How to Overcome Adversity with former Navy Seal, Jason Redman

Jason, a massive welcome to the Lead on Purpose podcast.

James, thanks for having me, man.

It's just so, so great to connect finally. I've read your book a year or so ago now, Overcome. It was the most amazing book. And for the listener that's listening right now, you got to buy it while you're listening. I know you're on your phone right now. You're probably listening to podcasts. Get on Amazon and buy it. It's amazing. So, look, I'd like to rewind the clock for the listener that's listening right now that hasn't came across your amazing work and your incredible story. Inspirational story. Jason, can we talk a little bit about your life, your professional life? I know that we have got a lot of corporate leaders listening right now and some athletes, but your professional life was a little bit different. So please tell us your professional story.

Yeah, my story is. It is a story of failure and redemption and catastrophic injury that stop that path and coming to understand that you can lead from any level. So grinding out of that failure, achieving redemption, thinking that the world I finally had gotten, you know, I had worked my way back up and had gotten there and only to have it all be ripped away again with some pretty severe injuries. But learning once again that you can lead from any situation, and that really has become the foundation of everything that I teach and just blessed. I've had a unique journey in the SEAL teams and, you know, even in the civilian world and just always learning. I'm a student of leadership.

I love that, that beginner mindset as a leader. I guess it's just so important as we go through life, right?

It is. And I mean, that's definitely a big thing, you know, that I talk about. I'm sure, James, with your group, the day you finally feel like you figured it all out and you stop hungering, thirsting for information, challenging your beliefs is the day you're slowly dying. I mean, we're all slowly dying, but you're dying as a leader. And I think that it's critical to constantly be challenged our beliefs. And that's why I always say, hey, I am a constant student of leadership. I've been fortunate enough to be able to lead in many different situations. People out there will say, hey, he's a leader, but I don't have all the answers. What's worked in the past isn't guaranteed to work in the future. So that's why we're always learning.

Powerful. Well, let's go into your story and unpack your story of adversity. Extreme adversity. And I know that there was two really big pivotal moments. One where you'd had to rebuild trust within your team. And then you came back and obviously an incredibly life changing experience and ordeal. So please, I'll let you know. Tell your story in your own words. It's, it's truly inspirational.

Yeah, I was, you know, very young man when I joined the SEAL teams. I was only 17 years old, really. I was 15 when I decided I wanted to be a SEAL. Trained obviously to get ready. 17. I was still in high school and joined the Navy as part of something called the delayed entry program with a pipeline to try and become a seal, as opposed to a lot of the programs we have now. There was no direct pipeline. Basically you had to get a rating in the seal. You know, there were certain.

Jobs in the Navy that you could have that would allow you to test to become a seal, and then a boot camp. You had one opportunity, you raised your hand and you said, hey man, I want to try out for the SEAL teams. And they would make sure that your scores were good enough and then they'd let you go do the physical training test. I believe there were 11 of us that tried out and I think only three of us made it. And that started a whole new journey. So this, this young kid, really the, the most unlikely of candidates in my opinion. I mean, I wasn't, I wasn't a star athlete. I'm not this gigantic guy. I'm smaller than the average seal, or I'm on the smaller end of the spectrum at least. And I don't know, just launched into this career that I just loved, had a blast, got to travel all over the world, predominantly Central and South America in the early 90s and mid-90s doing counter drug operations. But oftentimes, you know, as more so in young men, I don't see this as often as young women. But when young men, when we start to see success at an early age, sometimes if we're not careful, that ego and arrogance can start to grow. And it definitely did with me. Continued to excel, became an instructor, did very well at that. Got recommended for a commissioning program in the SEAL teams, went to school, crushed that was ranked number one out of my college program to come back as a SEAL officer. And this is where I really started to step on my toes because I came back thinking, hey man, I'm, I've got all this experience. I'm this great leader. I was ranked number one and came back in the SEAL teams thinking I was, I don't know, patent or something. And.

There were some, there were some specific things that happened. So I was at school when 911 happened. I actually started school before 9 11. 911 happened in the first year I was at school. So for the last two years while I was getting my college degree.

The SEAL teams went off to war in 2002, 2003 and I was coming back in 2004. And we quickly realized that a lot of the tactics we've been utilizing in all the years past, what I had been trained with, they did not work on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan and these really dynamic urban Iraq, we were looking at very dense urban fighting in the cities for the most part, or even extended desert terrain. Obviously in Afghanistan, we were looking at urban fighting and that very mountainous terrain. So really, over the two years I was in school, we rewrote most of the SEAL teams, rewrote a lot of the tactics. So when I came back thinking I'm God's gift of leadership, everything had changed. And this is where ego and arrogance can be really dangerous. Because instead of humbling myself and saying, hey, I really don't know how to do a lot of these things and asking guys around me and seeking them out, as a young, immature leader, I wasn't willing to admit that. And I just continued, I'll be honest, to struggle, hanging on too tight, making mistakes, and then doing what so many. Once again, more of a young men problem. Started self medicating with alcohol to numb my pain from my mistakes, which was further eroding my leadership credibility.

And all of that culminated with a bad call on a mission in Afghanistan in 2005. And it was that bad call that was kind of the last nail in the coffin as a young leader. Because there were a lot of guys in the SEAL teams who said, hey, in my platoon and guys who work with me who said, hey, I don't want to work with that guy. That guy's dangerous, he's immature, he's going to get people killed. And I found myself at a crossroads of my career because they were talking about kicking me out. And that was a really, really hard moment.

