Summary
Joe Hudson and Brett Kistler interview Will Chesney, a retired Navy SEAL who served in SEAL Team Six and was the dog handler on the bin Laden raid. Will shares his journey from a trailer park in Southeast Texas through SEAL training, to the pinnacle of special operations, and then into a devastating crash — brain injury from a grenade blast, alcohol abuse, loss of friends, and identity collapse after leaving the military. He describes moving back in with his parents, unable to hold a job, drinking himself to death, and staring at walls for hours.
The conversation explores how Will’s recovery began — reluctantly, when a friend convinced him to try a brain treatment program. He then pursued breathing work, diet changes, fasting, and eventually an entheogenic treatment weekend where he experienced a profound shift: “I just woke up and it was me again.” He describes this as reconnecting with the fire and drive he had as an 18-year-old, before ego and accomplishment had calcified his identity. The experience also restored his spiritual beliefs and ended his drinking.
Brett and Joe draw parallels to broader patterns: how high performers crash when stimulus is removed, how identity attachment prevents growth, how ego manifests as “I’ve made it” thinking, and how empathy — even in combat — makes you more effective rather than less. Will reflects on how hate and loss hardened his heart during service, and how his recovery opened him to caring about others again, including the people in the countries where he served.
Key Concepts
- Identity collapse follows peak achievement
- Growth stops when you think you’ve made it
- Remembering who you were before the armor
- Empathy makes warriors more effective
- Hate consumes mental bandwidth
- Believing recovery is possible is the first shift
- Hardened heart from unprocessed loss
Key Quotes
“I just woke up and it was me again. At one point during the weekend I woke up and it was me… like who I was before I went through buds, when I felt like the 18-year-old me again.”
“I stopped growing as a person. Once I got there, that’s where the ego comes into play. I had thought I had made it to the pinnacle and I just kind of started partying more and drinking more.”
“When I was up I was thinking about how do I improve myself and when I’m down I was thinking about how do I maintain.”
“You have to be humble to be a SEAL… it’s teamwork from day one. If you’re not humble you’re just going to go away.”
“There was a lot of hate in my heart… I just stopped caring. Nobody was worth losing any more of my friends over.”
“Everybody has trauma. Life’s hard sometimes. Life’s good but life’s hard. Everybody deals with trauma no matter what.”
Transcript
foreign just woke up and it was me again at one point during the weekend I know I was a seal and everybody always says oh we can’t relate to what you’ve gone through but everybody has trauma life’s hard sometimes right Life’s good the life’s hard everybody deals with trauma no matter what welcome to the art of accomplishment where we explore how deepening connection with ourselves and others leads to creating the life we want with enjoyment and ease I’m Brett Kistler here today with my co-host Joe Hudson so will is a he’s a retired Navy SEAL who I met in a program that was working with working with seals who had suffered a traumatic brain injury and other psychological traumas from from war and from just anything else related to that kind of a lifestyle and uh will served in the U.S naval special Warfare Development Group as an operator and dog handler he was on the bin Laden raid okay what is that thing that you just made the special the Opera oh that’s me reading off of his author uh wait will what does that mean um yeah Will what is that yeah basically still Team Six okay all right that’s like the badasses of the badasses right like that’s like takes a lot to be a seal alone and then you have to go through a certain amount of extra training to actually make it to be selected to go there as well so it’s quite quite the task yeah to say the least yeah yeah and other other notable information here you were on the bin Laden raid with your dog Cairo who joined you on hundreds of missions that is correct I was the dog handler on the bin Laden raid with Cairo yeah that’s what I wrote the book about an ordinary dog yeah what kind of breed was it he was a Belgian melon wall oh wow it’s kind of like a German Shepherd yeah fish yes shorter hair a little more agile a little a little smaller the shepherds are like 100 120 pounds you know they get pretty big yeah we skydive with them we fast rope we gotta hoist them up walls we got to carry them you know it’s so having 120 pound Shepherd or the Mauser 60 it’s a 70 you know they’re a little bit lighter shorter hair we work in hot environments so you don’t need these dogs getting heat stroke just it’s beneficial wow do they have that kind of sloped back like shorter hind leg thing that the German Shepherds do yeah I think the Shepherds have problems with their hips um I don’t think Miles have that same issue I could be wrong on that but now’s a little different breed I think they have a little more energy I mean there’s nothing wrong with Shepherd shepherds are really smart dogs and yeah they’re amazing but those miles they’re really athletic there’s some there’s some monsters all right cool yeah okay that’s I’m sure not what we’re talking about today if you’re a bad guy hiding they’re gonna find you they’re gonna get to you no matter what yeah they’ll Die Trying so let’s see if we can make it through the bio now right was that it was that the whole bio I mean there’s more I mean he’s also got a silver star and a purple heart which I think is definitely worth mentioning the context in which we met is interesting um which was in working with veterans who were who had suffered neurological trauma and psychological trauma and using various uh modalities and methods to to work with them like will had told me some of his story he had after I think what was it 13 years uh in the service you came out and dropped into a really dark place which is just very common for people who are reintegrating to