Kristin Beck, a decorated former SEAL Team Six operator and transgender veteran, details her journey from top-tier BUD/S training to public advocacy after retiring in 2011. She critiques rigid social justice movements and inconsistent DUI penalties between New York City and rural Allegheny County while recounting severe hate crimes and her relief at living authentically post-military. The discussion expands to include host anecdotes about mask mandates, conspiracy theories regarding pandemic tariffs, and a redefinition of masculinity that prioritizes mental resilience over physical feats like push-ups. Ultimately, the episode advocates for holistic "whole person therapy" through Mindful Valor, challenging traditional views on toughness and urging a compassionate approach to veteran care beyond pharmaceuticals. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Welcome to the Concrete Podcast00:01:42
Hello, world.
Welcome to number 59 of the Concrete Podcast.
Today's guest is a former U.S. Navy senior chief, SEAL team operator, and decorated war hero, Kristen Beck.
Kristen proudly served in the United States as a Navy SEAL for over 20 years, serving on three different SEAL teams, including the United States Special Counterterrorism Unit, also known as SEAL Team 6.
She was deployed 13 times, serving in Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq, including seven combat deployments.
Earning more than 50 ribbons and medals, including the Bronze Star with Valor and the Purple Heart.
Following retirement from military service in 2011, Senior Chief Beck continued high level clearance work at the Pentagon, working for the Secretary of Defense.
While on active duty, Kristen respectfully remained silent regarding her gender identity, following the U.S. military's don't ask, don't tell policy during her service.
But since retirement, she has announced her decision to live openly and authentically as possible.
Releasing her memoir, titled Warrior Princess, And starring in CNN's documentary film Lady Valor, where she recounts becoming totally detached from fear due to living through the constant rocket and mortar strikes in Afghanistan, and sometimes being more than willing to risk her own life to end the problems of having to face her gender identity issues.
In this podcast, Kristen shares her lessons from getting through basic underwater demolition SEAL training at the top of her class to dealing with failure on the battlefield, specifically during a raid on Saddam Hussein's palace.
And she specifically describes the courage it took to publicly display her true identity.
At the risk of not only losing the respect of her peers, but having to face a grueling amount of bigotry and hatred as a result.
Living Authentically as a SEAL00:03:11
I really hope you enjoyed this podcast as much as I did.
Please enjoy this conversation with Kristen Beck.
Hey, what's up?
How have you been doing?
It's so nice to finally be able to talk to you.
Yeah, we've been trying to set this up now for a while.
Yeah, just finally.
I've been wanting to get you on here for so long.
I've been following you.
It looks like you finally put a new house.
Is that what you've been doing?
Well, I wasn't building a house.
I bought a new house, and the garage basically had just raw two by fours, no insulation, and there was no freaking electrical outlets in the whole garage.
And so I wired a sub panel.
I insulated the whole garage.
I added like 10 outlets at about countertop high so I can plug in hand tools and stuff.
And then I drywalled it, painted it, and now it's all ready to rock and roll.
So that's what I did.
That was a little bit of instruction.
So, for the people out there who may not be familiar with your story, could you give me like a brief synopsis of your background?
Yeah, I mean, a real quick synopsis.
I grew up.
On a farm, you know, doing horses and cattle and pigs.
I was a football player.
I played rugby, played lacrosse.
I did a lot of that stuff and I was pretty good at it.
I graduated from high school.
I went to Virginia Military Institute.
And then after I left college with a Bachelor of Science and Political Science, Bachelor of Arts and Political Science, I'm sorry.
But then I didn't know what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.
And right at that time period, Desert Shield and Desert Storm kind of broke open.
So that was 1990.
And immediately when I saw that war starting, I said, as an American, as a citizen, I'm going to join the military.
And that's what I did.
And I joined with a specific intent to be a Navy SEAL.
So immediately after boot camp, I pretty much went to Navy SEAL training, Buds.
And then I graduated Buds at the top of my class.
I had my pick of SEAL Team, and I picked SEAL Team One.
I was at SEAL Team One for nine years.
And then I went on to a couple of SEAL teams after that.
And after 20 years of SEALs, I retired.
And I was working for the government at the Pentagon, and I was retired.
I had retirement.
And so I was kind of letting my hair grow a little bit longer than a buzz cut that you have normally for military.
And then I started kind of looking back on life, and I found that I defended liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and I had neither.
So I wasn't happy, and I just was not fulfilling what I would say would be my personal liberty.
The individual liberty that we have in America, I think, is our greatest asset.
The fact that you can live your life as fully as you want and you're not harming anybody else, you're not doing anything that affects anyone else in a negative way.
You just want to live your own personal liberty.
And so that's what I said I want to do.
Defending Liberty and Pursuit00:14:58
And at that point, I said, Hey, I'm transgender and I've been hiding this and afraid my entire life.
And starting that day, I started living as Kristen.
And I said, The heck with it.
I'm not going to put up with.
My living in hiding and being afraid all the time.
And I defended liberty.
So don't I have a chance to live some of it myself?
And that's what I finally came to the conclusion.
And I think every American should have that same opportunity to live the fullest life they can without fear, without ridicule, without being prejudiced or bigotry and everything else that comes with the territory of being a minority or being someone who is disenfranchised from the system.
And when I talk about the system, I talk about it's a system that's been set up around the world for eons, and it has to do with class and the caste structure.
And that caste structure is kind of what has affected us badly in so many ways because it's so hard to break.
You know, if you're born into a lower caste, you're born into a lower caste, it's so, so difficult to get a foot up in order to raise beyond, you know, your birthplace.
And I was born into a lower middle class, you know, blue collar.
We worked all our lives.
My family came from Sweden during the potato famines and everything else that were going on in Europe.
So we were running away from famine and pestilence and all that and came to America to try to live a better life.
And so for generations, my family, we've never really gone past, you know, very much past that, you know, lower middle class, blue collar existence.
We just haven't had an opportunity to raise above that.
We're just not, not that we're given the opportunity.
There are opportunities out there, but it's very, very difficult to get above that.
And the only way you can get above that class or caste system is through education and opportunity.
And America offers great opportunity.
Education, it's difficult.
You know, you need money to get that education.
You need money to go to Harvard.
You need an open slot to go to Harvard.
I wanted to go to Harvard, but I just never had the opportunity, it wasn't available to me.
Because of money or because of the high schools I went to, I just didn't have the grades.
I didn't have the drive.
I didn't have the instructors from grade school through high school.
If you don't have that, you know, seize the day professor, and I love that movie, you know, Carpe Diem and all that.
What was that movie called with Robin Williams, wasn't it?
Seize the day, you know, go.
It was Dead Poets, Dead Poets Society.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
Yeah.
And I love that movie because it just shows.
The impact of one professor, of one instructor.
And if you don't have that throughout your life, you know, you're missing.
And mentorship, you need a mentor.
And a lot of people do not ever have a mentor or an instructor that motivates them beyond just two plus two is four, you know, two plus three is eight.
No, it's five.
No, I'm just kidding.
But I just, I mean, I'm not saying that I never had the opportunities.
I've had great opportunities.
But I do think if I would have had one of those professors, maybe in grade school, to just push me a little bit further to really.
Understand what it's like to really buckle down and do the studies and then go a little bit beyond and get those grade point averages and get it up and figure out where you're at.
And then you would have a better opportunity to attend a better college when you're at a college age.
I just think that those opportunities aren't offered to a lot of people, only to very few.
Does that make any sense?
Oh, totally.
Totally.
We talked a lot about all kinds of different stuff.
No, I think it's so fascinating.
All the things that you've been able to accomplish in your life.
A, just being able to get through Bud's training, which is like one of the hardest things a human could possibly get through.
The closest way I can relate to it is listening to, I listened to David Goggins' book about it, which was so many awesome.
His brutal details of trying to survive Bud's and failing it so many times.
So, yeah, so when I first listened to David Goggins' book, that was the first time I'd ever even learned anything about the details of what Bud's is like.
And listening to that was like being shot up with pure adrenaline, just listening to what he had to deal with.
And the fact that you got through that training on your first attempt, is that right?
Yes.
Can you describe to me what that process was like?
Can you paint a picture for me and for the audience of what that was like and how grueling that was for you to get through it?
And not only that, but what was like the deep down burning desire for you to get through that training?
Initially?
Well, let me first cover that I made it through the first time.
And I will not say that's a feat.
It's a great thing.
It's like whatever that.
Because the thing is, getting through buds your first time, second time, third time, however many times it takes you, it's a matter of luck.
It's a matter of timing.
It's a matter of where you are in your life.
Because you figure that you're going through something that's six months long.
Every day is a workout.
Every day is a mental challenge.
Every day is you being just exhausted and just making it to the next day.
Now, if you're on an obstacle course and some of the obstacle course obstacles are up 50, 60 feet high, if you do anything, the slightest mistake when you're 60 feet off the ground and you fall, you're not going to make it through buds.
If you're on an obstacle, even if it's 10 or 15 feet tall, 10 or 15 foot fall could potentially break a leg and arm.
It could kill you if you fall badly.
Do you know what I'm saying?
Yeah.
Exactly.
So every day in buds, you're flipping a coin.
How lucky am I?
You're flipping a coin, you know.
Where's my mental preparation?
Where's all that?
So, that's the thing is for people who tried to go through buds and they tried at one time and they failed for whatever reason, you know, I'm just like, dude, you just had a bad day.
You got unlucky.
You fell off that.
You got hurt here.
You got that.
Something happened.
So, but if then a mental challenge comes into it, the mentality of just perseverance and never quitting.
They missed it the first time.
They should have gone the second time.
They probably would have made it.
It would have been a great seal.
They didn't try again.
So there's where they failed.
So I would say that you just didn't persist enough.
You didn't keep going.
You didn't drive hard enough.
You didn't do that.
So there's a lot of equations that you could say, and you could make stuff up.
You could say this or that or that or that.
And none of it's true.
It's all made up.
It's all equations that who's best prepared to make it through buds?
I don't know.
They would have never thought I would have made it through because I was like a mediocre athlete.
In high school and college, I wasn't great.
I was fast.
I would run 15 miles and do well because I would just gut it out.
I had that drive that just would never, ever stop.
I would run with a broken leg.
Goggins talks about that constantly that he's running with so huge blisters on his feet that he's bleeding through his sneakers.
What kind of mental attitude do you have to run a 50 mile course and your feet are bleeding?
That's David Goggins.
That's almost every SEAL I've ever met.
But it's not something you have normally, or is it something that everyone has?
Because when you think about it, we are animals, we're part of the animal kingdom, just really high up on a totem pole, not the top.
Because I think sharks are pretty high when it comes to water.
If you're a big bear, it's pretty high up on a totem pole for land creatures.
And the dinosaurs, they are freaking badass, but they're gone.
Why are the dinosaurs gone?
Those things were badass.
They'd crush anything on earth.
T Rex?
Come on, man.
How come we don't have T Rexes anymore?
Those things were tough.
And that's the top of the food chain.
Now, if we think we're on the top of the food chain, we're killing ourselves.
We're kidding ourselves.
We're, we don't know what we're talking about.
So, I don't know, man, what makes it make somebody get through buds the first time, second time, third time.
But I do know that I think we all have the capability to really dig into that primitive state that we have in human beings.
And it goes into that Amagobilan, the crocodile brain.
Yeah.
It's on Happy Gilmore and they make fun of it.
The crocodile.
Why is he so angry?
Abdullah Obligata.
Yeah, that's it, man.
That's it.
So, you know, but, But the thing is, if you can tap into the crocodile wearing the abdua obligada, if you can tap into that type of survival and the real instinct we have as human beings, then you're into something.
That's how you make it as a seal.
You're not relying on the higher learning that I'm going to run for 20 miles and our feet are going to bleed out.
If you're thinking about your higher learning, your higher mental capacity, you're not going to make it because then you're going to start overthinking it.
You know, I'm going to probably hurt myself.
I'm going to hurt myself badly and I'm going to have this injury for the rest of my life.
Oh man, make your alligator brain talk.
Yeah, my alligator brain is telling me to keep going.
Wow, so that's I don't, there's no equation.
Who knows who makes it through Buds?
I don't know.
You're gonna have the guy who's the freaking person they call a nerd his entire life, he's amazing on computers, and nobody ever saw him run a mile in his entire life.
And that guy ends up being a top guy.
And you know that women have been able to go to Buds since 2015, the door has been open.
And I think there's only been one woman who has gotten through to a certain point where she passed some of the entrance qualifications.
Because that's the thing about buds there's not going to be a change if you're black or white, if you're Asian, if you're Latino.
There's not going to be a change if you're male or female.
This is the test, this is a qualification.
If you pass that qual, right on, man, doors open.
Come on.
If you pass that qual and you're female, come on, let's do it.
Now, if you make it after you get through that door, that's all up to you.
And it's a lot tougher than the entrance exam.
And it's about pull ups too.
You're going to be able to do 30 pull ups when you got like 50 pounds and a rucksack on your back.
So put a backpack on with 50 pounds and then go do 30 pull ups.
That's a test.
If you can't pass that test, you're never going to be a SEAL.
And you know why?
It's not because we're saying that you have to do pull ups and you have to be this strong.
We don't want Arnold Schwarzenegger.
We don't want the toughest guy in the world.
But to do 30 pull ups with 50 pounds, that means you can climb a caving ladder, which is a ladder about this wide.
And it's got metal rungs.
The metal rungs are like pencils.
But you've got to be able to climb up that thing 50 feet to get on a ship in the middle of the ocean on six foot waves carrying 50 pounds.
So, can you get up 50 feet on a ladder made of pencils that's this wide in six foot seas with a boat slamming around and you're climbing up a ship?
And once you get up there, you've got to be in top physical condition because once you get up there, the battle starts.
So, the test is 30 pull ups with a 50 pound backpack on your back.
If you can't do that, male or female, black or white, Latino, Asian, you know, European, you're like me, you're a Swede, your middle name is Thor.
Right.
