The Megyn Kelly Show - 20230529_navy-seal-jason-redman-on-overcoming-the-victim-mi

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May 29, 2023 - The Megyn Kelly Show

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Proving Worth to Join the SEALs 00:14:58
	Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
	Hey, everyone, I'm Megan Kelly.
	Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show.
	Today, we remember and honor our servicemen and women who paid the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom.
	On this Memorial Day, we want to bring you the story of a remarkable veteran who stared death in the face and lived to share his incredible lessons on leadership, bravery, and how to overcome any obstacle, no matter how devastating it may feel in the moment.
	Lieutenant Jason C. Redmond joins us now.
	Jay, welcome to the show.
	Megan, honored to be on.
	Happy Memorial Day, everyone.
	Oh, gosh, to you two.
	It's so great to talk to you and to see you again.
	Do you remember when we met?
	Absolutely.
	Navy SEAL Foundation dinner in New York many years ago when you were still working with Bill Howard.
	Exactly right.
	And I never forgot you.
	I've talked about you to basically every Navy SEAL who's come on this show and talked about you with Leif Babbin and his wife, Jenna Lee, and all these people.
	And just have been thinking about you because your story was so incredible.
	And back then, it was still pretty close in time to when you first were injured.
	You know, that was what, like 2010?
	I'm trying to think of the year.
	2007.
	So I think I was still active duty.
	I think I still was trying to get back operational when I went to that dinner because I didn't retire until 2013.
	Yeah, I remember that.
	And it was like just your whole story was so incredible.
	And of course, I've met so many people over the years, and I've met a lot of vets too, veterans in active duty.
	And honestly, I can count on one hand the number of people who really stand out to me where I'm like, you've got to hear this story.
	And you're one of them.
	So I'm truly honored to have you on here and to be having this discussion with you today.
	Great to see you.
	Likewise.
	Thank you.
	Ah, okay.
	So, from a very early age, I think it's fair to say, I mean, like, well before you actually signed up for the Navy at age 17, had your eye.
	Was it on the Navy in particular or just the military?
	It was both.
	The Navy kind of came about a little bit later.
	I mean, still young.
	I think it was about 15.
	I mean, from a very young age.
	I mean, my parents tell me when I was about three years old, I always just talked about service-based and what I like to call in American society protectors.
	And I was always interested in, you know, that protector mindset.
	When I was three years old, I wanted to be a firefighter.
	That as I got a little bit older, my grandfather was a decorated B-24 pilot, along with my grandfather on both sides, served in World War II.
	My dad had been an Army veteran serving during the Vietnam War and had been a paratrooper and jump master and rigger.
	And that's where he had encountered SEALs for the first time and started learning more about special operations, started learning more.
	You know, I was kind of of the G.I. Joe era.
	So G.I. Joe was cool to me and definitely the special operations guys within the G.I. Joe universe.
	And it was about the time when I was maybe 14 that my dad said, Hey, you should look into the Navy SEALs.
	Having spent some time in the Virgin Islands, I was pretty strong in the water.
	And he said, Hey, these guys are tough.
	They're some of the best.
	He said, You know how to swim.
	He said, you're a little crazy.
	You should check them out.
	They'd be perfect for you.
	And he was right.
	I don't know what it was.
	And I'm not probably the likely candidate that most people would think of.
	You know, I think when people think of Navy SEALs, they see a picture of Jocko and Jocko looks like he's chiseled out of granite, you know, and he is the Hollywood version of a SEAL.
	And I like to joke that I'm not.
	I was like five foot, nothing, especially at that age.
	I was, I was probably, I don't even think I had hit five foot back then.
	I was probably 95 pounds when I decided that's what I want to do.
	And everybody was like, there's no way you'll ever make it.
	And I don't know, that just created fuel to my fire.
	And I just said, this is what I'm going to do and stepped my sights on it and started training.
	And, you know, the rest obviously leading up to joining the Navy when I was 17 on, amazingly enough, coincidentally, September 11th, 1992 is the day I joined the Navy when I was still a senior in high school.
	You are the guy who says, say I can't.
	Say I can't.
	Like there's no better fuel for your fire than those than those than that message.
	It's a fact.
	And, you know, and that's a good thing.
	I've come to learn as I get older, there's a balance there.
	You know, you've got to balance reality with where we're at.
	Because when I was younger, man, that was the catalyst.
	I mean, I would do just about anything if you told me, hey, you can't do that.
	I mean, I just had to prove.
	And I think some of that, who knows, had to do, maybe I was a smaller guy.
	So I felt like I had to prove that I was big enough or whatever to do it.
	But I tell you, back then, it was definitely a fuel that enabled me to make it through training and to overcome a lot of the impossible odds.
	Matter of fact, I was told right from the very beginning, when I went to the recruiting station in Lumberton, North Carolina, where I was living at the time, and I walked in that door, probably the first time I might have been 15, probably 15 and a half, basically.
	And I walked in that door and I said, hey, I want to join the Navy and I want to be a SEAL.
	And boy, they took one look at me, this five-foot-nothing, you know, run.
	And they were like, you'll never make it as a SEAL.
	And they basically, the, the recruiter chased me out of the office.
	And of course, that didn't deter me.
	I came back and he would chase me out again.
	And multiple times that happened.
	Funny story, I almost went and joined the Army because I got frustrated that they wouldn't let me, you know, that this guy wouldn't even give me the time of day.
	So I almost joined the Army to become a Ranger.
	And I ended up failing the airborne physical because they said, oh, you can't equalize because I had ruptured my eardrum when I was a kid.
	And when I, and, you know, thankfully my dad had been in the military, he said, well, why don't we go send you to a specialist?
	And they can, and I, because I knew I could equalize.
	I had dove, I had done all these things.
	And sure enough, I went to a specialist.
	By the time that it all transpired, I tried and explained to everybody, you know, everything happens for a reason.
	And by the time this had transpired, there was a new recruiter in the recruiting office in Lumberton, North Carolina, Henry Horn, who I got to link up with last year after all this time and thank him in person.
	But Henry Horne was the new recruiter and he said, Hey, you want to be a SEAL?
	Come on, man.
	And he helped me get into the Navy.
	He put me on the path to become a SEAL.
	And I got to give a lot of credit to Henry for that.
	He must be so proud of being that guy in your life and the life of the service industry in our country.
	Can I ask you how, so when you actually did sign up, because I understand you officially were allowed to join when you were 17.
	So what was your physical stature then?
	Because it's interesting to me.
	You always do think of these guys being bigger.
	And you do picture like a Jocko going in there and then being like, right this way, sir.
	Yes, duh, of course, we belong together.
	So I probably hit somewhat of a growth spurt in, you know, my junior, senior year, but I was definitely not that big.
	I mean, even today, you know, I'm 5'8 and about 170 pounds.
	So I'm on the average SEAL.
	A lot of people don't know, though, the average SEAL is only about 5'10 and 180 pounds.
	This Hollywood version of the Arnold Schwarzenegger type just is not necessarily the case.
	I mean, SEALs typically are lean, muscled, and usually they'll have a larger upper body because they have strong muscular endurance strength from the gear we have to carry and our ability to have to do a lot of activities with our body weight and gear.
	So your ability to pull yourself up a ladder, your ability to pull yourself up onto a rooftop, any of these different things are marked by what we have to do, especially when you're going through training.
	So yeah, when I went through training, I think I was probably 5'7.
	I might have grown one more inch.
	And I started training at 18.
	So I was 18 years old.
	I was 5'7.
	And I think I checked into Buds at about 135.
	So I was one of the lightest guys in the class.
	That's inspirational, though.
	There are probably a lot of guys out there thinking, oh my gosh, maybe I too could be a SEAL.
	Yeah.
	Oh, 100%.
	And I'm not one of the smallest.
	I mean, believe it or not, like I said, I'm on the smaller end of the spectrum, but we've had SEALs.
	I think the smallest I ever heard was about 5'2.
	And obviously, we've had great big, huge guys.
	It's not normal.
	The big guys really have a hard time making it through training.
	The amount of pounding on their joints ends up breaking them for the hundreds and hundreds of miles that you run and the amount of body weight strength you have, endurance you have to have to be able to do 20, 30 pull-ups, to be able to do 50 dips, to be able to do hundreds and hundreds of push-ups.
	It's really hard on big guys' joints.
	But we did.
	My nine-year-old was listening to me prepare for you, and we were talking all about the SEALs and training.
	And he wanted to know if they make you do one-handed push-ups.
	Do they make you do any of those?
	Yes.
	And I actually, when I broke my arm in training, and I had to do a lot of one-arm push-ups because just because I had broken my arm did not mean that I wasn't still getting yelled at and dropped to do push-ups and do things.
	Whoa.
	Whoa.
	So that's so good to know, but I think you tell me, but it seems like whatever the height, whatever the stature, the number one thing, the reason you made it as a SEAL was that attitude.
	It's that attitude, like that just never say die.
	I will not quit.
	There's something different in the guys who make it through as SEALs versus everybody else because they have that thing that just, it will not let them quit.
	That's right.
	It's, I think there are two things that enable individuals into special operations.
	Number one, that we like to call it the no-quit gene.
	I mean, the Navy has spent millions and millions of dollars trying to figure out how do they increase the number of graduates from SEAL training.
	And all these things they've done going all the way back to World War II when they started training.
	It really, the attrition rate has stayed roughly the same.
	It has been around 75%.
	So 75% of the people that start training do not graduate.
	You know, we often talk about it's the no quit gene.
	Everybody gets pushed to the point.
	Everyone has a breaking point.
	And in SEAL training, they push you to that point and they teach you how to grind through it and keep going.
	Your brain will tell you you have to stop.
	Your brain will tell you, if I don't keep going, I'm going to die.
	But the reality is your body can keep going almost 10 times further beyond that.
	And so it's the ability to endure that gets you through training.
	But the other thing that I think special operations guys, they have the ability to process massive amounts of information in a very chaotic environment and make rapid decisions.
	And there's a lot of people that can't do that.
	I mean, when we send guys into, you know, a imagine a hostage rescue scenario where they're now having to make entry into a room where there are bad guys in the room that are shooting at you, you very quickly have to assess that situation, identify who's bad, who's good, who do I need to shoot, who do I not need to shoot, who do I need to protect?
	And all of that's happening in milliseconds.
	And there are definitely guys that make it through training.
	Unfortunately, they don't have the ability to process that information at that rate.
	And sometimes they end up going away just because of that.
	So it's those two things that I think truly make excellent special operations, you know, people, they make great SEALs.
	You know, it kind of reminds me of, I was talking one time to the coach, the head coach of the Minnesota Vikings.
	And he was saying when he recruits quarterbacks, he does need an agile guy who can actually complete the plays and knows how to throw the football and has sort of a physics, a basic knowledge of physics, an instinctual knowledge of physics.
	But he was saying some of the guys can't remember the playbook.
	They don't remember everything that's in there and when to call which play, depending on how the guys line up in the field.