civilian life after just a very very different lifestyle has been very hard on their bodies and you know their their spirit and your journey back from this was just incredibly profound for me because I remember the first day that I met you was like the first day after like a treatment weekend you had been through and it was at a social event and you were kind of quiet and sort of hanging in the corner and the friend who brought you was like yeah this is his first time at a social event since I’ve ever met him and then I didn’t see you until four months later and you were helping run this Retreat and it took me several days hanging out with you to even recognize that you were the same person and you hear that I pulled yourself out of this dark place and you had like made a lot of progress you’d written your book so you know in this time right now giving some context on the the time of recording right now we just had the whole Russia invasion of Ukraine happen a couple of days ago this is a very different kind of interview than we have done in the past and maybe this is timely to bring bring some of this kind of perspective in from somebody who’s been through a lot of Darkness that isn’t just the kind of Darkness you might get as a CEO running through out running your Runway and trying to please investors but a very different kind of difficult experience and you’ve been through it and you’ve integrated it and so that’s really what I’m here to what I’m interested in talking with you about today yeah no that’s that’s definitely I was in a very dark place getting out of the Navy I did 13 years you were correct on that I was medically retired after 13 years I was um I joined the Navy right after high school so I didn’t have any I worked with my father building cell phone communication towers for a few months and I left to join the Navy right after high school just to spend some time with them and made it through buds no problem buds is basic underwater demolition SEAL training so that’s the six seven month selection process just to become a seal I made it through that it was a I go I grew up in Southeast Texas in a trailer park in Southeast Texas it was a nicer trailer park but it was still a trailer park so I go from that couldn’t wait to get out of there there’s not not much around where I grew up unless you like drinking your drugs so I had to get out of the trailer park and I show up to a beautiful beach in Coronado California with a bunch of great guys and basically just have to get your nuts kicked in and you get to stick around and it was all the things that I wanted to do or was aspiring to do we get to shoot guns and blow things up and dive and you just have to get it through this selection process and don’t get me wrong it was very hard but it was I made some of the best friends I’ve ever made in my life to this day I mean even once I made it through Buds and got to my team and going to war with some people I I still have those friends but that I made a really tight group of friends and buds made it through buds no issues I went to Seal Team Four where I spent a few years there I deployed to Iraq and South America after that I was selected to go to Development Group I made it I squeaked by made it through Development Group that’s a very hard process it’s like uh it’s like going through buds all over again for a bunch of Navy SEALs so they already they know you’re not going to quit you’ve already proven that you have what it takes to be a seal so it’s more Performance Based it’s all Performance Based they still beat you is what we call it make you do runs and physical exercise until you’re almost dead but that’s just the stressor they put on you because you’re not they’re not really going to shoot at you or put you in a near-death situation so the best they can do is scream at you push the physical limits to the to the most that they can and then put you in these really hard circumstances where if you’re in the position to save a American hostage or any hostage then you can actually perform under pressure basically if you have what it takes to to think calmly and smoothly under the most extreme circumstances basically in I made it through that without too many issues what was the check you learned there what was the way that you learned how to I mean you might not even be able to describe it but like how to think calmly and smoothly as you put it just that word smoothly is just so brilliant as far as I’m concerned and and how did you learn how to think smoothly under intense pressure what was the trick I’m assuming the same thing you do when you’re Wing suiting or whatever you’re under the life or death situation just breathe and you go into your happy place you get into the flow I guess yeah nothing else really matters um I remember even in buds you’re sitting in that ice cold water and they want I mean they have tests to make sure nobody’s going to die but they push it to the brink of hypothermia some guys do get hypothermia so you’re just sitting locked arms in the surf with the waves crashing over your head and Coronado so that water is always chilly and um same thing there it’s not physical but it’s just you’re not doing anything you’re just laying there being cold but what I do I go in my happy place and I would Breathe and then just try to have anything else that got all that stress related I would still just breathe and just try to get in the zone try to get in the flow and just focus nothing else is important if you stress out about it too much it’s just going to fall apart stressing out never helps anybody right sounds like one of the things you’re doing is you’re getting out of your head and into your body for that is that that’s my interpretation of what you just said how am I wrong or right about that yeah you’re just not letting the outside factors she’s not letting that stress get to you you just staying calm like if you keep my heart rate it’s actually one of the things that you just keep your heart rate nice and low to where you can think still if you freak out you’re just going to fail you’re just going to get somebody killed in the long run so if you can think yeah I guess it’s