My middle name is Thor.
So, if no matter who you are, what your name is, whatever you got, how much you weigh, how tall you are, it doesn't matter.
Can you do 30 pull ups with a 50 pound backpack on?
If you can't, don't even try.
You're not going to be a seal.
That's the test.
And that's why it doesn't matter.
So, if you have someone out there who's a female who passes that first entrance, She's got to be able to do those pull ups.
If she can't do those pull ups, she'll never be a CEO.
It's because that's the mission.
It's not because we're trying to discriminate.
It's not because we're trying to do male, gender conforming testing that only a man can do because they can do pull ups, because we have better upper body strength.
So, the more upper body strength, yeah, it helps.
And there's a lot of women out there who can do a ton of pull ups, but how many of them want to be a SEAL?
So, the numbers are going to probably always be really low.
And so, the door is open since 2015.
Only one female has ever even passed the first test.
Which is only like eight pull ups, I think.
So, one did eight pull ups.
It's the seals, man.
We can't change the qualifications.
You got to climb that ladder.
You got to get on top of that ship in six foot seas with 50 pounds and then do a mission.
And that mission might take you six or eight hours.
So, you can't climb up there and be totally done and exhausted and go, oh my God, I just did 30 pull ups with 50 pounds and I'm beat.
I can't do anything else.
I'm done.
Oh, man, now it starts.
Now you got eight hours of work.
That's why it takes six months.
It takes six months to become a SEAL.
That's why.
Because that's just one test.
I can tell you another 20 tests.
But here's a secret for you.
You want to hear a secret?
I do.
Yes, please.
So I have a reality show that I've written up and it has day to day all the executable tasks and training and challenges to test 30 women.
So we start out day one with 30 women.
And we have leaderboards, and leaderboards will be clicking off how much they are because every test, every swim, every run, when you're doing pull ups, you're doing sit ups, you're doing push ups, you're going to be paddling boats, you're going to be climbing stuff, you're going to be picking locks and breaking in.
No, never mind.
No, I'm just kidding.
But you'll be doing some really funky, really tough testing, and then there'll be disqualifications.
People will be quitting a long way because this is not easy.
But 30 women will start, and only one will finish.
And the one female that finishes, She'll get like $100,000 in her pocket and she'll be qualified as go to SEAL Team training.
You'd make it.
Would you want to watch a TV show like that?
Definitely would want to watch a TV show like that.
You should.
Some of the tests are really, really cool too.
The Ultimate Team Building Test00:15:31
It's like mind boggling.
You'll be like, oh my God.
But it's not going to be.
It's not like one of those ones where you have to eat a whole bunch of stuff and then you throw up.
It's not one of those ones where people are getting hurt.
There's nothing in here that's unsafe.
I think the insurance to cover us for insurance will cost like $1,000.
Because everything is like super scripted and like from stuff that's like tested.
It's not dangerous.
It's just like you just have to think and put your mind into it.
And then also get that, you know, Abdu Abanglada.
You have to show me how to pronounce that word.
The alligator brain, the crocodile brain.
But you have to really dig in.
It's going to be tough.
And that's going to be a reality show.
I don't watch reality shows because I don't like the backstabbing.
I don't like how they always turn it as team and teamness and all against that because it's not real.
And so, this is going to be like the real Ranger school, SEAL team training.
This will be like if you were in Forest Recon going through Forest Recon, it's going to be teamwork and leadership and team building and helping each other out and getting through each day.
It's going to be tough.
It's going to be tough.
And you're going to see, I think this is going to be the reality show that a lot of people that normally don't like reality are going to watch this and go, you know what?
It's unlike everything I've ever seen.
And it actually looks real because it's going to be real.
You mentioned the team building and like the camaraderie.
How much of that did you learn from being in the SEALs?
And can you go a little bit deeper into that part of it?
Okay.
Here's maybe one of the differences between being a man or woman growing up in America when it starts in grade school.
So, in grade school, all the boys are playing baseball or they're playing football, even at a very young age.
And so, they're starting to understand teamwork, they're starting to understand what position they are and how that position fits into the bigger team.
It fits into the machine.
Like you're a cog right here and you're the quarterback, you're doing that and that.
But hey, there's a lineman without the good lineman, the quarterback never gets to throw.
And then all the women are like, they're doing a lot of individual sports.
They're not doing quite as many of the team sports.
Now, it's changed a lot in the last 10 or 15 years.
But when I was growing up, if you were the female in grade school, even and going all the way up into high school, you could be a cheerleader.
And that has to do with how pretty you are or how you can kick your foot.
And it's all individual against the rest of them.
To be the best.
If you want to be in a play and you want to be an actress, you're up on stage going for that lead part.
So it's you individually competing against everyone else.
And so that's going to be the backstabbing.
That's going to be all the other stuff.
Who's going to win it?
You're going to be that figure skater who breaks someone's leg because she wanted to be number one.
And it's all aimed at for all the female sports.
For the most part, it's individual skills pitted against all of your supposed teammates.
Does that make sense?
Yeah.
Where in most men's sports, it's actually a team where if you're failing as an individual, you're failing the team.
So you try harder to be better, to make the team better, to win the whole team, to play your role, to help the whole team work better as a machine.
And so automatically, men are going to learn much better on leadership at an earlier age and team building and teamwork at an earlier age, which I think is totally unfair.
Does that make a little bit of sense?
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah, it definitely does.
I mean, that's just what I've seen from my point of view.
Now, when I went into the Seals, because I was on a football team, because I was on a lacrosse team, because I've done all these different sports and I've played a lot of different positions within these sports, I understand what it's like to be the team captain, the quarterback.
I also know what it means to be the lineman, a guard, or on defense or offense.
I know how to work all those different things.
Now, there are a lot, there's women's soccer, there's a lot of other women's sports that But there's not enough, and it's not as prevalent, it's not pushed as hard as the men's sports.
So, there's not as many opportunities for women to be in these sports where they really learn teamwork and they really learn that.
I know I'm going to get a lot of women who are in soccer and are amazing at professional soccer, they can yell at me.
But if you really think about it, the breadth of sports for women to compete and to build that type of teamwork is about half or less than that of men.
You know, if you really think about it honestly.
Yeah, it really is.
And I think you're right.
It is changing quite a bit, like as far as soccer and the WNBA.
It's changing, but I would love to see more women's sports, more opportunities for women to gain that true teamwork and leadership at a grade school level, which I just don't think they have the opportunities.
Because at grade school is when you learn it.
You know, when you're in like first, second, through fifth, or sixth grade, that's when you start learning the teamwork, and they don't have the women out there doing that as much as the boys would.
Yeah.
No, I totally see where you're coming from.
And I see that could be like a really cool concept for some sort of programming for a show or whatever you have planned to kind of develop and portray those skills and those assets that people can build similar to the SEALs.
So in season one, it'll be aimed at SEALs and Special Forces, Rangers, and Marine Force Recon.
Season two, it's going to be going to a junior high level and showing it at a younger level.
If I told you all of it, I can't really tell you everything.
But there's a lot of mix and match.
There's a lot of like age difference and how it changes over the years.
And then they'll also finally, it's going to be women only for the first one.
Then it'll be a little more co ed going into some of the other areas.
Then you see some of the differences between conditioning, between strengths and weaknesses and everything else, because everybody has strengths and weaknesses.
And so you learn how to utilize teamwork to make that person's strength.
Add to the team, and if somebody's weaker in something, they're stronger in something else.
And how do you balance that and how do you work that out?
And so, there'd be some other episodes that need like much greater team building exercises.
One of my most, I want to kind of take a step, a step like a lateral step, real quick from what we're talking about.
When you are in the trenches of brutal combat, running through caves in Afghanistan or jumping out of helicopters, and you have, yeah, like all the SEAL team guys did that stuff.
And you have your night vision goggles on in the middle of the night, and you're running through a blast, someone who blasted a hole in a wall.
You said that you felt like you and your fellow seals were just souls next to each other fighting against other souls, and you felt disconnected from your bodies.
Can you explain to me a little bit more what that means?
When you describe that in words, when you really get into it and you're just doing that, When you're in the midst of it, when you're in the midst of, like, let's say this is like a football team.
Let's say it's a soccer team.
Let's say it's anything else.
When you're in the middle of that crucial, that last, you have 10 seconds left and it's a tie game.
And then that last play starts and it's only going to last for six or seven seconds or 10 or 15 seconds, whatever it might be.
That 15 seconds, make that entire episode last for about an hour where you start, time starts slipping away.
You don't know where you are and whatever's going.
And you don't see people anymore.
You just see movement.
You see things happening.
You see the world expanding in front of you, kind of in slow motion, but critical.
Does that make a little bit of sense?
It's a blur.
It's like everything you just go on instinct and you're just going and going.
And you don't really.
So if I looked over at David Goggins, who was in one of my platoons, he was a new guy when I was chief, I think.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
So I put him through a lot of training.
I'm in his book in a few different places.
I think whenever he talks about the chief, a lot of times he's talking about me in that book.
Oh, wow.
I was the one in Goggin's book that we have lockers.
We have these huge lockers where you put all your equipment.
And I basically locked all their lockers up and I made them live out of bags.
So they had a bag of all their stuff in front of this giant locker where they could have spread out and organized and cleaned everything up.
And they were living out of like two bags.
I didn't let them have a locker.
I said, no, you're a new guy.
You don't deserve a locker yet.
You haven't earned it.
And they go, What do you mean?
That's just messed up, chief.
Why do you?
It's just like cruel and unusual punishment.
You're such an asshole.
Can I say asshole?
Oh, of course.
You can say anything.
They called me an asshole.
It was like I was an asshole.
And I told them, I said, No, just live out of the bag.
And when you guys have earned the privilege to use that cage, and the cage was like six feet by six feet, had hooks all over and racks, and you hang everything up, you can wash stuff down, spread it out, you can clean, you can sleep in your cage.
They're big cages.
You can sleep in them with hammocks, which people do all the time.
Because we work so late sometimes, you want to catch an hour or two hours of sleep, you do it in your cage.
You put your hammock up and sleep.
They're big cages where you spread out, they're nice.
And basically, I made them live out of two backpacks.
It was like small.
It's like, dude.
You cannot have anything else.
What you need is in those backpacks to organize it, live out of them.
And they did that for a while.
I can't remember how long it was a few weeks.
It sucked because every evolution we had to go on, they had to repack them up and have them ready.
I don't inspect them.
You know, let's go.
We have 10 minutes, get everything ready, let's go.
And all the old guys walk in their big lockers and put everything and put it together.
It was easy because you had everything spread out, you could see it all.
So after three weeks out of living out of a bag for David Goggins, I said, All right, put everything in the lockers if you want to and organize your stuff and get us spread out.
Do what you got to do.
And they're like, All right, right on.
And then, like two days later, they're all spread out.
It's all good.
I said, Hey, we have 10 minutes.
Pack up, get everything ready, go and get in the truck and load out.
We have to do a recon mission.
We're in the water.
Get your fins, get your stuff.
It's going to be really cold, and we got to get an airplane and fly out and do a mission.
We're like, All right.
So, all those new guys, David Goggins included, they were like, Everything's a bag, and they were in the truck waiting in like three minutes.
And all the old guys are going, What do I need?
Wait, we need fins, and where are my freaking fins?
I got to do that, I got to get that.
And the older guys took three, four times longer.
You know why?
Because I made those guys live out of the bags for three weeks.
They were organized.
They had exactly what they needed.
They had all the extra stuff.
They had it totally organized and ready to rock and roll at a second notice.
All those guys did when they walked in their lockers and went, grabbed a couple bags and walked out.
They were sitting in the truck waiting for everybody else.
Where were you guys during this?
That was at SEAL Team 5.
That was when I was on SEAL Team 5.
But basically, what happens is we get lazy, we get disorganized, we have the stuff, we have too much stuff.
I have three sets of fins.
So, I have to go.
Well, which set of fins?
What's the mission?
What's that?
All the new guys, they had one set of fins.
They had one mask.
They had everything set.
They had everything there, everything they needed specifically.
How cold it's going to be?
What's the mission?
What's that going to be?
They know exactly what to get.
Poop, poop, poop.
They're done.
We had to get on a submarine with, hey, we only have enough room for one bag.
Everybody pack out one bag to live on a submarine for a week and a half to do these three missions.
And the new guys are like, zip, zip, zip.
David Goggins, everybody's ready.
They're sitting on a truck waiting for all the old guys.
Because we had too much stuff.
We were too disorganized.
We didn't know what to bring.
We were like, yeah.
I mean, it didn't take forever.
They did it in like two minutes.
It took us like 10 minutes.
It took us longer because we had too much stuff.
It was a little spread out.
It was like, eh.
So just get used to having everything in a couple of bags, be organized, be ready to rock and roll.
That's life.
Life is like that when you start thinking about people living in a tiny house or somebody downsizing or somebody living in a freaking three or 4,000 foot mansion.
You say, hey, man, you're going to be isolated out there.
You're going to do this.
You have to go camping for a week.
Pack up.
You have 10 minutes.
The person that lives in a 3,000 foot mansion has 15 pairs of boots and just stuff all over.
Or we got a person that lives in a freaking tiny house that's, you know, 200 square feet and has only what he needs.
It's a whole different way to live.
Yeah, I think it speaks a lot to practicing discipline.
Well, what was your question?
I can't remember.
I don't remember what my question was.
Oh, I think, no, it doesn't matter.
I think we were originally.
Well, originally, what I was trying to get at was the analogy of you guys being souls next to each other when you were out there fighting.
And it's, was it kind of like a flow state where you were just disconnected from your body and you were just so tuned into that moment that everything was.
The perfect example that I just talked about was me making all the new guys live out of the bags.
I said, hey, you're new guys.
Live out of the bags.
Learn how to do it.
Did it matter if you're black or white, if you're Asian, Latino, if you're European descent, if whatever you were, did it matter?
No, you're a freaking new guy.
All of you live out of the bags, learn it equally.
