Nate Gladdin shares how he created a path to better understanding masculinity and his own identity through stoicism, Blues, and self-discovery. Listen in as Nate shares moments of his life where he experienced Adversity and how those moments motivated him to find mentorship, philosophy, and strategies for introspection.
Nate Gladdin is a creator, coach and podcast host of the Inheriting Manhood Podcast. Nate is a dynamic senior leader with an accomplished military career as a member of the US Air Force, specifically Special Operations Command.
You can learn more about Nate though the podcast: https://www.inheritingmanhood.com/
Episode Transcript
Nate Gladden describes himself as a simple man who is doing the best that he can to figure himself out. Stoicism, the blues, podcasting, writing, and whiskey seem to help him out the most on this journey. Now, Nate has been in the US Air Force for 19 years and is the creator, coach, and host of the Inheriting Manhood podcast. He’s a dynamic senior leader with an accomplished military career as a member of the US Air Force, specifically Special Operations Command.
01:28
He’s highly experienced in crisis action and an organizational leadership, as well as advanced training and conflict resolution. Now, Nate, I met you via the StoicCon X virtual event. Thank you so much for being here today. That for me was a huge honor to be on that stage with you, with JC Glick, with Donald Robertson, the one that actually created it. And then obviously, Ryan Holiday, these are like the top Stoics living today in society. So it was…
01:54
Great to hear what you had to say there. And it’s great to have you on the show today. I appreciate you having me on, brother. I really do. This is a big honor. It’s humbling. Told you before we started, I said something, I was like, I think I’m that interesting, but hey, if somebody thinks I am, so, but no, that Stowacon for me was like, you know, we’ve talked, I was terrified. I was like, I’m staring into a freaking computer screen. It’s obviously the virtual side of it. So I was like, I’m gonna stare into this.
02:20
I hope it’s recording. I think it’s going. I hope that somebody’s listening. I went through the whole thing and I was like, with the end of it, make sure this is all working. And then at the same time, I’ve never given speeches really. For me, that was, I’ve given a speech or whatever in my squadron or something where it’s been like, hey, you got to present something, whatever, that’s fine. But I’ve done a little bit of local schools and stuff like that, like some veteran day stuff. I’ve done that once or twice, but nothing like that. So I was very nervous.
02:49
Well, the good thing is you have a bunch of stoics listening to you. So they’re going to… Yeah. They’re on your side. Yeah. I’ve literally gone into places to give keynotes where there’s a thousand people in the room. And you can feel that a lot of them have their hands crossed and they’re not on board at the beginning. Yeah. So that’s a very challenging feeling. But it’s also challenging too. Like you said, when you’re looking at the screen, are there thousands of people watching me? Are there 10 people? Is this thing even on?
03:19
Am I doing this?” And they’re trying to contact me and say, Hey, you know, it’s not going, but it went off without a hitch. Oh yeah. It was really cool. You talk about going out on the stage and doing that. I’ve never done that. One of the unique things is like sitting back behind the scene. So Katie, so my lovely, lovely lady, she’s a speaker. She does amazing work. She does coaching and stuff like that. She’s awesome. But I’ve gone and like sat in the back corner behind her, like behind the curtain and watched and like filmed, taking pictures, filmed, all that kind of stuff. And it’s, it’s a very,
03:48
unique thing to sit back to watch, like see somebody trying to present, but at the same time trying to read the audience. And I’ve watched that and I was like, well, now this is different. Like I’ve been in the audience to see somebody. So that’s, yeah. So that walk out on stage and those lights is something, like I said, I’m not used to that, but it was very unique to see the body language as it shifts. Like you said, you see it as it goes through that hour, that 30 minutes or whatever the case may be. It’s really, it’s really unique to see. And there’s certain advantages to that.
04:18
a room of a hundred people, you can usually see almost every face, which is fantastic because now you can see what lands, you know where to move, you know where to focus. But when you get bigger stages, or even like a TEDx, you’ve got 11 different cameras, lights everywhere, they’re telling you not to get off the red dot. So literally, you know, there’s a bunch of people there watching, but you can’t see beyond the first row. So there’s a whole lot of dynamics in any kind of speaking environment.