paying attention to your body yeah cool something I’m really curious about that this might be skipping ahead a little bit but what you just described is going through going through Buds and then going through like Team Six training all of these things are something that you had to have this I’m not going to quit miss about you you had this grit you had this drive you knew how to get into flow you knew how to persevere through it and then you went through this period after the service where just going back to civilian life all of that seemed to crash and this seems to be something that’s just really interesting for people who are really high performers is that sometimes sometimes we go through these periods of that we’ve really got it got it together in the sense that we are connected to ourselves and we’re in flow and then sometimes we just feel like we’ve Fallen entirely off the train and you’ve gone there and then come back so I’m curious what was it that if you had this this flow that got you through the trainings got you through 13 years with a service what was it that switched off or what was it that changed there’s multiple factors I went into it I think I I got some brain injuries along the way I poured alcohol on top of the brain injuries loss of friends you know about that it’s it’s very pouring alcohol I mean I don’t like to use the word PTSD but I do miss a lot of my friends that we lost and uh pouring alcohol on top of that definitely does not help so brain injury alcohol loss of friends and just stop I stopped growing as a person like once I got that’s where the ego comes into play like I had made it to the Pinnacle I had thought I had made it to the Pinnacle and I just kind of started partying more and drinking more and stopped caring as much I guess about my personal growth and I did see all my friends they were doing multiple college courses they were going to become team leaders of basically bosses in our Command they’re like raising the family running trips getting their black belt and Jiu Jitsu or whatever you know they’re they’re growing and I was just drinking and living off of my past accomplishments I guess I think that’s accumulation I don’t think I felt like the same person either but I think the the brain injury definitely had an effect or especially right after I was blown up in 2012 by a hand grenade in Afghanistan and after that things weren’t exactly the same I mean I was still able to function somewhat but my I started getting migraines the memory loss was really bad uh before when we were talking about going through buds I mean it was as 18 I was 17 when I left for the Navy I didn’t know I was getting in the flow I was just doing whatever I thought made sense and you would have had to kill me to leave I mean if my we had one guy in our class was hip ball broke in half and there’s nothing he can do he was done like he will never become a seal and if that was my case then it is what it is it’s not in my hands it’s you know it’s in God’s hands but I mean if I would have died if I would have fallen off off the obstacle course and broken my neck I would have been completely content with it I just there’s no other place that I wanted to be I wanted to be there and I was going to give it 100 100 everything I had and if I died along the way or something that impeded me from making it that was fine but I wasn’t going I wasn’t going to quit I just couldn’t do it it’s just not me and there’s nothing wrong with the guys that did quit there’s nothing wrong with that we have guys that quit and come back and complete it later we have guys that job is not for everybody that’s for sure but it was everything I wanted to do there’s nothing else I wanted to do with my life I wasn’t going to school I said I’d go back to the trailer park and do drugs but that didn’t sound very fun to me I’m good there’s nothing else I want to do I wasn’t going to go to school there’s nothing no one didn’t want to become a doctor lawyer or anything you know there’s nothing that I I would have failed at school there’s just nothing that I but being a seal that’s all I ever wanted you know I was going to give it 100 so it sounds like when you retired there was a like a major loss of identity there oh dude that was my family like I have my family back here in Texas but that was I care more about the people that I serve with and some of my family members not all of my family but I mean if just as much as my family members I do care about and there’s some family members that I haven’t talked to and I don’t care to talk to you know so that was my family that was my life that was me so yeah going from going from that I mean I got to be on some of the coolest missions some of the most well-known missions the uh I was on the Captain Phillips raid I got to partake in that um I didn’t take any of the shots or anything but I still got to go on it and I got to be on the Bin Laden Mission and I got to the Pinnacle of my career so I was up here and then going from that suffering the brain injury and fast forward a couple years after I got blown up I was moving back in with my parents and I couldn’t hold down a job I was drinking myself to death I was 250 plus pounds and I just I couldn’t I couldn’t wrap my my brain and my mind around what was going on because it was my mind that was messed up to some extent I mean don’t get me wrong there’s booze on top of that and me feeling sorry for myself and other factors but the brain injury was definitely a big factor when I remember sitting at my mom’s house and just I was drinking a lot and I remember staring at the wall for like an hour trying to figure out like what what the fuck is going on like I went from here and then all of a sudden I’m I’m in Rock Bottom I was just waiting to die I was slowly drinking myself to death and I had people that I cared about and loved me in my life it’s just it was quite the fall I know the kind of stress that you handled is so different than say a CEO but there’s this really interesting study that they did where they took all these CEOs and they put them in a house and they said the only thing you can’t do is work and so then they took away the