group view what you were doing?

Were you considered strange for liking wrestling so much?

I mean, you're dieting, right?

You're a young male dieting for purpose of sport and performance.

You're sitting in sauna as you're running in rapped in plastic bags.

All this like, I mean, a good friend of ours who was also in the steel teams said,

one said to me, you said, you know, wrestlers are different.

And I think he meant different in quotes.

Yeah, I think that's true.

You know, school, my grades immediately went up.

Andrew was like, oh my gosh, the discipline of all of it,

my grades were always better in wrestling season than out of wrestling season.

Like, when I was cut loose out of the structure, then it wasn't good.

And, you know, between seventh and eighth grade and all that,

I didn't have any crazy shenanigans going on.

I wasn't going to get kicked out of school, whatever.

I was doing normal stuff for the age, but...

So the fight stopped.

Totally.

Totally, because I could put it into the wrestling space, you know.

And I think, I grew up obviously in New Orleans.

And I think, you know, down there,

it's baseball, football, basketball, wrestling is not...

I mean, I was lucky to wrestle on college at all,

because it wasn't like Iowa was looking to recruit me.

You know, they have plenty of people to recruit,

and they don't need any Louisiana wrestlers.

Although Daniel Cormier grew up not like North of the lake.

He was four years younger.

I was telling this to somebody.

We don't know each other.

I'd love to meet him.

Super impressive athlete.

We heard that, hey, there's some kid up in the North Shore.

I think is where he grew up.

Whooping everybody's ass.

His name is Daniel Cormier, and then, you know, obviously,

the rest is history.

But the sport is not big in Louisiana, which is all to say that...

We were kind of a unicorn.

We had...

It was very odd at my high school specifically.

We had one coach.

His son, either National runner up.

His name was Willie Gatson.

Willie's...

Willie passed away.

I think his son ended up at Iowa State.

And within the last five or six years,

was either a National Champ or a runner up.

Willie...

When I was in eighth grade, Andrew, Willie was at my high school.

Like, I have no idea how Willie Gatson ended up in New Orleans.

But we ended up with this cluster of wrestlers at that time

with the right coaching.

And a few kids were going to junior college and coming back

and wrestling and college and coming back.

And there were three or four guys, I remember specifically,

in eighth grade, because I started, at least in the junior high ranks,

I started to take off my second year.

These guys would abuse me in the wrestling room.

They were seniors in high school.

I was 112 pounds or 132 pounds my freshman year.

And they would just, in my eighth grade year,

and they would just abuse me, define abuse.

In all the legal, normal wrestling ways.

Like, there's the...

Wrestling gets broken up, obviously, by weight.

You got the heavy weights on one end of the room,

the light weights on the other end of the room,

and the young kids stay with the young kids for the most part.

And a few of these guys would drag me down to the varsity end,

and I would wrestle with the middle weights,

and they would beat the shit out of me.

And eventually you get to the point where you're like,

fuck this, I haven't had enough.

And that's when things started to turn.

But I think that wrestlers are different,

and my peer group, one or two of my really good friends wrestled,

but most of them played other sports.

And so...

But in every sense of the word, life got better for me,

because of that sport.

It changed my life.

So you wrestled all through high school?

Yeah, yeah.

At that point, were you discovering relationships, girls?

Were you partying?

Were you a drinker?

You used drugs?

No drugs.

I mean, it's New Orleans, right?

It's like one of the things that was tough.

I'm glad I got out of the city, frankly,

because it was party time outside the season.

Yeah, girls, girlfriends, normal stuff in that regard.

Lots of drinking.

Lots of rat in the streets, you know,

in those days and the 90s.

But you kept it inside the lane lines.

It sounds like no drunk driving, no arrests.

No, no.

But nothing crazy in that regard.

I think I understood the consequences,

and I really cared about my career.

I really wanted to wrestle in college.

My grades were excellent.

My SAT score is not so much.

But I started winning really fast.

And, you know, my last two years in high school,

I was 89 and 0, and I almost won my sophomore year.

So, I was runner up in the state my sophomore year.

I always joke with the boys.

All my boys were way better athletes than I ever could think about.

Your sons?

Yeah, yeah.

And, um, when eighth grade, I made varsity,

and it was like, it was like eighth grade,

yeah, and I lost like 75% of the matches, you know,

but you just grind it out, and it's hard got into a naval academy,

which is a whole another story.

So let's talk about that.

So you finish high school.

You head to the naval academy.

Why the naval academy?

This is actually a crazy story behind this,

which maybe it will circle back to, but, um,

the summer,

gosh, I had forgotten that this started in seventh grade two.

The summer between my seventh and eighth grade year,

my grandfather was too young to join the Navy.

And he wanted to go to the naval academy during World War II.

And he lied to the recruiter and got into the merchant marines.

His, I'm pretty sure, first cousin.

My uncle and my cousins are like, first cousins once removed.

My uncle Jim Tharrell was at a family reunion in Mississippi,

which we were at.

And he didn't mention the naval academy.

Family reunion ends.

They all go home.

And he starts sending me naval academy paraphernalia.

I knew nothing about the military.

And I just thought about it, you know,

and he would send me stuff, you know, you didn't,

I wouldn't have the internet right now.

You sent in these booklets.

And you don't like authority.

No, I've not been in the military,

but I've done some work with y'all.

And, um, there's a lot of hierarchy and authority.

Yeah, that's true.

The truth ended up like it was just, it just seemed exciting.

I wasn't really thinking about the implications as 18 year olds, you know.

It looked very exciting to me.

And having gotten some professional help in the intervening years,

what I really think was a big part of it.

Was my parents got divorced my senior year in high school.

And the family unit just blew up, right?

And so it also represented an escape, you know,

get out and go get your life out of the New Orleans and just go.

Just go do something.

Were you a part of that, that obviously you were a part of the family that got divorced?

Was it chaotic?

Was it controlled?

You and I are the exact same age.

We're both 48, 175.

Back then it was a lot less common for people being,

they called them broken homes back then.

You know, nowadays I don't think they call everyone just sites the statistic that,

you know, more than half of marriages and in divorce as if it perhaps to normalize it.

But that's more than half.

Do you recall feeling distraught about that or was it just kind of the natural consequence

of something you would observe for a long time?

Like, oh, that kind of makes sense.

No, it was a shock to me.

It wasn't a shock to my older sister.

I just remember, this was the thought at the time.

This is like, seared in my brain.

This has nothing to do with me.

That wasn't like some sophisticated view.

It was mostly fucked this.

I'm not dealing with this.

I have my own life.

They're going to have to do what they're going to do, meaning my parents.

I'm getting the hell out of here.

Not a bad mindset for a kid at that stage.

If it had been four years younger, that might not be the best mindset.

But as you're heading off to college, that's reasonably healthy mindset.

As opposed to getting amashed in the what happened and this and that.

Can I ask you at that stage, you're 17, 18 years old at that point.

Were you journaling at that point?

No.

No journaling, no introspective work.

Zero.

No school psychologists.

No thinking about it or talking about your feelings.

It's wrestling, naval academy, social things, school, SATs.

Like very standard.

We're almost like talking like a superficial list of like what happens at the end of high school in 1990.

Andrew, it's the word superficial.

And I carried this forward for years, which I'm sure we'll talk about here in a second.

Those binary focus areas.

Like I was literally just going after them at full steam.

Stronger, faster, more intensity with zero introspection.

No excavation of this of cause of the psychology of anything.

Just full steam ahead.

Like let's go.

No meditation, no breath.

Work zero.

Which was not.

Adaptive and long run.

We'll get to how that played out in the long run.

But nonetheless, you got into the naval academy.

Didn't first.

Okay.

So I applied.

I get, you know, my uncle's doing all this stuff.

Anyway, I applied.

And I didn't, I still have the letter of the thanks, but no thanks.

You know, you're not qualified.

How'd that hit you?

At the time it hit me kind of like everything I did when that age when it didn't work out.

Admittedly, Andrew, it was like.

There's got to be a way around this.

Like shit has to work out.

But it feels terrible.

Right?

Like you have a moment of what do we do?

And my kids have heard the story a million times.

My wife was a blue chip swimming recruit for Navy.

And so she was into the naval academy when she was at the beginning of her senior year of high school.

Right?

What's a blue chip?

I mean, my understanding of blue chip is like, you are at the very top of the list.

And the coach has put you straight into the admission cycle saying, nobody else gets in until this person does.

So they wanted her.

They didn't want you.

Not only was she a blue chip and I was, and I got the no.

I guess, well, the wrestling coach called me a couple of weeks after my no, which is now in May.

I'm about to graduate from high school.

I'm not accepted anywhere.

You only applied one place.

Actually, two, which you made burst bust out laughing when I tell you what the other one is.

Because no internet.

I got a mailer in a pamphlet from Stanford, the wrestling coach.

I didn't know what Stanford was.

I had no idea that the college was even prestigious.

I didn't know they had a wrestling team.

I filled out the application and wrote the letter thing.

And I sent it into Stanford.

Of course, never heard back from them.

But I applied to two places.

Stanford and the US Naval Academy.

Well, for those that follow wrestling.

I mean, get into either.

Right.

That's a great story.

And I'll just briefly mention that a few years ago,

there almost wasn't a wrestling team at Stanford.

They had plans to cut the wrestling team.

Despite having a NCAA champion at Stanford.

But the power of people gathering and petitioning works.

And wrestling and a few other sports that were being cut from the curriculum.

We're spared.

It's amazing.

We're rescued.

So happy to see that.

Yeah.

So that so it Stanford does have a wrestling team.

So the coach, the coach, back to the,

like, how I ended up getting in.

I appreciated my college coach called.

And he said, I'm recruiting.

I have one more spot at the prep school,

which is in Newport, Rhode Island.

I'm recruiting another kid from Pennsylvania.

If he takes that spot, then I don't have anything left.

And we were exploring going to prep school and stuff like that.

Obliquies to get in.

And he called me sometime in May.

I cried around graduation and said,

can you be in Newport in July?

That kid went to, I think he went to Lehigh.

And I went to the prep school.

So Newport, Rhode Island.