04:47
No matter what it is, there’s going to be a little bit of feeling nervous, but that’s good. That means that we’re excited about what we’re about to do. Yeah. Yeah, no doubt. No doubt. It’s big stuff. So tell me a little bit about what you talked about at Stoicon and then tell me a little bit about, because technically my podcast is a philosophy podcast. Tell me a little bit about the role that Stoicism has played in your life when you discovered it and then we’ll just keep going from there. Yeah. Well, I kind of talked about it during Stoicon a little bit in the sense of like…
05:17
of being introduced to stoicism. I think like everybody else, I heard of stoicism early on, but didn’t really… You learn about philosophy in school, right? So they tell you about this philosophy and that philosophy, and you just try to pass the test. You’re just trying to remember all the, you’re like, wait, that one means this, and then that one, okay. And so you just try to figure out that math equation for that test, if you will. Like a lot of people, that’s kind of what I had. And then later on, whenever I got into the military is when I actually heard it. So you, obviously being a former army, the side of things you would understand, obviously,
05:47
Tons of jumps have to happen, airborne schools, all that kind of stuff. But the basic gist of how that’ll happen was we were down at Pope Airfield. So for anybody that doesn’t, Fort Bragg would probably be a little bit more understandable for most people. So down in North Carolina. And there are quite a few drop zones and also landing zones. And to keep the story kind of condensed and short, basically as a C-130 guy, I was still during my C-130 days. So hauling butt down the dirt airstrip. One of the…
06:14
guys that we had dropped, you know, he jumped out, grabbed a shoot and everything else. He was running back and they usually run obviously, they’re kind of like parallel with the, you know, the dirt strip. Get around it. Once it’s done, they clear them and everything else. And he just kind of had a brain snap and he turned to go across the runway. And this all happened quick, right? So if you were to watch this and you were like a, you’re just the person that didn’t really know, you wouldn’t even necessarily see what was going on. But if you were somebody who jumps, if you’re somebody that shoots the airfield open, if you’re one of the flyers, you would know that this like…
06:41
almost turned into something really nasty, really fast. He, he unbrained snapped pretty quick and just dropped, right? And just dropped to the ground and we kept going. But in that little bit of that nuance, we have a routine, basically where, where the co-pilot sits, he says, you know, as we’re getting to airspeed and everything else, he says, rotate. And I’m a flight engineer. So I would be sitting basically in the center of the flight deck looking, I’ve got kind of a panoramic view, pilot to my left, co-pilot to my right, navigator over my right shoulder. And then of course, like just all the
07:10
windows that you can see out of, you know, and then obviously all of my panels and stuff like that above me and below me. So his role is to basically call rotate. And as the copilot, I saw this young man start to dart. The pilot luckily had seen it as well, but the copilot couldn’t see where he’s from. So I called rotate because in my mind I was like, we have to get off the ground now. I called it about three knots fast, which it’s not the end of the world. However, it’s also not something you’re supposed to do, right? It’s not my job to call it.
07:38
it was not the right speed. So of course, the co-pilot now is angry, has no idea why this is happening. Like no idea why that’s the thing that I just screamed out loud, not him. And in the middle of doing that, of course, we just, the pilot waited a second, climbs off the whole nine, gets off the ground, does his job the way he’s supposed to control the situation. And basic gist, once we got off the ground, we were of course like arguing everything else and
08:08
co-pilots like, why are you yelling at me? Why are you doing this? Why are you doing that? And we’re kind of just mad. And all at once the pilot just like, it’s not the things that upset us, but our opinion about things. There you go. We’re under stress. And why are we doing this? Why are we upset about this? Anyways, so in the process of why are we saying this and in the process that it kind of like led us to later, once we got everything done, got back.
08:35
I cleaned up, debriefed, got to the bar. Yeah, got back to the bar after the debrief, after all the other good stuff. And he just said, anybody know who that is? And we of course didn’t. So he’s like, that’s, you know, hepatitis. And so that’s kind of what was my introduction over beer in a, you know, in a bar in North Carolina. That was kind of the funny introduction. And from there, I started to do like the same simple thing everybody else does. Like, oh, who is Marcus Aurelius? You know, and who is Seneca? And oh, what is this? And I started to learn more.