phones and computers etc and so they just had to hang out with each other and then at day three they brought in a team of psychologists and they said you assess these folks and you just can’t talk about their work and the team of psychologists came out and they all said they’re depressed and they’re like it’s a house full of depressed people and it’s something that I see all the time with someone who’s been like a high-powered CEO over an extended period of time when when that adrenaline fatigue hits when there’s no longer that stimulus there’s like this bottom that they hit and I’ve seen some of them like really successful guys who have done crazy stuff in their life sit in their pajamas for a couple years afterwards just recovering yeah and they’re so hard on themselves because of that and then that creates a secondary storm of just self-abuse that or feelings are for yourself as you put it definitely went through that yeah it’s higher than finding purpose like what do I do now no I can’t do that job anymore yeah I gotta find I was I’d go from high school with nothing to that to some of the best guys in the world best times of my life I got I had a pretty cool job at the time and then all of a sudden I get blown up and my brain doesn’t work and I’m fired basically you know like it’s sort of a trifecta there you got you you lose your you lose your job which is something that your entire being is identified with and then you your family the the family that you describe as being linked to that as well as you know your brain injury just so much of your your internal resource that got you through to where you were somewhat over the course of 13 years of of combat and then also being blown up by a grenade like all of this stuff dropping some now I’m curious like what what was the moment when it started to shift for you at what point did you start to connect to that resource again that I’m imagining the same thing that got you through training and through through all those years but now like reconnecting to it to pull you out of that dark place that you were in I think it was a slow progression out of it was a slow progression in a slow progression out it was um I got out and I started just doing trying to think of the first medical things I went through the one that I I went to the brain treatment the brain treatment Foundation put me through a program where I did the TMS treatment which is transcranial magnetic stimulation it’s basically just trying to get your brain to communicate properly I don’t know I’m gonna not do it justice but it was a very good brain Treatment Center that was not the best thing I went through but I think it was a good start I went I was in a really bad place didn’t do anything I took my best friend reaching out and I wasn’t going to do anything he reached out to me he basically wasn’t going to go to this place unless I went with him which convinced me to go with him and I’m really glad I feel like that was the first step and then I started learning about the Wim Hof method so I started doing breathing and I started fasting I think my hormones so you look at your blood levels and testosterone I think there’s meditating and obviously diet sleep I started getting better on my sleep uh a couple of enthiogenic treatments definitely helped so I think that was a very beneficial for me to to go and partake in I don’t think it’s a none of these are one thing that’s just going to fix you I think they all just kind of looking back at it now they all just kind of lined up together I started learning about I went to the brain Treatment Center I started learning about breathing and got my diet better I dropped down from 250 pounds back to basically normal ish and then just got my sleep good and then I started doing all these other treatments and just little by little started to see progression and um definitely nowhere near where I want to be but I’m still working towards that goal yeah something I noticed that is uh there’s like a couple different levels of track here one of them is the modalities that you um that you went through that you explored to heal yourself and another level is the mindset shifts that occur and I noticed one that you just mentioned where it was that your friend was only going to go if you went with him and that there was there was something about doing it with your friend that got you across the hump of maybe some kind of learned helplessness of like nothing’s gonna work for me to this can work for me and I noticed that a lot of times is that the moment we’ve actually started to believe that we can that we can go through a process and Trust the process and and transform and grow and heal that that actually is like the a major point in shift and then the modalities that we do the the methods that we undertake are less important than that internal shift does that resonate with you definitely I’ve been through so many treatments getting out of the military and they’d put me on nothing against it I’d they did some yoga treatments and they did a little bit of breathing and a little bit of diet and everything else but they also did the antidepressants and the migraine medicines and a bunch of the other meds and I’d seen so many doctors and so many therapists and this and that and a lot of them were just full of shit I just was over it so when he reached out to me I’m like dude I’m good man I’m just gonna sit in my dark hole at my lake house and I’ll be fine I’m just gonna drink it away and then obviously that was not the right answer so I’m really glad he uh he told me that because I remember just thinking like no I’m not I wouldn’t even get on a plane I drove I drove to the treatment center in California because I just wouldn’t fly I didn’t want to be around people I wasn’t I was in a really bad place and nothing I did not want to leave my house I just wanted to stay there and drink and seclude so I was over I was overseeing all these doctors I was over trying all these new things I’m like what are you gonna do give me some more antidepressants like I’m good man I had my alcohol I have a question for you there’s like a humility that you have in your system right now um