	Far less dangerous, obviously, than what you do.
	But it was kind of a similar thing where it's not enough to have the physical capabilities.
	There has to be this mental thing that you either have or you don't have.
	And if you don't have it, it's as much of a deal breaker as not having the physical strength.
	Absolutely.
	And sometimes it will become the deal breaker.
	I mean, you know, there are a lot of guys out there that are strong.
	I mean, I meet a lot of individuals who will say to me, oh, you know, they're anywhere from professional athletes to, believe it or not, I meet a lot of high-level business individuals in the financial market that will say to me, I definitely could have been a SEAL.
	And, you know, I laugh at A, the arrogance of that statement.
	And maybe they do have a little bit of the financial, I mean, the physical ability.
	But do you have the ability to process information and continue to execute when you're in the middle of a firefighter after you've flown in, taken fire, maybe you've jumped in and now you're patrolling a long ways.
	Maybe you've been in a firefight, but you feel you even get to the target building.
	Now you're in the target.
	You're in a firefight.
	You have people that are wounded.
	Now you're trying to move people out.
	Now you've got civilians you're trying to take care of along with your wounded while things are still blowing up around you and you still got to process all this.
	I mean, that was all stuff that I experienced in my career.
	And there are some people that can do that.
	And unfortunately, there's a lot more that can't.
	They just high pressure environments, they shut down.
	Professional sports is the same.
	You put people, they often talk about the, you know, the high-level games, you know, like the Super Bowl or the NCAA championship games and how some of the players just can't manage that stress and that overwhelming pressure.
	Yeah, you can see it when people choke.
	I mean, in sports, we have an opportunity to see it in a way we don't in military, where you can see who's a choker and who's not, who performs at that high level in the most stressful of circumstances and who doesn't.
Uniting a Fractured Nation 00:14:27
	Now, wait, this is a stupid question, but I have to ask it.
	So are you telling me that even in my own exercise life, which I will grant you is more limited than it ought to be, when I am doing the jumping jacks and I am so burned and my legs are on fire and I'm like, I've got to take the next eight out.
	And I've just got to like bend down for the next eight.
	I'll come back after an eight beat pause.
	Are you telling me I can just keep going?
	Are you telling me that like, if I would just get mentally tougher, I can do it straight through.
	Just keep freaking pushing.
	Absolutely.
	Believe it or not, most people could, if you had the fortitude and the ability to endure the pain and the discomfort, you could probably push yourself right to death.
	You could jumping jack yourself to death.
	It would take a long time.
	There'd be all kinds of alarm bells going off in your brain, probably days before you got there.
	But it is amazing, the resiliency of this amazing machine we walk around in.
	And unfortunately, in this day and age, we are not building that much in our people.
	We are not, we're getting softer as a generation.
	And, you know, every Monday I put out a leadership and resilience video.
	I call it Monday Muster.
	And this last Monday, it was exactly about that.
	I just finished reading this book called Kingdom of Ice by Hampton Sides.
	And it is about the trek to the North Pole in, I believe, 1779.
	And absolutely amazing.
	I read that story and the level of heroism and the level of pain and discomfort and frozen temperatures all the time that those guys had to deal with.
	I consider myself a fairly tough guy.
	And I remember reading it thinking, man, how would I have fared in this?
	So fast forward to today, we don't have to do a lot of things that really push us.
	People have to do hard things in order to build grit and resilience.
	So I really encourage those of you that may be watching, you've got to push your kids to do hard things.
	You have to do hard things.
	You have to encourage your family to do hard things.
	Otherwise, we just get softer and softer.
	And we'll just, you know, it's human nature.
	We want to be comfortable, everybody, including me.
	I mean, we all want to be comfortable, but grit.
	And I like to tell people the overcome mindset is not something you can just flip a switch and say, oh, I have to be tough right now.
	So let me throw my little switch and now I'll be tough.
	It's doing hard things.
	And if you don't do hard things, you will never be able to throw that switch when you really need to.
	It reminds me, your story about your book reminds me of one time I was skiing at this very posh ski resort with my husband and my brother-in-law, some others.
	And just like a downpour of snow came right on top of us, just this huge snowstorm dumped on us and it came fast.
	And so before we knew it, the snow was up above our knees.
	You could barely see in front of you.
	And I said to my brother-in-law, Ken, I feel like Shackleton.
	And he said, except with no hardship.
	Yeah.
	That's exactly right.
	You know, like where they've got the ski butlers who are going to take off the sneak, this, the boots when you get back to the resort.
	Oh, poor me.
	No.
	And they warm your boots.
	I mean, I love the resorts like that.
	We love to ski.
	So anything like that, I'm all about.
	But yeah, I hate the cold now.
	And that expedition, I mean, you are, you are in SEAL training.
	It is the one common thing.
	You are wet, cold, covered in sand.
	So I despise the cold.
	And I just think about these guys.
	These guys were literally cutting frostbite out of their feet.
	Oh, my God.
	I mean, that's how insane the conditions were and how hard.
	And then continuing to go.
	I mean, there are other people that'd be like, oh, I'm now an invalid.
	There's no way I can drive forward.
	But literally, it wasn't until like bones were exposed where they weren't able to walk at all.
	I was just fascinated with this story and the level of grit and resilience.
	And society, we may never get back to that.
	I mean, thankfully, or hopefully we live in a day and we are.
	We are things to people like you.
	This is what our children need to be watching and listening to.
	Guys like you with that same messaging.
	You know, I'd like to say it's still the military writ large, notwithstanding Millie and some of these other guys and the messaging from them.
	But that's what I have my kids listen to.
	I don't want them listening to your weak, we lean into your weaknesses.
	Everyone's sick.
	Everyone's depressed.
	Everyone's near suicidal.
	You know, here's another poll to confirm all that.
	Here, go back in social media to make yourself feel better/slash worse.
	They need to be watching your Insta, Jocko's, all these guys who have been through it about just grit and mental toughness because it is a skill, like you were saying, it's a skill and you have to practice it.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	And that's what a lot of people don't.
	I love the fact when people read my book and they don't really know my story.
	What's out there is, hey, this guy got all shot up and he wrote that sign on the door and he's this top seal.
	What they don't realize is there's a huge part of the story that most people don't know until they read my book.
	And that's that I failed as a young leader.
	And I'll be honest, it was that journey building myself back up against really hard odds that really built the overcome mindset and all the leadership things that I talk about today.
	And, you know, Megan, you nailed it.
	Right now in this country, you know, I joke with people about, you know, we're still in the midst of a pandemic.
	And people go, COVID?
	And I'm like, no, the pandemic is the victim mindset.
	There is a large swath of society that is being convinced you are a victim.
	You know, there are, you know, political leaders that want to convince you, regardless of your race, creed, color, demographic, gender, gender persuasion, religion, religious affiliation.
	I don't care what it is.
	They want to convince you you're a victim and that there's no way you can save yourself.
	Only someone else have to save you.
	Or oftentimes it's only the government can save you, which is scary and a dangerous thought in itself.
	Everything I teach on is on self-leadership.
	You have the power to drive forward and create change in your life.
	And it is the exact opposite of this victim mindset, but it is pervasive.
	It is pervasive across social media.
	It is pervasive oftentimes in the media.
	And we've got to break this.
	I mean, America was built on these foundations of resilience and grit and self-leadership.
	You know, these individuals that came across here to this country and said, hey, we're going to figure out how to overcome and we're going to figure out how to make our way.
	And right now we're not there.
	Everything, even in the military right now, there's this idea about individualism.
	And I believe in self-leadership, but you have to be part of something bigger.
	You know, a military unit is working together.
	It's a whole bunch of leaders who create this unified organism, if you will, that does incredible things.
	So fascinating to watch and a little sad.
	I hope that we can wake up.
	You know, there is, you know, I learned the hard way about individualism because when I got myself in trouble as a leader, it was about me.
	I was selfish, not focused on me and I wasn't focused outward.
	And I think there's a lot of that going on in our country right now.
	You got to take care of yourself, but how does that impact?
	How do you set the example for your staff, your employees, your children, your spouse, your family, your community?
	You know, we need more leadership and we need more grit.
	How do we even still have a military given this mindset amongst the Gen Zers?
	Do you think today's guys are coming into the military with this victim mentality and then it gets sort of beaten out of them?
	Or do you think it just naturally attracts the minority amongst that generation that doesn't have the victim mentality?
	And that's what they're doing there.
	I think there's still a lot of individuals that are coming in the military who have that grit and resilience and want to be part of specific units and certain things.
	I think the problem is there are parts of the military that are becoming a little bit of a social experiment.
	Like, hey, you know, I'm conservative, but I probably have a little more liberal views when it comes to social norms.
	Like, I don't care if you're gay, but in the military, there's no room for individualism.
	You're in the military.
	We all have to fight together.
	Race, creed, color, demographic gender, gender persuasion, none of that matters in the military.
	If you want to do that in your off time, that's fine.
	You can embrace that.
	But as a military, we are a unit that must work together.
	And there is not time or all of that's going to distract if we're so focused on a certain segment or demographic of society that we need to, I don't know, highlight or promote.
	Everybody in the military, when I was in, we all wore the same uniform.
	We didn't highlight anyone.
	And it was amazing to me.
	And just, you know, the guys across the different platoons that I worked, they were different race creeds.
	Some were religious, some were Christians, some were atheists.
	You know, a few other religions that were out there, but it didn't matter.
	What mattered was our ability to execute the mission and you could depend on that person.
	And I think the military deeply needs to get back to understanding that and understand that the purpose of the military is to protect our country, to protect and defend the United States of America, which should be the same mission for any country that's out there.
	And it's not on highlighting whatever is going on in society out there.
	Those are political aims.
	The military should always be apolitical with a singularity of focus, which is to protect and defend our nation against all enemies.
	You know, this is you correct me if I'm wrong, but this is why the focus by Millie on having you guys learn about white rage or Austin defending, handing out Kendi to the troops is so problematic.
	It's not just a distraction from what you need to be focusing on, which I believe it is.
	It's divisive.
	It's kind of sending exactly the opposite of the message you need to ingrain in order to be an effective soldier, right?
	Or frog.
	Like you, frog man, you, you, all the messaging is forget that stuff.
	That stuff is not relevant to us here.
	No, a thousand percent.
	And I mean, it is the same thing in the military as it's happening in our country.
	I've talked about this.
	A lot of political leaders are doing things that are just dividing us as a nation.
	And they want to focus on, you know, specific segments of time.
	Slavery happened.
	It was a terrible thing.
	But there is no country in the past 250 years that has made more advances in trying to create equality.
	I mean, it has been a slow process, obviously.
	But there have been leaders who saw this is wrong.
	We need to fix this.
	And this idea suddenly that these different initiatives that are out there, you know, that focus on America was built on racism.
	I don't think this is true.
	We're throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
	And there's a lot of incredible things that have occurred.
	And when we start to talk about the level of success of the American dream, it has been all race, creed, and colors.
