How to Triumph Over Adversity

[00:00:00] Because we’ve all been in those overwhelming anxiety filled the and catastrophic moments. And the reality is you’re, the human body doesn’t go into fight or flight and go, oh, you’re in a fight or flight combat, bullet ridden ambush moment. It says, oh, you’re in a crisis and we’re dumping adrenaline and endorphins into you.

And if we hooked me up in the middle of that ambush to medical equipment that measured my heart rate and breathing and all these things, and we hooked it up to somebody else that was going through, who knows, maybe a car accident or something like that, they’d be almost identical. Our heart rate, breathing, respirations, brain activity, all that, because a crisis is a crisis regardless of what you’re in.

So I tell people, uh, whether it’s an enemy ambush or whether it’s a life ambush, the impact on you is the same.

Welcome to another episode of the Onward Podcast. This is Emily Harmon, your host. My guest today is Jason [00:01:00] Redman. Jason is a retired navy lieutenant who spent 11 years as an enlisted Navy SEAL, and almost 10 years as a SEAL officer. Jason was awarded the Bronze Star with Valor, the Purple Heart, the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, and many other medals.

He’s also got two Combat Action Ribbons and the US Army Ranger tab after being severely wounded in Iraq in 2007. Redman returned to active duty before retiring from the Navy in 2013 after retiring. Jason founded Soft Spoken L L C A speaking and consulting company that focuses on inspirational presentations on leadership, teamwork, and the overcome mindset to help individuals, companies, and teams to get off the X from life.

Ambushes. He talks about what that means in this episode. He also provides workshops, online programs, executive coaching [00:02:00] and business consulting to businesses around the world, as well as group coaching through his Get Off The X Training and Overcome Army Group Coaching Programs. He’s the author of two best selling books and he lives with his family in Virginia.

I interviewed Jason in mid to late February of 2020, and in this interview he talks about the fact that we all face ambushes in our lives like the one he faced in Iraq. And he even said, you know, another one’s coming. And I’m wondering, Jason, did you know at the time we were interviewing that the next one that was coming was the Covid virus?

I don’t think you did, but this interview is timely because I think that’s a, an ambush in our life that everybody’s going through, and we all can definitely apply the advice that Jason gives in this interview to our lives today. Jason, welcome to the Onward Podcast. Emily. Thanks for having me. Yeah, honored to [00:03:00] be on.

I’m so honored to be interviewing you. You’re just have such an inspiring story and I know that the listeners of the Honor Board podcast will find your story just captivating. And in your story you talk about, I mean, you were a Navy SEAL and you faced an ambush and got injured and I’ve heard some of your presentations where you talk about we all face.

Ambushes in our lives may not be an ambush like what you faced, but there’s certain ways that we can overcome those and, and move onward and shape our future. And you’re a living example of that. So, yeah, thank you for being here. I am honored once again. No, it’s uh, very blessed still be here and to be able to share my story and try and help other people.

Cause it is relatable. A lot of people try to think, oh, I can’t relate to an enemy, ambush, enemy bullets and bombs. But the reality is, when we have life ambushes, they’re the bullets and bombs of life and they’re the same. And, uh, there are a lot of people, everybody [00:04:00] lives in their own personal health.

Right. Well, yeah, we do. And um, I don’t know that you can compare one person to another, but the situations are, you know, life is really hard and I know that sometimes people are wondering like, where is God in all of this? Did you encounter that? Did you wonder where God was? No. If anything, it brought me back closer to God and I have a little bit of an interesting path.

I mean, I grew up in a pretty religious home. We were in church all the time. And my journey of faith, I’ll be honest, going into the military, I mean, you know, and a lot of people in the military know the military’s an interesting place. We work hard, we play hard. I think it can get easy to allow your faith to, to slide.

Uh, mine did as I got older. Interesting how combat can start to change that when you are encountering a very high, a very high probability of dying. And I think my faith started to get stronger again. And then I had a defining moment that night that I was wounded and I was laying there, I was bleeding out, I was dying.

And. I [00:05:00] really felt that this was it, and I couldn’t think straight. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t move a muscle. I remember trying to move my right hand, which wasn’t injured, and I didn’t even have the strength to move it. I couldn’t even feel my hand anymore. Every breath took massive. I just felt like I was running a marathon underwater.

I just could not get air. And I called out to God and I said, Hey, I, I, I need help. I need your strength to go home. And like that boom, I had strength. And I don’t know what that timeframe is. That is something that I cannot tell people. But, um, that firefight we know, lasted about 40 minutes. So sometime between the beginning of that firefight, 10, 15 minutes in all the up to the occurred, about 40 minutes after were hit the up.

I actually got up and I walked to the helicopter under my own power and climbed on and you know, a little bit of a modern day miracle. At the same time, I tell people, especially individuals, that, uh, faith is a really hard journey. I think for many of us, me included, I’m a fact based person. I’m an analytical person.

I like to look at a sequence of facts and I like to [00:06:00] look at tangible evidence and faith is not that, and that’s a harder concept to accept. But I will say, coming back to your first question where, you know how some of us maybe lose. Far away or maybe we think, you know, where is God and all of this. You know, I think at the end of the day, God gave us free will and he gave us the ability to make decisions.

And with those decision comes the ability to choose positivity in the face of negativity and sometimes to understand that when we go through suffering and when bad things happen, when we have a life ambush, or what I call sometimes the end moments, it’s so often we don’t see it in the moment. But so often when we get to the other side, it becomes a whole new beginning.

A new beginning that we never would’ve planned for, we never would’ve thought about. It was, it wasn’t on our current life pla path or plan, but uh, I know so many individuals that have suffered a catastrophic event. This guy included that. It became a whole new journey and I wouldn’t go back and change what happened.