09:03
And then fast forward and it started to really become a part of my life. A few years later, we’re really, I started to really focus on it, try to understand it and then implement it into like my job and my life. But of course, my job coaching, you know, sports and stuff like that. So yeah, that was my very weird introduction to really endostoicism, but it stuck with me. That’s the nice thing about, in my opinion, any philosophy that’s worth its
09:31
whether it be Zen, Taoism, Buddhism, Stoicism, even religions, Christianity, any of this stuff, it’s about being able to step back and say, okay, this person’s doing this. That’s right. You know, I’m pissed off about it or I’m reacting to it, but I don’t need to take it personally unless it’s like some sort of physical threat to me. I can just step back and say, they’re simply reacting or projecting or whatever the case may be. But it’s very easy for us, especially in today’s society, when there’s so much inbound between social media.
10:00
news feeds, the internet, where we are bombarded with these things. And all these stimuli are vying for our opinion. So now even without being aware of it, we’re sort of artificially edgy about things. And now all of a sudden, almost anything can catch us sideways. And now we’re even more aggravated than we are aware of before it gets started. Oh, yeah. It’s very easy to let that spiral really like it really can. It’s, you know, it’s, it’s the same. It’s like, you know, we talked about, you know,
10:29
People will talk about compound interest, right? It was the same thing with your emotions in the other way. You know, it can be good, it can be really bad also. It’s the same concept of like, Oh, this little thing. And then I add it to this little thing. And then this little thing. Somebody told me once, I wish I could remember it was so long ago. And I can, I wish I could remember the context of what happened to lead to it. But anyways, he’s like, you ever play that game? The game, um, with the little parts, I can’t even play Tetris. He goes, you ever played Tetris? I was like, yeah.
10:56
He’s like, you know how whenever you start to place the positions and the blocks in the wrong spot and it starts to pile up real quick. I was like, yeah, he’s like, as life, like that’s what life does to you. Just it’ll get there a lot faster than you realize, and it’ll take you all the way to the end. Like, I was like, Oh, it was a silly way to say it, but at the same time, it makes total sense because it’s a visual stimulus that goes to that. You can, you can actually visualize what that would be. And that’s stuck with me. Like don’t let the stress be Tetris pieces, you know, that kind of thing.
11:24
Yeah. And sometimes it’s something as simple as just breathing, meditating, working out. All these things are very natural ways to not only get it out of your system, but turn that almost into a fuel, turn that into something that you can actually leverage to your advantage to help not only yourself, but the people around you in the process. I think that people forget about that self-awareness and then they also forget that that lack of self-awareness again impacts the people around them, whether it be as a team leader, as a husband, as a wife, as a
11:53
as a father, whatever. So we have to always be aware of that because there’s much more gravity to all the stuff that we do if we take that kind of responsibility. And I know we’re military guys, so we’re big on taking responsibility. Oh, yeah. Tell me a little bit about your podcast because I had the honor of being on your podcast. We had an interview yesterday as a matter of fact. Tell me a little bit about it. Tell me about the inception of it. What led you to do that work?
12:21
So from a podcast standpoint, I think I’m like a lot of people that got into podcasts, actually got into them probably about 2013-ish, somewhere like that. I started to learn about them. And I didn’t really realize at the time how important they would come to me. But I just started listening. Somebody told me about it. And I was like, what’s a podcast? And they’re like, yeah, that little purple button on your phone. I was like, I pressed it. And then I started like learning. I was like, what is this? And I just thought it was really cool. So I started listening to them. I’d throw them in when I was at work.
12:48
or whatever. I was sitting at the desk trying to get stuff done. I just tossed something on and a lot of it at that time was like sports podcasts. And I just toss them all in as good stuff during the day. So that’s where that happened. And so you fast forward many, many years later. And I looked at it. I wanted to sit down and I’ve always written. I’ve always done a lot of writing and stuff like that for me. It just doesn’t really go anywhere but me. But I just, I was like, I want to try to do something. I didn’t grasp mentorship when I was young.
