PNTV: Fearless by Eric Blehm (#419)

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today we've got another great book, Fearless the Story of Adam Brown by Eric Blem. Again, Fearless, subtitled the Undaunted Courage Ultimate Sacrifice of Navy SEAL Team 6 operator Adam Brown. Now, I got this book after I was invited to join a mental performance working group, kind of an ad hoc group that some of the guys that run Navy SEAL training in Coronado put on. Mark Devine connected me with a gentleman named Captain Robert Schultz, who is a former, obviously Navy SEAL captain, ended his career as the head of leadership and character development at the U.S. naval Academy. So Captain Bob and I connected, hit it off and we were having a conversation, preparing for the, you know, group discussion I was going to have with this mental performance working group. We talk about this in some plus ones. Just a deep honor for me to be part of this group and to know that some of the guys running SEAL training are optimizers and using this wisdom in ways that they're applying to their training, which is humbling and inspiring and beautiful. We'll talk more about that in a moment. But for now, Captain Bob and I were having a conversation, preparing for it over the weekend and I ended the chat with this is a really well read human being. Stanford Scholarship, Naval, you know, taught at the Naval Academy, as I mentioned, at the end of his career, Navy Seal, etc. Just a beautiful guy who's got his own version of Philosopher's Notes. We'll put a link in the show notes here. And I said, okay, you've read a lot of books. What do you recommend? I read? And the number one recommendation he had immediately was this book, Fearless, the Story of Adam Brown. He said, you just need to read that. And so of course I immediately got it, read it, fell in love with Adam Brown. Eric Blum tells the story so perfectly and just beautifully. And one of the testimonials are kind of, I guess it was a testimonial I actually pulled out in the note here. Stu Weber, a Green Beret, a pastor, and the author of Tender Warrior, says that this is, it's a love story. Ultimately, it's a biography of Adam Brown. And he says it's actually several love stories. A man for his woman, a warrior for his team, parents for kids, and soldiers for their country. There is no greater love than that a man lay down his life for his friends. Be warned, reading Fearless will change the way you see the world. Certainly my experience, any great biography will help move us forward. This is one of those poignant ones William McRaven, Admiral William McRaven's biography autobiography, did something similar. We ended that PNTV by saying the only thing he wanted to be was a good man. That's what he strove to be, a good man. Serving his team, serving his country. And you read autobiographies and biographies like this and it makes you want to be a better human being. So with that, we've got the Philosopher's Notes. 6 page PDF, 20 minute MP3. This is our fourth installment. By the way, if you haven't been following, we've got the three PNTVs. Right before this were other Navy SEALs in their wisdom. Jocko. We first did David Goggins, Can't Hurt Me. Jocko Willink. Discipline equals freedom. Then Commander Mark Divine staring down the wolf. And now fearless. So we've got five big ideas. We're actually going to read a quote in a moment, so I'll keep on holding on to that. We'll start with the bullies. So Blem. Eric Blem is a great writer. He tells the story of Adam Brown, goes back through his childhood and then his challenges and then his rise in Navy seals and everything else that went on in the process. We start with Adam Brown in grade school, right? Maybe he's in middle school or even early high school. He's 13 years old or something like that. At this time, most people aren't particularly nice. In fact, a lot of them are mean. And one day, apparently some kids are dropping off, getting dropped off at school, and one kid's getting picked on. Three bullies are picking on a kid with down syndrome. It tears my eyes just thinking about this scene. And Adam Brown, who's smaller than all the bullies, goes up to him and says, quit picking on him. You want to pick on somebody, pick on me, right? And the bullies kind of did their thing and they went away. And again, I have tears in my eyes right now recollecting the story and the boy's father. So then Adam puts his arm around him and walks him into school. And then every day after that, he was cool to the kid. Everybody else is picking on him. He's cool. He stood up to the bullies. And one of the eulogies, what do you call it? Spoiler alert. Adam Brown