	It's been, there are more millionaires in the world that have come out of the United States of America than any other nation on earth.
	And they're all race, creed, color, and genders.
	You know, and there are some people that would try and say, Well, white males are the majority.
	Well, maybe that's true, uh, right now.
	But instead of trying to create division, why are we not looking for ways?
	You know, two wrongs don't make it right to continue to create division, especially in the military.
	You're creating individuals now, you're creating separation, you're creating a line of distrust, you're creating potentially even a level of hatred, which is not going to further that unit.
	It's all about culture, it's all about trust, it's all about respect for each other.
	That we are equal warriors that are trying to get out there and make something happen.
	It should be the same in this country.
	So, it's disheartening to me, and it's crazy to me because I think back to Martin Luther King's speech when he said, You know, I had a dream that one day men will be judged by the content of their character, not by the caliber of their skin.
	Yet, our political messaging right now is we want to judge individuals by the color of their skin.
	That's terrible, man.
	We're all human.
	We need to, we are, in my opinion, moving backwards.
	We're moving backwards both in the military and both as a nation.
	And that's sad to me because I have worked with everyone, you know, everyone.
	When I lived in the Virgin Islands, I was the only white kid in my class, but I didn't notice that.
	I didn't care.
	They were all my friends.
	And we're becoming the society that wants to focus so much on race.
	I hate the fact that every single form I fill out today is like, well, what race are you?
	Yep.
	And we should eradicate that.
	And it should just say, are you an American?
	If you're an American, if you're an American citizen, that's what you are.
	You know, I think the only things that maybe they still have that on is potentially medical documents because there is some linkage, of course, to race and nationality.
	And hopefully, they can help prevent that.
	Anything else, it should go away because it's just used as a method to divide us.
	And that should not be the case, man.
	Our leadership should be looking at how to unite us.
	And right now, all I see is political leadership who's continuing to divide us.
Surviving Hell Week in Cold Water 00:07:27
	And it's happening in the military too, which is super, super dangerous.
	All right, let's talk about your experience and sort of get the audience through what it was like for you.
	So, you, as I understand it, you deployed and you joined the military on September 11th, 1992, joined the Navy.
	Is that right?
	September 11th, 92.
	That's right.
	Little did you know.
	I mean, you know, what, nine years later, what was going to be happening in this country for guys in the military in particular.
	So, you go out to boot camp, you do Buds training.
	That was January of 1995.
	I know that this is like small ball for SEALs guys to talk about Buds training, but everybody else loves hearing about it.
	So, can you just give us a couple of examples?
	I was, you know, just listening to these guys talk about like your friend Lafe and Jocko, they were on a podcast talking about how like it's bullshit to talk about buds, like talk about combat.
	Only the only people want to talk about buds are people who never actually went to combat after buds.
	And that's the highlight of their Navy career.
	But give me a minute on it because I think my sons will enjoy it.
	And I think a lot of people love hearing about just what we put you guys through in order to call yourself a SEAL.
	Yeah, training is hard.
	It's uh, I mean, there's no doubt about it.
	But at the flip side of that coin, I kind of knew what I was getting myself into.
	I had researched.
	I actually served with one of the East Coast SEAL units before I went out to Buds.
	I had a pretty good idea of what I was getting myself into.
	Um, and it is unequivocally hard.
	Training is broken into three different parts.
	Uh, first phase is designed to weed people out, it is designed to be as hard as possible, physically hard as possible.
	And so it's massive amounts of physical exercises and evolutions that are pushing you out of your comfort zone into that zone of discomfort and pain and forcing you to come to grips with your brain is telling you you have to stop, but your body can keep going.
	That culminates with Hell Week.
	And Hell Week is probably considered to be one of the toughest blocks of training in the U.S. military.
	Some say in a lot of our even global military units.
	And Hell Week is exactly that.
	It's a week long, goes from Sunday to Friday.
	And during that week, you will get maybe on average two to three hours of sleep.
	You are constantly wet, coated in sand.
	You're carrying the boat around on top of your head everywhere you go.
	It's not uncommon for guys to chave holes inside their legs or inside their armpits or to rub the hair off their head.
	It's not uncommon for your toenails and fingernails to fall off during Hell Week.
	It's also not uncommon to hallucinate during Hell Week.
	I remember when I went through Hell Week, a couple of things that stand out.
	I remember, one, I was in the, I was, boat crews go by height.
	So the tallest boat crews are in boat crew one.
	Those are the studs.
	And in our class, I remember boat crew one won everything leading up to Hell Week.
	They were the beasts.
	And we got into Hell Week and on Tuesday night, I was in the shortest boat crew, by the way, which is called the Smurf Crew.
	So for those of you that enjoy that, complete with a little Smurf on the front of your boat.
	So, and I remember like the boat crew one were like gods.
	You know, we were like, those guys win everything.
	You know, they just dominated.
	And on Tuesday night of Hell Week, which is one of the hardest evolutions that culminates on Tuesday night, everybody on boat crew one quit that night except one guy.
	And it made me realize they're human too.
	Every single person out there that is like, oh, that guy's got it all figured out.
	Like they never have any doubts.
	That's BS.
	Everyone has doubts.
	Everyone has, you know, their hang-ups and issues.
	The difference between successful people is they continue to drive forward besides those doubts.
	And man, when those guys quit, I was like, I got this and kept driving forward.
	It's hard.
	It's miserable.
	You have to dig deep within yourself.
	And the evolution we were doing is something called steel piers.
	And what they do is, you know, they have like a fire hose that they're missing you.
	It's at night in San Diego Bay.
	I went through Hell Week in March.
	So the temperature was probably in the low 50s.
	The water temp, I would imagine, was probably in maybe high 50s.
	And it was a large floating steel pier.
	And you were forced to remove all your clothing and fold it up.
	You were just wearing a small pair of shorts.
	That was it.
	And they would, you were with your swim buddy in these little metal, I don't know, they were probably like three by three foot squares.
	And the whole class is spread out with their swim buddy.
	And you would have to fold your clothes up.
	And the instructors would say, place your, you know, pants folded up in the northwest corner.
	And none of us had a compass.
	And you've already been awake for like 48 hours.
	So you're like, it's nighttime.
	So you're like, which way is northwest?
	So everyone would try and figure out which way was northwest.
	And the class would come to a conclusion, this is northwest.
	And, you know, you'd mess it up.
	And then you'd get yelled at and they'd force you to lay down on the cold steel and they'd spray you with water until you were shaken enough.
	And at some point, they'd scream at you to get up and jump in the water.
	And I remember we'd all run over to the edge and it was like your body was telling you to go, but your brain would like slam on the brakes.
	And it was so funny.
	You'd watch everybody.
	I remember this in my mind.
	Everybody would get up to the edge of the pier and like come to this stop and be like, and then you just have to force yourself into the water.
	And the instructors would like throw your clothes and your boots into the water, which, you know, you're in the you're in the bay.
	So now you're having to dive down in the darkness and find your stuff.
	And this went on for hours, probably four or five hours.
	And I remember when guys quit, the steel pier was down below the concrete pier, which was up above where the vans were parked up there.
	And there's all, there's a method to the madness.
	I mean, a lot of what SEAL training, special operations training is, it's psychological.
	You know, seal training is not, you don't accomplish seal training through this.
	It's accomplished through this and through this, your ability to find it within your heart and to think through the problems.
	So when guys would quit, they would be given a blanket and a hot cup of coffee or cocoa, and they would go sit in the van that was, had the heater on.
	And you would see them up there sitting in that van drinking with their blanket on, all warm, looking down on you while you're getting your butt kicked.
	And it was so easy to say, man, all I have to do is say, I quit and I can go sit in that warmth.
	And that's, man, that's like life.
	How often do we find these moments like, man, all I have to do is get a little further?
	And I try to explain to people, keep pushing.
	You never know.
The Hidden Power of Sleep 00:03:06
	It's always darkest before the dawn.
	And so, anyways, that's what happened to Boat Crew One.
	All of them, I think, got caught up in it and they quit during that evolution.
	So I remember on Thursday or on Wednesday night, I was hallucinating.
	We were doing an evolution called Around the World, where you rove your boats around Coronado Island.
	And so now you've been awake for what, 96 hours at least.
	And it's very common for guys to start hallucinating.
	And I was seeing fences, chain link fences out in the middle of the ocean.
	And I'd tell the guys, we got to turn.
	We're going to hit this fence.
	I was seeing concrete walls that I was trying to steer around.
	I was hearing voices out in the middle.
	My buddy, he was telling me he saw a witch standing out in the water.
	And like, he told himself, like, okay, that's not there.
	So I'm just going to look away.
	And when I look back, it's going to be gone.
	When he looked back, she was still there.
	So he was like, guys, we got to row faster.
	This witch is going to get us.
	Is it just from lack of sleep?
	Is that what's causing the hallucinations?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Lack of sleep.
	Man, it is amazing.
	People really underestimate sleep and how good sleep is for you and how bad it is for you when you don't sleep, how bad your brain starts to break down and your decision making becomes poor.
	And yeah, even to the point you're starting to hallucinate.
	I was just talking to a doctor about this and we were talking about how, you know, some people, they get up at the crack of dawn, pre-crack of dawn to work out.
	And that's fine as long as you've built in enough sleep prior to that point that you've gotten a good night.
	You know, did you get your seven hours or did you get four hours so that you could get up at 4 a.m.?
	And he was saying they're completely missing the point because sleep is as important as exercise and nutrition to your overall wellness, your mental wellness, your brain function, your heart function, all of it.
	And so unless you can get the seven hours before you get out at four, it doesn't make much sense to do that just so you can work out.
	You need both.
	You need sleep.
	A thousand percent.
	And this is something that I really had to come to grips with.
	I mean, I teach, you know, something called the Pentagon of Peak Performance and the base level is physical leadership.
	And sleep is a big component of that.
	My whole life, I've gotten up early, but I wasn't getting the I need.
	I know my body, I need a minimum six hours.
	Seven is ideal for me to optimize.
	And I wasn't getting that.
	I was running, you know, I got to get up at 5:30 every single morning.
	And in the last year, my cortisol levels were high.
	I was having, you know, some of these health issues.
	And I said, okay, I'm going to force myself to get more sleep.
	And it has reset a lot of things.
	People just underestimate the power of sleep, especially, I mean, people in the business world are guys who think they're really tough.
	And they'll say to me, Hey, I, you know, I get by on four hours sleep a night.
	And I'm like, awesome, man.
Overcoming Victim Mindset in 2004 00:15:42
	Congratulations.
	You are chronically fatigued and nowhere near the optimal self you could be.
	And you'll be dead soon.
	I mean, really, it shortens lifespan.
	So it's really, you can't sacrifice sleep, but work out and eat healthy.
	That's that's just dumb, dumb strategy.
	All right.
	So you're in the Navy.
	You 9-11 happens.
	You are deployed in Afghanistan, right?
	In Afghanistan as an officer in 2004.