When you get to a level, okay, here's your lockers all at the same time.
If somebody wasn't getting it quick enough, then the other guys would help them out and we'd all get up to that level.
And so, no matter who you are, what you are as a SEAL, after two or three platoons and after doing all these deployments, after running a ton of missions, all the attributes of you as a person kind of follow away because you're all operating at such a high level for so long.
You don't think about, you know, yeah, David Goggins is a black dude and, you know, Kristen Beck, I'm a white.
I am a female now.
It's like, It doesn't, none of that matters because we work so hard at such a high level.
You don't think about that stuff.
It doesn't count anymore.
What counts is what you've been doing for the team and how long you've been doing it and what's your position in the team.
You're the quarterback, I'm the lineman.
We all work hard at the same level.
So we all get up to that level.
It doesn't matter if I was a Christian, Muslim, if I was a Buddhist, if I was whatever.
None of that matters.
It matters what you are in the team.
You're the quarterback, you're the lineman.
I don't care about any other stuff.
Oh, you're a female?
Who cares, man?
Just you're part of the team and now you're the.
You're the linebacker, go be a linebacker.
And if you're not a good linebacker, you're going to get fired.
If you can't do them 30 pull ups, sorry, we'll give you another shot.
But you fail it again, you're off the team because we can't have you there because you're going to get everybody else killed.
So that's what it was like, souls.
That's what I was trying to get at.
Okay, was that all the attributes of you as a person, you don't see any of that anymore.
The stuff that you see day to day in America, the prejudice against somebody for being black or for being female or being Latino.
Happens a lot nowadays for being Asian.
So, if you're from Asia, you're from Southeast Asia, you're from wherever you're from, you see prejudice every day.
Social Justice in Small Counties00:14:32
Yeah.
But when you're in combat, none of that stuff counts.
Right.
And especially from the time that you served.
What year did you retire?
I retired in 2011.
2011.
From the time that, yeah, from that time when you were serving, especially till now, I mean, obviously the 60s, there was a huge movement going on.
But between then and now, things have changed culturally.
As far as like social justice warriors and the way people react to different things online and the division of politics has changed so much.
Let's get into social justice for one second.
Okay, yeah, let's do it.
So, social justice, what does that actually mean?
And was it even something that people worried about back in the 1950s?
Heck yeah.
And that's why we had so many movements, we had so much stuff going on.
But I want to relate to something else in a second.
But then think about politicians.
And nobody's yelling about term limits.
And they're saying that we need to have term limits because these politicians have been in office for so long and they're totally out of touch with the people that do that and that.
I said, we already have term limits.
It's called your vote.
Every two years, a term limit for a congressperson.
It already exists.
Now, because the guy's a good congressman or because everybody loves him and they all vote for him, does that mean that we, as a people that don't live in his congressional district, we need to say, well, the rest of the country doesn't agree with your congressional district and we want to go against what they voted for?
And he shouldn't be able to serve past 10 years.
No, we already have term limits every two years for that guy.
Now, if all the people in my district are voting for the guy, then that's what they did.
And the same thing with social justice.
Do you think we have social justice?
I think we have social justice just like we have term limits for congresspeople.
We vote, we go out when you act, we make stuff happen.
But the problem is, the social justice isn't uniformly distributed.
It's there.
Do you know what I mean?
And now, is it the right thing for us to systematically or artificially?
Flatten the entire earth to make social justice equal in Antarctica as it is equal in South America or Chile or Argentina or Russia or China or the United States or Canada?
Should we flatten all the justice out across the entire spectrum of the world against all the spectrums of cultural upbringing, against all the spectrums of religion, religious freedom, hereditary, against you name it?
Would that be fair?
Right.
Well, if I grew up in America and I grew up in, let's say, Taiwan, because Taiwan's a great example because it's right there and you have China, Hong Kong, and there's a lot of difference between Hong Kong and mainland China, which people don't consider.
Now, is everything that goes on in mainland China and Hong Kong equal?
Well, no, because Hong Kong has had a very, very different socialization and everything going on in Hong Kong than mainland China.
For about, you know, last hundreds of years.
You know what I mean?
So, social justice flattened between mainland China and Hong Kong wouldn't be fair if it was equalized.
Now, if you took the same things in mainland China, applied them to Hong Kong, tried to apply them here in America and the United States, would it be all the same social justice if we could artificially change it because we say all social justice is equal across the entire world?
Well, it's not because you have so many different factors and so many things.
Yeah.
It's the same thing as term limits for America when we start trying to artificially force a congressional district to not have a certain congressperson because they've been in there for 30 or 40 years.
Now, I don't like some of them.
There's a congressperson that's been in there for like freaking 40 years.
I can't stand a guy because I think he forgot about his district he's from.
And then he goes on all those big, huge things and forgets about his district constantly.
And I really think he should start looking at the district more because we're going to vote him in, but he's doing a lot of really great.
Things at a national scale, but come on, dude, clean up that river and take care of that and take care of people in your district.
Now, do we need to force a term limit on that guy?
No, it needs to bring attention to the fact that he's forgetting about the people in his district and maybe have them vote a little differently.
But if he gets voted in again, then rock on, man, you got voted again.
So you made it past that term limit called voting, right?
So, there's a lot of things you can think about different ways, and when it comes to social justice.
I think that social justice, making it equal across certain spectrums of society, certain spectrums of religion, certain spectrums of environmental conditions, you know, it's different.
It's different in New York City than it is where I live in upstate New York.
I live like six hours from New York City in New York State.
Now, if you get a DUI in New York City and they take away your driver's license for six months, they're like, yeah, whatever, big deal.
They don't care because they have.
Buses on every block, they have subways, they have Ubers, they have a thousand Ubers at their freaking beck and call.
But if you live where I do in a town of 200, and the closest Walmart is a 40 minute drive, the closest grocery store is like, well, we have one dollar store right there.
It's a good dollar store.
Thanks a lot.
But that's 20 minutes away.
So if I have no driver's license, and if I drove and it took me 20 minutes to drive to the closest place for me to buy toilet paper, which is a big hype now in COVID, but if you drive 20 minutes to get a roll of toilet paper, if I have no license, how long does it take me to walk?
And you took away my license for six months?
It's so different between New York City that I have a thousand Uber drivers, I have taxis everywhere, I have subway and I have buses, I have transportation, you know, I have a million ways to travel.
But if I'm out here where I'm living, if I have no driver's license, I have to walk everywhere or I got to call up on my friends constantly.
It's not fair.
Yeah, it's definitely not a level playing field when it comes to.
The differences between the states we live in and different countries, and you know, what was New York State is the worst because New York City is this hub of metropolitan everything.
But if you drive an hour out of New York City, you're in, you're different, and you're applying all the laws.
Governor Como applies all the laws that make great sense in New York City, but it totally hampers and is punishing to everyone that lives an hour outside of New York City.
It's a punishment.
It's like, what's that cruel and unusual punishment for you to make me do the New York City DUI laws when I'm here south of Buffalo and I'm five hours from six hours from New York City?
Doesn't make sense.
Cruel and unusual punishment.
Social justice, somebody should be standing up for me.
The ACLU, they're taking away my civil rights, my civil liberties because I can't drive, so I can't work.
I can't even get a roll of toilet paper.
Without walking for four hours.
It's a four hour walk to go get a toilet paper.
That's cruel and unusual punishment.
And you're going to do those same laws?
Why doesn't the ACLU pick up that case?
You can't apply the urban laws for the DUI taking away my driver's license.
And I know somebody who's had her driver's license taken away for two years.
And it's hampered work.
It's like failing.
It loses his house, loses everything because he can't drive.
Yeah, the system's definitely not set up for you to win.
No, you can win in the city, but outside of the city, the same laws just don't work.
And they have to consider that.
So, why can't they make the laws like a per capita basis?
So, if you live in an area where per capita or how many people live in that area, if I live in a town of 200 and the closest city away from me is a town of 900, that's a city.
It's huge, it's a metropolis.
And they only have 900 people.
I have to drive two and a half hours away to get to a city of 10,000 or more.
And you're going to apply New York City laws to me?
Dude, come on.
Yeah.
Truly unusual punishment.
Why doesn't a lawyer pick up that case?
That's a class action lawsuit against the state of New York.
Because you love New York City.
You're making fuku money off New York City.
The Allegheny County.
Yeah, well, it is.
It's all about money, right?
It's crazy.
Allegheny County has, across the entire state, per capita percentage of DUIs is the highest in Allegheny County.
Per capita, it's crazy because we're all losing our jobs and you get another one, you don't know what to do, you're all drinking.
The highest unemployment rate is Allegheny County.
So, the highest DUI, the highest unemployment, the highest taxes are all in one county.
It's a county where there's no city that's bigger than freaking 1,000 people.
The biggest city in the entire county is like this, the metropolis of 1,000 people.
They live in a freaking 20 mile square.
It's like if you studied it, if New York, somebody would take a look at this.
If you compare that one county to like Queens or Kings or the Bronx or Brooklyn, Dude, there are millions of people in one county, the Bronx, compared to Allegheny County.
Millions of people living in one square mile compared to we have freaking thousand square miles with, you know, 40,000 people total.
But we have the most DUIs, the most unemployment, and the highest freaking taxes out of all of New York State.
They're punishing us.
It's cruel and unusual punishment to live in this county.
How close is this the same count?
You're a good moment of free.
And you think things are equal?
The cards are stacked up for everyone in Allegheny County to fail.
The cards are stacked up to make us all get DUIs and unemployed and sit in our.
And then we start driving because I have to drive.
Then I get pulled over again.
Well, your driver's license was suspended.
You have one DUI.
Well, now you can't have a driver's license for five years.
So it made it even worse.
So now I'm unemployed with no license for five years, no buses, no Uber.
No, nothing.
How do I get around?
I got to hike 20 miles to get a roll of toy paper.
God, what do you expect from us?
You're going to put us on welfare, you're going to put us on food stamps, you're going to make us into freaking thieving, drugging, drinking, DUI, unemployed because there's nothing for us to do.
And we can't get out.
You can't dig yourself out of that hole once you get so deep.
No, totally.
Allegheny County should be a study in New York State's ability to punish a whole population of people.
That's what they did.
Governor Como, I love New York City, hates Allegheny County.
He hates us.
And we're the highest taxed county in New York State.
How far is that county from where you were raised?
It's the same county.
Same exact county.
So you're 15 minutes?
Yeah, 15.
Well, if you drive really fast.
Yeah.
Yeah.
If you drive normal speed limit, it's about 2 or 23 minutes.
So, another subject, same county.
How would you say that your upbringing and your childhood directed the rest of your life?
How much of your childhood had an effect on your decision to eventually join the Navy SEALs and do, was it 15 combat deployments or 14 combat deployments?
It was 13 deployments.
Like he's 13.
Yeah, 13.
I only did 13.
Only did 13.
You're saying that's not a lot?
No.
Oh, I would.
I should have done more.
I don't feel like I did enough.
Really?
How many people do you know that have done that many combat deployments?
A lot.
Oh, okay.
Three, four, three or four.
I don't know, but it's, I don't know.
I don't, I mean, I never tried to count.
Okay.
It's not, it's not a number that you count or like look at, but I still don't think I did enough.
I'd still, I still wish I could do some more.
But I grew up, I grew up in rural.
It was very rural, very self sufficient.
We had farm animals, so you always had to get water and feed and take care of them, always like doing crops or taking care of it out and throwing hay bales.
In grade school, I was throwing hay bales.
So, you've learned how to be like.
Seems like you were always very, very hands on.
Rugged individualism.
Very rugged.
Hands on.
It was like MacGyver.
You know, I'm MacGyver the shit out of it.
So, I was in, I was going to Lowe's the other day.
So, I was going to Lowe's the other day, and they made this new rule for New York City that doesn't, it shouldn't apply to that, but it's a New York statewide rule that Governor Como came up with.
At this date and time, everyone in public has to have a mask on.
Because basically, if you live in New York City, you're living on top of another thousand people.
If you walk into any 7 Eleven in New York City, there's going to be 100 people in that store.
Now, if you walk into 7 Eleven where I live, there's one person in there every 20 minutes.
So your social distancing where I live is natural.
You know what I mean?
So I'm walking into the Lowe's, and there's somebody standing guard, and I got big signs in there that New York State law everyone must have one of those masks on in order to enter any store.
It's a New York State wide law.
Yeah, it makes sense in New York City.
But out here in the entire Lowe's, there was only like four people.
So it's not very hard to keep 20 feet away from every person in a freaking store.
Improvised Masks for Safety00:07:11
Jeez.
And so I didn't know this was going on.
So I walk in there and I have a mask on and it won't let me come in.
And so I'm like, well, damn, I don't drive a half hour drive.
No, it's more than that.
It's a 40 minute drive to go from Lowe's all the way back home to go back to Lowe's to buy the electrical outlet that I need to get everything wired up.
So it's freaking nuts.
So I'm sitting in my truck and I got to get this for you.
Here, I'm going to go get the thing.
Okay.
Can you edit this real quick?
Because I want to show you what I did.
Yeah, yeah.
Go ahead.
Okay.
Okay.
So I'm sitting in my freaking truck and I'm like, I don't want to drive 40 minutes all the way back home to drive all the way back here another 40 minutes.
It's like the day's almost over.
So I remember the drill instructor.
It was an army dude that was.
Was he Australian?
American, Australian, but basically, you know, if you got a just take off your sock and take care of business, right?
I was like, huh?
So, Jeremy sort of said, you know, if you got a in the internship, you know, take off your sock.
So, I took my sock off, okay, right?
And I cut it and I basically made it into a mask.
So, basically, you cut it, then there's your mask, right?
You did that right then and there, yeah, right in my truck.
So, I just took the knife out.
But basically, what you do is, and here's a really good one, here's a wool sock.
Yeah.
So this one, this one, I'm going to show you how to do it really quick.
So basically, all you're going to do is cut in here.
And this is the thing people are paying money for all these masks.
Yeah.