and I’m wondering like when did that show up like is that something that you learned in sales training is that something that’s happened since the kind of the Reconstruction of your life I think I’ve always had that you always go you have to be humble to be a seal I got my ego get out of control there for a few years and I guess I really didn’t even really comprehend what my ego was there for a while I mean by the time I got out I’m only 37 now I was in I was basically in my 20s early 30s at the time and I didn’t really understand maybe what the ego was until certain treatments really opened that up for me and looking back on it man I’m like man I was an asshole like I understand I was a seal and I was a I worked my ass off to get to where I was and it was a very high position but I did not let I did not need to let my ego get out of control because I stopped growing as a person I just thought it was it was all good I had everything I knew everything there’s nothing else I need to do I’m fine I’m here I made it yeah and man that was a that was a hard fall it was really it almost took my life two parts of that that I want to follow up on the first one is just double click on that sentence you have to be humble to be a CEO what can you explain that what does that mean you won’t make it very far it’s not a it’s not Delta Force where it’s like Chuck Norris where you’re a one-man show I’m kidding all the Delta guys will love that it’s teamwork you can’t come it’s not I’m not Chuck Norris we’re not going to do everything by myself right it’s uh it’s it’s teamwork from day one that’s when you show up to buds you always have a swim buddy you have a teammate and if you are caught without that teammate you get a safety violation enough safety violations you go away so from day one you always have a teammate that’s just your one teammate so when you get to the team you have all of your teammates it’s about the team it’s not about you when you get done with missions you you take care of the team gear you take care of your gear and then you take care of yourself right it’s always about the team because you’re not going to accomplish accomplish the mission with a team and if you’re not humble you’re just going to go away so then then you have this idea of the ego that comes in later and then some level it seems like that humility to make it through seals is is a partial deterioration of the ego but then somehow or another in your definition of the ego it’s like it re-manifested is like I’m finished yeah once I got to a certain level in my career it’s like I’ve made it through buds I made it through this training I made it through here I’ve been through all these schools I’ve been on these missions I’ve been yeah yeah I see this all the time not just in like career moves but you see that with CEOs and they feel like they’re finished they’re done like you you see their progress slump if not deteriorate and you see it with people who are like looking after Awakening as well like you’re you’re searching for like Spiritual Awakening when they think they’re done you can see like the corrosion that occurs and the best story I have on this which I thought was really cool was I was listening to like one of the world’s best cricket players and uh I shake my head because I’m like people watch crooked I don’t know what that’s like but I like this guy and he was talking and he was talking he was basically saying his career went like straight up skyrocketed and then went straight down then straight up again and somebody asked him what was the difference between the ups and the Downs he goes when I was up I was thinking about how do I improve myself and when I’m down I was thinking about how do I maintain I can totally relate to that for sure and I look back at all as I think about it all the time I’m like man I remember on deployment sitting in my room and going out and looking and this guy’s doing college and this guy’s reading books and this guy’s doing that and I was not growing as a person and it makes me not the happiest looking back on what it is that was that was what I needed to go through at the time of my life I just I don’t know why but I needed to go through that and now I’m feeling much better so yeah so that’s good yeah yeah I’m getting back on for you could be worse could have just drank myself to death I almost died a few times so I’m glad I’m still here you know you did the brain treatment stuff your electromagnetic stimulation um breath stuff you had clicked over into thinking okay this is possible something got you so that you were like okay this is possible again I I’m not stuck and I and I don’t have to believe these doctors who don’t know what they’re talking about so something happened there but how do you see that your mental and you talk a little bit about ego and and starting to recognize ego and the part that it played how did the transformation happen on a mental internal psychological spiritual level for you and on one of the treatment weekends I went through it wasn’t up to me I had to let go of everything and um it really opened my eyes to some of my shortcomings and put me on the right path to stop feeling sorry for myself and to realize who I was again also help me with my brain function because I guess I just kind of I thought I was giving up I was drinking myself to death for sure but I wasn’t sticking a gun in my mouth which I yeah to basically kill myself slowly what’s an example of a reflection that you had that that shifted things for you that in in this treatment weekend for example something that came up to you from your subconscious something that you recognized and just the recognition of which put you on the right path I kind of just woke up and it was me again at one point during the weekend I woke up and it was me it wasn’t life’s hard I mean I know it was a seal and everybody always says oh we can’t relate to what you’ve gone through but everybody has trauma life’s hard sometimes all right Life’s good but life’s hard everybody deals with trauma no matter what you’re not going to get out of this without dealing with death and hard times I think so people can know what I’m talking