	Is that correct?
	I commissioned in 2004.
	We went to Afghanistan in 2005.
	Okay.
	And this is where you, I think it's fair to say, would face this major leadership challenge that you referenced earlier, in which you feel you fell down on the job.
	So tell us what happened.
	It's a little bit of a perfect storm.
	So I came into the Navy in 1992 into a peacetime military.
	And there's a, you know, there's a big difference in a peacetime military and a wartime military.
	I try to, you know, you nailed it when you said when you signed up on 9-11, you had no clue what was coming.
	And that is a fact.
	And I try and explain that to younger guys and gals in the military.
	You never know when something's going to happen.
	None of us saw 9-11 happening.
	We went from total peacetime to total wartime.
	Within, I think, two or three years, all of the SEAL teams were 100% combat experienced.
	And that was one of the goals, obviously.
	So I actually started school in the summer of 2001.
	And 9-11 happened, obviously, in September.
	Myself and a couple of my teammates that were at school together tried to get out of the program.
	Like, hey, we know we're going to war, get us out.
	You know, let us go back to a platoon.
	And one of our most respected leaders who had helped me get commission, I remember prophetically said, Red, this war is going to go on for decades.
	He's like, go back to school.
	You will get your chance.
	So while I was at school, the community obviously was going off to war in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
	And one of the things that occurred was typically the military bases tactics and strategies off the last sustaining combat.
	And the SEAL teams based a lot of our tactics off Vietnam.
	That was the last time we had seen years of combat.
	Well, when we got over to Iraq and Afghanistan, we quickly realized a lot of those old tactics used in the jungles and the Mekong Delta and the swamps of Vietnam didn't necessarily apply quite as well in the mountains and the urban and desert environments out there actually.
	Not only technology advanced with vehicles.
	So the bottom line, our tactics changed pretty drastically.
	So here I was, this ex-enlisted guy who thought I was like God's gift of leadership.
	Ego and arrogance kind of got the best of me.
	And I came back when I got commissioned in 2004 thinking, man, I'm the man.
	I know everything.
	I'm going to step back.
	I'm going to be like Patton reincarnated or something.
	And that really wasn't the case.
	I stepped back in, and technically, I was probably one of the more inexperienced guys because I didn't have combat experience, and probably 60% of our platoon at that point definitely did.
	And instead of humbling myself and saying, and not only that, all our tactics had changed.
	So instead of humbling myself and saying to the guys, the younger guys who might have been more experienced, hey, man, I don't know how to do this.
	I made the mistake as a young leader of saying, oh, I'm a leader.
	Like, it's a sign of weakness if I say I don't know how to do this, which is a fallacy.
	It's wrong.
	But in doing that, I started to damage my credibility as a leader.
	Well, that was hurting me.
	So, and I recognized it was hurting me.
	So then, what was the next thing I did?
	Well, I started, I recognized that I was damaging my credibility.
	I was stepping on my toes, not keeping up like I should be.
	And I started drinking away my stress.
	So then I became known as a drunk on top of everything else.
	Fast forward, deployed to Afghanistan in 2005.
	And the very first mission we were getting ready to transition over.
	So Operation Red Wings was our troop.
	Lieutenant Commander Eric Christensen was my boss.
	A lot of the guys that you will read about that were shot down on the helicopter.
	And that Red Wings is the lone survivor story for those that may be familiar with that.
	If you've seen that movie or watched or read Marcus's book, we had a show last August with his brother.
	It was just an incredibly compelling episode, so they know the story.
	Okay, so I was a part of the troop.
	Our sister platoon was the platoon that was on the helicopter for Red Wing that was shot down.
	We were getting ready to fly to Afghanistan to turn over with those guys that following week.
	I think we were set to fly like right after the 4th of July.
	And of course, on June 28th, the helicopter was shot down.
	So this was our first introduction to combat.
	That's when I first met Marcus at the hospital in Launchfield, Germany.
	We stood watch on Mike Murphy and Danny Diets' bodies.
	They had not recovered Matt Axelfn yet.
	Flew to Afghanistan and the recovery was underway.
	And that's how our deployment started.
	So here I was, this knucklehead young officer who was stepping on his toes, who now, you know, got to combat.
	I wanted to prove myself, you know, hey, Red Wings happened.
	You know, we want payback, which is okay.
	That's fine.
	But there is a balance as a leader.
	We have to, you know, it should be the mission, then the men or the team that you're working with, and you're last on the equation.
	Unfortunately, I inverted that.
	And, you know, how do I make myself look like a great leader and a great hero?
	And I may, I continue to make mistakes, culminating with a bad call on a mission in September of that deployment.
	That call really did damage to my reputation.
	I am very fortunate that no one was injured or killed because of that call.
	But what it did kill was my professional reputation.
	By the time I got back out of that valley, the guys were like, get rid of that guy.
	They were calling me Rambo Red, which that is not a compliment.
	You know, for those who think Rambo is really cool, it's a cool movie.
	It doesn't apply in the military.
	It's kind of what we talked about before.
	There's no room for individualism, especially a leader who is making decisions based on his own glory.
	And that was what I saw.
	I wanted to get in the fight and I saw an opportunity and I took it.
	And I am very fortunate that no one was killed because of my decision making.
	So that started a whole new journey because there were guys who said, kick that guy out.
	And it was the lowest point I've ever hit in my life.
	I went and had to stand in front of my commanding officer and explain my actions.
	And I'll never forget there were guys in that room that were like, get rid of this guy.
	He's going to get people killed.
	And my commanding officer told me to go back to my room and he would let me know the next morning what his decision was.
	And I went back to my room and I almost killed myself.
	I put a gun in my mouth and I started to pull the trigger.
	But fortunately, I think God intervened.
	I looked, I just, right about the time I did it, I looked across at the desk and there was a picture of my wife and kids.
	And, you know, just this voice was like, what are you doing?
	You know, what are you doing?
	What impact are you going to leave behind on them?
	And I remember I put my gun away.
	I went and sought out special operations chaplain and talked to him.
	And we talked a lot.
	And he said, no matter what happens, if they take your trident or if they kick you out, then, you know, you've got to figure out what the path forward is.
	But never forget, for every DN moment in your life, there becomes a new beginning.
	It's up to you what you do with that new beginning.
	This is a big part of what I talk on.
	It's a part of my TED talk that I talk on.
	It's part of what I speak on.
	And he was absolutely right.
	And thankfully, you know, credit to my commanding officer who did not kick me out, even though he absolutely could have.
	As a matter of fact, I'm actually surprised he didn't.
	I mean, here's a guy who's grieving from the loss of 11 teammates only a couple months earlier.
	He didn't get to go home.
	He didn't get to go to the memorial ceremony.
	We had to stay and continue the mission.
	So, and now he's got this knucklehead ensign who's making bad calls.
	I mean, I think it would have been super easy for him to say, I don't have time to deal with this, nor do I have the emotional capacity to deal with this, but he didn't.
	He said, you know what, Red, you've done some good things.
	I believe in you.
	I'm going to give you a second chance.
	And he did.
	I mean, there was some punishment that came along with it.
	Any awards I was supposed to get, they retracted.
	I had to sign an unofficial letter of reprimand that was held in the commanding officer's safe.
	And if I had messed up again, that letter would have gone into my permanent officer record, which would have ended my career.
	And I got sent to U.S. Army Ranger School, which is probably one of the best things that could have happened to me.
	I mean, it's pretty cool.
	I mean, to learn how to be a Ranger and develop all those skills too.
	But you emerged out of that with a whole new set of leadership skills.
	I did.
	Ranger school, I'd love to tell people that when I walked out of the office in Afghanistan after getting that second chance, I was immediately like, yes, I'm going to, I'm going to, you know, recreate myself.
	But, you know, sometimes in this life, our new beginnings take time.
	And, you know, I talk about this victim mindset.
	I had a little bit of the victim mindset.
	I was seeing myself as a victim that the guys threw me under the bus.
	And I hadn't come to grips yet with, you know, the only person that put himself there was me, my poor decision making and really selfishly viewing, looking more at myself and not outward at the team and the mission and the impacts of that.
	And thankfully, it was at Ranger School that I really started to figure that out.
	You know, kind of a interesting side note in Ranger school, I screwed up.
	I failed to land that test.
	And SEALs are a little bit of an anomaly.
	We don't go through Ranger school that often.
	And, you know, there's that great professional rivalry between the Army and the Navy.
	And a lot of the Rangers, I don't think, liked me very much.
	So they let me know it and gave me a lot of grief about being there.
	And when I failed to land that course, man, they laid into me.
	I'm sorry, land navigation.
	This is orienting with a compass to figure out where you're going in the woods, in the dark, and all that.
	And the Ranger School Land Nav course is pretty long.
	We started in the middle of the night.
	And I had taught land nav.
	Once again, ego and arrogance.
	I thought, I'll crush this course.
	And I didn't.
	I failed it.
	I missed a point.
	And the instructors were totally heckling me.
	And in the moment, I allowed my emotions to get the best of me.
	And I basically told those instructors what I thought of them.
	And they said, are you quitting?
	And I said, yeah, I'm out of here.
	It's the only thing I've ever quit in my life.
	And so I had to go meet with the Ranger Colonel.
	And the Ranger Colonel listened and he said, I think you should talk to one of your SEAL teammates.
	And I'll be honest, I was utterly ashamed and embarrassed.
	And I was like, I don't want to talk to anyone.
	You know, I just want to crawl under a rock.
	And like, I guess this is the end of my military career.
	And he said, hey, I'm friends with a guy's name is Colonel.
	He was Colonel KK Chin back then.
	He retired a two-star general and I have become friends with him because he really amazing guy, amazing leader.
	He saved my career.
	And he ended up calling one of our most respected SEAL leaders who happened to be a mentor of mine, who had helped me get commissioned.
	And he put me on the phone with him.
	And I remember telling him this whole story how, you know, I ended up there.
	And he said, Red, I know all about what happened with you.
	Did you ever think that you're seeing this as punishment?
	He said, did you ever think you might learn something from this?
	And I said, no.
	And then I told him, I said, but sir, no one's ever going to follow me again.
	I've made too many mistakes.
	I don't think I can recover from this.
	And he gave me the foundational level of everything that I teach in leadership.
	Now he said, Red, people will follow you if you give them a reason to.
	That's it.
	That's all leadership is.
	He said, I don't care how bad you've messed up.
	It's human nature that if someone is on the winning team, if someone is leading a team, a community, a company to success, and they're a pretty good person, you know, despite any mistakes they made in their past, it's human nature.
	We're going to follow them.
	We want, we all want to be on the winning team.
	He said, so go back to Ranger school, crush it, come back and give the guys a reason to follow you.
	And I was like, Roger, that.
	I hung up the phone and I looked at the Ranger Colonel and I said, will you put me back in my class?
	And he said, no, you quit.
	You get to go sit in Ranger School jail for a month and you'll class up with the next class.