They're paying all this money, and it's freaking stupid, man.
Just take off one of your socks.
Okay.
Well, get a pair of socks because everybody always has those odd socks.
Oh, they're always left.
Well, why do you always have left socks?
So cut the toe off one side, cut the other, cut the tube off.
So you end up with a heel right there.
Oh, wow.
And then you cut two more stripes.
Then you cut along the one side right here.
You cut three quarters of the way up.
Don't cut all the way through it.
But you see how you just made a strap?
Yeah.
So there's a strap now.
And you make a strap on the other side.
And you make a strap on the other side.
And the thing is, now your coffee filters, because you want to throw this in the wash and wash it, because this is catching, this is going to be the dirty part, right?
Right.
But now you still have a sock there, right?
See the sock?
Yep.
Still, there's still a tube in there.
Right, right.
You put coffee filters and stuff in there because that'll make it even catch more.
Because the coffee filters are great.
The coffee filters catch down to like 10 microns and even smaller.
So you're going through cloth, then the coffee filter, you can double them up.
So it's catching like a lot of stuff.
And you put all that in between, and it's soft to get that.
And you put that up on your ears, and you got a mask.
That's amazing.
Can you still hear me good?
Yeah, I can hear you.
So you just put it up on your ears.
You know, so these are the loops, right?
That is amazing.
You really are like MacGyver.
So, boom, and you have a coffee filter in here, and you have a mask on.
So, I walk back into Lowe's and I'm like, yeah, yeah, whatever.
I got a mask now, motherfucker.
And they let it slide?
It's a mask, right?
It works.
No, it's probably a better mask than they didn't give you.
They didn't give you any shit and say that's a sock.
That doesn't count.
They didn't say nothing like that.
It doesn't count because it looks professional.
I mean, look at it.
No, it looks like a designer mask.
Here's your ear loops.
And then you have the layers in here.
So don't forget the coffee filter in the middle is probably the most important part.
So you still want to have the tube part of the sock where my arm is right now.
That's that.
Okay.
Put coffee filters, two or three coffee filters, whatever you want.
You can make it bigger or smaller.
Like I could have made that a little bit bigger.
So, I mean, you can make it really wide so it really wraps.
You can make it really wide and then wrap these all the way around the back.
You know, if you made it bigger.
Yeah.
So, there are different ways you can do it, depending on if you want it on your ears, you want to go around the back.
If it goes all the way around the back, then all you got to do is just hook these together.
You can tie them.
So, I mean, there are a few different ways you can do it, but basically, use a sock because it's super soft.
Use the material, and there's your mask.
Don't forget to put the filters in between to really filter out all the bad stuff.
Okay.
Got it.
Yeah, that's amazing.
Thank you.
And this takes no sewing skills.
You don't have to buy it because you have a whole bunch of left hand socks, you know, because you always lose the right one.
So in a dryer, you know, they always lose the one side.
See, my problem is I don't have any tube socks.
I have like the little short ankle socks.
You know what I mean?
You need it.
Well, you can do it with a sleeve too.
Do you have long sleeve shirts?
I do have long sleeve shirts.
So with a long sleeve shirt out of one sleeve, especially if it's a sweatshirt, is even better.
So if you have one long sleeve sweatshirt, Cut the one sleeve, you can make three masks out of one sleeve of a shirt.
Oh, shit, you're right.
And it's the same thing.
And all you have to do is use a pair of scissors and just cut it into your big tube and then cut the little strappy parts in.
Okay.
You have as many masks as you want to sit in your house with no sewing skills, with no effort.
Just don't forget to put the coffee filters in between.
Okay.
The coffee filters are a key part of this.
You can also do the Clorox wipes, the hand wipes.
Take the Clorox hand wipes and dry it out.
But it had to be dry.
You can use the drier things for that.
But the best one is the Clorox hand wipes.
Totally dry them out so there's no fluid, there's no in and there.
And then you can put that in between.
That'll catch up.
Okay.
See what I'm saying?
Yeah, it's amazing.
There's a few things you can use.
And if you multi filter them, you're even better.
So if you use a coffee filter and a dried out Clorox bleach, have your sock, then the coffee filter, then the dried out Clorox, then the outside of the sock.
So then you basically have four layers.
And you can always switch out the inside and get a fresh one whenever you need.
Well, you want to throw those away.
Right, exactly.
When you're done.
You have to throw those away and wash the sock after every visit.
And those people who are wearing the socks or wearing masks, not socks, the people who are wearing masks when they're driving in their cars, freaking idiots.
They're alone driving in the car.
So they're alone.
They put their mask on at home.
They get in their car.
They've already put their hands all over it.
You're going into the freaking supermarket and they're walking around.
They're getting people coughing.
You get stuff on there.
You're collecting stuff on your mask.
Then you wear it again in your car and you go home.
And then you finally take it off in your car.
You're fixing the nose thing.
Your hands are all over it.
You put your keys in your car.
You get keys in your house.
You walk into their house.
You take the mask off, all the germs and all the stuff is in the mask.
Biological Warfare and Pandemics00:13:17
Yeah, no, yeah, that makes no sense.
As soon as you get done, take the darn mask off, put it securely into a plastic bag that you're going to throw away when you get done.
Close it all up, wash your hands, then put your keys out of your pocket, put them in your car and drive.
But your mask and all the stuff you collected is all in a contained plastic bag or in a bag that now you throw in your dryer washing machine to clean off all the dirty.
You gotta be, you gotta have some brain cells to be able to realize that you're not supposed to bring that dirty shit back to your house.
Don't bring the freaking car when you're alone.
In your car alone, you're good.
You're contaminating yourself.
Take your freaking mask off.
What do you think about some of the people that are talking about how coronavirus is a biological warfare weapon that was released from a lab in Wuhan?
Have you been following up on any of that?
What are your thoughts on it?
I think if a country had intentions.
Or a country had like another country that was like playing economic games or economic war.
Economic warfare is taxation, is tariffs.
Economic warfare are a number of things they can do to adjust an economy to make another economy suffer.
That's economic warfare.
Now, if a barrel of oil falls below $1 a barrel, is it a dollar a barrel?
No, it's $10 a barrel.
If a barrel of oil falls below $10 a barrel in America, Then there's no way for Russia to get the oil from the inland areas in Siberia and everything else.
They have to basically drill, take the oil out of the ground, put it in a barrel, and transport it someplace to an ocean facility to put it on a ship, to transfer it from the ship all the way to America.
It costs them between $12 and $17 a barrel to get it out of the ground and bring it to America.
So every time a barrel of oil Per barrel falls below $10 a barrel, Russia loses money for every barrel.
It's economic warfare.
Yeah, no.
We're playing games.
So think about that.
So think about other tariffs or other regulations or other things we set in place that would be detrimental to a country's economy outside of the United States.
Let's say it's Canada, let's say it's Mexico, let's say it's China, let's say it's Russia, let's say it's Switzerland, let's say it's Sweden that the Volvo is.
We do something with the car manufacturers that we benefit Ford but not Volvo.
Is that economic warfare?
So, if a country had the ability with some biological, with anything else, to be able to put something out that would actually affect the economy of another nation, and that economy of the other nation that did this to them, that did tariffs, or did that, or did that, and now there's a biological, there's a flu like symptom that causes, decimates another country's economy, is that further economic war or is that biological war?
And no, it isn't.
It is, especially when you think about China manufacturing a lot of vaccines that we use in the US.
Almost all of them.
And if we're going to need a surplus of vaccine, if they develop this vaccine and they're manufacturing it out of China, we're going to need vaccines from China.
We're going to need syringes from China.
And how many millions of people are here?
Yeah.
Well, why is it that in December, before we really knew about any virus, we sent $10 billion worth of pharmaceutical stuff to China, from America to China?
I think it was like $10 billion.
It was like $100 billion.
It was like, it was like, It was a huge amount of money worth of pharmaceutical aid, syringes, all the tubing, all this, all that, and antibiotics and everything else.
We sent millions or billions of something worth of pharmaceutical aid in December of this year.
And then we found out about the virus in January.
And we were like, oh, damn, we just sent everything we had, all our surpluses.
We already sent it all to China.
Now we have none.
How did that happen?
I didn't hear about that.
And there's also a clause within.
The agreements and the tariff and everything else.
That if there's a clause written in there, when we signed the deal between China and America, there's a clause within the deal we signed with the tariffs and everything else, trying to even playing field.
There's one single clause that said, any event of an act of God, the entire deal is negated.
That's spooky.
And that happened in like a month before the virus, Jesus.
Or was it two weeks?
It was two weeks.
We signed the deal two weeks before the virus announced.
But didn't China know about this virus three months before it was recognized?
I think it was already three months.
So they had three months of warning.
They bought up all the stuff in December.
They signed the deal in January.
Two weeks later, we find out that there's an act of God clause in this amazing deal we've had that negates the entire deal.
And we already sent all of our pharmaceuticals and all the stuff we needed to China.
Isn't there a little weird stuff going on?
No, it's completely false.
This is not conspiracy.
This is not conspiracy or spooky.
This is actually black and white materials that you can look at.
This was actually done in December.
This is actually the deal assigned.
This is the act of God clause, which you can lose pandemic.
It included flood, tornado, pandemic.
Pandemic was actually cited as an act of God.
And this is a pandemic, so the entire deal is negated.
See, I can't even wrap my mind around something like that.
It's kind of odd.
No, it's totally odd.
Is that warfare or is that just an act of God that somehow just happened?
I don't know.
That's a good question.
It's a really good question.
Is there email traffic that would prove one way or the other?
Yes, there is.
Are there government cablegrams and traffic and things that would prove one way or the other?
Yes, there is.
Are there letters?
Are there doctors?
Some of the doctors are still alive.
Most of them have been killed already, who were there at the ground zero when the pandemic started.
Most of them are dead, though.
That's kind of odd, wouldn't you say?
Now, I'm not a conspiracy person.
I want to see it black and white.
I want to see the proof.
And there is proof out there to prove this one way or the other.
So I don't want to say one way or the other.
This is not an act of war, but it could be.
I can't prove it one way or the other.
I'd like to know one way or the other.
So let's see the data.
Yeah, it's to me, it's to me, it's just scary.
I'm not really a big conspiracy person either, but when you hear stuff like that, it just, you can't help but just look deeper into it and try to figure out what happened and where shit's going wrong.
Well, if you want to think about the future of warfare, you shouldn't be investing in, you know, ships and bombs and the big stuff or nuclear, nuclear bombs and all the other stuff, the stockpiles of everything we have to blow stuff from destroy.
That's not the future of warfare.
The future of warfare is cyber, and that's why making a space command.
The first thing we do, what we made a space command.
Why wouldn't you make a cyber command at the same level in Joint Chiefs of Staff?
Because that's where it's all at.
It's about electronics, it's all about that.
Then, after a cyber command, should have been like an MVC command, should have been nuclear, biological, chemical, and all the other stuff command after cyber.
Space would be third after cyber and after a MVCRE or MVC burn, chemical, radiological, biological, all that.
So, with the C burn command, is if I was a nation, I wanted to take over, let's say.
Let's say New York City wanted it, or New York State wanted to take over New York City, because New York State is just so sick of New York City.
So, if we just drop a couple of nuclear bombs in New York City and flatten it, well, we destroyed all the infrastructure.
We destroyed all of the power plants, all the dams, all the water, everything else.
And nobody's going to live within 100 square miles of where all those bombs dropped, right?
But what if we let a biological virus into the city?
And it's half life of the biological that we've released into the city had a half life of like, let's say, two months, and it killed off 80% of the population.
You would depopulate an entire city, and then the city would be clean in two months that you could move in and take over.
Not a building fell, not a bomb, not a nothing, just got rid of all the people.
How good would that warfare be for a nation that wanted to take over another nation?
You wouldn't have to worry about any of the infrastructure.
You just went there and Clean up a little bit, get rid of all that.
And within two months, you can move in.
Yeah.
Look at the cost savings it would be in warfare, not to take a building down with a bomb, but just to get rid of all the people in it.
Yeah, it really does seem, I mean, guns and bombs are.
It's the past.
It's gone.
All you have now is going to be cyber warfare and biological and chemical warfare.
It's all that's left.
What?
And then all you can use is delivery systems.
And delivery systems is all by drone anyway.
So, all you need is some drone pilots.
If you're good with Xbox, then you're a drone pilot.
You can deliver the biologic camera.
You can do whatever you want from your seat.
You can just sit there and play the game.
Okay, drop.
And you don't even need to drop them.
You just crash your UAV into the target spot you want.
Have you ever messed with those new drones, those DJI, like phantom drones that have the cameras on them?
Have you ever messed around with those?
The ones you can buy at Walmart?
Well, I started flying drones in 1999.
Some of the first drones that were ever used and militarized.
I was one of the first persons to do a call for fire with mortar strikes out of a drone.
So, I had my little drone.
I was flying around.
I was doing call for fire, hitting mortars.
So, yeah, it was basically trailblazing drone technology in the late 90s, early 2000s, before 9 11.
And when you launched your drone, how did you launch that drone?
We did a hand launch.
You throw them in the air.
We did catapult launches.
Okay.
We also would take them off from runways, too.
So, I've flown drones, you know, the big ones, the dual prop, the single prop, the turboprop, the big ones, the small ones, the micro drones, the real little ones.
And the real big ones.
We did explosives on the drones.
We did cameras.
We did chemical and biological testing devices on the drones so we could fly them through an area.
And if it was contaminated, we would purposely crash it out in the ocean.
If it showed back that it was not contaminated, we could bring it back and land it.
Because basically, you crash something in the ocean, the ocean cleans it up no matter what it is.
So you don't want to bring it back if it has stuff on it.
So you just crash it purposely because it's got affected.
It had stuff on it.
Don't bring it back.
What were you, what SEAL team were you on?
When you were involved in the raid of Saddam's palace, can you talk about that?
I was on a SEAL team and we raided a lot of palaces as we were going through there.
And we stayed in this hangar and it was all shot up.