I know severely wounded [00:07:00] warrior who feel the same way. So oftentimes I tell people, you know, when you have these DM moments, man, Be positive and drive forward, and it is gonna be hard. It’s gonna be painful. That’s just part of the journey. But sometimes you’ll get to the other side and it’ll be a new beginning that you never ever could have contemplated.

How has the experience changed the way you live, and why does it take something like that? Why can’t we just realize that right now and, and not take things for granted? I think it’s just the nature of being human. I think we, we all think that we’re, that we’re gonna. Exactly and that we’re all gonna make it to this, the end of this life and die of old days.

I think all of us have this thought process. We, we think down the road and we lay out our plans and we all think our plans are gonna unfold exactly in the, we’ve laid them out in our mind, but so often it doesn’t work so often. Some sort of catastrophic event comes along and cuts that pass short. But I think for those of us who get to see death up close and who have to, who [00:08:00] confront it and come to understand, wow, this, this life can be over in a second.

I mean, I tell people all the time, I got a second chance and I now recognize that. I recognize that any day I could go, you know, hell a meteor could hit this building right now while I’m standing there. I mean, the odds are slim. But it’s happened. Crazier things have happened. So I mean, I don’t live my life in like this.

I have a plan and I’m executing that plan, but I also, I also know that that plan could change on a dime. And I’m proactive in my thinking. I mean, this is a lot of what I teach, this get off the X methodology, this immediate action drills to deal with crisis and change and failure when they come along.

But at the end of the day, yeah, you’re your, this life you’ve been given is not. Infinite, it’s finite, and you never know when your day’s coming. I think for all of us, our days are numbered, and for some of us, hopefully it will be a, a long successful life where we, you know, we finish and we look back on our life and we say, Hey man, that was a, that was a great life.

I did it right. No regrets. And unfortunately for some [00:09:00] of us, it doesn’t happen that way. You know? Yeah. A car accident or a disease or whatever. Since I retired, I’ve been living closer to my parents. My dad just turned 86, so when I was younger I thought, you know, 86 was ancient, right? And I thought, you know, when you’re, when you’re that old, you’re probably just ready to die.

My dad is like, I can just tell he’s got books he’s gonna write. He’s just, he’s got things he wants to accomplish and he sees time running out and he. Is extra careful on how he makes his decisions. Do I wanna go to a movie tonight or do I wanna stay home and write my book? Because he looked, that’s a real serious trade off.

Whereas when you’re younger you think, yeah, go to the movie and write my book tomorrow or something, you know? But he, I can just, I watch in him this desire to just keep going and to keep finishing up what he wants to accomplish in his short time on earth. Yeah. And respect. I mean, he knows, and I think for so many people out there, they do, they procrastinate until suddenly.

And I think that’s how, how so many hopes and dreams and goals go to the wayside. They keep pushing it till tomorrow. Oh, you know, I’ll get on that tomorrow. I’ll [00:10:00] get on that tomorrow. And then either A, something happens and they don’t get to it, or B, they get to the end of their life and they procrastinated their life away and they didn’t go after their hopes and dreams.

So it’s one of the big things I talk about that. Yeah, the time to do It’s now. Now, right now. So what was your dream always to be a Navy seal? It was from a pretty young age. I mean, I started out, we came from a military background. My grandfather is on both sides, fought in World War ii. My dad was an army paratrooper, so I was kind of enamored with a military lifestyle.

And um, my grandfather was a decorated V 24 pilot, so I actually started out younger wanting to be a pilot. I thought that was really cool and I wanted to fly fast moving jets and. Of course Top Gun came out and, you know, we all wanted to be Tom Cruise. And, but it wasn’t too long after that, maybe a couple years later I started reading some books on special operations and just, uh, specifically Vietnam stories about the Macaw guys that were on the ground and just some of these legendary missions [00:11:00] these guys were doing.

And it really, um, spiked my interest. And a guy at our church was a big special operations. Uh, Fisher Auto and he told me, Hey, there’s a group of guys in the Navy called Seals. And he said, they’re the toughest of the tough. They’re the best of the best. He’s like, that’s what you want. You know, I was 14 years old and I was like, yeah, that’s what I want.

But I was about the most, um, unlikely candidate ever. I wasn’t like this big strapping jock or anything like that, you know, I was, uh, I was a small kid. Geez. When I was 14, I was probably five feet tall and weighed about 95 pounds. So yeah, when I proclaimed to my dad and many people, Hey, that’s what I’m gonna do, you know, they all kinda laughed at me, but I just, I don’t know.

I set my sights on that dream and I started looking for everything I could find, which there really wasn’t a whole lot of information about the SEAL teams. I mean, this is the mid eighties at this point, and not much information, but [00:12:00] the little bit that I could find, I just grabbed onto. And started working out, joined the high school football team and got my butt kicked on a regular basis, uh, and, uh, started wrestling and just started working out and just focusing on building myself.

And, you know, never really looked back. I had one little, uh, I had one little detour. The Navy recruiter was a real jerk. He was a very old school, salty, very crusty, E six. And uh, he chased me outta the office on a regular basis. Uh, just basically you’re never gonna be a seal. You don’t have what it takes.

And so I went through that for a while and finally one day I left Ejected. And the Army recruiter, smart guy that he was, saw me and was like, Hey, so, uh, you know the Army, we have Rangers, we have Green Berets. You can do that. My dad was Army, so I said, you know what? You’re right. You know, these guys’s being jerks, they’re not helping me.

So I actually enlisted in the Army. At first, I went to meps, or I started down that process. I went to MEPS for the Army, but [00:13:00] I had ruptured my ear drum when I was a kid and it had been reconstructed. So when the doctors looked in my ear, they said, oh, well you can’t equalize, so you’re not gonna be able to jump.