Yeah, Newport for a year.

And it's a nice place.

Yeah, it's great.

And so you wrestle for a, I mean, you do school.

You know, you're, you're in the West Point as a prep school

and Colorado Springs as a prep school.

And so we joked that my wife was first person in our class

accepted and I was last.

Which is highly possible, actually.

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So your new port, is that have a portal to the Naval Academy?

Is that-

Yeah, it's an graduate prep school.

You're straight into the Naval Academy.

Like they fully expect you to be there the next year.

When junior year rolled around,

and senior year rolled around of high school,

didn't anyone pull you aside and say,

hey, you might want to like apply to a few other places.

You might want to consider what you do if this doesn't work out.

What do they assume you're going to do?

They're just heading to the city of New Orleans and bus tables?

Zero guidance, Andrew, really.

Like from my high school,

and I think the ecosystem I was in,

like people just didn't really know how to do that.

You know how to apply to schools.

I mean, my parents obviously helped when I applied to the Naval Academy.

But when I look at the system that kids go through now

to go, you know, their process to find the best college experience,

I never had one conversation with a guidance counselor about what to do.

I just didn't.

I mean, I just got very lucky.

A few people, my high school wrestling coach intervened.

I think at some point and called the Naval Academy to speak to the coach

to say you should give this kid a chance.

But he didn't, they didn't know who he was.

You know, I'm so lucky and so fortunate that I ended up where I ended up.

It's why I took it so seriously.

Like the focus with which I applied my time in high school,

I took that to 10x degree when I got to Newport because I knew this was my chance.

There's something magical to that.

I can relate to that.

So you're in Newport.

Yeah.

And describe what a day was like.

Is it all wrestling?

You're taking general education classes like one does in the first two years of university.

Yep.

So the way the way the prep school is set up for the Naval Academy is they're basically

teaching you the first semester of the Naval Academy.

So you take calculus, physics, chemistry, I think you take English class, etc.

And you go through like a pretty hellacious first couple of weeks because you're away from the flagpole

where no one can hear you scream.

You know, you're up in Newport.

You're not in a napost where everyone's watching.

And you do a couple hellacious weeks for an 18-year-old who's never been in the military before.

So you're in the military, technically, if you go to this school.

You're actually enlisted in the Navy.

Okay.

So they only used to some extent.

Yeah.

Yeah, they do.

And then you do...

You wear uniforms, you jog it in the morning, you're doing salutes and marching.

Yep.

You're bugling, they're doing taps in the evening.

Yep.

All of it.

Got it.

Yep.

And you live, there's 300 people at the prep school.

It's distributed basically amongst folks coming from the fleet.

You did four or five years in the military somewhere and they're coming into the Naval Academy from the fleet.

And then athletes and then sort of a mixture of other folks who need a little extra school.

Right? And so...

And then you do a full school year.

You're competing.

It's basically a red shirt year.

That's not a red shirt year.

I competed up and down the East Coast against, you know, all the other prep schools.

And you finished that year in May.

And then, you know, you're done with the prep year.

The prep year is fine.

It's a little bit of a...

A shock when you're 18, but it's fine.

I've always been curious about these military schools and the people that go to them and what happens to people there.

Did you have any sense of patriotism prior to arriving at this prep school and did that sense of patriotism?

You know, I'm talking like love of country.

Understanding the history of our country and its position in the international landscape.

Are you thinking about that stuff?

Are they feeding you that?

Or is it really like wrestling, get through the march, shower up, go to the next thing?

Is it very like plug and chug?

No, no, the feeding of...

And I really appreciated this.

The feeding of those concepts starts when you get there.

But I was deer in the headlights.

And like, I didn't think about my life in this way at all when I was headed there.

I mean, what you get very early, because the school very quickly starts to bring really high level accomplished people,

colonels, admirals, whatever, generals to expose you to this people.

I do remember sitting there within weeks.

Like, this is way bigger than I thought it was.

In terms of how serious this situation is, you know.

And how serious this ecosystem of people take this.

Because I didn't have my dad wasn't an admiral.

He was a welder in New Orleans, you know.

I didn't understand the bigness of it.

One of the reasons I asked this is that various times throughout my life I've had this experience of like seeing people close to me doing incredible work.

You know, like when I was a post-doc at Stanford, I had a Nobel Prize.

It was given that one week to the guy next door to me.

Yeah.

So you see him in the morning and like, you hear him on the radio.

And obviously I didn't have that kind of stature or talent in science.

I think I'm a good scientist, but good enough to, you know, get tenure at Stanford.

But then there are levels within the game.

But there is something very special to the experience of having people close to you physically and in the same ecosystem as you described it.

Achieving amazing things.

I also saw this in skateboarding.

I mean, there were a lot of, let's just say, failures to integrate with normal life.

But there are also some guys that I grew up with who started companies and set well records and you know, had their pro models.

And then if you zoom out from that and you go, wait, I'm in this community.

It changes one self view about what's possible.

So I think that's what you're describing.

And I think it's such an important thing for people to experience at some point.

Even if the goal isn't to be at kind of world scale, you know, for people to realize that the town they grew up in, the family they grew up in, that context can expand.

Yes.

And so do you recall being at this prep school and kind of third person in yourself and thinking like, well, I'm, call me Ruiz.

I'm from New Orleans.

I went from this to this to this, the way you've been describing it.

And I'm here and they're like, I'm around some incredibly impressive people.

And I'm here.

Like once you make that recognition that you're there, there's a whole bunch of things can open up.

No, I actually came at it from the opposite way.

And this has been a hard thing for me my whole life.

And I have to watch out for this perspective is I felt like every day I had to wake up and earn my place there.

I was never good enough for myself ever.

So next day up is a restart to prove myself again on whatever standard I'm picking that day, right?

Looking back on it, I realized it was somewhat arbitrary because it was just day by day.

I didn't think I'm coming to Ruiz.

I made it here.

Look, I'm part of the speaker.

I was afraid.

I might Tyson talks about being afraid every time I was afraid every day.

And I fought for like a position in this place every day.

Now that was adaptive in some regard, right?

Very.

Because to me, it was, let's go.

Like today's another new day.

And it's 100% all in full go.

I hope everybody's ready.

Do you ever call falling asleep at night and thinking like, well, like I had a good day.

I had a good day or I'm scared, you know, they're going to discover I can't keep up or I can't keep up all the time.

So a lot of fear.

I mean, yeah, a lot of fear all the time.

And some of it I do, I genuinely know and believe in Andrew that it was well intentioned.

Like I wanted to do a good job for the group.

Whatever group I was in, my platoon, my squad, in the case of the preps school, you know, that first experience.

I mean, I was talking about this with with my wife the other day, just because stories come up.

You know, we had a 25th reunion at the Naval Academy and this kind of thing.

And I was a really good runner for my group in high school, like the people I was around.

I ran cross country when I was younger.

And anyway, I did, I suppose I'm going the other day, I sort of did have some level of confidence in my ability.

Then I got there and like all these college cross country runners are like my son is now just crushing me.

And I think sadly because it was just sort of in me that fed my fear like shit.

I thought I was better than this.

Clearly I suck.

I have to get to their level.

So I did have a very well intentioned excitement around just do a good job with the people you're around.

There's something fun to that.

And wild, you know, as we spoke about.

But I was operating out of fear for decades.

But there was a I need to get to their level statement in there.

It wasn't I can't keep up.

I better find a different path.

No, no, no, no.

I knew I could I knew I could get to their level with enough work.

You know, was that something that your your father or your mother or both had instilled in you that that sure?

Yeah, and my high school wrestling coach was.

Let's call it maybe from the old school.

If you worked hard enough, you could you could you could get there.

So this is the essence of growth mindset long before Carol Dweck coined the phrase to growth mindset.

It's there.

I'm not there yet.

When I first read a book like when people teach us to shit more kids.

Yeah.

Well, some of us got it.

Some of us didn't and it can be very context dependent.

Right. I think that's one of the more important and often overlooked aspects of Carol's work and Ali Krums work is that we can develop growth mindset in one domain of life.

But then another domain of life, we get you know kicked in the teeth once and we're like, I can't do that.

There's a carve out where I can't function.

Some people do that.

Some people don't.

And we don't understand enough about it to understand, you know, whether or not it's a global circuit.

You know, and it's there's a lot of context.

But okay, so you're you're hanging in there at least you're surrounded by some very impressive people.

There's a lot of structure.

Yeah.

So we're a long way from the pre-wrestling days when yeah, this is the opposite of chaos.

Totally.

This is structure.

Yeah, you told what to do every five minutes more or less.

And this is scary feelings fears of scary feeling.

But you're channeling it and you said the unit of the day became important.

It's like, what can I do today?

Yes.

You're not thinking about the week.

You're not thinking about the season.

You're not thinking about becoming some war hero down the line.

You're just 24 hours.

And do the next day.

Yeah.

How was your self care at that point or is that built into the system?

It's not built into the system and it was zero.

I mean, it really was, Andrew.

Like it was the old school.

We were not doing anything sophisticated back then.

I mean, there's no.

We stretched.

And in the grand scheme of things, it's going to sound weird because there's still a lot of, you know, primal nature to combat sports.

But in the grand scheme of things, we were probably on the upper end of sophisticated like wrestlers jump rope.

They stretch.

They do aerobics.

You know, been in a sauna since 1993.

You know, it's like not purposeful, not for to cut weight in a garbage bag, but there is some level of.

Some level of balancing out your training, you know, wrestlers like to swim in the like during the season because you're getting out of that hot room.

Again, they're accidentally doing some of these things, but there was no self care.

So you eventually go to the naval academy.

94 the actual naval academy.

And that's where you met your wife.

Yep.

And 96 myself.

So when you get there, what's different than the prep school?

First of all, it's big in the macro, not just geographically big or footprint square footage wise.

It's big.

The concept is big, you know, like the superintendent of the school is a three star admiral.

You hear about his career.

You know, you're 19 years old.

So there's two incredibly important people in my life in those early years at the naval academy.

My guy named Doug Zembeck, who's dead now, who most people of my service time will know who he is.

When I was on my recruiting trip to the naval academy and I was in high school, this is complete accident.