It was a bullet ridden hangar.
That was a pretty cool little hangar.
And we also stayed in a place called the VVIP lounge for the Baghdad airport.
So I will say those two things a shot up hangar and a VVIP lounge.
Is the places I worked out of.
That's about all I would say.
And if you know those areas, then you know who I was working with.
But I know the part of your book where you're talking about you guys were going down a river near the palace and you had to fly.
Shatala Rab.
I crashed a UAV on that river and I really, I still have nightmares about crashing UAVs that caused problems.
I screwed up and I still have like really big problems with that screw up.
Like when I make mistakes, I own them.
I say, hey, I messed up.
Right, I crashed a UAV and I and I and I'm cost lives.
I cost us not to have the intel we needed, and I don't know how many people I could have saved if I didn't crash that one UAV.
So it haunts me, it haunts you, but I think it speaks volumes that you're able to own up to it because honestly, I mean, people that are able to fail and live with it and talk about it and share it with people that is what.
Enables you to succeed is to be able to fail and fail and fail and be okay.
You're going to miss a dozen shots, but you're still going to make lots and lots of game winning shots.
And I think that spoke volumes.
That really stuck with me in your book.
Owning Mistakes and Crashes00:06:09
I mean, we all should.
And here's an example of somebody.
If I messed up, I'm admitting I've definitely had my share of screw ups.
And sometimes it takes a long time to realize how bad you're screwing up.
And then when you finally realize it, and then you're like, well, it's.
It's kind of too late now, or you stew on it.
And I would stew on stuff because I'd get so upset.
And I've stewed and I've messed up and then I've stewed on it.
And then I finally realized, and I was like, well, it's too late now.
I wish I could go back in time and fix that.
I would immediately say, I screwed up.
And this is what I want to do to make up for my screw up.
And let's get back into business.
Let's fix it and let's drive on.
And there's a few times I wish I could have done that earlier.
You know, it would have been better.
Here's an example of somebody who screwed up and never owned up to it.
And it caused someone.
Here it is.
If you're a Navy captain on an aircraft carrier, you're the captain, you're the skipper.
There's an admiral above you who's running a carrier battle group, but running that ship, the day to day running, and every person on that ship, 4,000 people who are working that ship, that 06, that captain, he's the guy, he's in charge.
Now, let's say you had a young seaman, this young kid, he's 19 years old.
And he's away from home.
He's new in the Navy.
He's really, it's tough.
And his kid is having, you know, some issues and he's not getting along with a lot of people.
He's doing whatever, but he's a happy kid.
Man, the kid, I have a video of the kid from a day before the incident where he's like, he's mopping a hallway and he's dancing around, he's dancing to music.
He's just a 19 year old kid.
The captain hears that this kid has some suicide ideations as he's really upset.
The captain calls, a captain's call for the whole division and has like 500 people lined up in the hangar decks and he starts making fun of the kid in front of everybody by name.
To the entire 500 people standing there.
Makes fun of the kid because the kid is weak, because the kid is thinking about committing suicide, he's just faking it, he doesn't know.
And the captain, the leader of that ship, is making fun of this kid by name in front of 500 of his peers.
Then the kid attempts suicide on the ship, and it didn't happen.
The captain further makes fun of him and puts him in the brig, and then the kid gets sent to the brig and hangs himself with his shoelaces in the brig and is dead now.
Do you think that captain was punished or the captain admitted that, hey, you know, it was in front of 500 people.
I made fun of the kid.
I didn't really understand.
Where is it?
I'm not a psychiatrist.
I don't know.
Did the captain say any of that?
No, that captain got promoted to admiral.
And that kid is dead.
Killed himself.
And as an organization, if you can see that, do you see the bottom of that mug?
Hicks Strong.
Hicks Strong, yeah.
So look up the hashtag and hashtag Hicks Strong and look up the hicksstrong.org, I think it is.
We'll tell you the whole story.
As you tell you about the mother and a father who makes these mugs, they're called hug mugs.
Because the mother and father of that young seaman, you know, Hicks, who just breaks my heart.
So Mike and Jolie are the parents and they're at my house and they gave me this mug.
Because they asked all the sailors on the ship who were friends with their son before he killed himself, they said, What could we have done?
And all the kids were like, To the parents, is that you couldn't have done anything?
It was the captain ridiculed your son in front of everybody.
And like everything was going on.
They talked about it all.
They said, Well, is there anything that if you had, you know, what would you want?
And a lot of sailors said, We just sometimes just give a hug, man.
Give support.
And she said, And I said, You guys drink coffee all the time, but what if I made a hug mug?
What if we made hug mugs and it says hug mug on the handle?
That you have this big mug you're drinking coffee out of this made custom made for me.
She made this one for me with this big sunflower on it.
On the other side, it says courageous to remind me every day that we're all courageous.
So every morning I drink coffee, it's Jolie Hicks, a wonderful lady.
She gives me a hug every morning I drink coffee because I have a mug.
I'm going to drink a hug mug.
I'm going to get a hug right now.
That's beautiful.
Now, giving each other a hug, caring enough.
Not ridiculing in front of 500 of your peers, not getting promoted from captain to admiral.
What happened to the Navy?
The Navy ridicules and makes fun of a 19 year old kid and ends up committing suicide.
You're going to make fun of somebody because they're in a bad spot?
That's not right.
That's not the Navy I'm from.
Own up to your mistakes and make them happen, make a change and fix them.
That captain should have been freaking court martialed by the admiral and thrown out of the Navy.
Somebody should look all this up.
Hicks Strong, Mike and Jolie Hicks.
They're my friends.
It's a mom and dad who lost their son, lost a wonderful soul, lost their kid.
And I just say to everybody out there just everybody makes mistakes, everybody does stuff.
But that captain, immediately as soon as he did that in front of all those people and found out the kid started having some issues, should have gone down there with his division officer, everybody else, and then said something to the kid personally with his officers and the chiefs and said, You know what, son?
I made a mistake.
I didn't know.
How can we make this right?
And then in front of all 500 people, the people he said it all to should have made a point.
Says, you know what?
I made a mistake the other day, and here's a young seaman, and we're going to make sure this is taken care of.
We're going to fix this, and I was wrong.
Alpha Masculinity vs Compassion00:04:44
And I will take my punishment, whatever it is.
I'm going to lose my ship.
I will lose that.
I'm going to get, I am in trouble because I made fun of that kid in front of everybody.
I did the wrong thing.
Then we'd have, you know, he'd be here still.
I would imagine that that sort of behavior happens a lot in the military, especially like the Marines and the SEALs.
We're tough.
We're yelling at each other.
Right.
I woke up at 2 a.m. this morning and did 1,000 push ups.
What'd you do?
You suck.
You're weak.
I hate that attitude.
I mean, I don't care what time you wake up in the morning and how many push ups you can do.
Even David Goggins, the guy's a freaking monster.
But you know, it comes down to it.
Not everybody has the ability to do 1,000 pull ups.
But if you can do 100, man, rock on if that's what you can do.
I'm proud of you.
But I'm never going to make fun of you because you can do 1,000.
You can do 100.
You can only do 10.
It's your capability to strengthen weakness.
You're still on a team.
You just might not be the quarterback.
You might not be the lineman.
Hey, how about a defensive end?
Let's try you there.
There's a spot for you on a team.
But those people that just like they do that macho, making fun, ridicule.
Do you have ridicule of me to make me better?
No, man, that doesn't make me better.
How about a hug?
How about a hug, man?
It speaks volumes coming from someone like you because you, a dominating and alpha personality that you were and the stuff that you went through, is beyond masculine and macho.
Okay, but wait, hold on.
You're saying alpha and macho.
Define alpha when I'm talking about alpha and macho.
Obviously, they're two different things, but when I say alpha, I'm referring to a trait where you're someone who is a dominating force and someone who is looked up to by many different people who are obviously going in the same direction and they look up to that person, and that person is a strong example for them.
Okay, so when you talk about domination, talk about alpha, we're talking about like lions, you're talking about the animal kingdom, you're talking about strength, it's a primal thing.
And we talk about alpha and macho, is sometimes that has nothing to do with like how many push ups you can do, right?
No, not like you woke up at 3 a.m. and did 100 push ups.
I don't care, dude.
Right?
When's the last time you helped somebody?
When was the last time you did something good for somebody?
When's the last time you actually had compassion and said, Hey, man, I was walking past this person, man, and I saw that they're sleeping in their car, and I was just like, Dude, I'm in a hurry, but you know what?
Knocking the window, the car, and then they'll put the window down, and they're scared because they think they're gonna be beat up or something bad's gonna happen, and all you do is just Just slip in a $20 bill.
I think what I'm getting at.
I like alpha compassion.
Is there a way to be alpha compassion?
Is that the Dalai Lama?
Is that Gandhi?
Yeah.
I think what I'm trying to get at, I think the point I'm trying to explore is the fact that you've been through the peak of what someone would think of alpha or macho.
That's who you are.
It's a life that you lived, right?
But I want to redefine alpha to be alpha.
Gandhi's alpha, compassion to make them at the same equal playing field.
That if you're that dude, if you're David Goggins, who freaking loved the guy, he's awesome, he's amazing, and he is an alpha, like competitive, and like just he's a monster.
He's also like his mentality, he's just like he goes.
Yeah.
But he should be at the same level as far as alpha measurement as I have a friend of mine, Mary, who's just this amazing spiritual leader, but she weighs like 90 pounds and she could probably do 10 push ups.
But shouldn't they be equals?
Because there's one that's an alpha domination of one whole thing, and it's one thing, and you want to look at them the same, but nobody will ever look at them the same.
Nobody will ever be on a talk show.
You have a very unique perspective, and I think that you're able to look at it that way.
Do you think that a lot of people with that mentality that think that that's how you need to be, or people raising their kids saying, You need to be a man, you need to be tough, you need to play football?
Do you think that comes from insecurity that that may not be there?
Maybe I'm insecure or I'm not confident that I am manly, so I need to really project this image.
Maybe, I mean, that's 100% possible.
It's probably totally true.
But the thing is, is when we're thinking about that, you got to be tough.
Well, I want to say you got to be tough when they're sitting there with their book and they're reading the chapter to do a report on to just finish the chapter.
They only read halfway through it and they want to go outside and play.
No, no, you got to be mentally tough.
Intellectual Toughness and Insecurity00:02:36
You got to be tough.
Just keep reading.
Well, you didn't read it.
Let's read it again.
That's toughness.
That's like an intellectual toughness.
You know, the extra reading assignments during the summertime that you just want to play and have fun, but you need to get through these 10 books during the summer, every summer.
Read 10 books every summer if you're in school.
Get your list.
You're going to read those because you're mentally tough.
You're like macho.
Well, that's an intellectual machoism.
Don't just measure it by how much you can run and jump and do push ups and pull ups.
We need to start measuring the mental toughness on the same level as we do how many push ups you can do, or that you can go in a UFC cage and beat the crap out of somebody.
You can win a UFC cage and beat the crap out of somebody.
Yeah, you're really tough.
But look at, you know, Alan Turing.
That guy's way tougher than any UFC fighter I've ever known in my life.
UFC, UFC, me.
Alan Turing was the toughest man alive.
Who was that?
Mentally and everything else.
He's the guy who invented the computers in the 1940s during World War II.
Oh, okay.
He killed himself.
He killed himself because he ridiculed us, he killed himself because he got set up and he made to fail.
He was set up for failure.
The guy who invented modern day computing.
You got to read the story.
Why did he kill himself?
He was made to take drugs to chemically castrate him because he thought he was a deviant.
He invented all modern day computing, all came from one person.
Alan Turing wasn't an alien, it was a man.
Did you know that's what Nikolai Tesla did?
Yeah, he was also a big part of that.
So he's also one of them.
Tesla was a huge part of that.
But when you start thinking about computing in ones and zeros, ones and zeros, and the way the whole thing happens, It really came to fruition under Alan Turing.
That was when he started doing the switches and basically the transistors, the NPTs, the NPNs, NTNs.
The whole thing, when it switches because of an electrical change in a circuit, it switches here or switches there, on or off.
That was basically Turing.
It was pre transistor transistors.
That's interesting.
All computing is based on ones and zeros.
Right, right, right.
That was a Turing machine, it was a magic machine.
Real quick, going back, Tesla didn't do that.
No, no, yeah, he was way different.
But I believe Tesla, he intentionally castrated himself so he could accomplish his goals and what he was trying to do in his life, and that he thought were more important than his sexuality.
Scuba Skills and Depth Awareness00:15:05
Was that to diminish the animal instinct of sexuality?
Yeah, exactly.
Because he felt it was a distraction.
Yeah.
We were talking about mental toughness.
In your documentary, you were comparing what it took for you to run through caves screaming.
With an assault rifle versus what it was like to tell your friends and your fellow comrades you felt like you were a woman, like coming out, explain the difference in the courage it took to do that versus the courage it took to be in combat.
Let me put it this way.
So, this has been me my whole life.
I've just never been able to express it, but in my mind, in my soul, this is me.
This is the way God created me.
You might not believe that, but I know because this is how I felt my whole life.
And it came from when I was like, before I even had thought.
So, it's not something that was invented or is environmental or anything else.
This is the life I was given by God, and this is how it works.
This is life.
Life is very diverse in so many ways that people don't even know yet.
Like, we barely understand the DNA chain and chromosomes, and we barely scratch the surface of who we are as human beings.
So, we're going to define it and say, no, it's only one or the other.
That's naive.
There's like a thousand levels between all of that, between male and female, there's a thousand million combinations.
So, who can say it's only black or white?
It's this or that?
It's male or female?
It's not.
So, there's gray.
There's a lot of gray between all that.
And I knew that at a very young age because I am.
You were dealing with it.
So, here's how I tell you to compare it to Have you ever been scuba diving?
All the time.
I grew up scuba diving.
Okay.
So, anyone else that is scuba diving is going to totally get this.
So, imagine you're living your entire life underwater with a scuba bottle on and a regular in your mouth.