13:18
I felt very lost when it came to having a good strong male role model in my life. I was very, very lost. I looked towards the military to give me a lot of that. Military has wonderful things and awful things that’s like anything else you do. There’s things that I go to work and I’m like, how is this a thing we do? But at the same time, I am a blessed man because of my time in the military. And I looked to the military to find male leadership, male mentors, to find these things. I had my grandfather who is…
13:47
only person I’ve ever considered a hero. Like everybody else, it’s like I replaced them all one row below him. He’s the best of all time for me. But that said, so you fast forward to the Inheriting Manhood podcast. And basically, at a certain point, I just I was talking to Katie. And I just said, you know, I want to start doing something. I mentor these young men and women in the military. And I mentor these young men and women who have coached in sports. And I help with them. But I want to do something. And I like podcasts. So…
14:16
I should do a podcast.” And so, a lot of them are me talking, like there’s me by myself, which probably is what most people would turn them off and be like, oh boy. But sometimes I just sit there and I go over something. This is something I believe is pertinent that I think would be good for a young man or even a young woman to hear and help them. Sometimes it’s military-based or athletic-based. Sometimes I just put my thoughts on paper and then I just read it out. And then as much as I can, I try to bring on people like yourself to be able to talk.
14:44
to give their life experience, to give their perspective on things? Because the honest answer is like, I think there’s an entire generation, but there are a lot of men out there, obviously women as well, but a lot of men really struggling and trying to, they’re not even struggling with like, not necessarily depression or anything. Just how to get started, how to find something, right? Like something that can give them some version of the guidance and then from there they take off and go. And so
15:09
For me, that’s kind of what I thought when I started the podcast. I was like, you know what? I’m on the way out transitioning, you know, out of the military in the very near future and, and because of that, I want to try to find something to. Military is about service. And I love the fact that I get to serve my audience who talking on the podcast. Like it’s very deep connection to me as the service I get from it. So that’s, that’s my why. So, yeah. And that’s, that’s so important because again,
15:38
That’s what we do is we try to serve. And the more that we can serve others, the more that elevates everybody. If you’re able to bring somebody up, they’re able to step up and they can bring you along the way and everyone that’s around you in the process. And you mentioned your grandfather, was your father not that big of a role model for you when you were growing up? No, my biological father was not a good man. My biological father was, he was, he was, it’s funny. If you ask anybody that knew him, they’d say he was a really hard worker.
16:06
He loved working on farms and stuff like that. But he struggled with alcohol. He struggled with drugs. He was an abusive man. He dealt drugs. He was in and out of jail. He just wasn’t a good man. And so he was just never there. And he gave me up at a very young age, nothing to do with my life. And I had somebody else come along that tried to fill the void, but it just never worked. We never clicked. And that’s, but the honest answer is like, I credit any version of any sense that I have with them.
16:35
my mom. She was a rock star of a woman, like a human being that I just can’t imagine having a better mom. And so she did her absolute best, always give. I definitely did not grow up as the poorest person in the school or anything like that. I didn’t grow up the richest either. I did like most of us, I grew up like just a blue collar family. But yeah, I struggled very deeply with the fact that my biological father could just happily sign a piece of paper and do away with me and never have anything to do. And that’s…
17:04
that really, it really threw me all the way into my thirties. Like it really did. Now I’ve accomplished a lot, right? Like I had to get all the way to the point of breaking, but I really accomplished a lot of my personal self. But him doing that led me to, I mean, even to the simplest thing, like a couple of years wouldn’t have been that long ago, more than a couple of years ago. But let’s say if I served with you a decade ago and I saw you, we served on a deployment and we served and we flew together or anything else, I’d introduce myself to you again.
17:34
I would assume you would forget me. Why would you need to remember me? I’m an irrelevant human. That was, and as I got older and I started to really work on myself, really dive in, I realized that is, I know where that comes from. That comes from that. It was a thing that really was deeply ingrained in me. So I look at it now as a gift, as a big thank you in the sense of I now appreciate.
18:03
people so much more. Like I want to be with them in that connecting. Like when we talk connected way that they’re like, not like, oh, I’m famous. I’ll remember like, oh, he embraced what I was saying. He cared about me. He empathized. Okay, awesome. He’ll remember me in the future or something to that effect. Like, oh, okay. So I take a deep connection whenever I spend time with people and serve with them, especially obviously, or coach them because of that. That’s really where that comes from for me.
18:33
Wow, that’s heavy. That’s a big blocker for a lot of people. It’s a nasty one. It’ll get you. So how were you dealing with that until recently when you were able to kind of unpack it? Were you overcompensating? Were you going the other direction? Because for so many people, if they have an alcoholic father or mother or any family member for that matter, they do one of two things. They either go towards that because that’s the norm. Right?