Doug was a sophomore.

We call him youngsters at the naval academy.

He was a sophomore and we're the same way class.

So coach matched us up because it was my recruiting visit.

And my first, this is back to being wild literally my first night on the grounds of the naval academy.

I'm sleeping on Doug Zembeck's floor of his room with his other two roommates.

And sometime around three or four a.m. I get woken up.

It's like a bomb goes off.

There's a bomb didn't go off, but there's 12 other gorillas in the room, all wrestlers, maybe one or two other guys.

And Doug is hustling.

I don't know any of these people.

And you're like, I just met Doug the previous evening.

We just flew into town.

He wakes me up.

He's hustling me to get my shoes on.

Again, I'm just a high school kid.

And then within two to three minutes, all 15 of these gorillas bolt out of the room.

And Doug grabs me and I'm just following them.

So we race out of bank craft hall.

It's maybe four in the morning, three thirty four in the morning.

We race out of bank craft hall.

The barracks we run across the parking lot into Lajoon Hall.

In Lajoon Hall is the swimming facility and the wrestling room.

That's it.

That's the only thing that's in there.

The doors we run up to Lajoon Hall.

The doors of Lajoon Hall are locked with a chain on the outside.

And one of our Doug pulls on the chain so that the doors open enough at the top.

That the 142 pounder can climb up and like get inside that little gap in the doors.

And run over and open one of the doors that isn't chained.

This is what you'll later do professionally.

I still have exactly.

And what I frankly did as a kid, like back in the day.

And so I'm terrified because I don't know what's coming.

I know.

And so you don't bother to ask what are we doing.

There's no time.

There's just no time.

Like these guys are to me.

They're full blown war heroes.

They're not their college kids.

But I'm seventeen.

They're twenty one.

All these wrestlers.

I'm hoping I'm going to come here and be their teammate, you know.

We run into Lajoon Hall.

Go to the second story.

We climb up the utility ladder where public works goes to get in the ceiling above the white foamy ceiling tile things.

So we're now on the catwalk where the HVAC guys would be working.

And I'm starting to get a sense of what's coming.

We go a couple of feet down the catwalk.

Everyone stops.

Someone reaches over the catwalk and pulls one chalky ceiling tile out.

So now you can look over the edge of the catwalk and see right through the ceiling into the diving well.

Remember the diving well has a 10 meter platform.

And then we're another.

I don't want to over exaggerate this.

We have to be another 20 feet into the ceiling.

So you're above the diving board.

Well, we're above the diving board.

Okay.

We're five feet above the ceiling, which is 20 feet above the 10 meter.

Got it.

Right.

And so.

And now I've.

Realized what's happening.

And two or three wrestlers.

They sort of you climb over the catwalk, get, you know, backwards.

Get your hands all the way down and then very lower yourself and a reverse pull up.

So you don't.

Kick the ceiling tile.

And three or four guys go and you can hear him hit the water after what is a terrifyingly long time when you're, you know, my age and the dark.

Oh, yeah.

No one's supposed to be in there.

And then one of the guys looks over when you're a crew, you're called a drag.

They're like drag you're up.

And I'm lowering myself and Drew and I kicked the adjacent ceiling tile.

And it hits the dive tank and it turns into pancake batter and goes to the bottom of the pool.

And one of my teammates is like, you motherfucker.

One of my future teammates, you know, he's going nuts.

I'm going to jump. I live.

And this is back to Doug.

I come up. Doug clearly goes behind me, but I don't hear him.

And one or two guys are going nuts.

You high school piece of shit.

Like you're going to go down to the 15 feet and pick it all up.

And Doug comes up and he just blasts everybody.

He's our responsibility.

This is not his fault.

We brought him here.

Like just totally backs me up.

And then the rest of the visit happens.

I end up there.

Doug's no senior.

I'm a freshman.

And he's just the legend.

He was all American.

And to this day, Andrew, you need a hereless loud and clear.

Like for all the people you and I both know and the people I've been around.

No other human in my life.

Have I met with his physical and mental toughness, not even close.

The guy was born in the wrong century.

Is the way I describe him.

And he was like my mentor and he was my guy, you know.

And he was killed in no seven.

Marie.

Yeah.

We'll talk about Doug.

You've written about him.

Yeah. He's unbelievable.

So I feel like I know him a little bit.

Thanks to you.

We'll get around to that for sure.

I think people are getting a sense of where we're headed.

So that's the answer to your question about like.

Yeah.

That the bigness of the naval academy.

That's how it started for me.

Like everything was just on steroids.

You know, all these kind of people.

I get the impression at least up until now that you're kind of just.

You just go with what's right in front of you.

100%.

Like there isn't a lot of pause and reflect.

Although your rudder is not haphazard.

It's not random.

No.

Well, yeah, I can say right now you and I are as similar as I, you know, we may be in certain

respects.

Like we're very different in this way.

Like there isn't a there isn't a like a foraging.

You know, in biology, we call them random walks.

You know, a lot of a lot of organization that comes out of biology is through random walks.

Like animal or human like that.

Finds a node and moves.

And life is like this.

Steve Jobs talked about not being able to connect the dots except in retrospect.

And I subscribe to that.

And his life was a bit of a random walk, but that were guided by some central beam of uniqueness.

Robert Green was when he was on the podcast talks about that.

Your beam is more narrow.

It seems.

And the propeller behind that beam is a high RPM.

Yes.

That's very clear.

And what I'm not hearing here is like, yeah, you know, at one point I paused and wondered whether or not I wanted to, you know, be here wrestling in the Naval Academy or.

Or even like what I might do when I get out.

Am I going to work for an investment firm?

What am I going to do?

You're your horizon.

It seems to be about 24 hours at that.

Yeah.

Hope not anymore, but at that point.

No, at that point.

I mean, I'm no psychologist, but.

Yeah.

But, but it just seems like you're.

It's not like you're playing checkers, but you're, you're optimizing for a fairly short horizon.

There's no question that's right.

And the other part that was probably the most important to me, Andrew was the person or the group.

Because this is going to sound very arrogant.

But.

When I got to.

I'm going to this preps school and going to the Naval Academy.

I think on day one, I'm going to literally meet the cream of the crop in the country.

And that was not the case.

And it was not the case with the Naval Academy.

And frankly, it wasn't the case in the teams either.

Like I'm not saying I'm better than anybody, but I thought every single person when I got to the Naval Academy was going to be entirely focused on whatever our mission was.

And I need to know what my mission was there.

I just knew I was going to be told what right looks like.

And Doug.

Not only did I meet him in high school and have the.

The lock of having him as a teammate and a mentor.

For me, he is what right look like.

So a focused beam and a propeller running at high RPM with the right, you know, quote unquote swim buddy.

So to speak was literally all I cared about.

That was it.

Everything else was white noise.

Were there other interests at the time?

I mean, presumably you listened to music every once in a while.

But I mean, I would whatever.

But didn't fall in love with it.

Didn't feel the need to pursue anything else.

Learn an instrument.

Do anything else.

It was.

It was a.

That was it.

It was that narrow beam.

So.

You met your wife in 96.

Sophomore here at the Naval Academy.

And was she as driven is she has driven.

I mean, she's obviously very talented swimmer.

Presumably works hard as well.

Kind of interesting.

I didn't.

Realize until a few years ago that the both you are, you know, military.

Yeah, she definitely just different, different driven.

Waste martyr way more.

You know, it's obviously not one to one for men and women, but way more successful by.

Gradient standards.

She's in the Navy Hall fame.

She was Patriot League swimming champ.

She was on junior national track on team when she was 20, I think.

Really talented in every regard.

Ninth in our class, I think.

First female graduate number one female graduate.

Our class.

Tell me more about that.

How is that has that work?

You have a, I don't even know exactly how the grading.

First of all, her grades are her.

The academic success is just remarkable.

And then you get a military grade and you get a physical grade.

Not for your athletics.

I don't think, but it's like your PRT scores, which is your physical readiness test.

All this military stuff you do.

You get this other cluster of a grade that goes along with your academic grades.

And.

She was number nine in the class and the first female graduate based on that cluster of grading.

And I mean, she's an amazing person.

Was her success in academics and swimming was that part of what drew you to her?

No.

And she was just nice and, you know, I didn't really care about the achievement.

It does, it certainly sounds like I care about achievement because of the narrow focus.

But it wasn't really that.

You know, she was just really normal in a group of a lot of abnormal people, frankly.

Like there's some cooks at these schools, you know.

And I'm probably in that category.

I don't know, but everybody's just really different there.

You have this athlete group.

You have, I mean, you know, I dream.

You want to Stanford.

I mean, some of the, you know, the group of Naval Academy and West Point,

like these schools who produce like the road scholar level person.

Like that cluster of group like at Navy, our members, they're super impressive.

I mean, and then there's a rest of us like doing our best, getting pretty good grades and stuff.

But there's very different groups inside, you know, the school.

Yeah.

I looked to some of my colleagues like a former guest on this podcast, Ali Krum.

Mm-hmm.

You know, she's incredible scientist.

Was a division one gymnast.

And is a licensed clinical psychologist.

Also, main name's a healthy relationship with children in the home.

I just go, who are these people?

You know, it's, I mean, you know, everyone's wild.

We talk about the person with the quote unquote, extra gear.

You know, like some people just seem to have that extra gear.

And I don't want to take anything away from Ali or anyone else's incredible work ethic

that goes with what people perceive as an extra gear.

Who knows if they have an extra gear or not.

I always just want to know what their parents did.

Yeah.

And it turns out Ali's parents, I hope, have this right.

But recollection of this is that her mother ran a theater group.

And her father was a martial arts teacher.

Okay.

So, you know, there's nothing that speaks to academics per se.

And I find that really important to me and to highlight, because I think people hearing this conversation

and hear about people like Ali's and other examples like that, you think, oh, yeah,

you got to come from an academic family to end up at a top tier institution or to win a Nobel Prize.

In fact, there are so many exceptions to that.

Or you have to be a natural athlete or be born with some genetic gift or some extra gear

as it were in order to succeed.