makes the ultimate sacrifice. One of the eulogies, serving his country and his teammates is by the dad of the kid who Adam protected from the bullies, saying that. And this is from a chapter called Something Special, that something was special about Adam Brown. He had the courage to stand up to bullies. And as I read this, I reflected on the fact that this was the seventh idea from Admiral William McRaven's book Make youe Bed, where he shared 10 of the lessons that he learned. And this McRaven is the former head of all U.S. special Forces. All of them, not just the Navy SEALs. He led the mission in which the U.S. forces got Osama bin Laden. He's been involved in some of the most powerful moments in recent US military history. His seventh idea in make youe Bed 10 ideas he learned in SEAL Training was stand up to bullies. And in that note, I referenced the fact that McRaven is currently standing up to what is arguably the greatest bully in America right now. Read his op ed pieces about the courage that he's had to stand up to the bully in chief in this moment. Again, politics aside, we need to have the courage to stand up to bullies. And then the other point I want to make here is Adam Brown wasn't doing this act of kindness and courageous standing up to the bullies, thinking that the guy's dad at the end of his life would eulogize him. But we start our Mastery series for our Optimized Coach program with the way Stephen Covey tells us to start everything, which is to begin with the end in mind, the ultimate end. And I use this example all the time. What would the cashier, the person working checking you out at the grocery store, what would they say about you and their eulogy that you were a kind person and you were always there checking in on their lives? There's opportunities right there to practice Love 2.0 and to connect and demonstrate that you actually care about this human being as more than just an item in your transaction. And again, when we show up, we have the opportunity to affect people in ways we couldn't imagine. Adam Brown is an absolute exemplar in that and his story begins. Very inspiring. Hard nosed kid, super tough, Tiny went out for football and he would just go against the biggest guys and relentlessly show up. Yet he had a tough time channeling that energy. He couldn't find his groove and find his purpose until he found the Navy SEALs. And before that he found crack cocaine. He became addicted to crack cocaine. He had dozens of felonies, over a dozen dozens, a ton of felonies. And rather than go to jail, he was allowed to go to a rehab center via some tough love from his parents and via a pastor who had a similar experience with his daughter. He went to a religious Christian based rehab center and Changed his life. And his favorite story that he learned in the Bible was the Prodigal Son, which is Luke 15, 11, 32. You probably know the story again, Eric tells the story beautifully. And Adam writes a letter to his parents saying that this is what's moving him. He's going to make it and he's going to make his mom proud. Because he was at a graduation of one of the guys who was going through this addiction rehab. And at the end of it, the guy graduated and his mom came up and said, I am so proud of you, to her son. I get tears in my eyes. And Adam says that he cried. His entire body just started vibrating. And he wanted to make his mom proud and that he was going to do the hard work to do that. And there's something beautiful about that. And the Prodigal Son, the story is, I certainly want to make my mom proud. I want to make you proud. I want to make all the people that have supported me over my life proud. What else are we here to do than to make those who have given us the gift of our life proud? So anyway, Prodigal Son, the story is, one of the kids tells his dad, while the dad is still alive, I want my inheritance now. And Blehm tells us, interpreting the passage, that's a pretty selfish thing to do. Entitled, selfish thing. And the dad says, okay, here you go, here's your inheritance. Of course, he proceeds to go out and squander it. And then he's at rock bottom. He's feeding pigs to get by. Barely can eat. I gotta go. My dad's servants live better than this. I'm gonna go back and I'm gonna beg to be a servant in his family. Of course, he arrives back, and what does his dad do? He throws a huge party. His dad, his son was dead, and now he's alive again. He celebrates, right? And there's so many powerful things we can talk about in a philosophical, metaphorical, religious sense. Jesus tells this passage, right, shares this parable. Why is that? Because the Father is going to celebrate when