Which I knew I could equalize cuz I had lived in the Virgin Islands for a while and stuff like that. But no matter what the army disqualified. So when they did that, I refused to sign up for the army. And this is where fate and sticking true to your guns sometimes kind of unfolds. About three or four months after that, a new recruiter came to the Navy and I happened to go back in there and the guy was really cool.

I, to this day, I knew his name. I’m hoping someday someone will say, cause I’ve never been able to track him down, but his name was Petty Officer Henry Horn. And, uh, he welcomed me with open arms and was like, Hey man, if you wanna be a seal, I’m gonna help you. I’m gonna show you what you need to do. And he sure did.

He walked me down that pipeline and he got me a seal rate and got me slotted. I, uh, did the delayed entry program and headed off to bootcamp right after I graduated high school. What made you keep going when you had so many skeptics in your life? You know, it’s a great [00:14:00] question. I just, something inside me a little fire that if you tell me I can’t do something, it fuels me to prove you wrong.

I’m not sure what caused that. I think it’s, uh, I think it’s a little bit of a genetic trait. My dad has the same trait, maybe the underdog trait. You know, I’m a a small guy, so I constantly have, always felt like I had to prove myself more to others and. Just a little bit of a chip on my shoulder where, okay, if you say I can’t do it, I will prove you wrong.

So the more people that told me I couldn’t do it, it just fueled my fire to want to do it even more. So I just, I knew, felt like I could do it, and I just focused on doing the things that I needed to do to get ready and do it. I just worked out and, you know, I mean, it was like many things in life. There was a little, for the most part, there was a black and white.

You know, Hey, here’s the physical requirements you need. Here are the Asfab requirements. You need to get in. You need to go do a SEAL rating, and after you do a SEAL rating, then you can earn a slot and go to Bud. So I just wrote out those, that to-do list [00:15:00] was like, this is what I’m gonna do. And that applies to anybody who’s trying to achieve a goal in their life.

You know, you stayed really, really focused on that goal. Yep. Absolutely. Yep. So tell us about that night you were in Iraq. That’s right on the ambush. And how did that go down and were you scared? Yeah, absolutely. I get scared. Well, I will say this, I wasn’t scared as in, let me explain how the firefi unfolded because oftentimes people ask you get scared in a, in a firefight and um, I will say, I don’t know if I ever felt fear in the middle of a firefight.

And the reason being, cuz once a firefight starts, there’s so much to be focused on, especially as a leader. Where are my guys, where are we taking fire from? How are we laying down fire? I need a full headcount so I can call in a fire support mission. I’ve got guys that are injured, so I need to set up a, a triage site that we can take care of them.

You know, I need to be calling in a medevac. I mean, all, there’s so much to do and with all the [00:16:00] training we’ve had, and you get muscle memory going that you don’t really have. Uh, a whole lot of time to be thinking about the fact that you’re being shot at. Where fear, I think, creeps up is in those moments prior, it’s the calm before the storm.

So oftentimes if we were getting ready to do a big mission, we would sometimes do missions where we knew we were going after very high level individuals, that we knew that those high level targets typically had security details. The security details typically wore suicide best, and they had been trained that if we got too close to blow themselves up to prevent us from getting to the leader.

So th there, there was a lot of anxiety that, you know, if you stepped around the corner and suddenly you’re confronted with an individual, how do you A, shoot fast? And B hey, you know, how do you maintain that standoff? So hopefully you don’t get blown up. So that created the level of anxiety and I think you would, I dunno, you would’ve to be inhuman if you didn’t have a little bit of fear.

And fear is a healthy thing. I mean, without fear you can’t have courage. So that was a little bit of the norm. But the more missions you [00:17:00] did, I think the more you got. I don’t wanna say immune, but you got, it just became the norm. You just knew, hey, this is, this might be an unfair analogy, but I don’t know, it’s kind of like a basketball game.

When you first start playing sports, you get a little butterflies in your stomach before the game starts and you’re, you’re kind of got a lot of adrenaline going and then, As you get more confident in your skills and stuff like that, you’re better able to go in and start that game. I don’t know if it’s the same as combat, but Yeah, I would say, I mean, it really is.

I mean, the downside combat always has. You can’t, crazy things happen in combat. Yes. I mean, you know, I often talk about life is unfair. Combat is unequivocally not fair. A bomb can blow up and kill everyone in your squad and you won’t have a scratch. It just weird things happen in battle. 12 year old kid with an AKA can throw it over a wall and pull the trigger and he’ll kill you just as fast as the train sniper that’s been on the battlefield for 30.

It’s so much different than a sports game, but, but it’s still that the more you do it, it does start to [00:18:00] do, but its moments. So the night that I was wounded, We’re going after a senior Al-Qaeda leader, a guy. We’ve been tracking all deployment and, um, we took down the initial target where we thought he was gonna be, he wasn’t there.

And we saw a whole lot of activity on another building, about 50 yards away. And my boss came up to me and said, Hey, we saw some movement, we saw some guys flee out of this house. They ran into this dense vegetation. We had seen this before. And then he said, let’s go question them. Let’s go wrap them up and question them.

Find out who they are, why are they hiding? Maybe they know where this leader is that we’re looking for. So I took my team and we maneuvered from the, we were south of this house and we were maneuvering up to the north and we came up on the southern side of this vegetation that they had run into. And it was about, I dunno, hundred yards deep.

And, uh, going into that vegetation, I remember thinking, I felt a lot of anxiety. Going into that vegetation, it was a bad situation. We had these guys, an unknown number of, uh, potential enemy, although we were questioning, we had [00:19:00] air assets up above and, Hey, can you see weapons? Can you see anything? No, we don’t see anything.