But I think so much of success is the thing that you seem to operationalize really quickly,

which is to really focus on that 24 hour horizon and where one has seen failure to just keep going.

I mean, a big part of it is just to keep going, but also to make sure that you're continuing to go in a direction that is adaptive and functional.

Because imagine had you not found wrestling and you had gotten into some, you know, some group where the,

the metrics of success were around, you know, deal in weed or doing something which back then was highly legal now is very, very levels of legality.

But you know, where that where the points came back for effort in domains of life that could take you down into the gutter and,

and you see this. So I'm convinced that the work ethic is the fundamental piece, but there has to be that rudder.

And rudder has to be pointed in the right direction.

So along those lines, you meet Bridget.

Yeah.

And was it instantaneous?

No, we kind of had a friendship first.

I felt like at least we've discussed this.

I mean, I instantaneously enjoyed her company. So I met Bridget in February of sophomore year.

I was on the campus of Naval Academy called the yard.

I was on the yard all winter because the wrestling season is an shittiest time ever, right?

It crosses over the holidays. You have to make weight there and thanks.

Giving you have to make weight during Christmas.

We were on campus on the yard.

And it was easily way steep snow.

And we were doing two a day practices. Everybody else's home on vacation.

That winter, I considered leaving and thank goodness for no cell phones and stuff because I didn't know how to leave.

I was like, consider leaving like leaving the neighborhood.

Leaving the neighborhood.

I was just, but it didn't have anything to do with the Naval Academy really.

It had everything to do with that moment.

I was miserable.

Like, I was making, I wrestled 190 in my freshman year and Doug graduated.

He was the 177 pounder. So sophomore year I dropped into his spot.

I went down to 177.

Fighting weight for me is like 193.

But, you know, back then, Andrew, I'm lifting a lot.

I was two, ten to two, fifteen in the off season.

And I cut to 177 sophomore year.

And I was just generally miserable.

And if it was easy to leave, I probably would have.

And then I met Bridget in February and I was like, fuck it, I'll stay.

She's better than this place anyway.

Having followed my high school girlfriend off to college and not gone to college when I got there,

I just lived in the parking lot outside her dorm room.

I can relate, you know, there's a, I probably wouldn't be sitting here today.

We're not for, for Eleni.

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So at what point did you decide you wanted to aim for the SEAL teams?

It's a great question. I mean things, you know, as compared to at a gunnery sergeant in the Marine Corps at Prep School,

who I thought, these are back to the first people you meet in this environment, Gunny Flynn.

And he was great. He was super hard on us, but I obviously kind of love that.

And I thought I was going to go into the Marine Corps and Doug wanted to go into the Marine Corps.

I'm a freshman at the Naval Academy. He's my wrestling partner.

Doug could literally tell me to jump off of a building as long as he came with me.

I'd do it no problem and enjoy it all the way down. Doug was going into the Marine Corps.

I thought I was going to go into the Marine Corps.

And I did a summer training in Kwanoko between freshmen and sophomore year.

And it was okay. It was good, but I didn't love it.

And I met a couple other guys who were going to compete for spots in the SEAL teams who were years ahead of me.

But to answer your question, junior year, you can sign up and say, I want to start competing for a bill at...

We had 16 spots in my class. I think there's 32 spots these days.

You know, the force has grown since 9-11, obviously, and...

And I want to say maybe 150 or so people. They put you through this weekend, overnight, two-day, hell, two-day things at Navy.

Some people quit. I don't know how many go to what we used to call many buds in the summer.

Between junior and senior year, you go out to Coronado and buds instructors.

They still have it. It's called something different.

You spend two weeks at the buds compound. They run you through a mini program.

And some buds for the... Some of the folks listening to this won't know the acronym.

The acronym is basic underwater demolition SEAL school. That's our school in Coronado.

It's a screening process for who gets in, who doesn't.

Yeah. And when you're at the Naval Academy, it's obviously different than guys coming into the Alistair ranks.

You have this pool of people. 150ish guys say they want to go.

Sometimes junior year, they run you through this weekend.

Pretty hard at Navy. Because we have SEAL station at the Naval Academy.

And then I'm just going to guess that goes from 150 to 80.

Maybe 80 guys go to the summer program in Coronado when you're still, you know, a midshipman at the Naval Academy.

I've never... Maybe people have quit many buds. I don't know.

But I don't know if I really saw anybody quit the two weeks we're out in Coronado.

And then you get, you know, graded on your performance and stuff.

And then you come back for senior year and you go through a series of interviews with a bunch of SEALs

who come out and do interviews and you don't really know what you're doing.

And then they select down. I don't want to again overdo it.

But it's probably seven, I don't know, maybe 50 or 60 qualified guys.

They select you down to 16.

And so, to answer your question about when I got interested was when I knew I didn't want to go to the Marine Corps,

I never, ever had the top gun fever thing.

I wasn't interested in flying.

I just wasn't interested in anything else, but something super physical.

And that seemed like the best, the next best thing.

And because I grew up in New Orleans and spent a lot of time in the water, that wasn't intimidating.

That screens a lot of people out, obviously.

Yeah. And got selected in the group of 16.

And was that buds after graduation? You know, a couple of months after graduation?

There's been a lot put out into the world around buds. You know, people have seen the log carrying, the boat carrying,

and the screaming in the set, screaming in the instructors and the running and the, you know,

clasped arms in the water and hell week, you know, sleep and on and on.

It's obviously tough. It calls 85% of the people that go out there thinking that they are the absolute last person who would ever quit.

And the bell so to speak.

You obviously got through a while back.

You mentioned to me three things that you think predict whether or not somebody is going to get through buds.

And before you tell us what these are, I just will just tell people that, yes, of course, you made it through buds successfully and went into the teams.

Very successful career in the teams. But you've also been a buds instructor. So you've been on the, on the, on the other side of the equation too.

What are those three things?

Yes, was as you know, this was very anecdotal, but it lined up.

We, when I was back there in 05 as an instructor, I feel like we're not scientists, right? But I feel like we tried every correlating data poll that we could pull from pull ups to runtimes to you name it to regions of the country.

The people grow up near water.

At least back then, nothing correlated.

And so I was a first phase, I see officer in charge.

And so our team in first phase, we can talk about what that is in detail if you want to.

But first phase is in charge of hell week, you know, hell weeks in the first two months of training.

And a couple of the guys said, all this bullshit about this can get you through that can get you through.

I bet that every single person we talk to out here on the grinder has one of these three things.

They were a varsity athlete in high school at college.

Their parents are divorced or they got suspended from school. I guarantee it.

And we would walk around the grinder and ask.

And I mean, you know, this isn't going to pass an independent review board.

But it's got to be 90 to 95%.

So that's incredible because you know, so much has been made of buds and hell week.

And just to just fill in a few of the blanks for those that aren't familiar, hell week is what it's five nights no sleep.

You get an hour or a couple minutes on on one day.

But you're basically in constant movement for about a week.

You are.

And that's when most people voluntarily ring the bell.

And most of them do it before Wednesday.

Okay. And I know it's got chaotic components, guns going off blasts.

It's got hard work boring components.

People.

The people trying to make it through.

We have no sense of how long the run is going to last or what's going to happen.

And you hear all this stuff like, okay, you just don't quit or you just go meal to meal.

But what you just described is really interesting.

Let's break those three things down because playing of RC sport.

It has certain elements.

Having divorced parents has certain elements.

And getting suspended in school has certain elements.

Let's start with.

Divorced parents first.

As RC sport, I think we can probably just quickly say, okay, there's structure.

You have to listen to somebody.

You have to be able to push yourself.

You have to have some level of physical competence.

Coachable mental, coachable mental competence work with others.

So there's something there, right?

And you presumably have to go through junior varsity to get there.

So there's some oomph and required in any event.

But the divorce parents pieces is what's surprising to me still is.

But what you have divorced parents.

So do I?

Divorces occur for any number of different reasons.

What in the world do you think is the consequence of or that of a divorced household that would predict so well,

at least in this back of the envelope measurement that you made.

But as an instructor, that people would get through this excruciatingly difficult period of time.

For me, it was one thing specifically.

I felt like I was alone.

If I didn't have the team.

So I don't know what it would be for other people, but I was like,

if I don't have this team, then what team do I have?

So I'm not leaving.

You could crank up the cold and misery as high as you fucking want.

But I'm not leaving.

Yeah, that hits deep.

I didn't do buzz.

I didn't even know what the seal team was worth.

But I certainly know the feeling of looking outside of the household for a sense of family and belonging.

Yeah.

And the feeling that like I'd much rather like from almost from a place of joy, like I'd much rather die for these people.

Hopefully not with these people, but much rather die trying to save others and to do well in that than to quit.

Yeah.

That's a powerful thing that you just shine light on.

I don't think of the hundreds of interviews with team guys, ex team guys, buds instructors, et cetera that are out there.

I don't think anyone's ever highlighted that.

I don't think I was aware of it then, Andrew.

But I just, you know, again, it's in its in retrospect.

Well, the retrospect is in large part what we're here for.

Yeah.

To go a little deeper on that, I think that a lot of people have challenging homes.

The parents aren't necessarily divorced.

And we're talking, talking of course, about trying to understand the human spirit.

Certainly not accomplishments per se, but the human spirit.

So I think that a lot of people, especially nowadays, they look to their home life.

And if, you know, God willing, they had a great home life.

That is the base.

It's like the touchstone for them that they can return to.

But for a lot of people, even people who go home for the holidays or who touch in with their parents,

whether or not they're divorced or not, they don't feel like that family unit is really a solid thing.

Maybe they're in a place.

I see this a lot of where like they're the parent.

They had to grow up taking care of the parents.

I see that a lot.

About the male side and the female side.

So you're saying that one strong predictor of getting through is a feeling of people want,

essentially making it there like almost like biological identity to get through.

It was certainly the case for me.

I mean, when I got, again, I don't really like to overdo these things because it tends to feed the mythos a little.

But when I got to bloods Andrew, like I, when I got to the Naval Academy had a very strong sense of this is my chance.

And you know, you develop over the years and you spend time thinking about this and having mentors when I got there,

that was very much my first time of.