19:03
or they rail against it because they desperately don’t want to be like that. Yeah. Where were you at? What made you take the path that you did as opposed to falling down into that weakness? I just worked hard. And that’s like, you know, you talk about the workaholic, I fell into that category. And I used it in a productive way for the things I was doing, but in a negative way for me. I just looked at it like, right, OK.
19:28
All I know is this, if I go to, when I was a kid, if I go to practice and I work as hard as I can on the sports team, the coach will accept me for that. Okay. So I’m going to work twice as hard as everybody else. When I went to the military, I was like, what do they want me to do here? Well, if they tell me to do this and I go out and do it, then they’re okay. And they like to keep me around. So they’ll keep me around. So if I just work harder than this guy and not like even like a step on anybody, just the, Hey, whatever, like no matter what they give me, like if they tell me that we have to do this, I’m going to do that times 10.
19:58
They’re going to like, I’m going to be fanatical about this. And so when I became a flyer, I spent… It would have looked like a scene off Beautiful Mind where he’s got all the stuff taped on the walls. Like if you had walked in, you would have seen checklists and you would have seen all kinds of schematics and you would have seen like overhead panels and stuff like in pictures, frames, like all over the bedroom in my hotel room and stuff like that, or my building room or whatever. You would have just seen the whole thing caked in it.
20:27
because I was staring at everything and I’d wake up at 430 and I’d be studying and I’d study till it was time to go get breakfast and I’d come back. I’d study till it’s time to go to class. I’d get back from class. I’d study till it was time to get something to eat. I’d give myself a break to go to rugby practice for the local team just to burn off steam. And then I get right back in and I’d study until like 10 or 11 o’clock at night. Then I wake up and do it over and over and over. And I’d do that like day after day and little things like that. Right. Where it’s just like, I need to…
20:55
every single day when I show up and I’m still this way but in a healthy way now compared to what I was then was every single day I need to show up and I need to 100% prove to them that they don’t want to get rid of me because in my brain it was always because they will because obviously you’re not worth like loving so you don’t matter. It’s a male dominated organization, the military. So the males out here can easily toss me aside. So I need to work hard for them. So it was always
21:25
that thing. That’s how I punished myself. But it’s also, funny enough, it’s probably what’s helped me throughout my career, but it really was the thing that it punished me for a long time. So yeah, that’s how I handled it. So. Will, and your story is not that different than a lot of people now. Right. In saying that for you, you were able to take that part of your father, maybe the only positive thing that you could see in him was the work ethic. And you…
21:55
internalized it. Maybe it was fear-based, maybe it was anxiety-ridden, maybe it was a sphere of abandonment. However, like you said, going through it, you eventually learned to just kind of have that be part of you. And now that you’re in a place where you can truly step away and look at it from this more educated, compassionate viewpoint on yourself, that helps you understand, okay, I’m going to want to drive. But as I said on our interview on your show yesterday,
22:25
Sometimes for those of us that have a work ethic that it’s really, really strong, it’s harder for us to take our foot off the gas. Very hard. It’s harder for us to be efficient. Yeah. Because in our mind, well, I’m just gonna be here for 12 hours anyway. I don’t need to worry about trying to just squeeze these 12 hours into three hours. That’s right. But sometimes that gives us the intellectual laziness. Sometimes you’re like, well, I’m just gonna keep going over this. Well, maybe there’s an easier way to do it. Maybe there’s a faster way to do it. But if we’re conditioned,
22:54
that I have to work harder and punish myself, we will never ever do that. Are you still, are you able to kind of bring that back a little bit? I am now. I’m still, I pour myself into anything I do. I don’t believe in going anything other than 150,000% at all times. I’m high octane when it comes to that kind of stuff. But I’ve definitely learned over the time. It’s funny you say that yesterday, I went to the gym. We talked about this yesterday when we recorded and then I went to the gym and I worked hard.
23:22
I actually had to send a message to a commander, right? So to not my commander now, but where I’m getting ready to go. I already know him. We’d flown together in the past, everything else. I’m getting ready to go there and that’ll be the last time and I’ll be off and running into the end of the civilian world. But I’m going out the way I want. So I’m going to go to that squadron. So I said something, I was like, oh yeah, this paperwork, you know, this goes, you process to a new base. There’s a bunch of paperwork goes in to play with it. And I sent a message. I was like, yep, wait on this piece of paperwork. All I got left.