They’re just laying there. But at the same time, things change on the dime. So I talk to people a lot about, as a leader, sometimes you gotta trust your intuition. And, uh, that night as we were moving through that field, we executed based off our standard operating procedures. We did based off what we had seen before and based off how we had trained.

But I’ll tell you, my spider sense was going insane and it was really like, Hey, this is a bad situation. You shouldn’t be doing this. You should do this a different way. And I’ll be honest, I chalked it up to fear. I said, no, that’s just fear. It’s just, it’s a hairy situation. You know? It’s the calm before the storm, you know, just squash that down and keep driving forward based off our standard operating procedures.

And the reality is, and we walked right into a very wellex, excused ambush. Uh, those four or five individuals were the last four or five members of the security detail for that Al-Qaeda leader. We estimate it was anywhere from 12 to 15 [00:20:00] individuals in that ambush line. They had built, uh, fighting positions, two P cam machine guns, which are very large belted, uh, machine guns similar to an M 60.

And then the rest were AK shooters and we very well disciplined force. They waited until we got into what we call the kill zone or, or the x and we, we walked right into it, opened up. Were you with? So we were with, uh, nine, but we got split. And uhhuh, that’s a whole nother story, but the bottom line, there were six of us that walked into the, the ambush, the kill zone, and three of the six of us were hit in the initial of fire.

So my team or my medic took a round right below the knee. One of our other guys got stitched off the right side, and then I was hit. Twice in the left elbow, I was stitched across the body armor. I was, took rounds off my helmet, my gun had my left night vision tube shot off. We had maneuvered around. We happened when we walked into where the ambush site was, they were actually pointing more so when we got separated, it caused us to [00:21:00] move to reconnect with our guys that had been separated.

So we ended up coming out of that vegetation and we were walking in front of the vegetation to relink up, and that’s when the ambush was initiated. So that we were north of the vegetation and then behind us to the north of that was nothing but thousands of yards of empty Iraqi desert. So we didn’t have any place to hide.

There was only, uh, and nothing really to stop bullets aside from a large tractor tire that was about 15 yards behind me, kind of like a John Deere. Pretty big John Deere style tractor tire. So our guys fell back to that. I, uh, tried to lay down some fire and it was at that point that I got, that was when I was getting shot pretty good.

And I turned, and it was at that point that I caught around in the face. It hit me right in front of the ear and it traveled through my face, exited the right side of my nose, blew out my right cheekbone, broke my cheek, and. Kicked that out to the right bullet, traveled right under my eye, so I vaporized my orbital floor, broke all the bones above my eye and shattered my jaw and [00:22:00] knocked me out.

So, um, yeah, that, uh, that definitely is an ambush that, uh, not everyone faces it every day. True. But here’s the thing. Emily. I mean, if you think about it, and I try to tell people that this, cuz I often say, oh my God, you know, especially, you know, when I speak, I tell this story and, and I even go on to talk about, you know, 96 hours waking up to find myself in Bethesda Naval Hospital with doctors telling me, Hey, your elbow is totally destroyed.

You have nerve damage, you have no use in your left hand. We’re thinking about amputating your arm, you’re wired shut, you’re trached. It’s gonna take years to put you back together, to be laying in the hospital bed, listening to all that, I mean, It’s so, it was so overwhelming, and I tell people, Hey, you so many of you can’t relate to this.

But the reality is you can’t because we’ve all been in those overwhelming anxiety filled the and catastrophic moments. And the reality is you’re, the human body doesn’t go into fight or flight and go, oh, you’re in a fight or flight combat, bullet ridden ambush moment. [00:23:00] It says, oh, you’re in a crisis and we’re dumping adrenaline and endorphins into you.

And if we hooked me up in the middle of that ambush to medical equipment that measured my heart rate and breathing and all these things, and we hooked it up to somebody else that was going through, who knows, maybe a car accident or something like that, they’d be almost identical. Our heart rate, breathing, respirations, brain activity, all that, because a crisis is a crisis regardless of what you’re in.

So I tell people, uh, whether it’s an enemy ambush or whether it’s a life ambush, the impact on you is the same. So, Laying in that hospital bed, what were you thinking? What was your attitude? Well, I’ll be honest. In the beginning I was, uh, a lot of people know me for the guy that put the sign on the door, and a lot of people know me for this, you know, this relentless overcome mindset.

But I, and I’d love to tell you that I, that that was there right from the second I got to the hospital. But, uh, I didn’t, I mean, I think there are moments, you know, it takes a little time to. Analyze and figure things out to get off the, and I’ll [00:24:00] be honest, I, I went through a little bit of phase that I think many of us go through where you.

You second guess yourself. So I, I replayed the firefight a lot in my mind. And I thought about, man, why did I do that? Why, why did I go left? You know, we should have gone right? Or why did I go right? We should have gone left. Or, you know, you should have listened to that little voice that was telling you not to go in there and you did.

So I really kicked myself. And then finally a couple of days went by and I was like, stop. This is accomplishing nothing. You can’t go back and change what happened in the past. All you can do is. Shape the future, focus on shaping the future. So that was kind of step one of starting to look forward. And then, uh, step two, uh, was, uh, a few days later I had some people that came into the room and they were, uh, you know, you get a lot of visitors and these individuals came into the room as visitors and we talked for a little bit, and then some of the doctors and nurses came in.

So they went off to the side and were having their own conversation. So while the doctors and nurses are checking on me and going through their spiel, I overheard their [00:25:00] conversation. And their conversation was, it was filled with, uh, pity, with a shame. We send these young men and women off to war, they come home broken and battered.