You better bring the nastiest shit on the planet because I'm not leaving here.

Like it's just not, I'm not, I'm just not going, you know.

And there's a navy bit to it too.

Like I didn't want to do anything else in the navy.

So back to fear.

I was afraid I would get stuck doing a job I didn't like.

But there's some people are not wrong, you know, about,

but there's some very difficult days where you do start to wonder, like is this really worth it?

And I, and that I never once thought about quitting.

It never crossed my mind because I just had these other things that I really had to do from myself and my life.

Or else I felt like I was going to have nothing.

And so again, I don't think operating out of fear is particularly adaptive.

But sometimes it, you know, the bit in your teeth is useful.

Yeah, certainly in my own life, I can say, you know, getting real scared about 19 and essentially realizing I'm not good at anything.

And I was terrible at a lot of things and some of those things were taking me down a dangerous path.

That was the fear.

I'm grateful for the fear piece.

It would it, it, it's scruffed me.

And let's talk about the suspended in school.

Yep.

He's first of all, that implies getting caught.

Yes.

Not just in misbehaving, but getting caught.

Yeah, what do you think that's about?

I really talk about a sense of rebellion against authority or the system that one finds themselves in.

Which is super important for our line of work.

Like for me, again, I can only speak for myself.

For me, it was the wild fuck you factor.

Like you have to, there's just a nasty reality of the work we had to do.

You know, I was in from 98 until 2011 in the seal teams in the seal teams from 98 until 2011.

Everybody knows what was happening between 9-11 and then.

It's not that it didn't stop happening.

I know, you know, from my own experience from 03 through 2010 was extremely intense.

And obviously the military has rules and we need rules.

And you follow the laws of on conflict and you follow the rules of engagement.

There's no question about that ever.

But the shit that happens to you out in the field for real does not follow any pattern.

And so if you are a complete, you know, non-suspendent from school rule follower, I'm not saying you won't be successful.

I'm sure plenty of people are.

But in our line of work, if you ask people, most of them had a weird streak as they were coming up.

Like they have a little bit of a side eye when somebody tells them this is how stuff is.

Like, hmm, maybe it's like that.

But you don't know that.

And where it really became clear for me, Andrew, was like, at every stage in your development, you're still looking for what right looks like.

And when I was a, I'm now a Naval Academy graduate, not that that means anything special.

But I'm smart enough.

I'm now in my 20s. I'm at Buds.

And I have this recollection later.

Like people are always telling stories about the teams. And when you're a new student at Buds, you're kind of believe everything the instructors tell you.

Because it's pretty impressive shit.

And then you find out later when you, when I checked into SEAL team three, you actually start to understand the arc of the job.

It's like all these guys were telling training stories.

Those weren't real combat stories.

They never said that that was a story from training. And so my point is like, what, what you hope guys are getting it now.

But what we didn't get a lot of was the real story in a sense, meaning I will say definitively my first combat deployment was 0-3 when we invaded Iraq.

I was a platoon commander. We invaded Iraq.

And I remember within a week of being in that situation, thinking not one single instructor had the experience to mentor and coach me on this, not one.

And so you have to go back to that wild suspended fuck you factor mindset.

Like all your silly rules about how the military works.

None of that shit's happening out here.

Like all this other stuff is happening that doesn't have anything to do with your training manuals.

Except for the things you don't violate, which is to your best of your ability, stuff happens.

But the rules of engagement and laws of armed conflict, everything else is a toss up.

The tactics aren't. That's not a toss up.

But you know what I mean? Like the environment is completely chaotic.

It's a new sport.

It's a brand new sport that no one coached you on.

And it's high risk high consequence for you and your teammates, but also for the other side.

I mean every 15 seconds is a new consequential decision.

Yeah, because you obviously don't want to kill civilians on the other side either.

Of course not.

So you obviously get through buds.

You probably weren't surprised given your mindset.

Right, weren't surprised. No, I wasn't surprised. At this point, I'm maybe building a little self confidence.

And it's just not pretty not a fear. But happy presumably.

Oh, yeah.

And I feel obligated to ask, well, I'm just curious to ask that you, you know, you've been in a system of military for a long time.

Is there a bigger pole of patriotism there? Or that's just it's there.

But I mean, are you thinking about country or are you thinking about team? You think about the day.

Yeah, I mean, at this point, you know, I'm fully indoctrinated in a sense.

You know, the Naval Academy really does give you a sense of, again, bigness.

And you meet people from World War II and Vietnam.

And, you know, an amazing guy, which, you know, we can cover later.

I don't, I wasn't around when he was coming up.

But Colonel John Ripley is a guy won the Navy Cross in Vietnam.

The book, the, the bridge at Darnhart is about him. He knew my, this is back to my uncle Jim who introduced, he and my uncle Jim were buddies.

And I met him.

He's since passed away. I met Colonel Ripley when I was a plea at the Naval Academy.

I work with one of his sons now, friend, teammate, mentor.

There's a great guy.

Colonel Ripley, he's a legend. Like this guy's a Navy Cross winner.

Should have won the Congressional Medal of Honor by all accounts.

If you read the book, the, the book, the bridge at Darnhart, you, you are going to have no ability to understand why he's not dead.

And these are the kind of people you meet.

So back to the patriotism, you know, thing.

By the time I was in the teams, I knew where I was sort of in this ecosystem.

Admittedly though, what I didn't really have, Andrew, because it, I mean, I love the country, of course.

But it wasn't, again, an in-girl with a dad who was like, you know, this was always in our house or just wasn't that big of a thing.

This, this came for me after 9-11, obviously.

But yes, the patriotism and the importance of the job is there.

But what, when I remember checking in the SEAL team three, what, what emerged very quickly for me because we had Vietnam vets in the training cell,

at SEAL team three, and just some amazing people, what I realized right away was, okay, playtime is completely over.

And that was very useful, like early lesson, not that anyone was fucking around and buds, like you know it's serious.

But you meet a guy like master chief Martin's got 100 combat missions from Vietnam.

He's about to retire.

He was like the third person I met when I checked into the team.

And you suddenly are like a kid again where there's just no fucking around.

So you're in the teams, presumably liking the work.

I loved it.

Loving the team component.

It's hard, it's unpredictable.

And that's part of the fun.

It's amazing.

Yeah, the job's amazing.

You do a number of different deployments.

And at some point you get called to try out for the tier one division within the SEAL teams.

Maybe just explain a little bit of what tier one means.

And you know we don't want to speak in code here, but you know just get informed people that there are levels within the teams.

And that tell us what tier one is.

Yeah, well, I'll just refer to a special mission unit. It's probably the easiest.

We have a bunch of teams on the East and West Coast as a lot of people know nowadays.

This shit was not public knowledge years ago.

Yeah, so you've got these different units within the SEAL teams.

Yeah, so you have to raise your hand.

You know I was 10 years in and you're I was at I had been platoon commander during the invasion of rock.

We came to Monterey.

I went to school.

I went back to be a budget instructor.

It was 10 years I felt like it was time to you know take my shot.

It's a little risky because it's hard to make it through.

You know green team and stuff at the at the special mission unit.

It's a nine month advanced training program.

You're 10 years into your career.

You're not 22 anymore.

And not everyone gets called to green team.

Not everyone can go.

You can't say I want to go.

I want to try out.

You can say you want to try out and you do a pre screener.

Okay.

So the command training staff.

I'll call it the command for purposes of this conversation because I'm familiar with that term for us.

The command training staff comes out.

They put you through all this stuff.

Some of it's psychological.

Some of it's physiological.

I don't think we did a blood test but they checked.

The trainers checked everything on me.

Which I thought.

This is actually a description of why the units tier one.

I was.

Even in the pre screening.

It was the first time the way I joke about it is like I really felt like I was doing what was in the brochure.

Like it was real varsity stuff you know.

I'm presidying later conversation that we'll get to but at this point had you ever sat down with a psychologist and done a therapy session.

That was no therapy but I sat down with psychologist because they put us through the battery.

The neopir the raven stuff like that.

They're asking you how do you sleep at night?

How do you feel?

Yeah.

What do you dream about?

How much do you drink and you say two beers a week and you're lying?

That's why.

Yeah.

But now it might be two beers a week.

Now zero.

Zero.

Yeah.

But yeah, so it was good screening process like I was like oh shit these guys are not messing around.

This is exactly what I wanted to do.

And the physical tests ramp up and coincidentally I worked for them later still friends with them now.

On my interview board was Bristol Benske who won the commercial metal honor.

Brit was on my interview board and he's a great guy.

And so yeah, then you just wait and if you get picked up you go out you know to the east coast and you really roll in the dice

because I was on the west coast you moved your whole family sell your house.

You mean I have to sell your house, but we did and you move and you're going to do a nine month advanced training program at the command just to get into a tactical unit, you know, which we call squadrons.

And the best way tactically for me to describe the difference and look my time at team three was amazing.

I'm not diminishing it.

But let me just use free fall military free fall for anybody who's you know even done civilian free fall.

So it's jumping out of jumping.

Yeah.

So if you go if we go to the drop zone and we go jumping right FAA regulations have you jump at 12,999 feet because as soon as you go above 13,000 you have to use supplemental oxygen, which is not a huge deal, but it's a pain in the ass for the airplane to have it.

And so 99% of your all your jumps will at any standard drops on your civilian jumps are going to be below 13 grand for all of our jumping at seal team three is below 13 grand.

And just makes the training more efficient and you'll jump during the daytime, maybe a little night jumping, you probably have some lights for safety.

And if you look out of the airplane, you would be able to see the orange tea on the drop zone.

Right. That's your standard jump profile.

Maybe you'll jump with some weight.

You'll certainly jump with your weapon, probably your helmet, but not all your jumps because you're bringing guys from zero to be able to do tactical military free fall as a group.

When you go to the command, your jumps are from 25,000 feet.

You do 30 minutes of pre-breathing on oxygen, helmet, night vision, zero lights, an attack board that has your navigation system on it, 100 pounds of gear, your weapon, your oxygen, all your shit, and 45 dudes piled up in a C-17.

And you drop miles away from the drop zone because your overground speed at 25,000 feet is hauling ass, you know, because of the wind.