about I have the deaths of my friends and brain injuries and blah blah blah but everybody has their stuff life’s hard all that stuff on top of me and all of a sudden I woke up during the weekend and I had none of that I had no ego I had no now that burden on my shoulders I guess I I kind of came to and it was me like legit me like who I was before I went through buds when I felt like the 18 year old me again like the the person that was going to go through SEAL training and nothing was going to happen to me I was gonna crush it and I’d stop being that person and when I woke up and I was that I had that fire inside of me again like the old me I was like nothing I was Unstoppable like the Devil Himself could have walked into that room right there and I’ve been like we’re good fuck you bro like we’re good uh I just it was good to see that person again so nothing was going to stop me this is a story that I’ve heard a lot in different contexts which is basically there’s a moment of re-remembering but somehow or another the journey was important and that the integration of the old person that’s remembered is different than it was before generally it’s like I I hear a lot of times from people talking it’s like oh it was like I had this big Epiphany this big Awakening and it was it was like I was remembering who I was but at the same time there’s a difference that the journey had integrated something or shifted something at the same time as remembering what I was how does that resonate with Europe at all in the remembering and recognition of who you were was there also an integration of something that the journey was important yeah me waking up to realize who I was again and who I could be again just didn’t realize I don’t need to drink anymore I don’t need to feel sorry for myself in certain aspects of my life when dealing with certain issues uh the deaths of my friends I kind of not that I don’t miss them and I don’t mourn for them and feel bad you know their families I know they miss them I’m not trying to downgrade their loss at all but I know they’re in a better place and I got to feel at least what I think where they are and I believe in God again is a very eye-opening it was a someone I grew I quit drinking my spiritual beliefs are back I believe in God and I pray every day now and I read the Bible and just put me on the right path it gave me the opportunity to get back on the right path and see things that I just didn’t I was wasting my time and I was killing myself with and seeing who I was again just remembering so yeah integrating that New Path into the old me try to get back there how has this integration affected the way that you now look back on your on your career and see and experience those or just the way that you relate to those experiences of losing friends and of Taking Lives and having to make really hard decisions that are that involve lives yeah it’s uh it’s kind of weird I think uh I wish I would have found that treatment before leaving the military I think uh I don’t think I would have had to quit my job possibly I mean I had some memory issues and I still do but I definitely don’t have the migraines and the stress I think it was I think the migraines were a lot of stress related so I definitely wish I would have found that treatment a little sooner and now that I look back at it I just um it’s not at the same level it was it definitely wears off a little bit after a while you know no treatment is going to last forever there’s no fix-all but I just try to remember that you know my friends are in a better place and then just to live my life to the fullest because I know them very well if they were to look at me now or look at me what I was drinking myself together they would call me a idiot like 100 I know my friends like hey dude what are you doing like live your life like stop doing this so I try to remember that something that we talk about a lot in uh in the podcast and the work that we do is how our social reality is a projection of ourselves and if you’ve gone through an integration in a journey where you found more empathy for yourself I’m curious how that impacts your empathy for others and also going back to my previous question how does that how does that empathy affect the way that you relate to the enemy for example or you know fighters on the other side I think it would have taken away a little bit of hate just looking back I was just not that I’ve done anything that I shouldn’t have done overseas but once I lose so many friends they just there’s a lot of hate a lot of hate my heart for sure and I think it would have helped me deal with that much better than I’m really glad I wasn’t put in search in positions where I could have done things if that makes any sense I uh I had a lot of hate I didn’t care anymore after I lost so many friends I just didn’t give a shit I just never was put in a position to where I look back now where I shouldn’t have done anything but there was a lot of hate in my heart and I know that that would have helped help me deal with that for sure how would that have affected you in in combat around missions it would have been fine you’re not we’re not over there to kill people who need to be killed and when I started I didn’t care who died like if you if I even think of my we lost a helicopter Extortion 17 um it was a helicopter that was shot down by a guy that we had captured and let go so I just stopped caring nobody it wasn’t worth losing any more of my friends over I didn’t even care if I got in trouble so I’m glad really glad I wasn’t put in certain positions because it’s not the right call sometimes you definitely need to have that empathy and still be a human being in a way what you’re saying here is that like even in being a soldier having empathy makes you a better Soldier than not having empathy and I think that’s actually something that non-soldiers don’t get yeah we used to hand out Kim lights to the kids even if they threw them you know they don’t care they mostly hate us and that didn’t bother me but towards the end I don’t give a shit I don’t care I’m not giving anything to any of you and if you die I don’t care that is just my heart