They’re never gonna be the same. They’re never gonna be able to get back out there and be successful. You know, they’re just shattered. And they left. And I remember thinking to myself, man, is that it? Is that me? Is that what. I have left, am I, you know, and I think it’s real easy. And, and in this day and age where it’s so easy to compare or listen to all the negative energy that’s out there in the social media and in the news and everything, I think it’s real easy to get on that x, that mental X and start focusing on that.

And I remember thinking to myself, you know, my, my special operations career is over. I’m gonna be permanently disabled, and I’ll probably be forever disfigured. Maybe they’re right. Nope, this is, it’s the same. Jason was laying in that bed. As the Jason that was 14 and five feet tall and 90 pounds, the people told him he couldn’t be a seal or were skeptical about that.

You overheard that conversation. You’re like, I’m not, that’s not me. You’re right. [00:26:00] And that’s exactly what happened. So when my, a few minutes later and my wife came back in the room and. And I told her, I said, uh, hey, that’s never gonna happen again. Nobody’s gonna come into my room and feel sorry for me.

I’m, I’m, I refuse to feel sorry for myself. And that’s how the sign on the door came to be. Cause I wrote out, I said, uh, I wrote out this sign. And it said, attention to all who here, if you’re coming in this room with Satara, don’t bother the wounds that I received. I gotten a job that I love doing it for people that I love.

Defending the freedom of the country I deeply love. I’ll make a full recovery. What’s full, that’s the absolute utmost, physically I have the ability to recover and then I’ll push it about 20% further through sheer mental, this room you’re about to enter is room of fun, optimism and intense rapid regrow.

And if you’re not prepared for that, go elsewhere. And we, uh, we signed, we signed at the management, which I still laugh at to this day, like why we felt the need to do that. But we signed at the management and it, uh, and put it on the door. It is amazing. And I talk a lot about that sign now. You know, people [00:27:00] wanna make a big deal and go, oh, you’re the guy that wrote the sign.

But that sign, it personifies one significant thing about any life ambush, and that is the most powerful weapon you have is a choice. You have a choice in how you’re gonna deal with it. You can choose positivity and you can choose to drive forward even though it’s gonna hurt, it’s gonna be painful, or you can lay there and it’s still gonna hurt and be painful.

And I chose to, to get off that and drive forward. And one of the greatest things I tell people about choosing positivity in the face of negativity is, uh, is you never know the impact it’s gonna have, the ripple effect it’s gonna have on other people around you. And that sign has now gone on to impact millions of people.

I didn’t keep it, I didn’t feel like it was mine to keep, I got invited the White House and met President Bush and he signed it and then we had it framed and it now hangs in the, at Walter Re, uh, right in. And guys go by and see it, you know, before they go to surgery. So never forget you have a choice. You know, you can, you can choose to [00:28:00] deal.

I mean, life’s hard. We talked about in the beginning, these life ambushes, the crisis, the struggles, they’re all gonna happen and it’s gonna happen no matter what. So might as well choose to drive forward. And the, and the great thing about getting off the X, the, the faster you drive forward, the faster you’re gonna find that new path, that new beginning, whatever, that’s you’re a seal, you’re an officer in the Navy.

Of course you can overcome it. Yeah. But I’m no different than, it wasn’t physicality that enabled me to do that. I think it’s always funny to me when people meet me, I think they think I’m 10 feet tall and, and bulletproof. And I, and I’m, I’ve proven both of those to be totally wrong. You know, I’m, I’m five foot eight and, uh, you know, I’m about 170 pounds.

And what I tell people is, anybody can build an overcome mindset. It just, it takes time. You, you can’t, it it. If you’ve always been negative and you’ve always focused on, you’re a victim, you’re not gonna turn it on overnight. But I will say, if you start to change your mindset, you start to say, you know what?

I’m gonna look for the [00:29:00] positive in this bad situation. I’m, instead of saying, oh, whoa, it’s me, I’m a victim and I’m gonna look at everything and, and anyone around me to blame, I’m gonna try and lift this person up next to me and say, Hey, come on. You and I together can move forward. That starts to build momentum and it actually starts to change your mindset.

To do that. And that’s one of the great things I tell people what I’m teaching you. They’re not SEAL principles, they’re human principles, right? And it’s a matter of being conscious enough and not just operating in, um, just the same old mode every day, but being conscious and catching ourselves with those negative thoughts.

And reframing it. And each time you practice doing that, you get better. And don’t beat yourself up if you say a negative thought or have a negative thought in your mind. Just think about how you could reframe that and say that out loud. And one of the things that helps me too is that I have these, I started this thing called the Miracle Morning, where I start out in the morning saying some positive affirmations.

And one of ’em is that I keep my [00:30:00] commitments to myself. And so some days if I’m feeling lazy and I don’t want to go to the gym, I remember that because I’ve said it in the morning and I’m like, darn it. I keep my commitments to myself. I’ve gotta go to the gym. So, you know, I’m not just operating in drive and not, I guess, um, automatic or whatever, you know, I’m thinking and those saying those affirmations helps me remember that.

Yeah. And be, and change to be a different. Person to improve. And the thing is that I tell people also, imagine, you know, this journey is a long journey, this journey of life. And what I tell people, uh, my compass is at home. But, uh, I liken it to, we’re all on this journey. And, and in my military career, I used a compass to get where we were going all the time.

You know, so you need two things to get where you’re going. You need to clearly define destination so very clearly, it’s not I’m going west or it’s not, I’m going to la I’m going to 24 Park. Place, Los Angeles area code 79 2 5. You know, that is a very specific destination. [00:31:00] And then the second thing, you need a course to get there.

You know, you’re heading on a bearing of 2 71 or whatever. It’s, but along the way, I mean, there’s a, you know, if we talk about, we’re here in Virginia Beach and we’re going to LA that’s roughly 3000 miles. There’s a lot of variation to get off course, and everybody’s gonna get off course. You wanna make a commitment to yourself to go to the gym every morning.