Thankfully, my commanding officer believed in me and said, hey, you got a lot of potential. We just need to humble you. So there were a lot of things that happened. They, they told me they basically wrote a letter of reprimand that they said, hey, if we put this in your record, it'll officially end your career. But we're not going to do that. Instead it's going to go in my safe the commanding officer, safe. You're going to go do another two year cycle as a assistant platoon commander. The number two. And if you do great, this letter gets shredded. If you screw up, then this goes into your record and that ends your career. And then they also said, hey, we're going to send you to U.S. army Ranger School. We think it'd be good for you. Which, I'll be honest, I wasn't that excited about going. I actually was a little bitter about going, so. And I would love to tell everybody, man, I was so excited to get a second chance. But as often happens in life, sometimes it takes a little time to recognize the opportunities you have and the second chances you get or the new beginnings you get. And it was in Ranger School that I think I finally really woke up, really came to understand I, I transferred from a victim mindset. That's something I frequently talk about. We're living in a victim mindset world. Everybody's a victim. You know, it's never my fault. Everybody's out to get me and everybody doesn't like me because of, you know, name a myriad of things, race, creed, color, gender, leadership abilities, height, sexuality, whatever it is, we're a victim. And I saw myself as a victim. And it wasn't until I got to Ranger school that I finally woke up and was like, hey man, you want to blame everybody else, but the really, the reality is the only reason you're here is because of you poor decisions you made, poor leadership decisions. You were focused on you and not outward as a leader, you know, you were focused on, hey, I have this rank, so you should follow me when the reality is that should never be the case. So came back from Ranger School, I finally knuckled down and graduated Ranger school and came back to the SEAL teams and faced a, faced an uphill battle. I mean, the guys did not welcome me back. Like, hey, you know, we're so glad you're back. You know, you're obviously a changed man because you went to Ranger School. No, they were, they were like, hey dude, you're still the same guy and we still don't want to work with you. So it was a real lesson for me and really the foundation, not, not the foundations. I mean, I'd learned somewhat of the overcome mindset by grinding through SEAL training and Ranger school and some other hard things in my life. But it was kind of the first real long term leadership side of the overcome mindset I had encountered because really, every single day I had to earn back the trust of these guys that I had been.

Given the opportunity to lead and lead in a very dangerous job that potentially their lives could be at stake if I made bad decisions. And one of the great things about special operations is if the enlisted guys say, hey, we don't want to work with that officer because he's dangerous, the leadership will remove them.

So I had an uphill battle. And that really became the foundation of the three things I teach on now. Lead yourself, lead others, lead always. We can get into that later, but that's how I started to live. I focused on that day and day out, on every day, trying to be the best that I possibly had the ability to do. To lead when I was supposed to and to follow when I was called upon and to just focus on setting the example and relentless positivity. And slowly over time that, that the guys warmed up to me and said, hey man, you're doing a good job. By the time we headed off to Iraq in 2007, or I'm sorry, yeah, in 2007, in the early part of 2007, the majority of the guys I had won over, there was still a few who were, you know, kind of gave me the cold shoulder. But, you know, I think they, they were waiting for me to mess up is probably what the case was. And we got into very heavy combat operations in Iraq almost every night going out on missions, very complicated direct action, capture, kill missions. And then I was doing well. I continued to excel. You know, everything's a learning curve. So sometimes I screwed up, but I don't know those mistakes. And we drive forward and had a pretty big redemption point on a pretty intense gunfight in June. And that seemed to be the tipping point of the guys saying, hey man, good job. Like, you know, we'll follow you. Everything was on track. Got to the end of that deployment. We were rolling into the beginning of September. We were supposed to slotted to head home the end of September. And we got word that the number one leader for the Al Qaeda organization in the Al Anbar province of Iraq, western Iraq, was at a specific location. A guy that we had been hunting all deployment. Very dangerous individual responsible for dozens and dozens of coalition deaths. Directly responsible for the death of a fellow seal, Petty Officer Clark Schwedler, was killed on the very beginning of our deployment. So a guy we really wanted. And on September 13, we launched on that mission. And I was the assault force commander for the takedown, the target takedown. And I won't get into all the details, but to make a longer story short, we walked into a Very well executed ambush the enemy. You know, we always say no different in life or in business. The enemy always gets a boat. So no matter what plan you come up with, the enemy gets a boat. And in this case, the enemy had watched how we did things, and they were ready for us when we maneuvered up to the target. And we walked right into this ambush.

Myself and several of my teammates were caught in a machine gun crossfire, and two of my teammates were shot pretty well. I also was shot up. I took multiple rounds 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 helmet, had my left night vision tube shot off, rounds off my right side plate rounds off my gun continued to fire and try and.

Move, lay down some fire for the guys. The guys managed to grab our two wounded and get them back behind a large tractor tire that was behind me.

At this point. You know, thinking that my arm had been shot off, I tried to run back to the tire to get behind some cover. And that's when I caught around in the face, 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 that cheekbone broke and kicked out to the right, broke all the bones above my eye, vaporized my orbital floor, broke the head of my jaw and shattered my jaw to my chin and knocked me out. So this gunfight continued to rage over me for.

You know, probably another 20 minutes. We estimate the firefight was at least 30 to 40 minutes. So for at least 25 minutes, we would estimate that I was pinned down under this enemy fire until at one point during Alolan fire, my team leader ran forward, got me, pulled me back to that tire, and got a tourniquet on my arm and undoubtedly saved my life. So I owe my life, I owe my life to my teammates, my team leader. And then we ended up calling in a fire mission from the AC130 gunship, which. Which is a aircraft that has advanced targeting technology and multiple weapon systems on it. It's amazing platform. It saved more lives on the battlefield probably than anything I can think of. And we ended up calling in a fire mission directly on our position. It ended up being the closest fire mission in the entire Iraq War. And thankfully, we all survived and made it home. But it started a whole new journey. And that journey, when I got to the hospital.

Was a long and.

Uphill battle again. And obviously there's A lot of parts to that story that we can get into because that really began an appreciation of an even higher level of leadership. So I don't know if you want me to pause.

Yeah.

Because I threw. I threw a ton at you.

That was amazing, Jason. Wow. And for the listener listening now, I know that they're just enthralled by what you've said. And it's. There's a couple of things I do want to unpack. There's a part of this story, and I want to talk about trusting your gut, trusting your intuition, the whisperings that are there. Before you went out for this fight, this, this essentially to get this number one guy to try and capture him and kill him. There was one thing that happened that was a crucial part of that story, and I want the leader that's listening right now to go trust your gut. What were the things that you put on your. On your body that made all the difference in the end?