	So for a month, I walked around Fort Benning picking up trash.
	And it was probably the best thing that ever could have happened to me because it finally humbled me and it gave me a lot of time to think about I was the problem.
	I was the problem.
	And it was my lack of my own self-leadership, selfish leadership that put me there.
	And it really changed everything.
	I created a new, you know, my three rules of leadership that I now teach.
	And that enabled me to drive forward, graduate Ranger school and slowly over the next couple of years, build back my credibility as a leader.
	This is what is so extraordinary about our military and some of the leaders who are in it.
	They somehow know when it's time to temper that extreme discipline and harsh, unforgiving training with mercy and inspiration and encouragement.
	The best leaders do.
	I mean, that's just a gift when you have a guy like that above you who knows you and knows what you need in the moment, whether it's a kick in the pants or a lift.
	That's, I love that story.
	And I love knowing that there are guys like that out there training the next generation of warriors and that you're out there using these same skills to help civilians too try to get through just life with some of these lessons that apply.
	And our military.
	I mean, I frequently speak to the military.
	I've been fortunate enough to speak almost all the service academies.
	West Point, all you have to do is call me.
	I will come speak for you guys.
	Yes, and it's amazing.
	It's so beautiful there.
	You should go.
	I know.
	I want to.
	You know, I mean, I speak Army.
	I wear the Ranger tab.
	I speak Army.
	Yeah, exactly right.
	Well, thank you for sharing that with me.
	That's like with all of us.
	That's, that's a very moving story.
	That could be the most moving story of the exchange we have.
Finding Love After War 00:04:41
	I feel like I learned so much already.
	And we haven't even gotten to the, you know, apex of everything that you've gone through.
	I do, before we get to your injury and what happened, can we just spend a minute on Erica?
	Because she's a huge part of your story.
	And we kind of glanced by on my wife and my kids.
	By the way, when you told me about that moment when you were feeling like you might take your own life and, you know, God stepped in and stopped you, I completely believe that was an angel.
	That was an angel was sent to you to stop you in the same way I talked to Dakota Meyer last Memorial Day.
	And he talked about the same thing.
	It was back when he got stateside again though, for him.
	And he actually tried.
	He pulled the trigger.
	He had the gun, pulled the trigger, and an angel had taken the bullets out of the gun.
	He thought it was loaded.
	But just I feel like so many of you guys go through these massive travails and emotional traumas, whether it's while you're serving or the buildup to the serving or just you're so hard on yourself and you're so used to being able to do everything at a high level, right?
	And then when you have a failure, that's when you really get tested.
	And I just think every once in a while you need an angel to come help you.
	And I agree with you that God plays a role.
	So I'm glad you had, I'm glad you had your faith to get you through.
	All right.
	So Erica, just to rewind now, because we're in 2005, I think, when you did Army Ranger school and you had all that happen to you.
	But five years earlier, you'd been out in the town.
	What town were you in?
	It's backstateside, right?
	Louisville, Kentucky.
	Louisville, Kentucky.
	And you guys were out, a bunch of you and you decided that night for whatever reason you're going to pretend that you were all there as boxers, that you were there for some big boxing match.
	And you see this stunning blonde with the thousand watt smile from across the room.
	And I mean, man, did you woo her?
	Your lines, I mean, they will live in infamy.
	But I just.
	So tell us how you managed to woo this amazing woman into having a drink with you.
	Well, she ditched me at first.
	So once again, you know, tell me I can't do something.
	And I hung out with the guys a little more.
	And it was a great big place for any of you that are familiar with Louisville, Kentucky.
	It was the Phoenix Hill Tavern, which is a, you know, it's a huge warehouse type bar.
	I had like, I don't know, three levels, six or seven bars in it.
	And I'd gone upstairs at some point.
	I looked across the upstairs bar area and she was kind of across the room standing on top of this, I don't know, elevated structure.
	And there was a guy talking to her and she just looked miserable.
	Like, I wish this guy would leave.
	And I was like, yes, here's my chance.
	So I went up and I kind of jumped up on the platform with her.
	And she seemed rather shocked.
	And the guy seemed rather perturbed, but I just kind of ignored him.
	And finally, he got the message and left.
	And I don't know, we just hit it off.
	There was kind of a natural chemistry that we talked from that point forward through the rest of the night and ended up linking up with her the next day for a barbecue, which is kind of a funny story because she didn't mention that she had a young son.
	He was four months old or six months old at that time.
	And literally, we opened the door and she like hands him to me.
	Here, hold awesome.
	And then she's like, hey, by the way, we have a new grill.
	So can you put the grill together?
	So, yeah, that was kind of our first date.
	I put this grill together for a barbecue.
	I'm trained early.
	I like this girl.
	Like, this is how it's going to be.
	You're going to help me with my son.
	You're going to put my grill together.
	And I'm going to do things for you too.
	So, yeah, I remember I read from your book: your opening line was, Hi, I'm Jay.
	How are you doing?
	Can I buy you a drink?
	I cringed at my lack of wit and charm in the weakest pickup line ever.
	What the hell?
	That's the best I've got.
	But you know what?
	That's really all it takes.
	Any like faux attempt to be overly clever is usually seen right through.
	So I think you know, you did the right thing, obviously, because it all worked out.
	So you wound up getting married.
	You married Erica and you had two additional children, two daughters.
	So those are the three kids and the wife and the family that you referenced when the times were tough.
	And she's still with us.
	I mean, she's still with you.
	And we'll get to all of that, but I love the story of Erica.
	So now we're post-Ranger school and you got to go back out there.
	And is this, it was what?
Walking into a Deadly Ambush 00:14:08
	It was May of 2007 that you were deployed to Fallujah, Iraq.
	And oh my God, can I tell you, Jay, whenever I even hear Fallujah, I brace myself.
	It's just like all the stories are awful.
	They're just all awful.
	They're terrible.
	Just so many bad things happened there.
	And it just seems like it went so poorly.
	And it was so incredibly violent and dark.
	And our guys were just overwhelmed time after time and kept fighting and the sacrificing.
	So it's already a trigger, I think, for a lot of people who covered the news, you know, as I was doing at that time.
	Never mind the guys who actually lived it.
	So you knew going over there at that point, high, high levels of danger here, yes?
	Yeah, absolutely.
	I mean, we, the, the, um, Jocko's deployment was uh 2006, prior to us operating out of Ramadi, and a lot of the guys who were operating prior to us.
	Fallujah, Ramadi, and Habanier, the big cities in the Ambar province.
	And a lot of the fighting had intensified in 06 and 07 really heavily.
	The second big battle, you know, a large battle occurred in Fallujah in 06.
	The Ambar Awakening had occurred.
	So a lot of the local tribal sheikhs had finally, I think, had enough.
	And whereas before they weren't really cooperating much with the coalition forces, the American government, the American military machine, I think finally they said, if we don't cooperate with them, we're never going to be able to get our country back.
	So what started to happen was in 06 and 2007, they started feeding us real intelligence, which enabled us to really start going after Al-Qaeda and insurgent leadership.
	So I will say as SEALs, even though we knew it was a high level of danger, it also was everything we had ever trained to do.
	At the pinnacle of special operations is direct action missions to take out mid-level and high-level enemy leaders and then probably hostage rescue type operations.
	And we got exposed to a lot of direct action going to those leaders, but also even at one point trying to rescue an army soldier in a Marine.
	And I just, those moments stood out in my mind, like how amazing it was that I was part of a unit that had trained to the level that these were the things that we could do.
	So we had a lot of close calls on that deployment, but it also, I was with one of the best troops I've ever been a part of.
	It gave me an opportunity to grow as a leader and learn and really put a lot of the new leadership things that I had incorporated into my life starting in Ranger School on this very intense combat deployment.
	You were second in command?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	And you'd been over there for quite a few months when I think it was September rolled around.
	And you were out on such a mission, as you just described, trying to take down this relatively high-level leader.
	And you've been given some intel about where you could find him.
	And you guys moved in to do exactly that and what happened.
	To make a long story short, we walked into a very well-executed ambush.
	The initial building we took down, they were not there, but we found a lot of signs that someone had recently been there while we were collecting intelligence and we had found IED making components and we were going to blow all that stuff up.
	Our snipers saw a bunch of activity on another building about 150 yards away.
	So my boss had me take about nine members of my team, myself and eight other members, seven SEALs and our interpreter, and move on this other building where we had seen individuals come out of the front door and run across the street into this vegetation.
	What we didn't know was our number one Al-Qaeda leader for the Ambar province, he had been in our original building we were in and he had moved to that building.
	And he had about a 15-man security detail that then set up an ambush line in the vegetation across the street.
	And those individuals we saw go out the door were the last part of his security detail that were part of that ambush line.
	And my team and I walked, unfortunately, right into that ambush.
	I mean, we were, we knew that there was enemy.
	We had air assets overhead.
	We had the Air Force AC-130 gunship that we were talking to.
	And hey, can you see weapons?
	They couldn't see anything.
	So, you know, and we had seen this before.
	We weren't just walking blindly.
	I mean, we had seen cases where the enemy would hide, not recognizing, you know, the technology and things like that.
	So unfortunately, yeah, we walked into a very well-executed ambush.
	My medic was initially hit, taken around directly below the knee.
	And then one of our other guys, Maddie, ran forward, grabbed our medic, started to drag him back.
	Maddie was shot up the right side, two rounds in his leg, one in his arm, still managed strong enough to pull himself and loop back to the tire behind us.
	There was like a large tractor tire, nothing but thousands of yards of empty Iraqi desert.
	And there was kind of a large John Deere style tractor tire.
	And then there was a tree, maybe, I don't know, 10 yards away from that tractor tire.
	And DJ fell back to the tree.
	Everybody else was behind the tractor.
	I was still out front at this point.
	I was trying to lay down fire when both machine guns turned on me and I was stitched across the body armor.
	I took two rounds in the left elbow, which I thought shot my arm off in the moment.
	I took rounds off my gun, rounds off my helmet.
	I had my left night vision tube shot off.
	I took rounds off my right side plate, turned to try and move back to the guys.
	And it was at this point that I caught a round in the face.
	It hit me right in front of the ear, traveled through my face, exited the right side of my nose, took off most of my nose, blew out my right cheekbone.
	What was left of the cheek broke and kicked out to the right.
	The bullet traveled right under my eye, vaporized my orbital floor.
	It broke all the bones above my eye.
	I fell in this newfound hole in my face.
	It broke the head of my jaw and shattered my jaw to my chin, and it knocked me out.
	The guys saw me fall and initially thought I was dead.
	Thankfully, you know, a tribute to the SEAL teams and how we train, we don't leave anybody behind.
	And they could have easily said, Red's dead, let's continue to try and fall back or whatever we can do.
	But I was, you know, pinned down probably 15 yards in front of them while this literal gunfight was happening directly over me.
	When I came to, I realized I was still in this gunfight.
	I realized that I was totally unable to do anything.