23:52
really looking forward to getting there. Like, hope I can make you guys proud. Right? Like that kind of thing. It’s just kind of a standard thing you’d say to a guy that you’re going to go work for or whatever. But I sat there. I remember this. I sat down. I was sitting on the bench press and I was just doing a couple warm-up bench press things before I went into my workout. And I was just sitting there and I sat on the edge of the bench and I was like, Oh no, what if I’m a failure now? Because I used to fly with him.
24:21
And I was just like, what if I’m a failure now? What if now is when I actually fail and I go out and he thinks I’m pathetic? The old me came back in. It’s not that people think these things, right? But I almost let that take me to a poisonous place. And instead I was like…
24:41
no, you know how to work and he knows you and I got myself back out of it. And I focused on that while I was in my workout of making sure that like, I didn’t allow myself to go down. What used to would have been like, that would have been, that would have thought would have been in my mind. And for how many years going forward until that man retired or I retired, I would be trying to kill myself physically to make sure I got everything done. Like.
25:05
It was not uncommon for me to go in, you know, be in the squadron of zero six and not leave till 2300 at night. And that was because there could be something that could be done. So I’d better be there in case it needs to be done. That was who I was. Whereas now it’s like, no, I need to be able to focus my attention on home life and the job and the podcast. And you know, these three things are the things that like really mean a lot to me. And the other things that kind of like figure this out.
25:35
figure this out. Sometimes I can lay off of this and sometimes I can attack this. Yeah. So that’s where I’m at now. But yeah, even that yesterday hit me and it could have taken me to a really bad place. And so how were you able to… What was your dialogue that helped you reverse that? Yeah. Yeah. So my dialogue at first, I was like, well, you flew with him, you served with him, he knows you. He knows you personally. Like I started talking about that kind of thing. And I was like, well…
26:02
What’s the job? The job is this. You’ve done this job for many, many years. So you know the job. And even though you’ve been out of that specific job, but that specific place for however many years now, five years, six years, because other assignments happen. I was just like, no, you know how to do that. You’ll get back in. You’ll go to an initial training again and get spun back up. You’ll be good. So that part’s not a problem. You’re a much more physically focused person in the sense of physical fitness. I’ve put that back
26:32
into the forefront of where I’m at instead of where I had it for a while. I’m a lot better at communicating now than I was then, so I won’t be screaming. Part of the thing too was a defensive mechanism for me was always like, I will always fight. If you want to fight, I will fight. Whether that’s a verbal confrontation or even a physical confrontation. I was not…
26:58
at any point worried. The only thing I wish would have happened is I would have met the other version of me. So you could just like slap me and I’d have been like, Oh, well, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. So, you know, that would have been nice. But yeah, so, but those two things. And so I’m like, Oh, you know what? I’m going to go back higher ranking, more experience, more expectations, but also like more intelligent individual, more well read person. Well, you know, I spend more time soaking in what I’m being told.
27:24
before responding, like I’ve really stepped up my game in these ways. And that’s how I started to talk myself through like, where, where is the good in me and what can I offer them that, that I know I can give them? And I just started focusing on those things. And over an hour, I worked myself through that to where I was like, okay, I am ready to go. Like, I cannot wait for that to happen now. Like that kind of thing happened over a one hour period that could have turned into…
27:53
years of me continuing to fight and spiral out of control. And it would have been unnecessary. And I talked to CEOs and leaders where they have kind of what you were talking about where in their minds, yesterday we talked about working and having a work ethic, but there is a difference because if you’re talking about working from 6am until 11pm, because something needs to be done, you and I understand now at this level, that that means that you’re not leading properly. That’s right. That’s exactly right. That means you’re not
28:22
you’re not delegating, you’re not creating more leaders. Or what I see at some of these multi-million dollar companies, they don’t trust their people enough because it’s a control issue. Yep. That’s right. And now, even though they spend a lot of money getting this person headhunted into this position, they’re still trying to be the bottleneck because they want to feel valued, they want to feel like they mean something, they want to feel like what they say really adds the stamp of approval when they don’t understand that, again, especially the level that you’re at as well.