So, when you're scuba diving and you're thinking about, Your breathing.
You have to always think about how you're breathing.
You're always thinking about where the regulator is.
If the regulator comes out, I'm in trouble.
Got to get back in.
You're always thinking about the level of air in your tank.
You're thinking about your depth.
You're thinking about all of it.
At all times, your survival is critical upon everything with the apparatus to breathe.
That's transgender.
So, my entire life from when I was born until February 28th, 2012, I was underwater.
On breathing apparatus, totally afraid for my life at every second for every word I said, every action, everything I did.
On February 28th, 2012, I said, The heck with it.
And I came above water.
I dropped my scuba tank, I dropped it all off, and I started living and not worrying about anything.
That's how it is to come out.
Because now I don't need to worry about anything because I'm above water now.
I'm not worried about how I breathe, how I act, what I say, what I wear.
I'm not worried about anything anymore like I was underwater.
That's what it feels like.
That's a beautiful analogy.
That's how you should think about it.
So, for anyone, everyone that yourself, you're not transgender, I don't know, but you're living your life, you've always been above water.
So, for you to look at me and I finally come out of the water and I go, Holy cow, this is so amazing.
You look at me and go, What are you talking about?
Because you never knew what it was like to be underwater.
You never had to worry about every word, every action, how you dressed, what you did.
You never had to worry about your survival depending on your life.
And now that you're above water, now you start to get ridiculed because now you're above water.
And I go, no, it feels better for me.
And then you're going to point at me and you go, well, yeah, but you look weird.
You're not doing it right.
You don't look right like everybody else.
I say, how do you know what it's like to live underwater?
How do I know what it's like to live above water my whole life?
I don't.
So you have to think about it totally differently.
And can't you respect the fact that now I'm living and I feel better?
Can't you say, well, I didn't know what it's like to live underwater and you're happier now, I fear?
So, yeah, right on, man.
Good job.
Good job for you not to worry about every second of your life.
Yeah.
Congratulations, man.
Welcome to Liberty.
You know?
Yeah.
Why can't people just say, hey, congratulations?
You're living a half year full life now.
Why can't you just do that to me?
Instead, you got to try to beat me up in the street.
You got to laugh at me.
You got to point at me saying, you're a dude wearing a dress.
You look ugly.
You're the ugliest thing I've ever seen.
You should kill yourself.
Why are you doing that?
People don't do that.
You're a man or a woman.
You were born a man.
You can't be a woman now.
Who is it to you to judge that?
You've never lived underwater.
Well, God says, Your God defined something based on a 2,000 year old book that you can't wear cotton fibers with wool fibers, or I should stone you right now.
It's ridiculous how they judge me.
It's based on stuff that doesn't even make any sense now.
There are so many things that you can cut out of Leviticus that would make our way of life in modern times impossible.
By what you eat, by what you wear, by what you say, by what you do, by all of it, you couldn't live a life in modern society.
Based on Leviticus 2,000 year old scriptures.
Well, no, that's not really what God meant.
Well, then, how can you cherry pick and tell me what God meant?
Are you God?
Do you really know what was going on?
Are you the creator?
Who are you to judge?
What type of people give you that sort of feedback?
Do you get that sort of feedback with fellow veterans?
I was told I should kill myself just a week ago based on something.
I had a veteran write a whole bunch of stuff on a Twitter post I have.
Like all kinds of stuff.
And I was like, all right, Diva, you have no idea what you're talking about.
Well, you don't know me.
I know you.
I was in your platoon.
You said that and that.
And I said, dude, eat them.
I was covering up and I was underwater just trying to be normal in your eyes.
I said, yeah, I probably said a lot of stupid stuff because I was just trying to cover up and survive in your world.
I said, I'm finally comfortable now and you're going to give me crap?
Right.
My Twitter handle, my Facebook handle, my Instagram handle, my Gmail, everything is the same.
Valor for us.
Valor for us.
The number four.
V A L O R for us.
Is my social media.
That's my social media.
I get death threats.
I get hate mail.
I get all kinds of stuff.
I've been beaten up two months ago.
I got freaking attacked two months ago in a bar.
Three months.
No, it's three months ago now.
Before the isolation from COVID, I had someone attack me in a bar where they tried to beat me up.
Did they know who you were?
No, they just saw a dude in a dress.
You're ugly.
You shouldn't even be living.
And I was going, dude, just leave me alone, man.
And then they started attacking me.
And yeah, they were on the floor pretty quickly.
Yeah, I would imagine if they knew who you were, they wouldn't have fucked with you.
No, but it just doesn't make sense.
Why don't you just let me alone?
Why don't you leave me alone?
Yeah, it's sad.
It really is sad.
People are mean, man.
People are mean.
Speaking of Twitter, didn't you respond to Donald Trump when he tweeted something about transgender people not being in the military?
So, President Trump tweeted out that transgender people should not be in the military in any capacity and wants to get rid of us.
That's about 15,000 people in uniform today in uniform.
So he basically wanted to kick out 15,000 people who nobody would even know, or some of them know, but they're doing a great job.
And the problem was when he tweeted that, the Army was undermanned by like 28%.
The Marine Corps was undermanned by like 15%.
The Air Force was like 5%.
I think they were doing pretty good.
But the recruitment numbers to go to boot camp and join the military were all significantly undermanned.
So for us, the capability to fight a war on two fronts.
If you had a European war and something going on in Asia or anything going on, we can't do it because we are so undermanned because nobody wants to join because it's a shit place to go.
And you want to kick out an additional 15,000 people who are right now serving, doing a good job because of your prejudices?
It doesn't make any sense.
So that's why I told him I said, hey, look, I served 20 years.
I did a good job.
I served with honor.
You never knew, and it didn't matter to you, and who cares?
You're going to kick me out?
Well, that's bullshit.
Let's talk face to face.
Let's talk about this.
Did you get any response?
No.
No.
But about six or seven months later, I met him face to face, shook his hand, and I talked to him.
And I said, Sir, served my country for 20 years.
I did a good job.
There's a lot of people just like me that want to serve, and we want to serve with honor.
And he said to me, as he was shaking my hand, Thank you for your service, Chief.
How'd he know I was Chief?
He knew who you were?
Yeah.
How did that make you feel?
Well, he just said, Thank you for your service, Chief.
And I said, You're welcome, sir.
Just a lot of us want to join.
I'm not going to stop serving.
I serve to this day.
I serve in a different capacity.
I serve by speaking to you, maybe dropping a couple of nuggets of truth and having some people think a little bit.
Yeah.
Have your mental toughness, your intellectual toughness, your spiritual toughness.
Tell you what, being a Muslim in America right now, you got to be spiritually tough.
But nobody cares about that toughness.
They only care how many push ups he can do.
I woke up at three o'clock in the morning, did a thousand push ups.
Who cares, man?
I know a guy who's a Sikh, like a Sikh elder.
The guy is amazing.
You know who the Sikhs are?
They're like religious, like spiritual leaders, man.
They're tough.
And he's a good friend of mine.
So I don't care how many push ups he can do at three o'clock in the morning.
I care about my really good Sikh, Ahmad.
And I know another one, Ahmad Pushin, he was a SEAL, and he's freaking mentally tough.
He's way tougher than doing a thousand push ups at 3 a.m., all the above.
I have a really good Muslim friend.
He was a Marine, Marine Corps.
And that guy is mentally tough.
Way tougher than a thousand push ups at 3 o'clock in the morning.
I don't care how many push ups you can do at 3 o'clock in the morning.
Why don't you try being a Muslim Marine for a day?
That guy's way tougher than you.
So, spiritual toughness, mental toughness, intellectual toughness, freaking tough toughness, not what you do.
You wake up in the morning and do push ups.
I don't care.
That's weak.
That's the weakest person I ever said.
Because if all you can do is do a thousand push ups at 3 o'clock in the morning and you yell and thump your chest about it, I did a thousand push ups at 3 a.m.
Dude, that's one of the weakest people I've ever met.
Because you got to yell about it.
You got to tell everybody in the whole world how many push ups you did.
I don't care.
Do a thousand push ups and don't tell anybody about it.
That's tough.
I don't care if you're yelling.
I don't care if you woke up at 3 a.m.
Wake up at 3 a.m. and do whatever you got to do.
Why do you got to tell anybody about it?
The weakest person is the one that.
Does stuff and yells and screams and thumps your chest.
They brag about it.
At every turn, they brag.
Those are the weakest people.
The toughest people do all their stuff and nobody ever knew they did it.
I give somebody a homeless man, I'll give him a $20 bill.
I'm not going to tell anybody or take a picture or do anything.
And I'll do that 100 times in a month.
Well, shit, I just said it.
Yeah.
I just figured it out.
There's going to be some people even comment saying, You just told all of us.
That's okay.
There's so much stuff that happens.
You don't need to tell anybody about it.
Just do it, man.
That's toughness.
That's real toughness.
You know who knows that you did that?
You knew who knows you did it and who it counts.
It's you.
You.
Just you.
No one else.
Not even a creator.
Your creator doesn't care if you gave somebody who needed some help some help.
People try to use bragging and saying they've done great things as acts to prop up something that's not there.
And you can get more followers.
Yeah.
I don't have followers because I don't, I try not to say very much stuff about myself.
I write a lot of stuff on all my social media when I did something incorrect.
I did something without thinking.
I did something that was callous or, you know, incompassionate.
I didn't know what I was doing.
And then I was like, darn it, I did that wrong.
And then I go back and I try to fix it and I try to make it better and I try to do something good where I failed.
So every time I fail, I try to do better.
I try to do something.
Those are the things I post.
So I don't have followers because I'm never out there saying, hey, I just did a 23 mile run in an hour and 20 minutes.
I just did this or I did that.
I woke up at 3 a.m. and did a thousand push ups.
I don't write any of that stuff.
I write about stuff where I screwed it up and then I try to do better.
So who's going to follow me?
If I don't have followers, I'm not going to ever have fame.
I think you have followers.
I try to defame myself and I try to make it a lesson.
I try to give you some help by saying what I did wrong or what I felt bad about this or I wish I would have done that better.
I try to do lessons with everything I do.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, it's important though because you do.
I think you do have followers, but speaking to talking about the things that you do wrong and the things that you mess up, I think that's important for people to learn that and learn that it's important to fail.
It's important to mess up.
Like wearing a sock on my face.
Yeah, yeah.
I totally messed up because I just went into a store without a face mask.
And so I went and I said, Hey, you got to take your sock off.
Hey, I did that.
I didn't wipe myself.
I made a mask.
But I mean, it's just, I just do stuff and I just try to make it, Hey, I learned something.
And I want you to know how to do this so that maybe you can do it.
I learned it from somebody else, and then I made a couple improvements here and there.
And they're like, Hey, man, my buddy Denny did something with the sock before me.
And then I said, Hey, but if you do it like this, do it like that.
It's something.
And then, Hey, man, let's.
So all knowledge is like borrowed and approved, done that or done that.
And then I gave a lot of credit to my friend Denny, you know, at Better Days, who came up with the first idea.
And it was like, Man, it's a great idea, and I want more people to know about it.
And so now, and you can even change it so that you put your chin where the foot is, is another way to do it.
Oh, where the heel goes.
It'll cup in.
I mean, improve it.
Someone out there improve what I did and make it better.
Because, man, all of life is about improvements.
VA Caregiver Programs and Hope00:09:07
When the cavemen were here and they were, you know, fighting the T Rexes, they did a lot of stuff.
And we've improved on it.
Nothing's new.
No.
Everything's been said.
You just said it different.
What do you think is the biggest point of pain in fellow veterans like yourself who have?
Been in combat as much as you have?
And how do you try to help them with what you've experienced with trying to let out bottled up emotions or bottled up feelings and get them off your shoulder?
Like, maybe that's one example, but what do you see is the biggest point of pain or stress within people like yourself who've dealt with what you've dealt with?
Well, let me put it this way if you go to the Veterans Administration and you see the number of people registered and using the VA, the VA hospital, and the doctors and prescriptions and all the other stuff, and you look at the total number of veterans in the United States, the percentage of people that use the VA is like 20% of veterans.
So, the other 80% are like, hell no, I'm not going to the VA.
You know why?
Why are they going to the VA?
I probably won't go to the VA shortly because I'm just, I'm angry.
Because I went to the VA and I was like, hey man, I'm in a really tough spot right now.
And I'm having some problems and I just need help.
And I think I need help for about six months or a year.
And I need a caregiver, I need somebody around to help me do some scheduling because I have a traumatic brain injury and some other stuff happened.
I just need some help for a little while.
And they have this thing called a caregiver program.
Well, they'll actually pay me a little bit of extra money so I can pay a caregiver to come in and work with me for two or three hours a day to make sure my scheduling is good.
I'm on time.
I'm taking my medications.
I'm doing this, I'm doing that.
They're just like, it's like a checkup.
And I went to the VA and I asked him, I said, Hey, man, I'm in a really tough spot right now.
And you have this caregiver program.
You're going to give me like $400 a month or $800 a month so I could pay somebody.
Could come in like a qualified person that understands scheduling and pharmaceuticals and prescriptions, all the other stuff I'm doing because I'm in a tough spot right now.
So I could actually pay them to come in and be with me for an hour or two hours every two or three days or whatever.
Come in once a week.
I just go through my schedule, go through everything going on, make sure everything's good.
You know, make sure I'm eating healthy.
I'm not just eating macaroni and cheese every day for a month straight, which I did.
And it caused me to have this really bad cholesterol, it was off the charts.
I was going to McDonald's, eating McDonald's, eating mac and cheese.
Because I was just in that real bad funk.
I was in a bad place.
So I go to the VA and I go to this place.
I had this caregiver program.
I say, hey, I want to apply for this caregiver program.
And they asked me all these questions.
And man, I'm a seal.
And I answered the questions like a seal would.
And I didn't go in there limping and I have a limp.
And I go in there and I just like, and I tell them, yeah, I'm okay.