Well, and there were two parts. So now I often speak about this. My new planner that I recently put out called the point man planner. I talk about the 4.9 principles. And the third principle is risk assessments and indicators. And indicators are all the things that we see when we're walking through this life. And they can be everything from what we. What we see, what we hear, what we smell, what we notice in the environment around us. In business, it's fluctuations in the market, it's fluctuations in supply chain. It's whatever it is that those indicators, good leaders are watching those things. Things. And they should tip you off to hopefully avoid an upcoming ambush. So there were two things that happened that night that, that were indicators. Number one, when we were gearing up for the mission.

You know, the last thing I did was get all my gear on. You know, we. We did all our mission planning, and then we made sure all the team gear was ready vehicles, and if we were taking vehicles or any of the traffic, direct equipment we needed for the actual target takedown. And then the last thing you would do was take care of your own personal equipment. When I was gearing up, I was, I was loading my gear, and this little voice said, hey, where are your side plates? And I didn't normally wear my side plates. And, and for those of you that may not understand the vernacular, you know, in the military, in special operations, we have our load bearing equipment. So it's kind of like a vest. Under that vest or within that vest, you have body armor. You have, you know, armor, ceramic plates that can stop high caliber bullets. You have another vest that stops lower caliber and frag. Then on top of that you have your magazines, you have your radios, you have grenades and frag and pens and, you know, signaling devices and basically everything you need to take the fight to the enemy. Knives, stuff like that.

On the side, there were pockets that you could put side plates for additional protection.

The great thing for us as special operators, we had the latitude to decide what we were going to carry. Now you had to wear your front and rear plates. That was a requirement. And we had basic requirements of what you had to carry. Beyond that, it was on the individual operator. And side plates were heavy. You know, they added additional weight. And you know, when you were operating in dynamic environments, if you were going to be fighting with someone or you were walking a long distance or you had to climb over walls or up onto rooftops and things like that, you wanted to be as light as possible. So frequently I would not wear my side plates if it was a mission that we were, you know.

Patrolling in or I knew that there was a high likelihood that we were going to get into direct contact with the enemy.

And some people would say, well, why would you do that? You know, you're giving up protection. Well, like anything in life, it's risk versus reward. I typically opted to be lighter so that I can move faster as necessary. Now, if it was a mobility operation where there was a high likelihood of hitting IEDs, I would wear my side plates because I wasn't out of the vehicle. I was in the vehicle. We were providing usually security to lock down target. So on that night, I'm getting ready and it's like, where are your side plates? And I was like, why? I don't normally wear my side plates. You know, this isn't a mission. I wear my side plates. Why am I going to do that? You know, Once again, the little voice was like, wear your side plate. So I thought about, I was like, well, you know what, man, we're not patrolling far. We're, we're actually landing the helicopters right on the X. It's a very high risk target. So I said, okay, I'm going to wear my side plates. This is a time where, as an indicator saved my life. I took around right off my right side plate that most likely, if it had not happened, it would have passed through and probably blown out my, my kidney, my liver, my spine. Who knows what it would have done. But, so that was the first case where did me. Well, I listened to that little voice. I listened to that intuition. Later that night.

When we had taken down the initial target. No one was there. So we thought it was going to be a quiet night. At one point we realized there was activity on another house about 150 yards away. So my ground, my boss, the ground force commander, said, hey, red, I want you to take your team and maneuver to this house. Another. About 150 yards away. We saw some people flee out. As we were moving up, we were starting to encounter some pretty dense vegetation, which about 75 yards forward is where the enemy was hiding. And as I was starting to push into that vegetation, my spidey sense was going crazy. It was like, this is all wrong, like you need to stop, like you need to reassess. And I listened to that voice for a second, but I said, you know what? That's fear. That's just fear. This is a high risk target. We know these are bad guys. You know, I mean, I've got the aircraft up above that's telling me they can see some of these guys. That's just fear. Push that away. We've seen this situation before. We should drive. We're going to drive forward. And that's what we did. And unfortunately, we walked right into an ambush. So that's a situation where I didn't listen to my gut. I pushed against it. So I frequently talk about this, that it's always a good idea if your gut tells you something is wrong or something is off, Listen to it and even pull your team together. What I should have done or could have done is I could have pulled my teammates together, especially at least if no one, especially at least my team leader, my, my senior guy with me and said, hey, man, I've got a bad feeling about this. What are you feeling? What are you thinking right now? And if he had said, dude, this does not feel right. You know, maybe we should come up with an alternate plan and we could have done that. So I would encourage that in business. Sometimes it will be fear. Sometimes we're doing high stakes, high risk things and you know, that little fear bubble will bubble up and we'll say, ah, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm afraid of the uncertainty with this. But sometimes it's the right thing to do to make a change because of that. So listen to that voice.

That's a really good one. Thank you for sharing that. And for the listener that's listening right now, Jason lost around 40% of his blood while he was lying there. And on the medevac, you know, there was a lot of doubt around whether he's going to pull through. But I want to tie this into personal care, personal health, fitness. You know, your fitness level would have been phenomenal and I imagine that would have been a contributing factor to you surviving this horrific injury, multiple injuries. So for the leader out there, whether they're on the sports field or they're in the boardroom or they're leading their family, how important is it to be physically strong and healthy?