	And thankfully, my team lead, Jay, who combat experience SEAL, what we call a JTAC, he is trained to coordinate airstrikes from aircraft to the ground.
	And Jay coordinated and said, hey, to the AC-130, we need an immediate, we need an immediate fire mission.
	And unfortunately, we were so close.
	I was only 45 feet from the machine gun that had me pinned down.
	And that's well, well, well within danger close parameters.
	And the gunship said, no way we can bring this.
	We're going to kill you guys if we do.
	And so they said, hey, you need to figure out a way to fall back.
	So gunfight went on for another five minutes or so.
	The entire gunfight lasted about 35 to 40 minutes.
	Jay called for another one.
	They said no.
	On the third attempt, probably after 15 minutes, he basically said, Hey, look, you know, if you don't bring in this fire mission, there's not going to be anybody left.
	You know, I got people critically wounded.
	We're running out of ammo.
	Like, you have to bring in this fire mission.
	It was at that point they basically put the onus on him.
	They made him give his JTAC designator number, meaning the training that our joint tactical air controllers go through that basically say they have the ability to do this job.
	They understand all the ordinance.
	They understand all the danger close parameters.
	And they made him read off his JTAC number or give his JTAC number that basically said, you're acknowledging that we may potentially kill you if we bring this strike in.
	And Jay did an amazing job coordinating that.
	I remember him calling out to me, incoming, and the aircraft flies at a pretty high altitude.
	And you can hear the gun go off.
	And then there's a delay, probably five or six seconds before the rounds hit the ground.
	And I remember hearing the, you know, whoomp, whoomp, whoomp of the gun up overhead, and the enemy was still firing.
	So machine guns churning away.
	And all of a sudden, you know, explosions incurred in front of us and blew up over us.
	And all of a sudden, that gun went cold.
	That machine gun in front of me that had me pinned down went cold.
	And I heard the enemy like crying out to Allah, Allah, Allah Akbar.
	And I remember thinking to myself, stand by, man, like here he comes.
	And sure enough, next rounds came in, which took him out, took other enemy out.
	Jay came forward at this point, grabbed me, got me back to the tire, got a tourniquet on me.
	I owe my life to him.
	And we ended up calling in, I think, eight or nine more fire missions before we were able to bring in the medevac, um, you know, to get us out of there.
	Oh, my God.
	What's Jay's full name?
	Um, I think it's okay for it to be out there.
	So, Jay Alias, I was with him this weekend, and this was a conversation we had.
	So, this is kind of the first time, but he told me he's okay with being out there more.
	Before, I had not, we had not talked about it, or I had not given his name.
	But I owe my life to him.
	I love that man, uh, and all my teammates.
	I owe my life to my teammates and that gunship.
	I mean, you know, people want to say, Oh, you're so tough, you know, maybe, but I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for those guys.
	I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for that gunship up overhead.
	And that's what frustrates me with the military right now with this focus on individualism.
	Like, it is the team effort, it is all different, you know, it's all of us together from different backgrounds and different demographics and different race and creeds and all these different things that come together for a very unified mission.
	In this case, that mission was to make sure that we all came home alive.
	Or, at a minimum, you know, if I had died, they would have brought, you know, hopefully my body home to Erica and the kids.
	But thankfully, you know, I was able to hang on and they did a great job fighting in that gunship.
	So, rightfully so.
	The gunship was decorated.
	I don't feel like our guys were decorated enough.
	I am going to come back around.
	It's something I've been talking about with them about resubmitting them for award reviews.
	But I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for those guys.
	We took some hits, obviously, but we didn't lose a single guy.
	And the other guys did.
	There was no one.
	The enemy leader got away.
	He got away long before this gunfight ever occurred.
	They came out in the ambush.
	He managed to sneak out the back of the house, but everybody that engaged us, there was no one left to go home and talk about it.
	He got away, but not for long.
	Not for long.
	Another team ended up about four months later finishing the job.
	Good.
	We got him.
	We got him eventually.
	So you, what, next thing you know, you wake up where?
	They take you to the hospital.
	And it's an incredible story, you sort of coming back to consciousness and starting to process what's happened to you.
	Yeah, so they initially normally head injuries go to Balad, but I was so critical they flew me directly to Baghdad.
	Got to Baghdad.
	And I'll be honest, I don't think I thought I was going to make it.
	But thankfully, you know, and this is a shout out to the amazing military medical teams and the trauma surgeons.
	A lot of people don't know that the greatest advances in trauma medicine are made in war.
	And it's incredible.
	There are a lot of civilian trauma doctors and orthopedic surgeons and all kinds of anesthesiologists that volunteer to go over to the war zone in these dangerous places.
	And literally some of the best and the brightest doctors in the world end up coming and helping to save our wounded.
	And they're so good.
	I knew that if you made it to the hospital with a pulse, you had a 90% chance of making it home alive.
	And I hung on to that fact like a lifeline as I flew that medevac helicopter and drifted in and out of consciousness.
	So I got there.
	They saved me.
	I remember waking up and I was so elated to know that I was still alive.
	I also was fascinated because I thought my arm had been shot off.
Healing from Battlefield Surgery 00:15:13
	And I remember learning that I still had an arm, gravely damaged.
	Later, they would talk about amputating it and they would keep it.
	But in the beginning, I was happy for that.
	And I remember my commanding officer and my command mask chief were there in the hospital as I woke up.
	And I remember going to talk and I couldn't talk.
	And the nurse said, hey, you know, Lieutenant, you're trached.
	You know, you're messed up.
	Your wire's shut and you're trached.
	You're not going to be able to talk.
	So I said, okay, give me a piece of paper.
	And I wrote down three questions.
	I said, are my guys okay?
	And they told me that Luke and Matt were out of surgery and that they were going to be okay.
	And I said, okay, has my wife been notified?
	And that's a funny story or kind of a crazy story in itself.
	But at this point, she had been notified.
	Although my commanding officer did not know my mental state.
	And that was a real concern of theirs with this head injury.
	They didn't know the angle of the bullet.
	They only knew I had been shot in the face.
	So they didn't know if I did survive what level of mental, did I have a major traumatic brain injury or anything like that?
	So he would later call her after this and let her know I was doing okay.
	So that was the second question.
	And the third question, I don't know why I asked this.
	I said, do I still look pretty?
	And they told me no.
	They told me, no, that getting shot in the face would probably be an improvement.
	And it actually was.
	I used to have like a big old Tom Cruise nose.
	So two facts.
	Jay and I were actually joking about this, that I had a big old Tom Cruise nose that I had broken and I had a deviated septum that right before that deployment, I had gone to see about surgery to fix it.
	And they told me I would be down for like two months.
	I was like, I'll wait till after deployment.
	And then obviously they shot my nose off.
	So I got a brand new nose.
	Thanks.
	So if you've ever wondered about where your tox dollars would go, this one made a difference.
	I have to tell you, I've been looking at you and I've been looking at your before pictures.
	And you actually are better looking now.
	Your nose is obviously a little crooked, but you just look like a little bit more grisly.
	I don't like the long hair and the beard and like the eyebrows.
	Something's working about it.
	You looked a little bit more clean cut before.
	And this look is a little bit better for like the Navy CL who served the, I'm digging it.
	So I think I'm sure Erica backs me up on this, but I think you look amazing.
	She does.
	She likes the longer hair and the beard.
	Thank you, Megan, Kelly.
	I appreciate that.
	Yeah, it's working for you.
	It's working for you.
	I mean, there were easier ways of getting there, but yeah, you managed to find your way through.
	So can we talk about the time you talked?
	You first, the first thing you said to Erica when you talked to her, because it's sort of to it evidences your mental state.
	And while some people thought it was a little surprising, it's a great story about how you telegraphed to her, you were fine.
	Yeah.
	So I went from Baghdad where they stabilized and saved my life to Balad.
	And then they moved me to Germany.
	It was in Germany.
	I had some more stabilization surgeries.
	And one of my teammates flew with me.
	And obviously, I could not talk.
	So Erica had not and I had not talked at all.
	She was trying to get everything taken care of with the kids.
	And she knew they had told her approximately when I would get to Bethesda.
	So she was trying to get ready for that.
	And so my teammate who was there with me was like, do you want to call Erica?
	And I said, yes, let's do this.
	I said, you know, you talk to her.
	I'll write down what to say to her.
	And so I don't remember the first couple of things.
	Might have been, hey, babe, I got, I'm sure you've heard, I got all banged up.
	And the second thing I said, but my Wang's okay.
	And, you know, and military members will fully understand this because, you know, as service members, unfortunately with IEDs and everything else, I mean, that isn't a fear, you know, obviously.
	And it was kind of a running joke.
	So when I told her that, it let her know immediately that he's okay.
	His sense of humor is still intact.
	So.
	As is the Wang.
	So good news on multiple fronts.
	Absolutely.
	I love this too.
	This is from your book.
	When you were talking to Gil, who is the one who was answering the questions for you.
	Your wife has been notified.
	I spoke to her myself.
	I try to not.
	I want to thank him, but the track and my wire job preclude that.
	Gil then adds, in response to your third question, and the guys wanted me to tell you, you never look pretty.
	It's great.
	It feels good to be insulted at certain low points in your life.
	It's actually a pick-me-up.
	It's one of the great, it's one of the things I miss the most now that I'm out of the military, especially this day and age where like we've created, once again, the victim mindset, you know, oh my God, if you say this about me, I must be insulted.
	Even though half the time people say things that are in jest.
	Oh my God, how dare you joke about, I don't know anything today.
	And in the SEAL teams, there's nothing off limits.
	I mean, we would poke fun at anything and everything, including when I was injured.
	I got, I mean, one of the guys showed up in the hospital.
	I'm wired shut with my face blown out and he showed up with beef jerky.
	So, I mean, that's the type of humor.
	And I mean, you know, this life is too short to take yourself that seriously.
	And that's, I miss that the most.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I can see why.
	So you, I mean, we're not going to go through it all, but you did.
	You, 39 surgeries?
	Yeah, 40 when it's all said and done.
	Although Erica, also known as the long-haired admiral, tells me that the last two don't count because they were kidney stone surgeries.
	But I'm like, I've had 40 surgeries since I was wounded.
	So, I mean, was that, not to ask like another dumb question, but like, was that traumatic?
	Because like a surgery of any kind, I would just had C-sections, but I mean, it's traumatic.
	And just that alone, never mind after a massive injury on a battlefield and, you know, the emotional trauma of all that.
	Like, how did you handle that many times in and under the knife?
	So it's interesting.
	I mean, you know, I tell people, once again, a lot of people assume that my battlefield injuries were like the worst thing that ever happened to me, but that failure as a leader, you know, God works in mysterious ways.
	It prepared me to deal with all this adversity.
	That journey back, having to take small incremental steps to build back my credibility and reputation, the leadership lessons that I had built in myself.
	And when I was in the hospital, I told myself, hey, man, this, this is no different from that journey.
	Now it's a medical journey.