got really hardened and uh now you’re there I mean I’m just good to be I’m happy to be kind of the old person I am now like yeah who cares give the Kim the kids Kim lights and flags even if they’d hate you who cares like you still need to be a person like we’re not them we’re there to make the world a better place not just kill a bunch of bad guys which I mean there’s nothing wrong with killing a bunch of bad people for some reason that just needs to be done sometimes yeah but that doesn’t mean you still can’t care about other people that are there as well yeah yeah and I didn’t care at all right it seems like being in this career and being in this position which is just a really difficult position it’s a sticky moral position for almost anybody and also I’m what I’m hearing from you is that having more empathy having less Hate in Your Heart impacted not only the way that you could stay and flow in what you were doing and also the ways that you might be able to make a quick second you know Split Second decision when you might spot somebody at the end of a rifle and have to quickly decide whether or not to pull the trigger and then also in you know handing chem lights out to kids and how are you going to how are you going to uh interact with you know civilians where you are and how is that going to impact the the relations in general how is that going to either feed or ease some of the tension that is that is inherent to the situation which is a big deal if you build those relationships and they’ll tell you where the bad guys are but if you don’t build those relationships then they won’t obviously there’s no what’s the difference between you and the Taliban like so yes and getting into flow if I’m if I’m just stuck in a thing of rage and hate and anger it’s I’m not going to function nearly as as well as not having to deal with any of that you know you only have so much mental bandwidth and if 50 of that is taken up by rage it’s like yeah you’re not going to function nearly as well just push all that stuff to the side and just get into the flow and yeah especially when that rage is the source some of that unowned rage unprocessed rage is the source of so much of the the tension and the reason you’re there yeah my hair was falling out twice I mean that was there was a lot of hate and a lot of loss and sadness and I had started losing big chunks in my my hairs fell out and it was alopecia I said it was hereditary or stress reduced or stress related and it was right after extortion went down so I lost some friends there and then that was the first time it happened and then I lost one of my best friends his name was Nick check he died in a hostage Rescue Mission saving a doctor American doctor and after that my hair fell out again in different places so it was not very not a doctor but it was kind of easy to figure out like yeah I think that’s from stress and then after that man once I start losing so many people just the hardened my heart in your process of integration how how did grief and moving grief play a part if at all I just drink drink it away and stuffed it down no I mean when you started the healing process after the drinking after the brain treatment that started you on the path was there any movement of grief that had to happen for you too to open your heart again or was it was it some other way that your heart opened again I think it was a different way I think it was just kind of realizing that there is a God and there’s a better place and just kind of feeling that and not that I don’t miss them but I know that they’re in a good place right I think that kind of helped me helped me a lot but they lived a full life they died doing what they wanted to do so it does suck that they left behind families and that they died young but they died doing what they love so I’m curious if if you had never been exposed to the seals or there wasn’t there wasn’t a military to go into and with that same drive and that same Spirit what would you have wanted to do with it that’s a good question I don’t know I have no idea where I would be today if I didn’t join the military I really had nothing else I wanted to do I mean I’m sure I guess would have found something but I don’t know if I would have had the same drive I really don’t know yeah what are you doing now what’s now that the the military is no longer an option for you what’s what’s the way you want to leave this world a better place nowadays I just uh wrote a book on my dog and ordinary dog so Cairo you’re on the bin Laden Mission some things came out they weren’t exactly accurate so now he has a book that everything’s accurate it’s a big piece of History so I go out and promote that and I do I teach I teach law enforcement when I can I have a lot of things that I can pass along that might help those guys out so if I can I love to do that I’m getting into real estate so I do that I try to do some public speaking here and there and I just I want to raise a family just work on me I do a lot of working on me yeah honestly like yeah I just want to invest into real estate so I have mailbox money to do what I want to do I want to go hunting fish and dive and raise a family but yeah I’m all over the place these days sounds good to me I like to give back with foundations to the uh it’s obviously a big part of it I work with different foundations that uh I mean there’s there’s seals that are killing themselves which doesn’t really make sense to me seals don’t quit and uh they just I knew I know where I was none of that I stuck a gun in my mouth but I was I was killing myself with alcohol I was just I was gonna die eventually you know I was in my early 30s I didn’t have much longer I’m sure so I try to work with foundations yeah I’m curious about that piece right there about seals don’t quit and you you know you were saying that you know ego was something that was getting in the way at a time and a phrase or a belief like seals don’t quit sounds to me like an easy way to abuse oneself if you feel like quitting but seals don’t quit and you’re a seal and your identity is built upon being a seal how does it impact you when you feel like quitting and you’re drinking