I talk about five key areas, what I call the pentagon of peak performance. To be a balanced, effective leader. And the foundational level is physical leadership. And it's interesting, I'm sure everybody listen on here. Whether you're a professional athlete or whether you are a C suite executive, we all reach a point in our lives where the level of responsibility starts to grow. If you're a professional athlete, obviously fitness critical part of what you do. But typically for everybody else, we reach a level where the demands of our job of running a family, of trying to do everything in our lives starts to catch up and we start to look at, okay, I just don't have enough time, what am I going to start to cut? People usually cut physical leadership or fitness first. And I will challenge anyone that that is a bad idea. This machine that you walk around in is incredible. And the better you take care of it, the better it's going to take care of you. So if you are physically fit, and I break this into three levels. Number one, fitness. So how much you move your body. Number two is nutrition. What do you put into your body? And number three is sleep. So number one on the nutrition level, if you take care of yourself well on, I mean, number one on the, on all three of those levels, you take good care of yourself, you're going to manage stress better, you're going to have more energy, you're going to be able to go longer, you're going to be more positive, your emotions are going to be better, you're going to have a better immune system. And then the kicker like, like James talked about is God forbid you ever had a major traumatic incident or illness, injury, disease, you will sustain it much better. Your body will be healthier and be able to deal with it better. No different than me. I mean, the doctors. I was probably in the best shape of my life when I got wounded. I was actually training to screen for our next year SEAL team. That comes with a very difficult physical test. And so I had been training very well. If we weren't doing operations, I was training and the doctor said, hey, your fitness saved your life. So fitness, nutrition, guys you know, I mean, so many of you that are listening to this podcast love a hot sports car. You know, we love a Ferrari or a Lamborghini or, you know, Bugatti or whatever it is. Well, those cars are designed to run on super high octane fuel. You're not going to put low octane or crap fuel in your car. You're going to baby it. You're going to take care of it because you have this amazing piece of precision machinery. So why do you put crap into yourself? You are an amazing. You're a Ferrari, man. You're a Ferrari. And all these people out there don't take care of themselves and they put substandard fuel into their body, so you're not operating as well. And then the third one, guys, is sleep. And this is a big one because I meet a lot of executives. Athletes usually are a little smarter about this. I mean, a lot of executives in the business community who brag about, oh, I get popular on five hours of sleep or four hours of sleep, and I tell them, I'm like, hey, man, congratulations. You are chronically fatigued. You are nowhere near operating at the best level. You have the ability to be.

The SEAL teams. Obviously, there are times that we have to go through with very little sleep. Obviously in Hell Week, we do a week where you only get, like a couple hours of sleep in the entire week. It is terrible for you. It's terrible for your body.

We know that it helps develop a great overcome mindset, push through that. So I tell guys, hey, man, you should get good sleep. Your body is healing when it sleeps. Your body is repairing when it sleeps. Your brain, your energy, all these different things are healing. And the average person out there needs at least six to seven hours a night. My. My. My friend, fellow SEAL Dr. Kirk Parsley would yell at me and say, it's actually eight hours. I'm even gonna. I'm gonna go down a little bit for you guys. But those are the three things that are critical. You want to be a better leader? Take care of yourself. Physical build that foundation. You build everything else on top of that. That should be a priority for all of you.

It's great advice, really good advice, and let's go to Hell week. You know, I've read a lot about Hellwick. I've never been anywhere near Hell Week, but I imagine there's a certain mindset that you've got to embrace to be one of the few who actually doesn't ring the bell, one of the few who qualifies and graduates. So for the person who's going through a hell week of their own, whether it's too much work and 100 hour weeks or stress or relationship meltdowns, what's the mindset that they can adopt or certain habits that they can think of that can help them actually get through their hell week.

So take it in bites. And this is really how we should live our life anyways. First off, balance is not balance. When I talk about the Pentagon and peak performance, five key areas, it's not like it's 20% in each area. The demands of life don't work that way. It's just awareness that, hey, I need to make sure I'm putting time into physical leadership, I need to make sure I'm putting time into social leadership, spending time with my family, friends, things like that.

In goal setting, we're setting those incremental goals. So hell week is no different. You just need to set your focus shorter and not longer. Because that's typically where people get off course when they're dealing with their own. Maybe you're going through a business hell week, maybe you're going through a relationship hell week. Maybe you and your spouse are just at it and you're thinking, this isn't worth it, I'm going to throw in the towel. Usually it's when we're at the hardest points, our own hell weeks, that we're ready to quit. And what we need to do is look at the small incremental, like, how do I make it to the end of, you know, right now? How do I make it to the end of this, this evolution? I'm working on this report and it's grinding. How do I get to the end of this? Because the reality is once you get to the end, you get a little bit of a breather. And most people tend to quit when the discomfort, the pain, the stress is at the greatest. Mentally, we're at that breaking point. I really try to encourage the guys that seek out me for advice on SEAL training. I tell them, don't quit during an evolution. Everybody's going to, but you don't do it. Like, no matter how painful and how uncomfortable you are, if you truly want to quit, wait till the end of the evolution, push through and just tell yourself, I'm going to make it to the end of this evolution. And then when you get to the end of that evolution, reevaluate and decide, hey, do I really want to quit or was I just truly uncomfortable in pain? 99% of the time, guys don't want to quit. It's just they're in a moment of weakness and we all have them. So I encourage you to set those shorter goals. You know, how do I get through this day? Let me get some sleep. I'm going to attack tomorrow. Tomorrow is another dragger, but I'm going to push through. You know, maybe I need to take a break and, you know, walk, get outside, walk for a few minutes, reduce that stress and just continue to do things that reduce that stress. Stress momentarily. And that's how you end up getting all the way through.

Really amazing. I love that bite size approach, that kind of 1% approach. It's incredible. And the Pentagon of peak performance. I know the person listening right now is going, what is that? Tell me more about that. So I'd love to, like, just spend a bit of time unpacking your Pentagon of peak performance.

Yeah. When I got in trouble as a young leader, I realized I was kind of out of balance as a leader. I'll be honest. Physically, I mean, I was in shape as a seal, but I wasn't. I wasn't where I needed to be. As a SEAL leader, you should be really in the best shape that you have the possibility to be. And doesn't mean that I'm going to beat everybody in my platoon. I want to, but everybody has gifts. Everybody, you know, you're going to be good some areas and other people are going to be better in others, but you should be 100% the best version of yourself. So I wasn't there physically.

Mentally, I definitely wasn't there. I wasn't challenging myself. I wasn't challenging my beliefs. Emotionally, I was. I was definitely a basket case. I was up, I was down. Socially, I wasn't, in my opinion, doing as good a job. And spiritually, I was off course also. So these were the five key areas that after I went to Ranger school and I was rebuilding myself, that I really tried to say, you need to put time and effort into it, these. These areas. So physically you should be killing it. Mentally, I was. I was consuming every book I could find on leadership. I was watching good leaders in my SEAL team and saying, hey, man, that guy's a rock star. I want to be like that guy. What's he doing? And then I would say, that guy is not. The guys don't like him. What is he doing that I want to make sure I'm not doing? And I also looked at myself. Guys didn't want to work with me, so what was I doing in the past that I want to make sure I'M not doing again in the future. So mental leadership, it's challenging our beliefs, it's consuming information. Emotional leadership is how do we manage our emotions? How do we, how do we stay even keeled calm in the chaos? So in the highs we're not too high and obviously in the lows, we're still positive and driving forward. Man, I watch so many leaders that allow their emotions to drive their, A, the worst case, their decision making, or B, at least on a lesser case, their expressions, what they're saying, their sarcasm. And those are things that can damage your credibility as a leader and they'll damage relationships. Man, I watch people who in a frustrated moment throw out that zinger that does nothing to contribute to that situation. All it does is makes their ego feel better. So, but in the long run, as a leader, how is that helping? At the end of the day, as a leader is what are, you know, how are we making sure that we're, we're moving the ball down the field and if something you're saying is not contributing that that's weak. Emotional leadership.