	I said, this is medical Buds, which Buds is the acronym for SEAL training, basic underwater demolition SEAL training.
	I said, this is medical buds.
	You know, you don't have to like it, but you have to do it and we have to go.
	And I wanted to be operational again.
	So I knew I had to go through all these surgeries if I even remotely had a chance at doing that.
	So every surgery, the doctors used to laugh because literally I would be in the post op.
	And one of my very first questions after they would tell me how the surgery went would be, I'd write out, when can we schedule the next one?
	Let's get it on the schedule now.
	Because I wanted to just, you know, churn and burn.
	I wanted to try and recover as quickly as I could, which ended up, you know, battlefield injuries are really dirty.
	I had a lot of infection problems.
	There were a lot of setbacks.
	I mean, it ended up taking almost four years to put me back together.
	Well, I've gotten ahead of myself because immediately post the massive injury before the 3940 surgeries, I'm kind of with Erica.
	I don't think we can call the, I don't think we can count the stones.
	You posted the infamous sign, the sign, the famous sign, not infamous, that connotes something bad.
	And that's how you came to be so memorable in my own life.
	Hearing that story after meeting you when your face was still pretty banged up was just incredible.
	I mean, it was a true inspiration to me as a human, and it's inspired countless numbers of others since then.
	So just set the stage for, we're going to read it, but just set the stage for where you were and what made you realize you needed to post a sign like the one we're going to discuss.
	So I'd probably only been in the hospital about a week, which is seven days, give or take.
	And I will admit, I struggled a little bit in the beginning.
	I think there's this big spike of elation, like I survived.
	And then the reality kind of set in that I am really messed up.
	Doctors were telling me it was going to be months to put at a minimum.
	Or let me rephrase that.
	Doctors were telling me it was going to be years to put me back together, whereas I thought it'd only take a few months.
	The prognosis was not good.
	My elbow was totally destroyed.
	I had no use in my left hand.
	There was massive nerve damage, obviously the massive amount of damage to my face.
	And I just, I was kind of struggling.
	I felt like a monster.
	You know, I was really scared before I saw Erica the first time.
	I was really scared.
	She is a rock star.
	That's how she earned her name, the long-haired admiral.
	I mean, she didn't bat an eye.
	So I had her, but I was kind of struggling with where do I go from here?
	How do I overcome this?
	You know, pain and I'm disfigured.
	I felt like I'd be a monster for the rest of my life.
	And I had some individuals that came into the room and we had a short conversation.
	And then I guess I maybe was drifting off and they were talking amongst themselves.
	And if any of you have been in that, you know, that in-between awake and you're not quite asleep, you can still hear the sounds, the TVs.
	Yeah.
	And I caught bits and pieces of their conversation.
	And I don't fault them.
	There are some people that are like, how rude?
	How could they have that conversation in your room?
	Military hospital is a really hard place to be during a time of war.
	There are young men and women that are blown apart, missing limbs, traumatic brain injuries.
	It is very overwhelming to see this many young people.
	And they were there and I think they were caught up in this.
	And they started having a conversation about what a shame, what a pity.
	We send these young men and women off to war and they come home broken and battered and they'll never be the same.
	And then they left.
	And Erica had gone down to get a cup of coffee or something.
	So I was in my room by myself just thinking about this.
	It kind of woke me up and I was both angry and like, is that going to be me?
	Am I going to be this broken veteran, you know, that is never successful again?
	Am I going to be like Lieutenant Dan from the movie Forrest Gump, you know, the beginning of the movie, hookers and booze, Lieutenant Dan, not you got new legs, Lieutenant Dan.
	And I wrestled with it for a few minutes and then I went back to everything that I had been through.
	And what I try to explain to people is that the victim mindset focuses on all the negativity.
	It focuses on it's unfair.
	You know, I'm never going to be better.
	We focus on the immediate here and now, not recognizing that the greatest gift you have in this life is you have a choice.
	No one forces you to lay there and feel sorry for yourself.
	I don't care what situation you're in.
	As long as your brain is still working, you have free will.
	And you have the ability to decide how you're going to handle this situation, no matter how bad and uncomfortable and unpleasant it may be.
	And it was in that moment when Erica walked back into the room.
	I said, never again.
	That is never going to happen again.
	From this point forward, I will never feel sorry for myself again.
	And I will not allow anybody else to come in this room and feel sorry for me.
	And I asked her for my pen and paper and I wrote out this sign.
	And it said, attention to all who enter here.
	If you're coming in this room with sadness or sorrow, go elsewhere.
	The wounds I received, I got in a job that I love, doing it for people that I love, defending the freedom of a country I deeply love.
	I will make a full recovery.
	What is full?
	That's the absolute utmost physically.
	I have the ability to recover.
	And I'm going to push that about 20% further through sheer mental tenacity.
	This room you're about to enter is a room of fun, optimism, and intense rapid regroup.
	And we signed it to management.
	And the original sign was put on a regular piece of paper that I had been writing on.
	But later, Erica went and bought that large orange red piece of poster paper and we transcribed it word for word, put it on the door.
	A teammate tactics tried it into it.
	And a New York firefighter wrote a blog about it and it went viral.
	It went all over the place.
	It was all over the news.
	To date, you know, it has been written about in multiple books.
	Secretary Robert Gates wrote about it.
	First Lady Michelle Obama wrote about it twice in her book, Becoming Michelle, sent me a handwritten note on how much it moved her.
	And it is now earned me an invitation to the White House to meet President Bush, who signed it.
	And we had it framed and dedicated.
	I didn't feel like it was mine.
	I felt like it belonged to the hospital and the other wounded warriors.
	And it now hangs in Walter Reed in the middle of the wounded ward and continues to motivate and inspire other wounded warriors.
	And now it's been amazing.
	I mean, I don't know hundreds of thousands of people who have written me and said, hey, I put your sign on the door.
	I have cancer.
	I've been injured or my kid has been injured or my kid has cancer.
	You know, thank you.
	So you just never know the power of positivity and choosing to drive forward despite the hardship and adversity we face.
	And that's what that sign is.
	People will follow if you give them something to follow.
	Like who knew, who knew that maybe your most important role in these conflicts would be helping severely wounded guys coming back with no hope understand that there was a way out.
	And it began with attitude and the decisions about how you'd handle what happened to you and who would have access to you in this, your most vulnerable time.
	Right.
	I mean, I'm sure we have no idea the number of people you've helped, even outside the military, as you point out, people in cancer wards who read that message and remind themselves, I have a choice here.
	And the choice I make really could be the difference between life and death.
Unconditional Love and Family Recovery 00:07:58
	It really could.
	Well, and to lift up those around you, that was one of my big goals.
	Like I wanted to set the example for my kids.
	I wanted to set the example for Erica.
	I wanted to set the example for other wounded warriors around me.
	And I think that's such a powerful thing because you can't, we may not be able to change the situation we're in.
	You know, we've got to navigate through that.
	We've got to navigate through the pain and the misery and all the things that work, but we definitely can change.
	We can be what I like to say.
	It's one of the shirts we created.
	Be the light in the darkness.
	Be the light.
	You know, in those dark times, so many people are waiting for someone else to come save them or someone else to help them.
	Well, you do it.
	You know, you do it.
	You be the light, man.
	And it'll help.
	It helps with your mindset.
	You know, you start pouring some positivity into yourself.
	It's amazing how much it makes an impact.
	You may not, I try to explain to people that's part of the overcome mindset.
	And you may not be able to get back what you've lost.
	I meet so many people who that's what their focus is.
	Like, I want back my health or I want back my relationship or I want back my business or whatever it is I've lost.
	And that may not be the case, but a willingness to drive forward, you're going to take that the end moment and create a new beginning.
	I read in your book about how it was when you saw Erica for the first time post-injury.
	And it was actually kind of shocking because you were writing about how, unfortunately, there are a lot of cases where the wife or the girlfriend comes in and sees the severely injured soldier and pieces right out of there.
	I mean, that's horrifying.
	But so there was, you know, in the back of your head, some concern, you know, given how badly injured you were in the face and so on.
	And obviously, what was going to be ahead of you guys?
	Is she going to stick with me?
	And Erica was solid.
	The long-haired admiral came through.
	She came through huge.
	It wasn't a thing.
	Huge.
	But I know you were worried about it.
	You said, don't bring the kids right away.
	Like, I don't want them to see me like this.
	So, how was it?
	Because obviously, when you first saw your kids, you didn't look like you look now.
	You definitely looked closer to right after the injuries.
	So how did they handle that?
	Good.
	And a lot of that I got to attribute to, you know, Eric and I were really locked on.
	I mean, I think that's one of the, as a couple, your ability to be unified in your decision making.
	And, you know, her and I discussed how would we handle this.
	You know, it's been something that's been a common theme throughout our marriage.
	So much so.
	99% of, first off, SEALs have almost a 90% divorce rate.
	Special operations, pretty close.
	Guys who are wounded have almost a 99%.
	It's just very hard on families to sustain these type of injuries.
	And Eric and I talked: okay, well, how are we going to manage this?
	One of the things we said, and we were fortunate enough to have family to help, we weren't going to change the kids' schedules.
	The kids' schedules were going to stay the same.
	We had family that came in.
	If they had dance and soccer and school, they were going to be there.
	So they would be home.
	Erica stayed up at the hospital on the weekends.
	Family would bring, not in the beginning.
	I didn't see the kids for probably three weeks.
	And there were several things that I told I said I wanted.
	One, I was really, some of the original pictures are not out there.
	I think if you dig deep enough, there's some surgical journals that have pictures of me in it.
	But my head swelled almost to like the size of a basketball.
	I looked pretty grotesque.
	You know, stitches just stretched on my face.
	And I told Erica I didn't want the kids to see me until they had done some more surgeries and some of the swelling had gone down.
	And I was in, you know, I see you at the beginning.
	I also did not want them to come into the room.
	I wanted to walk into the room where the kids were.
	I wanted it to be like a family room and I wanted to walk in.
	So that was my goal to get well enough and strong enough that I could get up and walk into the room.
	So that took about three weeks.
	And then the other thing, Erica was super smart.
	She knew the kids wanted different toys that they had talked about.
	I mean, it's now September.
	So she went and, you know, normally they would have had to wait till Christmas, but she went and bought, my son wanted a Nintendo DS.
	One of the girls wanted a baby doll.
	I can't remember what the other, what Sierra wanted, but Erica went and bought those things for them and then had me give them to them in the room that I walked into with them.
	So, and I tell you what, that I learned over the next couple of years.
	People often talk about unconditional love.
	And I think you can build unconditional love with your spouse, but you learn what unconditional love is through your children.
	Your children have unconditional love for their parents, especially when they're young.
	You are their world.
	And even though I looked messed up, my kids love me.
	And there was a lot of healing that occurred over those couple of years, especially with my youngest daughter, because my middle daughter and my son, they went back to school by the time I got home.
	But my youngest, she was only three.
	So she was home with me and she became, and I had not been around her her whole life.