And if you take your hands out of your gloves at 25,000 feet, it's curtains, like you're not going to be able to use your fingers because it's so cold.

And you jump from way away, obviously, and all your jump is completely blacked out.

Everybody turns IR lights on their helmets and infrared lights so you can see through night vision.

And you got to fly that canopy multiple, multiple miles and land everybody on a drop zone.

You know, that's if you take every tactical thing we do and expand the same way you would expand free fall, that's the difference at the command, which is, look, I was, I want to own this when I was at team three because you think about this.

I had many, many moments where I was thinking, oh, fuck it man, those guys aren't that much different, like we're super high end, right? And we are.

And then when I got there, I was like, this is, this is another level.

What, what percentage of people that go to green team get through and get that sort of, I think I had 65 in my class.

You don't drop that many, maybe 10 guys didn't make it or something, maybe 15 ish.

So then you were, what do they call it tier one?

No idea. It must have some official reason like, because if you go into like a real documentation, and you're like, there's, there's echelons in, you know, this, this command is echelon this, this command is echelon this.

And the military congress sets end strength numbers. It says the Navy, you get at the one time, because it took some class, the Navy had like 355,000 people.

And that's the Navy's end strength. And they have to distribute those numbers across everybody in the Navy. So I don't know why it's called tier one, but I think it has a, you know, has a reason.

So you got through, you were accepted. And then you're doing very different sorts of things than you were doing previously.

So my understanding is this is largely counter-terrorist work.

So all the work in the military and SEAL teams is high risk high consequence. But now it's special operations as the name implies.

And where things have to be worked out, you know, on a, on a case by case basis is highly unusual is unusual before. But now it's highly unusual circumstances.

What was it like to be there? Did you like that family?

I loved it. It was the best place to work.

And this is 2000, this is 06 through 2011 for me. Okay. So post 911 through 2011. Yeah. Okay. So I'm sure a lot happened. And most of which we can't and won't discuss.

And that's not what's important here. But clearly you met and worked with some amazing individuals.

I happen to know because we've spoken before and we have some common friends in that arena that you had both the privilege of doing this work in this really important war time.

But also the unfortunate experience of being close to and working with quite a lot of people that were killed.

How many? So I mean, I don't know why I did this or why anyone does it. It's way over 40, but I try not to over affiliate myself with a larger group than I actually knew.

But the people that I personally knew Andrew, it's exactly 40.

And we could spend probably weeks detailing how impressive each and every one of those people was in their individual cases.

This is perhaps an opportunity to put a call out. There's a wonderful book. I think an important book that isn't so well known in the in the array of quote unquote military and seal books.

Which is the book about Adam Brown, the fearless book. I heard they're going to make it into a movie. But what I what I like about the book is actually has very low to do with the seal team.

Totally. That's the same thing.

Is that Adam had a serious serious problem with addiction that he masked at times and it came back to pull him under various times while he was in the teams.

I know you worked with Adam and your close. Yeah, so that's a great book for anyone that wants a different sort of book. It's really about addiction and family and his discovery of the path out of all that.

Just an acid. He's incredible.

This is awesome, awesome book at human about an awesome, awesome human.

So you do those years. And then, you know, what happens when you, you know, 40 people close to you die.

I have to imagine involves that you get pretty good. Unfortunately at taking what each never one of those is a tragedy and just continuing.

Yeah. So let's just talk about that for a bit if you're willing. Yeah.

So guys, you're getting shot and blown up and you're close with them to say the least.

And what was your role in the in the aftermath? Like like how do what do you do? You go to a funeral.

You, you, you, um, toast a few beers and then you go back to work.

I mean, it's, that's kind of. You know, in the most simplistic terms into that is exactly what happens.

I script the diary, so to speak. It's, it wasn't, you know, a funeral every three months, but on average.

If I average it out because I've done this in, you know, excavating the last few years.

We were at a funeral or memorial effectively every 90 days.

And in that time period.

Obviously, you know, that's simple. Like for, for me and our family.

Doug was my first super close teammate killed and it wasn't in the team, right?

I'm now at the command. I was back from Afghanistan from Kandahar.

This is way before the Marines built up 100 kilometers west of Kandahar.

We were operating six of us with like 180 Afghans kind of the Wild West back then.

And Doug was killed that summer of 07.

And I got a phone call from a friend. I was standing in my kitchen in Virginia Beach.

And it was like.

Like the whole scaffolding of the world was just gone.

Because at that age, and here I am, like, I'm some kid.

I was in my third, I was in my 30s.

But I'm thinking, you know, things get more and more serious as you go.

Like at that time. But when Doug was killed.

And I was a Paul Baroness funeral.

And you know, we came up to a napless.

He was living in a napless because he was working.

It's now been publicly released, which is nice for Pam.

Because she can talk about it more. He was working at the agency.

And.

And when after his funeral and just the days around that. And then I go back to work.

And what I mentioned earlier about Doug and what I knew about him just as an operator.

He had been a company commander in Fallujah.

He was on the front page of the LA Times.

Like Tony Perry is a reporter in San Diego.

He was in Fallujah following Doug.

The guy was in. Doug is not a like a public people.

People just attracted to him to tell his story.

I have so many stories that I heard later from his bosses.

I heard about his regimental commander.

You know, told stories about his unit in Fallujah.

His Sergeant Major and his amazing guy.

I've talked to him about like what went on in Fallujah.

Doug is just a fucking legend.

I mean, he was awesome.

And the dominant thought.

After his funeral was.

If things.

It's not that you don't think they're serious.

And I mean just about life. Andrew wasn't just about combat action and hard deployment.

But if Doug can be killed, all fucking bets are off.

They're all off.

Like if I didn't respect the rules before and didn't think society was particularly ordered in a way that I respected, you know,

shit that I think is made up.

I knew when Doug was killed that.

It's all fucking made up.

Like he was supposed to be.

The immortal one.

And if he's not, none of us are.

Like everything has to be re-evaluated.

You know how old was I was 32.

And you've got kids at this point.

Yeah.

Olli wasn't born yet.

My youngest.

Because you now have three boys.

Yeah, three boys, 21, 18 and 14.

And the older two.

We're born my.

My middle son was two at the time.

It did occur to you.

At the point where Doug was killed.

Or maybe some other point that, you know, at some point you could die.

Oh, I mean, that's what I mean.

And you're like, I, you know, personal work and therapy afterwards.

It was then that I started looking over my shoulder.

Just in general, like everything was suddenly.

Like has to be watched with a vigilant eye.

Something that close friends, close male friends of mine have told me.

These are friends that are married with kids.

And I've heard this from people that were in the military and, and as well as those that weren't.

Was that it was very important to them to marry somebody who, were they to die.

They knew their kids would be well taken care of.

Well, that one's not even.

There's no question about that.

Yeah.

So that that was a, like a primary criteria.

And I think in your line of work, I mean, that must be especially important.

Because the, the probability of dying is, well, let's face it, is, is much higher as my sister who doesn't like sharks.

Once told me she said, you know, the best way to not get eaten by a shark is never going the ocean.

You know, there is a way to limiting probabilities.

She'll swim in the ocean a little bit.

But, but the point being that when you're in the military and you're, you're, you're shooting moving communicate is a big part of the job description.

And the, the enemy is also taught to shoot moving communicate that there's, there's a decent probability that you could die.

So, did you ever think, okay, well, if I die, my kids are okay because Bridgett solid.

Or were you still just operating on this 24 hour schedule that you had adopted way back in the seventh grade?

No, I think, well, maybe I'd have to ask her that question.

I think I was back the way from the 24 hour ledge a little bit.

I knew that the boys obviously would be taking care of with my wife like that was never, and never crossed my mind probably until you just asked the question that was almost just like table stakes.

Back to us adaptive, but maladaptive behavior.

Because if you met the guy, there is, I'm going to say it probably multiple, there is not a fucking human on the planet that was as tough and as focused and as hyper dialed in to how to do the job.

100% effectively.

As he was and it happened him, you know, and I just never, it's almost embarrassing Andrew to say I never thought about it like that until Doug was killed.

And yet, and I'm not challenging that at all.

Of course, I mean, life circumstances, the other team gets a vote too.

Totally.

And I mean, somebody can be seemingly indestructible, also capable and talented and get t-bonded in an intersection and like that.

We've known people like that.

All of us that, you know, you hear these things. That's why they're called tragedies.

Yeah, we just, we just like to put it in context, we have to remember is part of the beauty of taking a young person and taking all the ingredients that a person comes into special operations, pick your service.

I'm not, I'm agnostic. I mean, some of my best buddies are on the marine core, like I'm agnostic to the service head is when you end up at a certain point, like and you look back, you realize for 10 or 15 years, I've been indoctrinated in a very adaptive way to believe that I'm immortal.

Because if you didn't, you certainly wouldn't jump out of aircraft at 25,000 feet with no lights and you're for health for sure wouldn't go into some of these fucking towns we go into and end up in these fire fights.

Like you have some weird, I'll speak for myself. I was entirely convinced that I couldn't be killed.

Just because I was in some way, Andrew, convinced that our training was so good, the that shit wouldn't happen to us.

Let's take a step back for a second and acknowledge the truth all around that set of statements, which is that I think most people can think of the government and the training programs as

holding the body, but it's probably not lost on you at this point in your life that you were your weapon.

Your mind became a weapon, right? Your your body became a weapon.

You were a weapon of the military from the inside out and in the statement you just made encapsulates that.

That weapon honed itself for a long time, but then that's what the military is. It creates weapons out of humans. And I'm not demonizing the military whatsoever.

I want to be very clear. I realize that statement could be considered differently, but but that mindset encapsulates that.

So.

So with the other guys, I want to make sure I finish your question. So it started with Doug. And then you know,

what direction you want to go here specifically, but then it just kept going, Andrew, right? Like at that time, Doug was 07. And then we went to a rock in the winter of 07 08, which was

complete mayhem and the troop was, I mean, my my troop in the winter of 07 08 were like fucking superheroes.

And a guy named Tommy Valentine was the troop chief. And we got home and he was killed in a parachute accident after all that shit we went through.