28:51
at this high level, it’s good to get on the ground once in a while with the troops, so to speak, but you can’t live there because if you’re doing that, you can’t do your jobs. It’s impossible for you to take your hands off the wheel on the ship, walk around down below deck to see what’s going on, run the rocks. So it’s so important. And then also what you’re talking about as a civilian, when you transition, you’ll see…
29:18
unsustainable that is. Yeah. Which I know that you already know that. But sometimes we don’t think it’s that big of a deal. When I came out, I was only in for like four years. But when I came out, the amount of just the people that wouldn’t even show up to work on time, I’m like, how hard is that? Oh, yeah. Right. Or the people that don’t have the right uniform. I mean, in the military, like that is the bare minimum. You’re in uniform, everybody’s here, you’re there five minutes early, at least. Absolutely.
29:48
And then to go into the civilian sector where you have a person that, like, I remember a young punk kid pulled right out in front of me. The first day I got out when I’m on my way to go to this gym to enroll, pulls out in front of me, slams on his brakes, goes into a gas station, no signal, not paying attention. I can literally see the phone in his hand as he’s doing that. And I followed him for a second and I pulled my car over in the gas station.
30:18
And I had to sit there for a second and I was like, no, it’s not my job to tighten this kid up. It’s not my job to try to square this kid away. But that leader in me, it’s like Corporal Anderson was gonna come out and let this kid know what was going on. But it’s like, that’s not my job. He’s not gonna take it well. And frankly, it’s gonna scare him, which some people might think, oh, that might be a good thing. It’s like, no, in today’s day and age, you don’t know. You don’t know what that may do to him or that his friend has.
30:45
is scared or if they have a weapon or if I, it escalates and all of a sudden now is thinking that I could have easily just driven around and said, now I let it escalate into something even bigger. Now your ego gets, you know, pulls you in, your ego pulls you in thinking that you have all the answers to fix that. You know, like that’s, and you may, you may, but
31:03
But it’s also that person, right? Does that person want to receive that message? Because if they don’t want to receive it, it doesn’t matter how you say it. You could read it, you could write it, you could sing it, you could beat it into them. It doesn’t matter. It’s not going to work. If they’re not ready to receive the message, it’s not going to work. That’s one of the hardest things that I’ve ever had to learn is like just, you may actually have an answer that will give them the actual result they want. But if they don’t want to hear it, they’re not going to hear it. And that’s one of the hardest things for me to learn.
31:32
But one of the best things I’ve learned over time is like, try to focus on getting into the point where they are hunting down answers. And if you can get them there, then it may not even be you, but like they are actively seeking out answers. They will find it. Like they will find a way to do it. Yeah. I hear coaches that are like, you know, my client won’t do what I want, or you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink. It’s like, it’s not your job. Your job is to make the horse thirsty so that they run towards this knowledge that you’re providing them. But until they are thirsty.
32:01
you have to remind them of that thirst, because without that, they’re never gonna go there. And it’s, frankly, if you’re a coach and you have people that are not doing what you’re telling them to do, one, you’re either not coaching them properly, or two, they’re just not the right client for you, or three, you’re not charging them enough. Double your prices and see how much more they take your advice to heart, right? I coached a team one time and I coached rugby teams and soccer teams and stuff like that.
32:29
and in basketball teams over the years, just for fun. You know, whenever I go somewhere, I try to like throw that in as a side thing just to do. But I was coaching this rugby team and I basically told them, I was like, all right, you guys want to play, here’s the deal. So you’re not touching the ball. Like I’m not required to let you touch the ball. But it was at this college that didn’t, this is, this is, this was a weird concept for me. Obviously being in the military, you’d understand this one also. There was no-
32:51
cut policy, right? In my mind, I was like, well, that doesn’t make any sense. Like, they’re like, well, technically, this is rugby in most colleges is a club sport, right? So even though even if your team is great, even if they play the highest levels, it’s still maybe considered a club sport, not an NCAA sanctioned sport. So it’s everything’s taken care of by the school, all that kind of stuff, right? So it is it’s still at that level. So they’re like, Oh, we don’t have cut policies for our club programs. And I’m like,
33:18
Okay, but people can quit, right? They’re like, yeah. And I was like, all right. So I walked out on day one, I was like, I can’t cut any of it. Like literally all of you have a spot on this team. So you’re not going to get the ball basically for the first week, maybe the first two weeks, you’re not even going to see it. Like, you’re just going to run. You’re just going to run like a lot and hit a lot. And at the end of that, like I was able to weed out all the people that would have quit, you know, that would have cut, right? Or even worse, maybe one or two of them would have snuck through. And then I would have cut somebody who was really willing to get after it.