any of us make the decision to flip the switch and be the best version of ourselves. Eric Butterworth says, the ultimate decision is that is to connect to the divine within you and let it flow through you. The moment you make that decision, you become light. And great spiritual teachers say it doesn't matter how long the room has been dark. When you turn on the light, boom, it's lit. Now, of course, you may need to dust and you may need to clear out some cobwebs. Etc. But flip the switch, make the decision, be the prodigal son. And remember, we are all. Why that story is so important, so inspiring, is we are all that. It's not like some of us have escaped the shame of letting ourselves down and letting other people down. All of us have lived that heroic journey. Now, in the note, I reference Richard Rohr, a Franciscan monk. I was raised Catholic, Franciscan tradition. Now, I hadn't found a Catholic Franciscan monk, spiritual teacher I really resonated with. Anthony Demello was a Jesuit, right? He's awesome. But it wasn't until I found Richard Rohr that I really fell in love with this particular adaptation of what I grew up practicing and immersed in. So Richard Rohr wrote a great book called Falling Upward that will feature soon. In fact, we'll do that next, right? Hundreds coming down the pipeline. We'll do that one next. Richard Rohr is falling upward. And basically it's him taking Joseph Campbell's hero's journey, running it through his spiritual tradition, and then applying some Ken Wilbur and other wisdom to it. It's fantastic. It's like all the things I love about life in one book. He says this. The book is called Falling Upward. You need to go down to go up. I'll just draw some arrows to make sure we get something on this blackboard today. Down, up, falling upward. All heroes journey have a descent and then a rise. Adam Brown is the quintessential hero's journey. Descent into addiction, rise into heroic service. So Richard Rohr tells us, normally a job, fortune, or reputation has to be lost. A death has to be suffered, a house has to be flooded, or a disease has to be endured. The pattern, in fact, is so clear that one has to work rather hard or be intellectually lazy to miss the continual lesson. So we're sitting here whining about all the challenges we face in life, whether it's Covid or this or that. Guess what? That's how it's supposed to be if you want to live a heroic life. Richard tells us. And again, we've all got our own idiosyncratic strengths and weaknesses, challenges, etc. Rohr tells us it is not that suffering or failure might happen, or that it will only happen if you are bad, which is what religious people often think. Or this is a religious guy saying that. Or that it will happen to the unfortunate or to a few in other places, or that you can somehow, by cleverness or righteousness, avoid it. No, it will happen, Andy. You losing, failing, falling sin, and the suffering that comes from those experiences. All of this is a necessary, even good part of the human journey. And again, Adam Brown, as his story is told by Eric Blam, is the perfect demonstration of this. I'll write this as well. Let there be light. Make the decision to flip the switch. As Desmond Tutu says, our jobs, he said this to Richard Rohr, is just to stay screwed in. We're the light bulb. Let God's light flow through us. We got to stay screwed in. How do you do that, Jocko? Willing comes to mind. Discipline equals freedom. Screw yourself into the divine so it can come in and shine through you. Yes. I get fired up when I talk about these ideas. Third big idea is the trident. So this is one of my favorite ideas in the book and in general as well. So the Trident. So I am holding a card that Maggs, who is the director of mentorship at the Naval Special Warfare center, who I'm honored to know is an optimized member and has been for years. Mags and Captain Bob invited me to do this mental performance working group. Thank you, Mark Devine, for. Again, for connecting us. So I said it would be an absolute honor. Of course, I'm in. You tell me when. And then Covid happened, so we couldn't do it in person. We wound up doing it on Zoom. But right before COVID shut everything down, literally, like, days before, the only requests I had, when they asked me to come in and connect with their mental performance working group, I said, look, zero pressure. But my son, Emerson, Navy seals are his heroes. Do you think we can get a tour of your Navy SEAL training facilities? That would be epic. Long story a little shorter. They said yes. We went down. Emerson went down with two Navy Seal. I think they're called Mark 6, Mark 5, whatever.

Boats.