yourself to death and that also conflicts with your identity there are certain times you do have to let go you know that for sure but yeah yeah but not quoting the drinking is definitely not not beneficial not quitting certain aspects of the lifestyle sometimes you just have to let go this might be a weird question but it Dawns on me that there’s a way in which like that humility it you said about to the team that you had to like you weren’t going to work if it wasn’t the team there was no Chuck norrises and there’s a certain kind of letting go into the team in that right where it’s like you give up certain autonomy certain kind of a belief in itself and you give to the belief in the team and then there’s the secondary one where in this treatment where you kind of like let go you describe it as letting go it’s almost like a surrender to God or something to that effect I wonder how are those two things in your body and the way you think about them the same or different letting go and being part of a team letting go into God surrender into being yourself again like in both cases you describe them as letting go or yeah surrender letting go into the team it was for something bigger than myself and then letting go and then he was letting go in the second part it was obviously something bigger than myself as well so letting go into the team to work together to accomplish a mission that’s going to save somebody’s life or get rid of bad people that are going to hurt innocent people that’s letting go into a team to accomplish a bigger picture a bigger purpose and I was all about it like what am I going to do go back to the trailer park and do drugs or be part of this team where I can actually benefit Humanity hopefully same thing letting go into a higher power higher purpose and so sometimes you just have to what would you have to say to somebody who whether they believe their brain is broken from birth or that they’ve got you know they’ve got add or they’ve got you know they’re on the Spectrum or they had a car accident somebody who feels like they are physically incapable in ways that they didn’t feel like they used to be what would you have to say to them about joining you in the journey through to recovery first things just don’t quit obviously that’s very important um I know it can be frustrating but so one of the things I tell myself these days is it’ll pass like and that’s a hard thing to see in my bad days like I do not think that I’m like yes it will it will pass like this won’t last forever and to be open-minded right don’t let your ego get in the way of you trying something that you think is stupid like you hear of essential oils or something you’re like yeah I’m not trying that hippie stuff or something like breathing like yeah sure I breathe every day maybe maybe have an open mind don’t give up and even though you’re going through a hard time like you can get through it it will pass eventually but you you do need to put in the work to get past it you can’t just sit there I mean you’re going to have to suffer through it but you definitely need to get the work put in the work to get yourself out of the hole for sure then it’s not going to be easy but nothing in life worth doing is usually easy so just don’t give up and it sucks I say that not not lightly not lightly at all because I can say it even though I’m in a good place right now I I think about it all the time like if it comes you’re gonna have your bad days and they’re gonna come to be as prepared as possible now for those bad days that are going to come because death is a thing you know your family’s gonna pass away they’re going to be bad days you’re going to lose the things that you love or something’s going to happen to you you get in a car wreck today tomorrow it can happen in a heartbeat to get through those times to put in the work now to when those Hard Times come it won’t be so hard to get through those hard times I noticed that when you say that you know sometimes it sucks I see an authentic smile on your face and acceptance yeah I feel like a absence of resistance to the suck in you the way that you say it and that seems important here bring it on it sucks when my brain’s not working to get to think my way through certain shitty situations but still it’s like a I don’t want anything bad to happen but if it does happen just get through it the best I can like Jordan Peterson says you want to be the strongest person at your father’s funeral right so put in the work now I know what’s going to come so it’s just a problem that I’m gonna have to figure out because life’s not over it seems like you have learned some tools that can support a whole bunch of other people in the military I mean to try to change the VA hospital I mean that’s I know people who’ve been involved I know people who worked for it and know but there is like the seals do a lot of stuff to there’s a lot of stuff that they do that is unique in their support of their people is there any inclination in you to to figure out how to bring some of this stuff to to the sales organization so that they can support their people so that the next guy who’s highly trained who loves his work doesn’t have to have a doesn’t have to have hate in his heart you know so the next guy can learn some empathy and and get over that stress and not have the hair fall off so they can continue to do what they love it’s definitely very important to me I think doing things like this the podcast and talking about it and not only in the military Community the law enforcement first responder I mean anybody can use it life’s hard man yeah life’s great but life can be hard so I mean I do this and I hope with a lot of charity foundations when I can just to bring attention to them I’ll go to the events and speak and meet with veterans but I think doing things like this to where anybody can listen is also very beneficial yeah awesome thank you will thanks well thanks for coming on of course thanks for having me thanks for listening to the art of accomplishment if you enjoyed what you heard today please subscribe and rate us on your podcast app we’d love 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