Well, at some point something’s gonna happen where you’re not gonna. Right. And then suddenly you’re gonna kick yourself and now you’re gonna, you know, you’re like, oh my God, I’m a terrible person. Cause I can’t stay true to myself. It’s gonna happen. It’s gonna happen. So what Man, pull your compass back out.

It’s never too late to get back on course. And that’s what I tell people. I don’t care if you’ve been off course for years. Right? Those two things, figure out that clearly define destination and figure out that course. And constantly pull it out. Constantly pull it out and make sure you’re on course.

Cause so many people they do step one. They’ve identified a goal or a destination and they even identify that bearing, but then they get distracted by everything in life and the next thing you know, they’re so far off course cause they haven’t, they’re not constantly pulling it out to make sure, am I [00:32:00] still moving the needle?

Am I still moving where I need to go? Right. So you have started, got a couple questions, but you started on the Combat Wounded uh, coalition, which is a nonprofit. You’ve written a couple books. Can you, and you’re gonna start a training course. Can you tell us all the things that you’re doing within your, within your business, and also where do you speak?

I do. So the Combat Wounded Coalition, I ran it for 10 years and we phased it down in 2018 for a number of reasons. I’ll be honest. The biggest reason, so as many nonprofits, it started out of a passion. It actually started when I was in the hospital bed. We started out as wounded wear, providing clothing and clothing modification to wounded warriors.

It was a need that I had. I saw other wounded warriors that needed it and it grew out of that. And then from there, we grew into events and then we just grew and grew. The one thing we were not doing, that became, in my opinion, the two greatest areas that need focus on in the veteran and specifically the wounded veteran community are employment opportunities.

So helping guys find a new [00:33:00] purpose in employment. And then the biggest thing is, is mental health. Mental health and brain research, and. We were not, we were doing a little bit with the employment. We were doing a leadership course, but we were doing nothing in the brain research and, and the mental health.

And a good friend of mine was an e OD warrior who killed himself in September of 2018, uh, only a couple of weeks before he was supposed to go through our leadership program. And that really shook me. It really shook me and made me realize that up. That we were not focused on where the bigger needs needed to be.

And it also shook me because I had had this belief before that if we could help wounded warriors and guys find their new passion, their new mission, give them that destination and give them their course, but he, he showed me he had some pretty significant traumatic brain injuries that contributed to his suicide.

And we are now beginning to see a lot of that more and more. So it made me decide that, you know, a lot of people don’t know there’s 43,000 veteran nonprofits out there. And there are some really good ones that are doing good things. And then there are some small mom and pop ones. They’re doing [00:34:00] great things on a very small level, but at the same time, there’s just so many, I really think that, you know, we need to look at who’s making the biggest impact and, and let’s get behind them.

And that’s what I said. So I decided phase my down. I’m down, I’m lending my support to, uh, Two great organizations, project Headstrong, which is focused on, uh, mental health support for our nine 11 combat veterans. They’re doing a great job based out New York, and I’m working with Concussion Foundation, which recognize the involved the.

Concussions, T B I, they’ve started an arm that’s focused on, on military members also called Project Enlist. So doing that and then obviously now focused full on on the leadership and resiliency training. So I’m speaking all across the company, the country to companies, teams, and individuals just trying.

My goal is to help exactly that companies, teams, and individuals become the best version of themselves. And through learning how to build tructure and discipline in your life, how to lead yourself, how to build. [00:35:00] All the problems all of us encounter and how to implement that in your business and in your life.

So yeah, you can find me for speaking jason redmond.com. And Emily, like we talked about, my new online course platform is going live. It’s on my website. My coaching and speaking website is get off x.com. So if you go to jason redmond.com, it’ll take you there. But, uh, that’s where the courses live. And uh, we’ve now got a 72 hour to peak performance course, which is a.

It’s course to get you back on track within 72 hours. Many of us, you know, maybe we feel a little lost. Maybe we’re stuck. Maybe we’re, man, how did I get so far off course in my life? You may oftentimes, I’ve come to find that people, they may not be in a major life ambush, but they realize they’re stuck on the X in their life, that they stopped moving forward.

They kind of lost their passion, their purpose, their course. And many people reach out to me and go, holy smokes. I’m. I’ve been stuck on the X for years. So it’s a little bit of a self-analysis. Uh, it gives you some tools, questionnaires, and then helps you [00:36:00] drive forward on, uh, reestablishing. You know, I teach something called Pentagon Peak.

Proactive in how we lead ourselves so that we’re better prepared for those ambushes. So we’ve got that course, we have a short course that is kind of a blend of those things, but it comes directly off my new overcome book that just released. And then, uh, I’ve got a new, I’ve got a course for young men who aspire to be seals.

I got a lot of them that reach out to me for advice. So uniquely qualified, having both been a seal and also having made some mistakes as a young seal leader. So in the course, I also talked to him about, Being a successful, being a good operator, uh, really understanding yourself. Alcohol is a, is a double edged sword in the military.

It’s a very strong part of the military and in a lot of your frontline combat and special operations forces. Uh, we train hard, we fight hard, and we play hard. But you really have to know yourself and alcohol almost. Almost hurt my career. I really had to come to Grip. So I talked to them about that, about how to be [00:37:00] smart with your career and how to focus on why are you there.

So anyways, I talk about all those things in this course, how to make it through training and how to have a successful long career and to be a good, uh, a good man, as we said. So could, um, a female could take that course too now? Absolutely. Yeah. Cause I dunno if we have, we had a female that’s made it through training, yet we haven’t.