Social leadership is how do we build the rings of influence around us, our teams from the. And there are four rings that I talk about. There's the outermost ring is your professional ring. Those are the people that you work with, you're probably not friends with, but you work with. You know, they help you accomplish the professional things we have in our life. The inner ring is our acquaintances and friends. And this is still in the work sphere, but these are people that you work with, but you are friends with. You probably hang out with them, you go out, you might have a beer after work, you may have lunch with them. You know, you bitch about the boss with them.

The next ring is your close friends. These are the people that maybe you grew up with. You know, you go, you, you work out with, you play sports with, maybe go hunting with, you know, maybe they're your neighbor and you do barbecues together and the kids hang out. And then the bullseye is our family. That is your spouse, your kids, your mom, your dad, brothers, sisters. The problem with most of us in western culture, we have a tendency to place all our emphasis on the outer two rings on our professional and our work acquaintances and friends. And the inner rings, our close friends and our family, we tend to just take for granted. We just say, well, they're going to be here. They know that I'm working hard and they know I'm doing it for them. But they may not. And if you're not putting some Time and effort into them. I frequently watch when a major life ambush comes along and that gets pressure tested. That's where it breaks and marriages break and relationships break, friendships break because you're going through a major life ambush. And you didn't, you didn't, you didn't invest in those relationships. So I really encourage people to put time and effort into all four rings, recognize that balance is critical. That way when you have a major life ambush or crisis, you know, you're not pressure testing those innermost rings who really are still going to be with you. Because God forbid, you know, like me, I thought, you know, I often tell people we all ride along on trains and I rode the Navy SEAL train. Some of you are riding the business train, some of you are rising, riding the professional athletic train, sports train. Someday something could happen that throws you off that train. Like I got thrown off the seat, SEAL train, so my teammates and friends were still on the train. So those outer two rings, they go away. But who gets off the train with you in a major crisis? It's those inner two rings, the close friends and your family. And, and if you did not invest in them in that pressure tested situation, they may go away. And that's why I tell people, man, build, invest in those four rings. Build your social leadership. And then the fifth one is spiritual leadership. Faith plays a part for me, religion for some people, religion is a part of them. I tell people that religion isn't the end all, be all for spiritual leadership. It's more of just getting outside of yourself, having perspective, understanding that you know.

All the problems you're facing. Most likely, if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably from a most likely in a decent place. You have access to technology, you obviously have an Internet connection, you have power.

The problems you're facing are not that great. They're challenging, they're hard, they could be life threatening to you. But spiritual leadership, in my opinion, is having perspective that there's a great big world out there and there are people that are enduring far worse than any of us. And if you can have that perspective, if you can do those things to connect with those types of people or at least appreciate them, spiritual leadership makes you stronger. When you go through your problems, those five areas create the Pentagon. And in my opinion, that creates balance.

As a leader, that's. So I guess the only word I can use to describe it is fire. Like, that's just amazing way of perspective. The true train analogy, you're on this professional train. When you get thrown off the Train. The train keeps going and the only people that get off are the family, loved ones and close friends. That's a real powerful message to us all. And, Jason, I want to reinforce for the listener that this is not theory. What you're sharing is not theory. You've walked the walk. And so I want to talk about adversity and I want to talk about self pity for a second. So you end up in a military hospital and you're thinking, I want to get out for Halloween, which is like a month away, and I want to get out for, I think it was maybe your sister, your sister in law's wedding. And you're planning to do these things in the next couple months. And you turn to the nurse and the nurse says something to you, and I'm not going to share it with the audience yet. I'll let you tell your own story. But then people start coming into the room going, oh, isn't this so awful? These wounded warriors and feel so bad. I want you to please share your response to those things and what the nurse told you. People coming in and then what your response was. It's incredibly inspiring.

Yeah, thank you. So.

We'Ll back up for one second to make it relatable to everyone. All of us in this life are going to encounter, excuse me, are going to encounter these catastrophic, what I call the end moments. And it may very well be the end of one part of your life. It could be you lose a job, a business could fail. It could be a divorce, you know, some. It could be sexual trauma. So could be, you know, the loss of a child or the loss of a close family member. These are all major, the end moments, or life ambushes, as I call them. And there's a natural tendency when we endure these moments that we, we get hit with all the negativity. You know, there's no hope, there's nothing I can do. It's all outside of my control. It's not fair. These are the thoughts that everyone has, including me. So when I was sitting in that hospital, I mean, you have to think I had just finished this impossible climb out of this deep, dark hole, being told, you don't deserve to be a SEAL and we don't want to work with you.

That is the hardest, hardest road I've ever, ever walked. And I climbed out of it and earned my way back. To suddenly find myself laying in a hospital bed.

Being told, hey.

You have no use of your left hand.

Your elbow is so mangled and the nerve damage is so great. We're Talking about amputating your arm. Your face is mangled. You know, you have really no nose. You just have tubes that are coming out of what's left of your nose. You are wired shut from the massive amount of, you know, your shattered and broken jaw. You are trached. We're feeding you through a stomach tube. You're. You. You've lost so much blood. We've given you seven blood transfusions. And because of all that blood loss, you're so weak that you have to have nurses come in and help you go to the bathroom. And.