I mean, I'm doing okay, I guess.
And I'm doing that and I don't have time.
So I didn't go in there and cry.
I didn't go in there limping.
I go in there.
Unshowered for a week, which I did go for about a week and a half.
I didn't take a shower, which is because I was in a funk and I couldn't get out.
And this is the stuff that happens when you have, you know, PTSD and traumatic brain injury, stuff doesn't always connect.
And so you go for a week and a half without showering, you didn't go out of the house.
I wasn't, and like, you want to be self-isolated?
Well, I did that to myself a lot.
And so I'm talking to this caregiver program and they deny me.
And I actually went in and asked them for help.
Yeah.
Because I knew it was in a funk and I had stuff going on and I.
I needed some help and I want to get out of the funk.
I want to give me six months of this person to come in once a week and help me out.
That's what I was asking for.
I said, I want somebody for six months or a year to come in for one or two days a week for like two hours and just check everything out and do that and do that.
Make sure I'm not in that funk, that nothing's going on funky, that I'm not doing that or that.
And they said, no.
That's unbelievable.
It would have cost him total for a year.
It would have cost him, what, $4,000, $5,000 total?
And you're talking about a VA that only serves 20% of the veteran population, and they're the biggest healthcare, and they have millions and millions and millions of dollars.
And they won't give me $4,000 over a year because I asked them for help.
They deny me.
So, do you think I give a crap about the VA anymore?
I think they suck.
They basically said no.
Yeah, that seems extremely unfair.
Next time I fall into one of those depression holes, and if anybody's ever had depression, Or anxiety or TBI or PTSD or anything, survivor's guilt and remorse and all the other stuff that I have wrapped up and stuff.
And it goes in waves.
And I hit one of them waves and now I'm in a hole.
And if I got nobody around checking me, nobody around, I'm all alone just sitting here.
And when I start getting in that hole, I can't climb out of the hole.
The hole gets deeper, it gets worse.
Now I'm in the darkness.
Now I don't shower.
And a week and a half goes by and I'm in a real deep hole.
It's real hard to get out of it.
And all I have is somebody saying, well, just buck up and man up.
You should wake up at 3 a.m., do a thousand push ups.
You suck.
You're the biggest pussy I ever met.
You got that.
And you got somebody and you're going, what?
Dude, I don't.
And I got everything coming down on me.
I'm going, man, I just, I just, I just don't know what's wrong, man.
I can't.
I look at myself and I go, man, I don't know what's wrong.
I don't know what's wrong with me, man.
And all I asked a VA was, I just, I know I'm in a spot.
I want somebody to help me with the tools, somebody who's educated in some therapy and some other stuff.
That when they start seeing me get in a little bit of a hole, before I start digging deeper and I get worse, before I start stewing on it, they go, Hey, man, you just, hey, try this out.
Hey, here's some tools, man.
Here's some yoga.
Why don't you try this practice out?
Why don't you do that?
And I go, Man, that's a really good idea.
I want to try that.
They don't just tell me I'm a freaking wimp and I got a man up or I got to do that or that.
And the VA says, No, we don't believe you because you're coming here and you look pretty happy because you're seeing me on the day I went to the VA.
It's not the day after a week and a half with no shower and a big hole.
You're not going to ever see me when I'm in my hole.
But when I got out of the hole and I said, Hey, look, I've been in a hole like this year, it happened five times this year.
And I see a pattern, I see some stuff going on.
How long does it last for?
Shoot, one time it was like a month and a half.
Oh, my God.
And so I finally get out of the hole and I'm talking to the VA and I get out of the hole by myself because I start reading something or I see something on social media because I'm on social media, I'm on my Instagram.
I'm on my Instagram, and somebody on Instagram says something.
They go, Hey, you know, I've been there, you know, and this is what.
And they tell me just enough in one sentence on my Instagram.
I see it, it pops up.
And so I say, Hey, I just followed you back because you follow me.
And I PM'd you.
What are you talking about?
So, personal message.
So now we're talking, we're talking behind the scenes now.
And I go, What do you mean by that?
And I'm in a hole, man.
I'm deep.
Yeah.
And then they say, Well, what I mean by that is this and that.
And they gave me some really good advice as someone who's been there.
And I go, holy cow, that's a really good idea.
Now I'm out of the hole a little bit.
And I said, what about this and this?
Now I'm out a little bit.
And so I got out of the hole because I had a whole bunch of my followers who are on Instagram, who are on Twitter, who are some Facebook followers, but mostly Instagram really helps because I can see stuff and I see their pictures.
I see where they're at.
And a picture is a thousand words.
So I see them all happy.
And I go and I said, man, you look really happy with your hair.
You know, like mine.
I'm all like, I'm kind of ratty.
I don't really look that good.
And you're like thinking about this, you're thinking about that.
And I look at the picture and I see what they wrote.
And I go, damn, that's kind of like me.
Because a picture says a lot.
What they say says a lot.
So Instagram is really good for me.
But then on the same Instagram, I had a guy who was a Navy SEAL who I served with who started totally giving me crap.
And it made me feel worse.
Totally.
Like, I was like, man, why would they say that?
They knew who I am.
They gave me a little secret, little snippet that I know he was in my platoon.
I know what platoon he is.
I know who he is because he gave me enough information that I'm able to figure out who it was.
But they gave me a lot of crap I didn't deserve.
Then he did it even deeper.
He started sticking the knife in even worse.
And I was going, man, how do you know where I am in life?
Right.
How do you know what's going on in my life that now you stick the knife in as a friend?
Dude, how do you know where I am with a shotgun in my mouth getting ready to pull the trigger?
He could have been the one to pull the trigger through an Instagram post by giving me all that crap, by the hate, by the bigotry.
You don't know where I'm in life.
Mental Health and Alternative Therapy00:12:53
Why would you do that to somebody?
Dude, just be nice, man.
Give a hug, man.
How about a hug mug?
It's blind hate.
You don't have to ridicule somebody, you don't know where they are.
So, Instagram is good because I see pictures, I see stuff going on, and I see that.
You know what?
That guy, the Navy SEAL, who I know who it was, has a hidden name, has hidden pictures.
You'll never figure out who he is by name, by fiction.
He's anonymous.
So, he's an anonymous little wimpy dude hiding behind a keyboard, giving shit to somebody.
Keyboard warrior.
Little, the most weak, weak mind, weak person, the weakest person on earth is that person.
Because he has no strength or integrity or honor.
You're going to do that to somebody behind a hidden war by a keyboard warrior?
You're going to try to make somebody kill themselves?
Because you're so weak?
The weakest person I've ever met is that person.
Well, notice in a category of very, very weak.
Weak mind, weak intellectual, weak spiritual.
Because you don't even have a spiritual awakening where you can see this or see that or understand humanity is diverse.
We have a lot of stuff going on.
Come on, man.
How weak are you?
Yeah, I've come to realize that the people that leave those toxic, hateful comments on social media, they.
It's coming from a place of self hate.
They literally have the lives they're living, they're so unhappy and they're just projecting that and trying to make themselves feel better.
It's like a, it's just, it's toxic and it's a cesspool.
If you're in that hole and you're in a deep hole, you want to do anything to try to get out of that hole.
And that's alternative therapies.
So that's my nonprofit.
It's called Mindful Valor because valor isn't thump chesting, valor isn't how many push ups or how tough you are or the UFC cage, isn't valor?
Mindful Valor is about mindfulness.
Mindful Valor is about intellectual integrity and honor and strength.
Mindful Valor is about spiritual strength.
MindfulValor.org is my nonprofit.
Okay.
So I get money to pursue alternative therapies, to try to find alternative therapy in any way.
Dude, if you live in Washington State and marijuana is legal, and if you smoke a joint and you're good and you're able to cope or do whatever you got to do, then you can pursue other things.
Man, that's good therapy.
If you live in New York like I do and you start doing yoga and it's something you can do and it works for you, man, that's therapy.
If it works for you, then get out of that hole.
If you do, like, I have like a Buddha right there and I have aromatherapy stuff going on.
I have my Himalayan salt black, which I heat up and I burn.
And I have this, I have stuff.
I have like a hundred different alternative therapies that I've pursued.
Have you ever looked into.
Some of them are legal in only some places, some of them are legal in other places.
But the thing is, is like, who are we to judge?
the legality of a God-grown plant that might help out a lot of people, then, man, you should be able to do that, man.
The laws related in that.
It's like, and this is April 2020.
April 20?
Man, come on.
April 4th in 2020?
Man, that's like the creator told me to go smoke some herb.
Yeah.
On, you know, this week.
What was it, Monday of this week?
Man, I think the whole world should have been stoned.
Well, the worst drugs for you.
The creator said April 4th, 2020, everyone should smoke it up.
That was God given, right?
On a God given day, that said everybody gets stoned.
Yeah.
But there's laws, man.
Well, who are your laws, man?
Are your laws of man or laws of the creator?
Are they spiritual laws or are they main man laws?
And only apply to some, apply to others.
And what's up with the law?
What's up with the law that only applies to some people, not others?
I don't like those kind of laws.
If you have a law that applies to black and not white, if you have a law that applies to female, not male, if you have a law that applies to someone who has this or that or that or that, you're making up laws that apply to being gay or straight.
That's not a law, man.
That's a bigoted way to persecute one person over another.
And those laws are illegal.
Those laws are illegal by the laws of man and the laws of God if they apply to one or not the other.
One of my favorite comedians' quotes is the worst drugs for you are the ones that aren't taxed.
Have you ever experimented with anything like MDMA for PTSD?
Hug mug.
I've experimented with hugging.
You get a hug of energy.
Now, hugs are great.
I love hugs when it comes to all that.
I have not yet tried that.
I'll try to do more study into some of that before I would even do it myself.
I don't know enough about it, but I do know other people have done it.
I'm trying to get more information from them.
Okay, yeah, I've heard a lot about it and I've heard a lot of really good things about it.
I've heard a lot of things, yeah.
I've also heard good things about shock therapy, you know.
1940s and 50s, when they stick the big things on there and they send like 400 volts through your brain.
Yeah.
In the old days, they did it with kind of like a punishment.
It was kind of like abuse.
It was like criminal fricking torture.
But there's been some advances and some studies because we've learned so much.
I know someone who did that the other day and had great, great results.
Shock therapy.
Shock therapy, man.
The old fashioned, like Frankenstein shock therapy.
Holy shit, that sounds brutal.
The advances, it's not brutal at all.
It's actually therapeutic.
That's the thing is like, if things are done wrong, it can be very, very harmful.
But if you do things, I mean, even waterboard it, man.
I mean, you waterboard somebody and it's like, good, it's good for you.
You know, you only waterboard them the right way.
No, just kidding.
That's total torture.
Sorry.
You had to do that part of your training, right?
Yeah, it hurts.
It's painful.
Don't ever get waterboarded.
It's really painful.
But the thing is, like, There's a lot of things that, if you do it the wrong way, you can definitely harm people.
And there's ways to do things that can be helpful and beneficial.
We just need to figure out through science and through experimentation and through to be able to do something and have a repeatable solution, a repeatable outcome to the procedure that are beneficial.
So if it's beneficial to 90 people and 10 people, it really hurts.
We have to figure out what's going on and we have to fix it.
We have to find out because you're harming 10 out of 100.
That's not really good.
We have to figure out with drugs.
There's a lot of drugs that are out there on the market that are legal, but it also harms a pretty big part of the population if they're used incorrectly or even if they're used correctly, but just for that person, it would have a chemical imbalance or a chemical side effect that's extremely harmful.
So I think that the rigor in science needs to keep its legitimacy through equality in that way.
I don't know if that makes any sense, but I think we get harsh on some things and easy on others because there's more money in somebody's pocket.
Yeah, for sure.
Pharmaceutical companies are huge.
They make a lot of money, but some of their stuff they use has never really been tested and it still has some side effects.
We still see it happen.
Yeah.
I mean, a huge problem, obviously, with places like the VA is they focus a lot on physical and treating you with pharmaceuticals and they want to just, you know, pill you up, but they don't really, there's not enough focus on mental health and mental treatment.
And that's what affects the suicide rate.
Here's the problem with the VA the VA is huge, it's the biggest medical.
Group in the world, probably.
So they have a lot of money.
It's the biggest money.
It's the biggest one single spending item in the entire budget.
So you have all those millions and millions of dollars.
You know how they split them up?
You have a physical ailment.
So you have a broken bone.
We got to put a cast in there.
We're going to set it.
Or you have mental something going on.
You can send you to a psychiatrist.
You can do this and do that.
Right.
So there's two huge, huge pots of money.
It's always a competition between the pots of money.
Okay.
You have a broke.
I don't know.
I said it's easy.
You have to get an operation.
Let's do the operation and do this.
You have to go see the psychiatrist and do that.
But the psychiatry is like small compared.
They want to see the problem and medical doctors and psychologists.
So they're all competing, competing funds, right?
But it's a huge pot of money.
It's a wrong way to look at it.
So you got to look at the funds.
The funds should also be split up into a third bucket of money.
And that third bucket of money should be about twice of what the mental illness, mental counseling, and all that.
So, whatever their budget is, multiply by two and take that multiplication of two out of the physical budget.
So, the physical budget goes down by this much.
This one comes in here.
You know what that pot of money is called?
It's twice this, it's called wholeness.
It's the whole person, it's a whole person therapy, it's the whole well being.
So, it's called whole body well being that we'd go over all.
And so, that has to do with after you have a broken bone or whatever, you have to go into physical therapy.
Physical therapy is part of whole being because that'll be yoga, that'll be massaging, that'll be a hot tub therapy, hot therapy, aromatherapy.
It's all the other therapies.
And that's kind of like lifestyle.
Lifestyle, yeah.
It's a proper diet.
We want nutrition to be in the whole person therapy.
Yeah.
So after you're fixed with a surgery with that and that and that, you're done.
The medical doctor fixed you.
He did surgery on you.
He did brain surgery, foot surgery, bone surgery, intestinal, gastrointestinal.