Not yet. So they’re eligible. We and several have. Have tried to qualify and I think one has qualified and she didn’t make it. She made it maybe maybe a month into training and didn’t make it so, man, it’s tough. I commend them. Yeah. Back when I’m sure it’ll happen. Yeah. You know, women could just be, we could be on like a submarine tender or a destroyer tender, and now that you can.

Do anything. Yeah. Yep. And it’s only a matter of time. I mean, there’s some amazing, I’ve, I’ve met some pretty strong women with a, uh, relentless overcome mindset, so it’s only a matter of time, you know, that course. The other thing, even though it says it’s for seals, [00:38:00] the reality is all of your special operations courses, whether it’s.

Ranger Marsak, you know, combat Controller Green Beret. The methodology behind training is almost the same. So I mean, it really would apply for anybody. I mean, I do talk specifically to SEAL training, but you know, if you’re looking for something about mindset and to make it through training, it applies there too.

So tell us about the books you’ve written. So my, uh, first book, the Trini Funny Thing was, uh, never intended to write a book. Really how it came to be was because I was trached and wired shut. I couldn’t, I couldn’t speak. I had to write in order to communicate. So I was trached for seven months and um, so I wrote a lot and it actually, I’ve always liked to write, so it kind of became this cathartic thing I would do after surgeries when I was recovering.

I just, um, It started out writing about the actual firefight and the ambush, and then I started to reflect on other missions we had been on. And then I got into my Afghanistan deployment, which, uh, some people, if you know my story, know that I, I messed up as a young leader. At one [00:39:00] point in my career. I made some mistakes and almost got myself kicked out of the military.

And, um, that actually is the first major life ambush I’ve ever encountered. You wanna talk about it now? Yeah, absolutely we can because a lot of people, the funny thing about it is a lot of people wrongly assume that the gunfight ambush and my injuries are the worst thing that ever happened to me. But no, messing up as a young leader and uh, almost getting myself kicked out and ostracized for a while from teammates is the hardest road I’ve ever lost.

And to earn back that trust and credibility. So how’d that happen? Was it alcohol? Alcohol played a part in it. It was a combination of ego and arrogance. Those were really the biggest things. Like many young individuals who find success at a, a younger age, I mean, you know, I was, I was literally 17 when I joined the Navy.

I’d made it through SEAL training at 19. I had done multiple deployments in Central and South America by the time I was 20, I think I was a training instructor by the time I was. [00:40:00] And, uh, recommended for a commission and got selected for a commission, and I think I started school at at 27. So I, you know, decent amount of success at.

I’m just gonna crush this, you know, I’m gonna be patent incarnate or something. I, what the hell was thinking. But, uh, so a lot of in arrogance and step back into the teams when I got commissioned thinking, you know, or something. But there were a lot of things that had occurred. There was a massive shift. I started school and I got selected for the commissioning program in 2000, and I started school in August of 2001.

Well, obviously all of us know what happened in September while I was at school, and over that three year period while I attended school, the SEAL teams changed overnight. A lot of the military changed overnight, but the SEAL teams specifically, the last time the SEAL teams had seen sustained combat was in Vietnam.

And uh, we were still operating off a lot of the old Vietnam era attack. Which [00:41:00] was heavy, jungle, maritime, riverine based combat. Obviously Iraq and Afghanistan were very different, and it caused us to have to rewrite a ton of our tactics and realize that a lot of things we were doing. So over a three year period, we went from a force that had almost zero combat experience to a force that the vast majority were combat experience.

By the time I got back as a new officer in two four, and oh by the way, almost all our tactics were rewritten. So everything that I used to know had changed. And instead of humbling myself and saying, Hey, I don’t know how to do this. I need to slow down. I need to rely on the guys around me. Instead, ego and arrogance got in the way.

And, uh, what often happens when ego and arrogance get in the way and we’re struggling, you know, then we start to, uh, we wanna numb the pain. And I started drinking too much. And all of that was just further eroding my credibility as a leader. So these. I was creating the perfect storm and, uh, Floyd, Afghanistan in 2005, uh, combat [00:42:00] operations and on one of the missions we were on.

Long story short, my book that tried to get deep into the details on all of this, and really this is what the book about, it’s about a leadership journey, a fall. Uh, very big, humbling, and then a redemption to come to understand what its, to be an effective leader, and then it gets into the injury. Moving from there, I made a bad call on a mission, made a bad call on a mission, and it probably wouldn’t have been that big a deal if afterwards I just owned know.

I think the leadership would’ve said, Hey, yeah, that was a bad call. But because I already had been making some mistakes, a lot of the leaders viewed me as a drunk. These things combined with that bad decision and me pushing back against it all came together for this perfect storm where there were quite a few guys who were like, get rid of that guy.

And I was confronted with that fact. Long story short, thankfully my, uh, commanding officer at the time believed in me and said, Hey, I think you’ve got a lot of potential. We just need to humble you, you know, we need to shake a little sense into you. So, [00:43:00] uh, they gave me some, uh, some opportunities and one of those opportunities they sent me to US Army School after that deployment.

And um, and it was exactly what I needed. It definitely humbled me and gave me an appreciation to understand who I was and what it is to be an effective leader now. But I commend you for, you know, you could have had a different attitude about that. It was your whole attitude that helped you turn around.

I mean, you were coachable. You listened that, that took some time though, Emily, and that’s the thing. I’m sure it wasn’t easy for you. It was about five months before I finally owned it. Yeah. I’ll be honest, it was about a five month journey that I was the victim I play. I, in my mind, I was the victim. I was being thrown under the bus, and these guys were conspiring, conspiring against me.

You know, I made the right call on that mission. So I tell people that sometimes the journey off the acts takes time, but it’s never too late. It’s never too late to figure it out. And I almost left, I almost, uh, the, the story’s in the book, but, uh, I [00:44:00] actually failed the Army Land navigation course the first time I did it.