They're command boats. Right. Attack boats. Combat boots, rather. Boats. Emerson made two Navy SEAL replicas of them. We went to the craft store and got black paint to paint them. A dark black. Right. Awesome. We give them the mags. We give them to Captain Bob. Apparently Mags, at least for a while, had it on his desk. His desk is what looks out on the asphalt at the Naval Special Warfare center, where the seals go through their hell week. Right. The grinder, it's called. Well, his office is right there. Right. So at the end of our visit, which was amazing. Thank you again, Captain Bob. Thank you again, Mags. Thank you again, Tim. Sniper Tim Young stud showed Emerson how to climb trees and do other cool things. Mags gave me this. This is a card that seals get on Graduation, Naval Special Warfare. Earn your trident every day. The trident is what gets pinned to your chest when you successfully complete Bud's training. And on the back it has the US Navy SEAL code. Now the Trident. I did not know what the trident stands for. So on the trident, if you look this up, you'll see four different symbols. First you have an anchor. The anchor blem tells US represents the US Navy. The SEALs are part of the US Navy. Then you'll see a trident, the three pointed spear of Poseidon. Right? You have the trident which represents the fact that the SEALs can attack from the sea. Then you have a cocked pistol. The cocked pistol represents two things. One, that the seals can attack on the land as well. And two, the cocked pistol. They're always ready. The hero is always ready. Boom. I'm always training. I always am prepared. I have strength for two. When do you need me? Let's go. And then the fourth thing which is what moved me the most is there's a symbol of an eagle. Now the eagle is America's symbol for freedom. But this eagle, its head is bowed down. Usually the eagle has a head up and proud. Powerful bird, right? In this trident, the eagle's head is bowed. And the reason it's bowed is to have a humble stance. And I find that amazing because you have here the most elite warriors arguably in history. Certainly in modern military environments, the most elite warriors are the most humble. They have a bowed head on their commitment to creating freedom for us and protecting our freedom around the world. They're always ready to attack from wherever we need them. And I just find that just brings me tears in my eyes. And then I look at Mags business card, right? And I keep this in my wallet. The first two things, before I can get to a credit card, I have to go through these to remind myself to earn my trident. To show up today, to get better today, and to be ready today to serve profoundly. And then I have Maggs card. On his card he says he has a quote. And this is the thing I was most touched about, connecting with Mags, reading a book like this, connecting with Captain Bob is their humility. This is one of the most decorated. He was the former highest ranking enlisted Navy SEAL in the world. In the US Navy seals most humble guy giving us a little tour of his office with some historical mementos. Unbelievably humble, just astonishingly so. And his business card sums it all up. The deed is all, not the glory. It's the mantra of the seals. The deed is all. May we serve. Profoundly. We don't need recognition. Keep us in anonymity. We're here to serve. We're not here to glorify ourselves. The deed is all unbelievably inspiring. That's the trident. If you didn't know the backstory on that. And one of the reasons why I'm just so grateful for the men and women who serve us in our military forces to preserve our freedom. I don't take this for granted. I take that as granted. So thank you, Captain Bob Maggs, Adam.

Brown, Eric Blem, all the people that.

Have served in different ways to bring this story to life. Back to this the best. This is crazy. So Adam Brown had all this energy. He's always had it his whole life, right? He kind of misplaced it in the wrong direction. But once he got direction with a woman he fell in love with and married, and her story is amazing. His two kids, his parents were so supportive, and he found the Navy and the Navy Seals, right? And by the way, he almost couldn't get in to the Navy SEALS either. David Goggins was laughed out of recruiting offices because he was £297, became one of our luminaries, radiance exemplars, and hustled Adam Brown. Same thing. You tell me what it's like to go into a recruiting office and say, yeah, I have a dozen felonies. You know, I was addicted to crack cocaine. The officer in charge was like, dude, I don't know what I can do about this. I'm sorry. Like, come on. And then they looked on the wall and there's a picture of a guy who happened to be the dad of one of Adam's best friends from high school. And his buddy that he went with said, call him. Gives me tears of my eyes. Again, call that guy. He'll vouch for Adam. And guess what? Adam wasn't just the only. He didn't just stand up to this one bully. He always did that. He was the guy everybody could count on. So this guy says to the recruiting officer, treat him like he's my son. It's a really moving scene. Boom, he gets in and then he goes off. And he's all