Badger, a guy named Mark Carter was killed in that deployment. We got home and Tommy was killing a parachute accident. And me and a guy named Dutch, we went up to Minnesota to notify Tommy's parents and his sister and his brother.

And we're not the Navy calls him Kiko's like casualty assistance officers. These are jobs in the military where you're trained to do stuff. You know, one of the things that's amazing about us is if a guy gets killed, we send a team guy there.

But think about the team guy. Like it's great for the family that you send the team guy.

Well, we don't know shit about sitting with a family who's about to be notified that their son in this case of Tommy was killed. Brit went to Christina's house. Slab, Britslbenzki. He went to Christina's house and me and Dutch went up to Minnesota.

And I'm shaking right now like I was shaking the whole drive. We had to get to international falls all the way up north. The Valentine's are incredible people.

And I mean, notifying a family was just. It was brutal. And so this is this is this is this is a weight.

And then it just keeps coming. It's Nate and it's Mike and his Lance and it's extortion in 2011.

And in the middle of that. Adam gets killed right like tons of people know about extortion because it was a one helicopter. Obviously, full. Maybe we just just briefly want to manage that was August 2011 as I recall.

Yeah, August of 11. So but in 2010, Adam is killed.

And I got a phone call and I wasn't best friend. I mean, Adam had some very close friends as the command that I don't want to make some anybody give the impression that like me and Adam were boys. We were.

We knew each other well right went through green together. He was in a different squadron though. So you sort of get separated a little.

And I got a phone call in the middle of the night from one of my buddies who still in who is another legend.

And I answered the phone and it's midnight. I knew something was wrong. And we were kind of in this pattern and you're like actually a few of the commands were like our partner command and a bunch of other guys we work with and other units.

It was a hard time like guys were fighting hard overseas and that just comes with the consequences we know you know and I get the phone call the mill and night like.

And so. This guy tells me you know get your uniform you need to come in something happened and like fucking know what happened like tell me who it is and they didn't want to say it over the phone which I get.

And I.

I had like one of those moments where I told him no I can't. I can't do that again like you have to get somebody knows what the fuck they're doing.

And he just didn't let me off the hook you know get your shit and come come into the command because you got to do all this prep stuff and I walked into the conference room.

I mean I remember it clears day and you're walking to the conference room and I could see it on everybody's face again this is 2010 now.

They were more terrified than I was and these are some you know civilian guys guys who retired or now civilians they work to command and amazing people and they looked like.

I know if you've seen Peter Jackson's remake they shall not grow old.

Oh you have to watch it they shall not grow old is Peter Jackson took.

I did see that yeah put the color and the lip reading and it and there's a scene I don't know if it's about a LeBalger exactly there's a scene where.

This young unit army unit is about to go up over the top and you know run across the open field and.

The camera pans over and there's a young kid with his rifle in front of them the bayonet affixed to it his helmet on his lips are sort of flat and purseed and he everybody in that conference room looked like him.

When I saw that movie later I'm like every single person looked like him and they told me it was Adam and we were going to go notify Kelly.

Is why. And you had little ones at that point Savannah Nathan you know they were small and um.

We knocked on she had a sort of a stained glass like window and I could see her at the top of the.

The stairs.

How's the worst man. It was the worst.

So we sat with Kelly and a bunch of other guys were there of course it wasn't just me and we did our best.

And I learned later and you know reading Paul's work doctor Conti and other people and.

I was it dude I was like a I don't know if it's a locust or whatever the sheds are skin I literally like left a shell of myself on Kelly's front porch and walked out of my skin.

It was that was tough. That was tough.

And so that was kind of.

And I was like a tempo to answer your question like it wasn't exactly every 90 days.

But almost every 90 days from 06 to 2011 for me I got out in the fall of 2011.

It was memorial at the theater memorial at the people's house.

You know and our neighbor across the street in Virginia Beach she lost her husband and 07 so.

You are trying to live two lives.

You have this.

Military life with all these consequences where.

Every bone in your body is telling you to.

Go full Spartan like no not the dispartners didn't have families because they did whatever did nothing else like just cut off every other thing in your life completely.

You have to go do this and you have to do it full on because clearly all bets are off like we're barely making it through we're losing our best guys.

And how the fuck do I survive if at this pace and so.

Because we're all in the same community in Virginia Beach you're around it all the time when you're home you know and you should be because you're supporting your.

You know you're going to be a great family and that's important but it was just it's almost like a dream you know when I think about it now how do.

How did we live like that how does anyone live like that and I know you know my experiences the military people go through you know all sorts of tough situations in different walks of life.

But I have so much compassion for anybody who's trying to live in an environment like that where.

And we are going on the next deployment and you know I mean look and we left Boccup in in in a wait before Tommy was killed three fucking weeks later guys are getting blown up in the same area like and there they got all the debris from us they knew exactly where to but it was just such a kinetic environment.

It was almost like you couldn't stop it you know it was just like the balls rolling and when I think about people overseas and you know different situations that countries find themselves in right now.

I can feel it for for them you know what they're what it takes it's a.

It's intense environment. Certainly that comes through I think years ago you said to me and this will be an important way of of setting aside which side people are on you know whether or not you side with one group in the Middle East or the other you feel for everybody that one of the things that you said that really wrong my ears for a long time is that the warriors on both sides.

In their own minds each and all of them are just doing what they think is right for them and their families like you cannot erase that fact like whether or not the government of this country or the government of that country group was correct or incorrect whether or not you're even talking about a terrorist cell versus a military a formal military group or special operations group that in the minds of the warriors.

They're doing what they truly believe is right for them and their families and sometimes country as well and when I heard that it was sort of a you know it's sort of an obvious statement on the one hand but it's a very important one I think to the psychology that you know everyone's fighting tooth and nail because they believe that they are right or they're just fighting tooth and nail for whatever reason.

And that was an important thing for me to hear and I think about that a lot when I see any news stories about international conflict or terrorist military conflict terrorists civilian stuff even the people there's something about the human brain people get this into their mind like this is my job and they're doing it doesn't justify it right but.

Going back to this thing of being a weapon yeah humans can be trained as weapons and and it's often not the weapons themselves that are making the decisions about where to go and what to do sometimes it is.

At this time Coleman what's going on with the three boys with Bridget I mean you're I mean your boys have turned out really well they're amazing and there's no coincidence there and obviously it was a team effort with you in Bridget but you know there are a lot of things about the weight the scenario describing here that speaks to like how can a home function but obviously.

It function well and you know it's it's remarkable but it can't be due to chance so the were you able to compartmentalize like the moment you hit your front door your dad at home your husband your and was that a pause in a conversation with yourself at the front door that's just something that becomes reflexive.

I mean I.

I think it was just reflexive it wasn't really a pause at the front door and admittedly the story I would like to tell is that I was super zen about it and I had this process and I would come home and I would take this off and put on regular dad things and I think I was just.

By the same level of effort that we put into what we were doing Bridget and every other wife mom.

At least the ones that I knew they put that level effort in as well it made our home life.

Just very comfortable so it was easy like I didn't have to go through some process right it was it this how I remember it was easy for me I don't know if it was easy for Bridget she would have to answer that question it was easy for me and so I felt like for the most part.

I was I wasn't like platoon commander dad you know some movie you know the great Santini type dad you know I think Pat Conrad great great to anything.

And his dad was crazy apparently that's what he writes about it wasn't like that it was more of this this home is such a relief.

And Bridget is so dialed that I don't have to unfortunately hard for Bridget I don't have to do anything you know the time that I'm here I can be here.

And then you know go away again and so it's as we know what trauma does to the mind like there are many many stretches of that time period.

That I just don't remember.

And I and what I do remember is mostly obviously the fun times the front yard the whatever playing with the boys.

Doing rough housing and going on vacation and stuff but the when I was in the grind when we were in the training cycle of our cycle or deployment or whatever I don't really remember sections of it.

So a lot far too many I guess even one would be far too many doorbells ringing on doorbells.

So I decided to get out.

Was that a conscious decision based on time conscious decision based on like I would like to have the rest of my life.

I like to call it a regret you know but it's just kind of emblematic of where I was.

It was the right decision I do not regret getting out at the 13 year mark not for a second.

We needed it as a family.

It was a snap decision.

It was like a 24 hour just 24 hour.

I was standing on the ledge of the 24 hour.

And you said what year was that again.

That was a fall of 2011.

2011.

Yeah.

And the story is we can just we don't have to touch into it too deeply because people can look it up but this was a massive loss of special operations including a lot of seals.

It was basically helicopter shot out of the sky with a with a with a grenade right.

Yeah.

Or maybe.

People can look it up if they want to and there's a lot of material out there about it.

It's just can only be described as the tragedy.

And I'm not trying to make light of it. I just think you know that we could do there's a lot to explore there for in a different discussion.

Kiss your out.

Now the probability that you're going to die is much lower provided.

It's not my nervous system said.

Right.

But you're you're out.

And what do you do?

Meaning what do you do with all that energy? The energy of the way you've been operating up until now.

These intense battle rhythms vampire schedules as you call them.

But also what do you do with all the energy of what happened?

You know, I think this is where I think our conversation really.

Hopefully has been related to other people as we've been going, but that you know, sometimes I stop and I'm like I know I'm supposed to process all this stuff.

You know, it that's happened.

It's like, what do you do when so much has happened or when something's happened that you know you have to move on from you know you need to compartmentalize but that lives in our nervous system.

So are you thinking about that?

No, you're Coleman Ruiz at that point.

You're just you're just going forward.

I mean, I just didn't know you know it's 2011 doesn't sound like that long ago, but still in 2011.

This was not a topic for conversation.

You know, and.

I took maybe one week to process out.

I turned in my gear.

I turned in my badge.

I turned in my next visit to the command years later, I had to be escorted on by people I worked with in the same fucking squadron.

Like so within a matter of one week, I'm a stranger.

Like I can't get on the base.

There's reasons for that.

I get that, but I'm just using it as a.

To make the point there was nothing dishonorable about how you went.