And that was a. I mean, that was depressing. It was tough to wrap my head around all that. And I was thinking all those things, you know, there's no hope. There's nothing I can do. It's all outside of my control. This isn't fair. And. And I remember thinking, like, okay, well, all right, well, I'm just gonna drive forward and, you know, get out of this situation, you know. You know, how long is it going to take to put. Put me back together? And I remember asking the nurse. I had to write to her, or the doctor actually, was the. It was the presiding doctor. And I said, how many months is going to take to put me back together? You know, I got. You know, James, like you said, I got things to do. I got me my. I got to go to my sister's wedding. I want to get back to Iraq. And she was like, months. She's like, tenant. It's going to take years to put you back together. And like, that was a blow.

The doctors telling me all these different things was a blow. And it just felt like one. One blow after another. And I almost felt like I was back in that gunfight in Iraq, that.

It wasn't the bullets and bombs of battle, but it was like the bullets and bombs of life. And every time I turned around, I was getting hit again. And I remember at one point thinking to myself, man, like, okay, so I'm potentially gonna. I'm going to be forever disabled. I'm going to be permanently disfigured.

And my special operations career is over. And while I was navigating all that is when I had a couple of people come into the room, like James mentioned, who had a lot of pity. They had a lot of pity over what had happened. Pity for me, pity for fellow wounded warriors on the ward, and just, hey, these young men, this is so sad that they have been all banged up and they're never going to be the same. They're never going to be able to overcome. And they left. And I remember just kind of sitting there with all this weight and negativity on me, like, just thinking, like, where do I go from here?

And.

Here'S the interesting thing. In this life, the greatest gift you have as a human is you have a choice. You have a choice in how you're going to deal with adversity and problems. Nobody forces you to lay there and feel sorry for yourself. Nobody makes you be a victim. It's an internal choice to be a victim. It's an internal choice to lay there and feel sorry for yourself. It's an internal choice to have a pity party and just stay there. And I was at that moment where I said, I just got done climbing out of this dark hole. You created these rules of leadership which said, lead yourself, lead others, lead always. Guess what? Just because you're in a hospital bed doesn't mean those rules no longer apply. So it's go time. Like, let's go. From this point forward, it's relentless positivity. And you're not going to let other people come into this room and feel sorry for you. When my wife came back into the room, she had been gone for a few minutes. When those people were in there, I motioned to her and said, hey, let me have my pen and paper.

Because I couldn't talk, obviously. And I wrote out. I said, never again. Never again is anybody going to come into this room feeling sorry for me. Because from this point forward, I refuse to feel sorry for myself. And I wrote out this sign that said, attention to all who enter here. If you're coming in this room with sadness, sorrow, go elsewhere. The wounds I received, I got the job that I love doing it for people that I love, defending the freedom of a country that I deeply love. I will make a full recovery. What is full, that's the absolute utmost, physically, of the ability to recover. And then 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 regrowth. If you are not prepared for that, go elsewhere. And we signed it to management.

I love it. You're incredible. And you put it up on the door.

We did. We put it on the door. I said, hey, nobody's allowed into the room until they read this. And the sign took on a life of its own. A New York firefighter, really amazing guy. He had been a Marine and then became a highly decorated New York fire captain. He lost both sons on 9 11. One was a police officer and one was a firefighter. And he started coming to the hospital to visit wounded warriors and I think just to heal his soul. And he came into my room and met me and he read the sign and he took a picture of it and he blogged about it. And it ended up going viral. It was all over the news and it was written about in other blogs. And to this day it has now gone forward to motivate millions and millions of individuals. It earned me an invitation to the White House and I met President Bush, who signed it. I didn't feel like it was mine to keep, so we had it framed and it now hangs in the wounded ward at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington Dior in Bethesda, Maryland. It has been written about in amazing book. Secretary Robert Gates, our Secretary of Defense, wrote about it in his book. First Lady Michelle Obama wrote about it not once, but twice in her book. It moved her so much. I don't tell everybody that, say, hey, look at me, I wrote this. I tell you that because that is the power of choice. That's the power of choosing positivity in the face of negativity. And as a leader, when you have these moments where you feel down and there's no hope and there's nothing I can do, you need to understand that you have a choice. Hope comes from within. Hope is merely a belief that I can change the outcome of the situation I'm in. It doesn't mean that you're going to get back whatever was lost, crushed, destroyed, set off course. All it means is that I'm going to change the outcome I'm in right now. That is what hope is. And, and, and as a leader, you have to believe that. And that's what I believed. And that's what that sign represents.

It's powerful. And for the listener, I'm going to make sure and get that exact note. I'm going to write it out and put it in the show notes so that you can, can put it up on your own wall in those times of, of need and hope. So absolutely amazing stuff. Now let's think about leading others. So once you learn to lead yourself and get off the X and learn to adapt, how do we embrace the peak performance, the Pentagon of peak performance? What about leading others? Because I think a lot of us as leaders or people with leadership titles want to go, I just lead other people. That's my job. They don't focus on me and then go into others. So once you've focused on yourself, how do you pivot and then start to lead other people.

So there's multiple components of it. You know, if we take it to the most basic level, if you're building a team of individuals and you're building a culture, you know, I talk about how it goes back to SEAL training.

In SEAL training, they do an amazing job of building teams. And the teams are built through.