in, all day, every day, just ferocious intensity. I talked about Jocko Willink's Soul Force and David Goggins Soul Force and how you need to show up at 101%. And when you do that, God meets you, but you got to go more than halfway. Adam Brown is the living demonstration of what sheer, absolute, pure hustle and commitment to Arete looks like moment to moment to moment, ceaselessly, courageously showing up. And as it turns out, he gets shot in the eyeball during training. He winds up having to lose an eye. And now he can no longer effectively shoot with his right hand at a high level. So he has to train himself to shoot with his left hand. Imagine that you're training, you get your eye popped, and they're telling him, you got a medical leave, you can go check out, get paid for the rest of your life. He's like, I'm not doing that. I can still serve. And I haven't done what I'm here to do yet. I haven't done anything yet. I got hurt in training. Let's go. Okay, heroic. Thank you. Let's go. Now he wants to become the best of the best. He wants to get into Devgru, otherwise known as SEAL Team 6, the top 1% of the top 1%. It's impossible to get into Navy SEALs. Well, it's even harder to get into nearly impossible. Even harder to get into DEVGRU Seal Team 6. He has to go through sniper school and some other stuff, and he's got to go through that shooting with his non dominant hand a year after he loses sight in it. And they tell the story about how that's nearly impossible. And he does it. And then he goes to the next level of training. And in between that and the other level of training, he gets his right hand nearly cut off in a Humvee accident. Literally has to have several fingers reattached. Same thing. You can go, thank you for your service. No way. I'm not going anywhere. And now he's so banged up, they won't even let him try to do the super, super, super hard training, which makes buds look easy. And somehow he gets another hidden hand from a former commanding officer who gets him in. And they're like, God, you don't even have. You're missing an eye, you're shooting with your non dominant hand. You don't even have full function of your other hand. You're just not physically ready. And of course he gets through. He's on Seal Team 6. And the story here is just absolutely amazing. And then one of the guys says, are you a Jedi? And his answer is no. I just pray a lot. I pray a lot. Oh, he's a man of faith. Deep, deep, deep faith. And made me think of Susan B. Anthony, who was once asked, do you pray? And she said, I pray every moment of my life. And Adam Brown did as well. Both as A prayer to his God and also by fiercely showing up in service to his God and his family, etc. So that's the best crazy stuff. And then we have the fallen hero, Adam falls in the line of duty, serving as friends as one of the most heroic warriors again that the U.S. navy SEALs have seen. Thankfully, we have many who have also served as profoundly as they have, which is why we have again, our freedom. That we do have willingness to stand up to the bullies in whatever domain. And when I was moved on here, they take the trident, all of the guys from his team take their trident off and hammer it with their fist into his coffin. Boom. As an honor to him. So apparently it's just a thud, thud, thud. At his services, we had the father of the boy with down syndrome speak. Everyone comes up and talks about his journey, you know, from down to up. And he said, tell my story. I don't want to sugarcoat it. Tell everyone about all my challenges, all my pain. I'm not afraid of anything. This is how I became who I became. I've made a lot of mistakes in my life. Let me be an exemplar and share what I've learned and. But it was his parents wisdom that most moved me. After losing their son, they said, are we going to get bitter or are we going to get better? Are we going to get bitter or are we going to get better? Are we going to. They had such a good line regarding their faith that I want to get it right. They said, are we going to abandon. They were also people of deep faith. Are we going to abandon our faith or are we going to apply our faith? So I ask you, are you going to be bitter right now? Whatever challenges you're facing in your life, are you going to be bitter? Are you going to take the freedoms that you have for granted? Are you going to honor the people, whether it's in the US or abroad, who have helped us create this freedom? From the military heroes to political leaders, the business leaders, our parents, our teachers, everybody who's made our lives possible. Are we going to get bitter when life knocks us down? Are we going to get better? Are we going to abandon our faith and not practice our philosophy? Or are we going to lean in and apply our philosophy when we need to be our best the most, have the humility to show up ready, know that we're all on the hero's journey. We've all been down. That's an opportunity to be up. Just make the decision to be the light, stand up to the bullies. Be a hero, which literally means protector. Have the strength for two to serve honorably and profoundly today. Hey guys, this is Bry.

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