I'm not sure if you can't just drive on the base anymore, you know, and this is like emblematic of of course I didn't talk to anybody about it, not even Bridget, but at the time in those first call it couple of years or even couple of months, I don't know.

The question you just asked me is a question I was at is like, what do I do?

Like not with work.

Like what do I do period with life?

Like how do I manage my time? And I'm not some bumbling idiot. It's not like I was walking around the neighborhood, like trying to figure out where my house was.

I just been in that environment for so long to your point that I didn't know what to do.

I didn't know what to do with my thoughts, my feelings, my, you know, I could go to the Buddhist five aggregates, my thoughts, feelings, perceptions, physical form, or kind.

All these things I've learned about and thought about later that have helped so much.

I didn't know what to do with any of it.

Like I don't know what to do with nights was I didn't know what to do with.

I thought the term PTSD was the was the biggest fucking joke on the planet until I read all the symptoms and I'm like, wait a minute.

Sounds like sounds familiar.

And so it's that and it was like and so I remember like even the little things that kind of make the point of the big things.

I didn't know how to get a dentist.

Like just go to the dentist in the military.

You know, I thought when I was walking around the food line that somebody was going to call me and say come back to the base because like the bubble went up.

You just, I had zero context and didn't have the current or not even just a courage but no who to ask.

Right, it wasn't the mentoring one of the most important books in my life in the last 12 years has been Joseph Campbell's the hero with a thousand faces for the back end of the hero's journey.

And I haven't read it.

I know I should.

You should actually listen to it.

I should listen to it.

It's better to listen.

I've probably only listened to five audio books in my life.

I prefer to read in paper because I can take notes in the margin.

That book is better.

Listen to hero with a thousand faces.

Could you just highlight a couple of the things that you took from the back end of that.

That somehow shifted your mind toward like like you do.

I've been thinking.

Coleman Ruiz.

Circa 2011 is like.

Like what do I do now and then something cues you.

There's like a beacon someplace.

It's like I always think of this like a texture of something and you're like I want to you know you want to feel it more to get a sense of what it is.

Is that is that about right?

It was in that case for sure.

So Joseph Campbell wrote that book in 1949.

And the hero of the thousand faces is effectively the 17 stage hero journey which by the way George Lucas says and has said many times publicly.

He built the arc of store wars around the 17 stage heroes journey.

He credits Joseph Campbell's book for helping him.

And if you ever read it or you go through the 17 stages or you see it or watch a short video.

Anybody.

You'll see how damn near everybody's life which is why it's called the monometh.

He described it as the monometh or the cosmic cycle.

A little weirder term for it.

But what he lays out in the book is I don't know maybe supposedly 2000 years of culture across multiple cultures.

The book is incredibly complicated in that sense.

And so what the summary.

I struggle with the first 10 stages a little bit but it I'll try to come back to him.

If you look at the image when you lay out the 17 stages the way it's in a circle is the ordinary world.

And the extraordinary world is on the bottom of the page.

There's a horizontal line.

The diameter of that circle goes horizontally across and the extraordinary world is on the bottom.

The ordinary world is on the top.

Okay.

So let me talk about the back end of the journey first because what I was mostly concerned about with when a friend pointed me to that book was my return to the ordinary world.

And he told me you come and you got to read this book.

And so the back end of the hero's journey in the return section is three seven stages of the 17.

It's the ultimate boom which is you learned something big in life.

It dependent on everybody learns something where you sort of realize something big happened to me.

That's the ultimate boom and you have this incredible desire to do something with it.

It's either knowledge or it's experience or whatever.

And the ultimate boom you have and you feel like this life thing.

And then the next stage is typically a refusal of the return.

You really don't want to come back to the ordinary world because you feel that there is some level of consequence that maybe you can't handle or somebody won't understand.

Or maybe it's too mundane.

You'll be maybe you'll feel a drift.

Totally. Yeah. And this is in the description of the stages where you just described as part of that description.

The next stage you're coming up back into the ordinary world in this return is magic flight.

In the way it's described in myths or in real life is you have to escape that extraordinary world.

And it take one more dangerous flight or sneak away or something is catapulting you to take that ultimate boom and fight against that refusal.

You're taking magic flight. Amazing.

And then there is it is it's it's assistance.

I think it's like assistance from a like a special power or something which could be your own or somebody else.

And then suddenly you're into the last three which is crossing the return threshold into the ordinary world.

Master of two worlds where you finally realize through help and or process where you can hold these two opposing life experiences in place.

And then the very last stage 17 is freedom to live.

And when you can I'm going to give you my little pet theory in a second.

When you can work your way through those stages you can have the freedom to live.

What I realized potentially happened to me just my internal feelings about you know my coming in out of the military and back is if you skip or you don't want to live.

You don't figure out how to deal with the refusal to return and and you just pick I'm going to call it the next big thing.

You catapult yourself into a new cycle and you never finish.

And one of two things has happened you're either two people trapped in the ordinary world or your one person trapped in the in two worlds.

I don't know which it is like see the two worlds in one person or it's two people trying to live in one world but shit gets crazy right because you just haven't done the cycle.

And it sounds very mischievous but if you read here in the thousand phase you like this journey is not new like this is thousands of years of very typical human cycle.

Now if we go back to the top of the circle.

Let me try to scream to the first ten which will be very obvious for Star Wars fans.

Just think about what Luke does and I'm not like a superstar worst person.

I've seen the movies but it's a call to adventure.

Most of us have a call to adventure of some sort in our life refuse the call help from a mentor crossing the first threshold the belly of the whale which is described as when you first truly separate this was me leaving for college when you first truly separate from the ordinary world road of trials.

Eating the goddess temptations atonement with the father apostasis which is kind of like dying of death while you're still alive and then you're into those return stages.

And when I first read that book and I was like I'm trapped in the return.

I'm trapped somewhere in the return just emotionally.

And one of the places that I was absolutely trapped in the return was I didn't have the mentor to help me cross the threshold.

I knew I had to move on in my life.

I knew I learned something extremely valuable.

I knew that there was a way through because people across thousands of years of humanity have done it.

I don't think I'm special.

And I never had the mentor I got mentors later, you know, a couple years out.

And it reminds me that in the so I got on the fall of 2011 in the summer one of my very good friends who lives in Connecticut works in New York.

He brought me to a lunch.

I'm fancy club in New York with a guy named Buddy Buka Paul, Buddy Buka who won the congressional medal of honors, a West Point grad, you won the CMH and Vietnam.

I've been around a lot of, you know, famous military people lunch was very normal, but buddy was amazing.

It was a normal lunch.

We didn't talk about much like impact.

We didn't talk about combat action or whatever.

There was a green velvet set of stairs.

The club upstairs were coming down the green set of stairs. If I remember, Buddy's a little bit shorter than I am.

He reached out his left, I was on his left. He reached out his left arm.

I was a stair one stair below him.

He stopped me.

I turned to my right to look at him. He looked at me. He said, son, you have it. You know that.

You have it.

PTS.

And you're going to have to deal with it.

And we left. I got in the cabin. I left.

And I remember thinking.

You might have it, but I don't.

Because that's the old days.

Like we were prepared for this shit.

I was still convinced.

That I'm good.

Like nothing happened to me.

Nothing in the military happened to me. That's just normal stuff.

And all of our training is a story I told myself.

All of our training prepared me for that.

Like this.

The rest of my life is just going to it. Nothing bad's going to happen.

Because I'm good. Whatever that meant.

And when I started to learn more and read more and talk to people who are helping me.

I remember buddy telling me that.

And back to those returned stages, Andrew.

It's just incredibly important for me to understand that my journey is not special.

We are part of a long history of evolution.

The people who go through very chowt.

And the.

The 17 stages in Joseph could not be more accurate to like to my life.

Particularly the return.

And of course, if one looked from the outside, they would agree with your mindset then and say,

you're alive.

You certainly done very hard things, extraordinary things.

You're married.

You got three kids.

They're thriving.

PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder.

And things like it.

Because I don't think any single acronym or diagnosis can capture anything.

I think Paul Conti made that very clear to us in the mental health series.

These are names by necessity.

What?

It's a framework.

Certainly taught me something.

Absolutely.

And.

And certainly those who haven't been in the military, maybe had a seed event of something challenging or whatever it is.

You know, many people struggle with these kinds of things that live inside them.

In their nervous system, they pack it down.

Maybe they don't.

But that was inside you at that point.

I think you and I first got acquainted in around 2016 when you and some other folks from Tier 1 community and related communities started coming to lab.

And my lab, and I never really talked publicly about my lab has been involved with various things in Canada and the US.

I'm not trying to create any mystique there, but it's not a point of interest what we did.

But I recall at that time just thinking, like this guy is just an amazing team guy.

But in any event, you know, we got to know each other a bit.

And my sense then was like, it's like a, it's kind of indestructible.

Right.

I realize nobody's indestructible. We're flesh and bone.

But if we may, let's fast forward a bit to a couple years later.

If you're willing to talk about it, maybe talk about some of the evolution that happened.

So you started working a job, getting back into civilian life.

And I recall a conversation about this time of year, probably about three years ago.

Yeah. And you had done what a lot of vets from Tier 1 operations have done and are now doing, which I actually have mostly favorable outlook on, which is,

I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean

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[The Hero's Journey: Coleman Ruiz's Path from Navy SEAL to Civilian Life]-[Coleman Ruiz: Overcoming Physical & Emotional Challenges]

📋 Summary

The Hero's Journey: Insights from Former Navy SEAL Coleman Ruiz

The Shaping of a Warrior

The Military Path and the "Bigness" of Service

The Reality of Combat and the Cost of Service

Finding Meaning: The Hero's Journey

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

[The Hero's Journey: Coleman Ruiz's Path from Navy SEAL to Civilian Life]-[Coleman Ruiz: Overcoming Physical & Emotional Challenges]

📋 Summary

The Hero's Journey: Insights from Former Navy SEAL Coleman Ruiz

The Shaping of a Warrior

The Military Path and the "Bigness" of Service

The Reality of Combat and the Cost of Service

Finding Meaning: The Hero's Journey

Deep Learning with ListenLeap

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

ListenLeap Brings You Into Real Context Learning