Through. One of the main ways we do it is through using this little rubber boat called an inflatable boat. Small. And there are seven men under that boat. We're all roughly about the same height. And you carry this boat around everywhere you go. And there's coordinated commands to carry the boat at a low carry or carry it at a knee level or waist level or up on your shoulder, or where it's normally carried is on top of your head, and you end up running all over base. You cover hundreds of miles with these boats on your head. And it's painful. Your neck aches, and, you know, the boat weighs about 300 pounds, empty. You add some sand, a little bit of salt water, and it starts to, you know, maybe an instructor decides to get in and go for a ride. You know, they. They are painful to carry. And typically, if you were to watch a class go through SEAL training and they were carrying these boats, you would hear a lot of chaos. The instructors would be yelling, but you would hear a lot of chaos and yelling coming from the boats. And you would hear one yell above all others, and that was get your head under the boat. Because frequently, what would happen, no different in life. When the pain and the stress of being in a team is on and we're all trying to carry the weight, someone will try and remove their head to release the pressure. And as soon as they do that, it redistributes the weight on everybody else. I have an amazing picture in my presentations where there's a guy in the back of the boat who has his head out, and the guy in the front directly opposite of him is all crunched down because the weight of the boat shifted. And it's such a great example of being an effective member of a team and understanding you have to carry your weight. So as a leader, you have to make sure not only are you carrying your weight, but you are encouraging and making sure that everybody else in your team is. Is carrying their weight. Because if you allow individuals to take their head out from underneath the boat temporarily, it's going to cause discomfort. And people are more focused on the discomfort and the pain than they are on moving that boat in the direction where you want it to go or moving your team in that direction. If you allow it to happen longer, then they will totally lose sight of what they're there to do. And all they're thinking about is killing that person that doesn't have their head on the boat. You're, you're losing the culture and camaraderie of the team. And all you've got is animosity towards that individual who's not carrying their weight. So that's number one. Number two is the other thing we do is you're obviously, if you're not carrying the boat, you're rowing the boat and rowing the boat out into some really big sea state, into great big waves. And it takes very coordinated effort. Everybody has to be rowing at the same time, very coordinated, in order to row up into, you know, a 12, 15, you know, 20 foot wave, if you will. And if anyone is not rowing at exactly the right time, it could actually cause the boat to pivot. And a boat that pivots in the face of a giant wave will get dumped because you need it to be going straight with speed to punch through the top of the wave. That's no different in a team. A leader has to constantly be encouraging as people, you know, hey, we're all rowing in the same direction. This is where we're going. I need to make sure that everyone understands where are we going? And as a leader, we got to continually reinforce that sometimes.

Sometimes we underestimate. We think that just because it's in our head or we've said it four or five times, that people know where we're going. People, they're dealing with all kinds of stuff, their family, work, personal problems, whatever it is. And if we're not constantly beating the drum as leaders, like, hey, this is where we're going. They lose sight. And all of a sudden, if you're not careful, you got a team that's rowing at different times. The third component is something we call main effort and supporting effort. And this is really critical to understand.

This is where a lot of organizations get off track. Because when we talk about main effort and supporting effort, it's when we're leading multiple teams within an organization. You know.

In America, I frequently talk about football as a great example of this, but use any sport, so transcribe it to any sports. I will admit I don't study rugby a lot, so I wouldn't be able to speak intelligently on that. But I will say in American football and in rugby, rugby, the main effort is to win. It is to Win. That is the main effort. The supporting effort are all the different pieces that go together into that. It's your coaching staff. If it's a professional team, it's your administration staff. It's, you know, who handles payroll, who handles recruiting. You get into the players. And now in American football, you've got your offense, your defense, you've got your quarterbacks, you've got your offensive line, you've got your receiving core, you know, your defense, defensive line, linebackers, secondary, all that. Those are called supporting effort. As a leader, we have to make sure that they always understand what is the main effort or what we're doing. Because sometimes supporting efforts will lose sight of, hey, we're here to win. And they start focusing so heavily on their own individual little piece of the puzzle that they start to place it at a higher priority over the main effort. And this is where things get off track. This is where silos start to develop in an organization. This is where an organization gets off track. And that's why a leader and leaders of every supporting effort must always beating that drum. Hey, guys, what is the main effort? And if your organization is to sell amazing widgets, then guess what? It should be. Our mission, our main effort, is to. To provide our customers with the best amazing widgets on the planet. And whether you're in accounting or engineering or sales or customer service, it's always back to presenting the greatest widget there is. That is the main effort. And so often in leadership, you have to remember, that's why I'm here. And obviously praise your teams for doing that, but you're constantly, boom, boom, beating that drum. This is the main effort. So I could get a little deeper. You know, we could then almost get into extreme ownership also, which is, I think, the final part of what I talk about in the teamwork section.

But.

Extreme ownership, I think every listener that you. When you said that, they all perked up like, yeah, yeah, we want to know that. Tell us about extreme ownership.

Yeah. So obviously giving credit to Jocko Willink and Lake Bath and my teammates who served in Ramadi, which Lapin. Jocko ran with Task Unit Bruiser, which, you know, a troop that did a lot of work. You know, some pretty heavy hitters in there. Mark Lee was one of the first SEALs killed in Iraq. Mark was part of Bruiser.

Chris Kyle was assigned to them. The legendary American Sniper. So pretty amazing group of guys. But Jocko and Leif wrote a book called Extreme Ownership. And it's about the idea that as a leader, when we are managing our Teams.

There is an overlap. And this is something I frequently talk about within organizations that you have to teach every single person in your organization, they are a leader, from the brand new guy all the way to the most senior individual. And you want to build a team of leaders, individuals who are making decisions on the fly, who you push that decision making down, you trust them to make those decisions. But at the end of the day, you the leader. Regardless of how much autonomy you want to give your team, you are the leader. And when things go wrong, you have to own it. And a lot of leaders don't do this. A lot of leaders, when things start to go wrong, they immediately look externally, they start to look at, well, what, what broke, what went wrong, who did what wrong, what are the external factors? And really good leaders who manage great teams, they immediately look inward and they say, well, what did I do wrong? What didn't I provide my team to make them successful? Did I not give them enough training? Did I not give them adequate resources? Did I not give them the right guidance? Did I not give them enough motivation? Did I not show them the right and left limits that they needed to operate within? Did I not hold members of the team accountable, which allowed them to slip, which set them up for failure? That's extreme ownership. And, you know, Jocko really does a great job of illustrating that point. I interview him and in the book Overcome, and we talk about those things. But if you're going to be a good leader and you want to build a great culture, you got to take extreme ownership of everything that goes on. And I'll tell you, the greatest leaders I ever worked for. I frequently talk about Vince Peterson in my book, who is a legendary seal. Not his real name, but probably one of the greatest leaders I ever worked for. And a lot of the leadership lessons I teach came directly from Vince. And when you talk about extreme ownership, Vince was the perfect example of that because he had the ability to.

Motivate a team in a specific direction. How to always, hey, this is the main effort. This is where we need to go. He always showed he had his head under the boat and he encouraged us to row in the right direction. And when we would get there, he would then give all the credit to everyone, you know, never himself. You know, he would praise all the guys and he would highlight people and, you know, these people are the reason why this occurred. You know, they're, you know, we achieved this success because these people had the ideas. And it was only later in my career I began to realize that he planted Those seeds long ago. It was always his idea. And if it went wrong, he owned it. It was his fault if it went wrong. So probably one of the best leaders I ever had the opportunity to work with.