And I failed it, not because I was, uh, I taught land that when I was an instructor in the Seal Force, so I know how to land that I failed it because I was so arrogant and. Ticked off still in the beginning of being at ranger school that I gaffed off the course until the sun rose. I think we started at 4:00 AM so I wasted two hours and told myself I’ll knock out the whole course when the sun’s up doing.

But yeah, the course was hard. I ran out time. And I failed. And, uh, the ranger instructors ate that up. They were like, oh, you know, they were so gleeful to see the sail, the seal. Yeah. And, and those, uh, five months of anger and bitterness and seeing myself as the victim all came together. And I, I talk about that.

This is poor emotional leadership. I bubbled up and I blew up. And I basically quit. I quit that course in that moment, and certain things, cons, certain things unfolded that allowed me, they gave me another chance [00:45:00] and I went back. Although I set myself back a month, I added a month to my training because of my emotional weakness and.

But I’ll tell you what, I needed it. I needed that month to really come to understand who I was and understand I wasn’t this great leader that I thought I was and I had a lot of flaws. So that whole journey is in the book for TriNet. Um, and it really, I love it cuz a lot of people will reach out to me and say, Hey, thank you.

I was that guy, or I was that gal and I really needed that to take a step back and realize that most of us are not as great as we think we are. And then your, your other book is overcome. Yeah, so overcome just came out. So over the years, people would say, how did you do that? How did you maintain this relentless, overcome mindset and drive forward despite all, despite all the hardships, and, and, uh, I’ll be honest, I wasn’t able to line out a step-by-step process.

So that’s exactly what overcome is. Overcome is a step-by-step process on how we deal with crisis failure, adversity [00:46:00] and implementing massive change. And how you, a, if you’re in a massive crisis, how you get outta it. B, how you start looking proactively at future crisis, cuz they’re all coming. I got bad news if you’re listening, they’re coming.

And then C, how we lead ourselves, how we lead others, and then how do we lead all. How do we maintain that momentum so that we constantly maintain that, that idea of leadership and that’s what overcoming is about. So it’s been getting great reviews. People are really liking it and uh, yeah, and that’s what I’m out there speaking on now.

That’s awesome. So how old are your children and how old were they born when you got hurt? They were, so they were all born, uh, my son was eight when I was shot. He was the oldest and the girls were five and three. Wow. That was, or two, she just turned three. Yeah. Tough. Yeah. My wife is a saint. We are a little bit of an anomaly to have, you know, the SEAL teams have about a 90% of course rate as it is.

So for her and I to go through everything that we went through from my leadership failure and we lost friends, [00:47:00] obviously to me being severely injured and, you know, we still have a very strong marriage. You know, we, we ran the nonprofit together and now we run our. You know, my speaking business together, that’s your next book.

You should write. It’s not keeping together through all of that. It’s, it’s so funny we’re talking about that. We’re talking about that. Cuz it’s a big question we get asked a lot. Yeah. How we manage to, do she write a chapter from your perspective on an incident or something and she writes it from hers, you know, or something.

Yeah. Just thinking out loud. But no, I love it. Uh, and that’s definitely something as we close this up, what’s your, the last message you wanna leave with the listeners? It’s never too late. You know, I think so many people in life think that, uh, hey, I’ve messed up too much, or It’s too late for me. Time has passed.

I can’t go after my hopes and dreams or whatever. It’s, if you’re still breathing, it’s not too late. Mm-hmm. I mean, that’s the thing, and I’m proof of that. I’ve managed to overcome. Some pretty incredible odds. The seal teams definitely do not suffer mistakes very easily, [00:48:00] and the mistakes that I’ve made were, were really hard to overcome.

And there’s still probably some guys out there who hate my guts, and that’s fine. I mean, that’s life also. You know, you’re never gonna win everybody over, but it’s never too late. You got one shot at this life. Not all of us get a second chance, so make the most of it. You know, if you’ve ever thought about doing something, go do it.

Go do it. You know? Cause you want to get to the end of your life and, and look back and say, you know what? I did it. I, I went after it. Maybe I wasn’t successful, but at least I did it. At least you won’t be laying there as you looked at in the face and go, man, I never went after it. So you, then you don’t know, you know, then you don’t know.

But at least man, cuz that’s what I, I had regrets when I lay there dying. And I don’t wanna have that anymore. You know? I wanna live this life where I make the most of it with the people I love and this journey that I have, and I wanna help other people. So it’s never too late. Get off that and drive.

Thank you Jason. Yeah, absolutely. We all can move onward and shape our future. Jason is a [00:49:00] living example of that. In addition to his injuries, severe injuries from that ambush, he also talks about another life ambush that he experienced and the mistakes he made as a junior officer. And how that was the worst thing that ever happened to him, and it was humbling.

He says he went on about a five month journey before he stepped out of victimhood and owned his mistake. That comment made me think about some of the areas of my life where maybe I’m still in victimhood and the things that I need to own. I’m always working on myself. I’m a work in progress, and I hope you are too.

Consider joining the Onward Movement. All of us in the Onward Movement are working on ourselves. The values of the Onward Movement are authenticity, continuous learning and engagement, both in the Onward Movement community, as well as within our own communities all around the world. It’s almost like a big mastermind of about [00:50:00] 900 people.

We would love to have more people join. Just go to Facebook and search on onward movement in groups. And hit the joined request. You can also find a link in the show notes. Thank you for listening everybody. Life is full of ambushes and we can get through them. I’m sure we all know somebody. If it’s not us that’s facing a life ambush right now, please share this episode with them and help them see.

But they will get through it. Have a great day everybody.