	And she became my little buddy.
	She would climb into bed with me as I recovered and we'd watch cartoons.
	And man, I think that was very healing for me.
	I needed that because I was so worried about would my kids be afraid of me and the way I look.
	And, you know, they just, I'll never forget.
	Oh, I went to pick my kids up at school one day and my daughter was like five.
	She's in kindergarten.
	Somebody was like, what happened to your dad?
	And my daughter, matter of fact, was like, he got shot off.
	He got all shot off.
	He's fine though.
	You know, I mean, just the candor of a five-year-old.
	Yeah.
	You know, especially when they're young, they have that healing power and there is something almost angelic about them in moments.
	And I really believe it's like, someone once said it to me this way and it made sense.
	They're closer to the other side than we are.
	They're still closer to the other side.
	And I think they still have that sort of halo effect around them and on us.
	There is something sort of magical about really young kids when you're down, you're blue, you're struggling.
	And I'm so glad that was, you're so lucky to have your three-year-old with you during those moments.
	I'm sure she was a healing bomb.
	The rock star Erica, too, those are all great stories about her.
	And I'm so glad.
	Thank God this doesn't end with, and she just left.
	You're still together.
	You're still, right?
	The family's still intact.
	Yeah, I mean, I got to, I mean, and such a credit to her.
	You know, she became my best nurse.
	Even though I had nurse, in-home nurses in between surgeries, you know, for the first eight or nine months, I was a mess.
	I'm in a wheelchair.
	I've got metal hardware coming out of my arm.
	What's called an external fixator.
	I was traped for seven months and two days.
	They were feeding me through a stomach tube.
	Erica was doing those things.
	She was helping to clean my trache.
	She's frying up meds and grinding up food so that I could eat.
	And I recognized the burden.
	I mean, I became like a fourth child to her to take care of me.
	And I'm just so thankful how strong she was because never once did she ever say, why did you do this to us?
	Why did you pick this job that this happened?
	Because that would have been devastating.
Leaving Afghanistan Behind 00:10:29
	And if she thought it, she never said it.
	So, man, she is a leader in herself.
	And we're an amazing team.
	Really excited right now.
	We are working on, we're almost done with a relationship book called Invincible Marriage because it's a question so many people have.
	How did you do it?
	You guys made it through a special operations career.
	You made it through wounding.
	We've run a business together.
	We've had business failures together.
	We have three amazing kids.
	You know, so yeah, I'm really excited to get that book out there and hopefully help others, you know, build a strong, invincible marriage also.
	Oh my gosh, you both are welcome on the show when it hits.
	I would love to help you promote that.
	I feel like everybody will buy that.
	That's such a great, I mean, think of how we tell ourselves, we outside of your marriage, tell ourselves, oh, this is really hard.
	Oh, he didn't empty the dishwasher.
	Oh, it's annoying.
	You know, he didn't show me enough emotional availability.
	This is what, you know, you hear.
	My God, you don't even understand what the challenges are.
	I had no idea about the divorce rate amongst the wounded.
	I want to ask you in the time we have left, I would be remiss if I skipped the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan because everyone who served there, like yourself, had some thoughts on it.
	And some had some real trauma when it happened and just sort of the abandonment of it, of the translators.
	You mentioned that was one of the guys with you in Iraq when you got hurt.
	How did you process that whole thing?
	Well, I got involved as much as I could.
	I think that's going to be viewed, and in my opinion, probably one of the greatest failures.
	I think the way we withdrew from Iraq was poorly done, which, in my opinion, directly led to the creation of ISIS in Iraq.
	And then we repeated the exact same thing, except at an exponential scale in Afghanistan.
	And in Afghanistan, I think we had done so much of a better job, you know, helping the people.
	There were so many people that had embraced this newfound freedom apart from the rule of the Taliban.
	I mean, there were women in leadership position, there were women in political positions, there were women leaders in the military.
	Commerce was starting to grow and thrive in Afghanistan again.
	And we had basically convinced these people: like, hey, a free, democratic Afghanistan is a real thing.
	And yeah, when we pulled out of there in the way that we did, I mean, just I don't understand.
	I don't know.
	I mean, you can't tell me that there weren't senior political leaders who are saying this is not going to end well.
	Why we didn't maintain forces in Bagram.
	We knew Bagram.
	Bagram was protected.
	How did we ever agree to allow the Taliban to provide some level of security?
	How did we ever, you know, who in their right mind allowed this to occur with, you know, American citizens that were left behind?
	I mean, trying to get people in the Karzai airport.
	That's how I got involved.
	Lieutenant Colonel Scott Mann had created a group to try and help.
	He wanted to get his interpreter out.
	And there were a lot of special operations guys, Chad Robotshaw, Tim Kennedy, a lot of these guys did amazing things.
	I ended up working with Scott, and we were trying to get people out of Afghanistan.
	And we saw firsthand the chaos and the disorganization and the mass confusion by the U.S. government.
	You know, the focus became we're just going to get the military out and ignoring all these U.S. citizens and most importantly, the individuals who had been processed, Afghans who had sacrificed their lives to protect us and work with us, who had lost family members and risked their lives, who had been told you're going to get a special immigrant visa and you're going to be able to come to the United States when all of this was transpiring,
	that the Taliban was going to take back over, which I had issues with in the first place.
	Why did we turn the country back over to the exact same terrorist group that we were fighting against for 20 years?
	I mean, it's mind-blowing.
	Mind-blowing.
	It's infuriating.
	And I think it will impact our national security collection abilities for decades to come.
	Because who in their right mind is going to want to work with America and risk their lives to help us collect intelligence when they're going to go, I'm not going to work with you guys.
	If anything goes wrong, you're just going to sell me out to dry and I'm going to be killed.
	We sent such a negative message across the world.
	I think it was such a poor display of leadership.
	I think it was just straight up anti-American.
	It was traumatic for so many guys who served.
	Like, what was I there for?
	What did my friends die for?
	What, you know, what did I, I mean, you were in Iraq, but same similar question.
	Like, what did I get blown up for?
	What, you know, what?
	We just tuck tail and ran at the end.
	I don't know.
	I still think the way I process it from over here, you guys kept us safe for 20 years.
	You know, remember how afraid we were after 9-11, we were going to get attacked again.
	You kept us safe for 20 years.
	And we're still safe.
	We're still safe because what you did over there, it was not all for naught, though it was terribly, terribly handled.
	And even before the withdrawal, there was a lot of criticism to be leveled.
	But the withdrawal was just a stain.
	It was just a stain on our leadership, not on our guys.
	No, and I would say the same.
	I mean, I never once have ever thought, oh my God, what a waste.
	I mean, you know, the mission that we did was, you know, we helped a lot of people.
	We definitely got rid of a lot of very bad people who, given the opportunity, would gladly do bad things here in our own country and even in other countries abroad.
	So yeah, I definitely tell fellow veterans, don't ever think that what we did absolutely made a difference.
	It's unfortunate the way it ended, but I'm proud of the time that I had to serve over there and hopefully make a small difference in Afghanistan and Iraq.
	And beyond, beyond.
	So now, how old are you?
	I turn 48 next week.
	Oh, you're still a spring chicken.
	You're a young guy.
	Yeah.
	You got Erica.
	You got your three kids.
	Yeah.
	And your career is as a motivational speaker, as an author.
	How's that going?
	Are you paying the bills with that?
	You feel like things are going well?
	They are.
	I mean, the demand is high.
	I mean, you know, I think the message I deliver is very needed.
	And I think companies recognize it.
	I mean, a combination of coming out of the COVID era and also into just society as a whole.
	My message is on self-leadership.
	How do we lead ourselves to be successful?
	How do we build better teams?
	How do we build more positive culture within companies?
	And then how do we find balance in this crazy world that we're living in?
	And then all about the resilience and grit.
	I teach something called Getting Off the X.
	It's one of the foundational principles in my Overcome book.
	I'm now teaching the Appoint Man for Life program, which is a structured process of building long-term goal setting, understanding based on your values, what your mission or purpose is in this life with kind of a special operations twist.
	And then, of course, we have the relationship book coming.
	And then something I've started working on.
	We just concluded our most recent Overcome and Survive workshop.
	A lot of my teammates have a lot of experience and they are training law enforcement and national organization, even military organizations and tactical abilities.
	But I keep meeting average everyday Americans who are like, I'm scared for the future.
	Like, I wish I knew how to better defend myself in this dangerous world where every time we turn around, there's a mass shooting or God forbid something happened to my family.
	How do I, you know, save them?
	How do I know basic first aid?
	Or, you know, God forbid society, you know, collapsed or at least we lost.
	Take this course.
	You're not going to throw me in the ocean and hose me down with a hose and tell me to find Northwest, are you?
	No, no, there's not.
	As a matter of fact, it was funny, man.
	People signing up for the course.
	I had to put it right on the website, overcomeandsurvive.com.
	We do not yell at you.
	You're not.
	We want to take the average everyday American and make them better.
	That's it.
	And to give them a basic level of preparation so that they can overcome and survive if something bad happens.
	And I've really enjoyed that.
	I've met people from all across this country have come to these courses and I'm doing it with some of my former teammates.
	It keeps the brotherhood connected.
	That's so important for you guys.
	I know there's such a unique bond.
	And if you don't nurture it, maybe you lose it and it just becomes a memory, which is not okay.
	I want to tell our audience that the book that talks about Jay's experience is called The Trident.
	And then you heard him reference his second book, which is called Overcome: Crush Adversary, Adversity with Leadership Techniques of America's Toughest Warriors.
	And we will look forward to the third book, which is the relationship one.
	And we'll have you back on for that.
	Lieutenant Jason Redman, I'm moved.
	I'm inspired.
	I'm excited for what comes next in your life and to read your next writing.
	And I just wish all my best to you and your family.
	I know my audience is joining me right now in thanking you, thanking you, thanking you so much for your service, your sacrifice, that of your family as well.
	They do the same in their own ways, and we appreciate you.
	God bless you.
	My honor.
	Thank you.
	Oh, such an inspiring guest.
	He's amazing, isn't he?
	Go to JasonRedman, R-E-D-M-A-N.com to find out much, much more about Jason, about his books, about his courses, everything, everything, Jason Redman.
	Well worth your time.
	Today, I join you in remembering all of the men and women who have served our country and also thinking of and thanking our current military members serving today.
	Have a great Memorial Day and we'll talk tomorrow.
	Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly Show.
	No BS, no agenda, and no

Chapters

00:00:20 Proving Worth to Join the SEALs
00:15:19 Uniting a Fractured Nation
00:29:46 Surviving Hell Week in Cold Water
00:37:14 The Hidden Power of Sleep
00:40:20 Overcoming Victim Mindset in 2004
00:56:02 Finding Love After War
01:00:43 Walking into a Deadly Ambush
01:14:51 Healing from Battlefield Surgery
01:30:04 Unconditional Love and Family Recovery
01:38:03 Leaving Afghanistan Behind