What a privilege. And to apply that to your fatherhood. You know, being a dad, being a partner, being a son, being a daughter, whoever you are. And when you're listening right now, applying that to every aspect of your life, taking extreme ownership for your actions or your inactions. And I'm glad you brought the book up again. Overcome, please, if you're listening, take a moment and order. It's an incredible, incredible leadership book, lifebook. It's got insights that are going to help you traverse life. When things get tough, and they do get tough, there's another ambush waiting around the corner. And I guess, Jason, that's the thing with an ambush. You don't know when the ambush is happening because it's an ambush. And you can't plan for the death in a family generally. You can't plan for a global pandemic. And so having those skill sets are critical. So the book is a must buy. If you're an audible listener, go and get it on there. But I certainly recommend buy. I've made hundreds of notes in it, highlighted it, taken distinctions away. It's been incredible. So I want to thank you for distilling your leadership excellence, your leadership experience, your adversity and how you traversed it into one book that is a best selling book. And I know that you are a New York Times bestselling author. I mean, we're so fortunate that you've taken the time to do that. So I want to thank you.

James, My honor.

And just I want to double tap the fatherhood thing. You know, as a parent, I think people over complicate being a parent.

At the end of the day, the rules of leadership I talk about overcome, apply in parenting. And you know, it comes down to how do you lead yourself? You know, if you tell your kids, hey, do this, but you're doing the opposite, guess what? They're going to end up doing the opposite. Opposite. But if you set the example for your kids, 90% of the time they're going to follow your example. If you're into fitness, your kids are going to follow. If you're into.

Whatever it is typically kids will follow. So set the example for your kids and you'll be amazed. Even if sometimes you feel like, hey, they're not paying any attention. It's pretty fantastic. My, my oldest daughter is actually one of my coaches now. She's 19. She's getting ready to turn 20. And even though she's super young, she's grown up listening to me. And I just, I love it. She's so smart. And the people in our coaching group are like, man, she's so wise beyond her years. So set that example for your kids and it will, it will reap dividends.

Incredible. Well, there's two things I want to ask you before we wrap up. So the first thing is, do you have any events coming up where people can actually rub shoulders with you, meet you and learn from you?

Yeah, absolutely. So I have two ticketed events that are coming up. One is a leadership development development event on. Yeah, I am a professional speaker. I don't feel like it.

It's a leadership development event called Roger up and it is in Chicago, Illinois, September 1st through 3rd. Myself and some other amazing speakers are going to be talking about leadership. We're going to be talking talk about mental toughness. We're going to talk about emotional leadership. Fellow SEAL Senior Chief Will Branham is going to be there. Also we got Nick Kumalatis, who was a Marine Corps MARSOC Raider. So it's a great group, a great lineup, and we just want to encourage individuals to check it out, come out to the event, get out of your comfort zone. And there's an opportunity to have a mastermind with me one night. There's an opportunity to have a mastermind with Nick a lot since one night. So great event. Rogerupevent.com and then I am running last year or earlier this year. It's a crazy world we're living in. There's a lot of division. We're seeing violence on the rise. We're seeing.

Disasters and destabilization around the world. As a SEAL instructor, I taught marksmanship and commute survival. So I put together a course called the Overcome and Survive course, really targeting the average individual out there that maybe, maybe you own a gun, maybe you understand a little bit of survival, but you never have really come to understand. I want you to be comfortable with a firearm. I want you to be comfortable to understand how to de escalate a dangerous situation. I want you to understand whether it's a storm, whether it's, or whether, you know, the country has collapsed, you know, understand some basic levels of survival. And that's what this course is. So overcome and survive.com we're doing that the weekend of September 16th through 18th in North Carolina.

Amazing. I'm going to put those in the show notes for anybody that's keen to go and join those. And the work that you do is phenomenal. It's world class. And to get an opportunity to sit with you and learn from you directly. I mean, what a privilege for people to do that. So I look forward to bringing you down to New Zealand and Australia at some point and getting in front of Kiwis and Aussies. They will love you.

I want to be there.

Let's do it. Let's do it. There's one last question I'd like to ask you. So fast forward many, many years, your last breath, their last breaths, and one of your kids, or both your kids are sitting there and they say, dad, how can we lead our life with purpose? What would you say to them?

Go out and help make other. Other people better.

Beautiful. I love it. Well, guys, you heard it here. Go out and help make other people better. I mean, when you do that, you're focused outwards, right?

Absolutely.

Really powerful.

And the one other thing I want to highlight for the person that's listening and they're not watching the video right now. You got the best T shirt on. No bad days.

Yeah, it's. It's an entire line. On the back is my. Is my skull. So this was drawn by an artist. The bullet hole in the forehead was actually in my helmet. So miraculous that I'm still here. But the damage to the face was actually taken directly off the CT scan. And so that's what's on the back of the shirt. We have a whole no bad days line. And it's really a mindset. And the mindset is this. You know, so many people whine and complain and have that victim mindset. Oh, my God, I had a bad day. When really it's nothing. It's a scheduled disruption at best. And it's. It's a mindset of, hey, if I'm still alive, if I'm still breathing, then it's a good day, and it's up to you to make it a great day. So if you approach your day like that, no bad days, you know, and that's what I think about when I look at that skull. I think, hey, man, I'm blessed to still be here.

Absolutely. And we're so blessed to have connected with you today. So thank you so much for sharing and helping us all work on overcoming adversity. I sincerely appreciate you, James.

My honor, man. Thank you. And definitely I can't wait. Let's do this. My. My wife would love to come to New Zealand, as would I. New Zealand? Australia, actually. Her brother is living in Australia, so we'd. We need to get there and see him.

Anyways, let's make it happen.

All right, man. Let's do it.

Cheers, man. Hey, guys, if you enjoyed the content today, please smash that subscribe button below. And if you want to become part of my community, I've got an amazing free Facebook group, please come and join us. The link is in the description below. And also, if you've got any questions about today's session, I'd love to know. Just comment below and I'll be sure to get back to you guys. Have the most amazing day.