All the other things are part of this big physical budget.
Budgeting.
Then you have the whole being, which is a physical therapy and everything after you get to surgery.
Plus, for the mental well being, you have the psychology and lay on a couch and do all that.
That doesn't cover the yoga and doing group therapy or do aromatherapy or do MDMA or do marijuana or do that.
The whole person therapy is drum circles, is doing a lot of stuff because that goes in between.
It all contributes back and forth between mental.
It's all interwoven.
Yeah.
And it's also spiritual.
Hey, dude, if you have your yoga dude and he's also a prayer guy, he's a drum guy, he does all that, I'm an ordained minister.
And if you gave me a budget because somebody just got an operated on, they were like in a coma for three weeks and they got operated on here, that and that, they had to go to a psychiatrist, you're missing a whole other part of that.
I could have them talking to me for, you know, an hour a week and I'll fix everything in between that a psychiatrist is never going to talk about and a medical doctor is never going to even know about.
And I bring it all together in the middle, and I'm talking about nutrition.
I talk about intellectual stimulation of that and that and get you fired up.
I'm talking about, hey, man, let's just go sit in a hot tub and do some aromatherapy for a little bit and let's have a talk.
What was the last book you read?
Let's talk about that book.
What did that book mean to you, and where does it go?
So it's nice psychology and it's not setting a bone.
I'm doing everything in between that makes you a whole person.
Yeah.
They don't have a lot of nutrition.
Nutrition is huge.
It's huge.
Nutrition is bigger than mental and physical.
Yeah.
Nutrition.
I mean, you are, you literally, you are what you eat.
In mindful of valor, I can do all of that.
I'm going to talk about your nutrition.
I'm going to talk about your spirituality, intellectuality.
I'm talking about your sexuality because your sexual well being is also part of your whole being.
And what are you up to, man?
What's going on?
How can you do that?
When was the last time you went on a date?
You know, what's going on with your marriage?
Do you have a boyfriend or girlfriend?
What's going on there?
Let's talk about that for a little bit.
So, that kind of counseling.
Is not psychology 101 Freudian science, and it's not medical doctor or anything else.
This is a whole different spectrum of healing.
Yeah.
The well being of you as a whole person.
Maintenance.
You're not going to talk about sexuality with a mental doctor or even most psychologists because they're just going to talk about the Freudian crap and opid, ipid, ayad, ala, blah, spiritual.
I want to go in and talk to my priest about freaking my last date.
No, man, that's mindful valor, man.
Operating with Broken Bones00:04:52
That's my realm.
The VA doesn't fund that.
Nobody funds that.
That's why I have to have a nonprofit to get money to bring somebody in and say, hey, man, this has been a backyard.
Hey, there's those deer over there.
I have deer in my backyard right now through my back window.
They're just grazing 15 yards away from me.
And I find a lot of peace with that.
I find peace with that.
Do you find peace with that?
Let's just talk about the deer in my backyard for an hour.
That's wholeness, man.
That's whole body healing.
That's amazing.
That's amazing.
I love that.
That's what I do.
That's really amazing.
You can take any stimulation.
You can have a cup of tea in your hug mug.
A hug mug.
And we can heal.
I love that hug mug.
We need to start funding that kind of stuff.
It should be twice of the psychology budget and taken from the physical because we'll be doing physical therapy and whole body healing.
What do you have to deal with physically now?
A lot.
Really?
I know you broke your back.
You broke your back.
I remember your Taliban birthday present.
Yeah.
I've had a share of injuries.
My wrist and my hands, I'll be sitting there and my hand will just start aching.
I'll have like holding on to something.
And my thumb has so many issues.
My thumb will stop working and I get these twitches and I just drop whatever I have.
So if I have something fragile, I have something, you'll see me drop stuff.
And I'm just like, I just couldn't hold it.
It's just my hand didn't work.
So that's both my hands, the arthritis and the aches.
I have a lot there.
Then my elbow, I blew that elbow.
That's why it sticks way out.
I hit here so hard, it broke my ulna.
It's a radius and ulna.
It shoved up through my elbow.
And so it sticks out still through the elbow.
How did you do that?
Pushed it up through.
It was a really big fall that happened in a country we shall not name.
But it was like a hurt.
I just taped it with rigorous tape and put it back in place.
And then I had another one where it tore my shoulder out, did that, and my knees and did that.
It broke that ankle somewhere else.
I broke every finger in my hand.
This rib, I fell through a roof in another country and it hit air and it broke one of my ribs.
And I climbed back up through the roof as my feet were dangling through the roof.
So I'm going, eh.
So that's another funny story.
Oh my god.
It was funny.
But my body armor broke, and I won one when it cracked my body armor, broke some ribs and stuff.
And you were falling off of a ship at that when you broke your back, right?
That was a ship fact.
It didn't break it like that crap.
It wasn't like that bad of a break.
It was a fracture?
Not total fractures.
It was partial fractures.
Partial fractures.
It was a bunch of partial fractures that cracked everything up.
But it didn't totally, and it broke one of the cushioning.
What do they call them?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I know you're talking about.
I have black discs.
So I have black discs and I have gray discs and I have white discs.
The white ones that are healthy with a fluid is still good.
The gray ones that are fluid is kind of disrupted, it starts getting old.
If the disc is black, and the x ray you can see it, if the disc is black, that means basically all the fluid in there that gives it cushioning has all turned solid kind of.
So it's just like more bone between bone.
So I basically made a couple of black discs and I fractured a bunch of bones.
So, I was still able to operate.
I could still move around, but it's just really painful.
So, because I was laying on the bottom of the boat, and a bunch of the guys were kicking me as they were going past to get on the ladder.
They were like, Beck, get up.
Let's go, man.
It would kick me on the way up.
And so I'm laying there, getting kicked, getting kicked.
And I'm like, Damn.
All right.
And so I got up and I jumped to the ladder and I climbed up.
And I was like, Dude, stop kicking me.
I'm going to get up.
So I got up and it was like, Ah, that hurts.
I don't know why that hurts so much, but I climbed the ladder with like 40 or 50 pounds.
I had a rucksack on with a You know, saws and stuff, all my ammunition and guns.
So basically, it's like doing 30 pull ups with 40 pounds, 50 pounds on your back with the broken bones.
So you're not able to use your feet when you're doing that?
Yeah, use your feet and your hands.
Oh, okay, okay.
But basically, using your feet and your hands with all the weight on and getting up the ladder.
But it's a lot of arms to climb fast, use a lot of arms because if you use all feet, you're not as fast.
So basically, you're skipping up with just doing pull ups.
So, you're just skipping up really fast, and you only hook in basically just a little bit of your heel on the ladder.
So, your heel is barely catching, then you're just doing pull ups, and your heels are going tick, So, it's real quick.
You can get up a ladder fast if you do it right.
Wow.
Climbing the Ladder of Strength00:03:50
It's been amazing hearing your story and the perspectives that you're able to give from your experiences.
What is the message that you want to communicate to people, whether it be young people who maybe want to join the military or anyone in the world?
What do you want your legacy to say about you, and how do you want it to help other people?
I mean, it's a huge question.
I mean, everybody has a legacy, but most people's legacies are forgotten one or two generations after they pass away.
So, what's anyone's legacy going to be?
Is it going to be written down?
Is it just like this a little podcast that's in video?
This is forever.
This podcast is in bits and zeros, it's ones and zeros, it's bits and bytes.
So, this podcast is forever.
The documentary film Lady Valor, which is about part of my life, is forever.
That's part of my legacy.
Part of my legacy is Mindful Valor Foundation, the nonprofit that I started.
That's part of my legacy.
I mean, that's what you have to consider it's just like going up that ladder.
So every rung of that ladder is part of your legacy.
But is it the same?
Or is it building and you learn?
So every time I make a mistake, I say, hey, I own it.
This is what I want to do better.
And that's a rung up, it's the stabs of a ship.
I wrote a book called The Book of Staves.
So, if you think about a rowboat, every part of that rowboat, those little runners along, there's those staves.
And the more staves you have, the higher up the gunwales, the higher up the sides of those boats go, so you can handle more and more harsh weather.
So, the more staves you have, the higher up the boat goes, so you can handle bigger and bigger seas.
The stave is also the rung of a ladder.
So, if you're a kid, you're in grade school, you're building up a staff to play good with others.
That's your first staff, it's play well.
Then you get another staff.
Your ladder gets more and more rungs, more and more staffs.
So, I have this thing called a book of staffs.
And staff number one is this, staff two is this, staff three.
And each one of these are lessons that I've learned in life.
And it goes up to like staff 200, are all these little things that I've learned, all these lessons that I've picked up.
And these staffs put together make a pretty sturdy little boat.
That I can handle the harshness of the world's oceans.
I can handle the harshness of the intellectual ocean, of the spiritual ocean, of the tough ocean.
So, if all you're doing is building staves of toughness, doing pull ups and push ups and waking up early in the morning, your boat is pretty weak in other waters.
You might be strong in Lake Erie, but when you try to go to the Pacific, you're not going to be very strong because you never did a mental stave.
You only did one set of staves.
So, your staves that you have and you build up your strength.
Should be a combination of mental stabs, of toughness stabs, of weightlifting stabs, of nutritional stabs, of spiritual stabs, of camaraderie stabs, of colleague stabs.
Your stabs should be so assorted and so diverse that you can survive in the oceans, in any ocean, in a lake, in a pond, on a stream, on a river.
You can't just make a stab that survives the oceans.
What are you going to do when you go in the river?
So the book of stabs.
It's a combination of lessons.
It's a combination of pearls of wisdom that I've learned over the years the hard way through stories and things that I know because I learned it.
So I'm going to give you a little story.
The Book of Stabs Wisdom00:04:28
This is how it happened.
This is when I learned.
So the Book of Stabs is one of those kinds of books.
So that's why we talked a lot about toughness.
And I talk about the SEAL team training.
You can get through SEAL team training if you're pretty mentally tough and you have a lot of physical strength.
With some luck, you can get through.
But there's other things you probably couldn't handle because you have no, like the intellectual or spiritual, or you have no compassionate stabs to walk past something and see, you know what, that person really needs a hand.
The captain of that ship, he had no compassion.
He saw somebody and needed it.
That person was in a hole and having a really tough time.
And that captain did nothing more but dig that hole deeper and stuck that person deeper in a hole.
And that person committed suicide.
I would say that captain's one of the weakest people I've ever met in my life.
His ship would never survive in the waters that I've navigated.
He caused somebody to kill themselves.
Now, when you think about your life and what your legacy is going to be, are you a UFC fighter who freaking was super tough in a ring?
And I won't name him, but you probably know the person.
He's very notorious.
He's a tough guy, man.
He's notorious.
And that guy is probably the biggest a hole in the world.
He has zero compassion, he has zero intellectual, he has zero spiritual, or very little of all the above.
But the guy's a winner in UFC ring, but a loser with everything else.
His legacy is one fold.
His legacy is so single dimension, it's pretty weak.
I want my legacy to be across all that.
It doesn't need to be super deep in one or anything else, but I want it to be pretty broad.
I want somebody to listen to me and they go, damn.
Intellectual, spiritual, pretty strong, made it through buds.
Also thinks about stuff.
Also admits to make mistakes.
Also tries to be better and all that stuff.
Wow.
Okay.
I get it.
There's a guy who.
Fighter and the Kid is really fun to listen to.
Yeah.
So listen to the Fighter and Kid podcast.
Yeah, it's a great podcast.
I implore you.
There's also, I'm messing his name up, Ron.
He did the Zombie Cage Fighter series.
He's from Washington State.
Why am I messing his name up, man?
I'm sorry.
I can't do that.
Do you have your computer open right now?
Look up Zombie Cage Fighter.
That's okay.
Oh, Nathan Quarry, Rock Quarry.
What's his name?
Rock Quarry.
Nathan Rock Quarry.
Oh, okay.
So here's that's part of my traumatic brain injury.
I have some memory issues sometimes, but I swear, man, look up Nathan Rock Quarry.
Rock Quarry!
He is the coolest guy, and this guy's a UFC fighting champion.
He's awesome.
He's tough, but the guy has a spiritual toughness.
That guy's an intellectual toughness.
He's compassionate.
He has this feeling.
The guy's amazing.
If I get to grow up and I can be like one person, I would be like the Rock, man, Rock Quarry.
That guy is the coolest guy, man.
Look him up.
Okay.
If I get him on your show, I really like this guy, man.
And I swear he's also on the same thing.
His legacy, he'll have a legacy of, man, of compassion, of intellectual giant.
And he was a UFC fighting tough guy.
You don't want to mess with the guy.
Wow.
But he's the coolest guy, man.
And that's what I want my legacy to be, just like Nathan Rock Corey.
You know, that's how we need to look at it.
If your legacy is one dimensional, then it's not very much.
You know, and that's why I talk about the book of stabs.
It's a book that I'm writing, it's not published yet, but it's just stabs, man.
Build your stabs up, have a lot of stabs, and stabs are twofold, or however you want to look at it.
If you have a tall ladder, you can climb up to higher and higher levels of consciousness, higher and higher levels of vibration.
More stabs is more rungs, staff is a rung on the ladder, however you want to look at it, you can look at it.
But it's cool because stabs mean two things, you know what I mean.
Yeah, that's so.
So, I just climb high, man.
Do big stuff, order stabs of your boats.
You can sail in many, many harsh waters, you know.
So, I love that.
That's beautiful.
That's that's beautiful.
And I definitely look forward to reading that book.
Do Big Stuff and Sail On00:00:40
Is that a cool way to leave our show?
That is a very cool way to leave our show, Kristen.
Thank you so much for doing this.
I've learned so very much from you.
I'm so grateful for you doing this and for everything that you've done for the country.
If you want to follow me, follow me on Instagram.
It's valor44.
Us because valor is not for me, and valor has no gender, valor has no color, valor has nothing, valor is doesn't care.
Valor is for us, valor is for all of us.
So, valor for us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, all of it.