33:48
So instead I ended up with a team of like hardworking, motivated individuals. And whether they were athletes or not was a different thing. I could teach them the sport later, but I wanted the people with the will to be there, like the desire to fight through it. And that was, I look at it now and I think if I ever like go back into coaching, I’ll never have a cut policy. I’m like, there’s no cut policy. You just will not receive this ball and will not enjoy this, the fruits of this. Like if I have to go.
34:12
three weeks into the season, we get beat by a hundred points. I’m okay with that. But there’s, there’s some of you who need to quit and I’m going to make sure that happens. And not in a, not in a malicious way in a, you need to look at yourself in the mirror and decide if you want it way. And if like rugby is a physical sport, right? If you don’t like contact, you don’t need to be there. So by me putting you through physical training, you’re going to learn that you should go away and that’s okay. Go find the other thing. You’re probably a phenomenal athlete. You just don’t need to be playing a contact sport and that’s okay. Go do something else. All good.
34:42
Yeah, you don’t have to be our scrum half. That’s fine. We don’t need you. There’s going to be somebody else that wants that. And like you said, once they have the will, that’s more important because you can’t really teach that skill. We can always teach. You can always teach the federal past. You can always teach those things. And they can drill that if they had the will. But without that, everybody thinks we talked about it on our interview yesterday on your show about how there were younger guys when I was in infantry school that studs, naturals, you know, five and a half minute miles just crushing it.
35:10
But when you put them in an environment where they weren’t the top dog, where you’re asking them to learn something under duress in the heat of it, and there’s stakes, and there’s real adversity, now they’re like, oh, shit, I’m not used to this. And now, again, they’re holding back. And now that’s what gets men killed, that hesitation, right? So it’s so important to have that pain and discomfort of the best teachers for better or for worse. And that’s the reality. Absolutely. It 100% is.
35:39
That’s the only way that we can get there. We were talking yesterday about how adversity forces us to level up. And if we’re looking at it from the right vantage point, there’s always an opportunity. There’s always a gift in it. Can you tell us about an adversity that you went through in your life? At the time you were like, why did this happen to me? How am I going to get through this? I’m never going to be the same on the other side of this thing. Can you tell us about something that happened that at the time seemed like this huge?
36:09
purse. But when you got to the other side, it was actually a huge opportunity for you, a gift. Yeah. I can actually tell you, here’s the funny thing. One happened whenever I was a teenage, you know, teenage timeframe, but it didn’t surface, I guess. It didn’t bubble over until I was older. And then when I did because of another one, it forced me to deal with that one and it forced me to deal with my father. So the irony is that both of these things happen later. So in, oh gosh, it’s been a while ago now, but in my mid thirties,
36:39
somewhere in that timeframe. It’s bad that I don’t remember, but I just can’t remember. But I came home from a deployment like so many guys have to find out that my now ex-wife was having a very long affair and was pregnant with another man’s child. And so you can only imagine how that goes, right? And that caused a lot. The irony in it is that it’s funny. I look back on it now. That was a very traumatic time, like to deal with that coming back.
37:08
It just, it was a really rough thing to deal with. Um, but having said that it, when I look back on it now, I’m like, Oh, you know, I got that. Like that was like, I got through that one. Like I got through that. Um, it did change me. It changed where I looked at certain things. It taught me a lot of great things, but it forced me because I almost instantly. So because she was pregnant with another man’s child, I was like, I don’t know what to do. I have to take care of this child. My brain was like broken.
37:35
It was like, it’s my responsibility to take care of this child because if not, I look just like my dad did, right? Literally not my job to take care of this child, not my responsibility, but my brain was so broken. And so what happened for me was because I’d never dealt with my dad doing that. And I’d never dealt with being molested as a young man or teenage age timeframe, you know, that young teenage timeframe, because I hadn’t dealt with that.
38:01
I had literally just pushed them away and just fought through all that and not told anybody, never told anyone. I let that fester for a very long time, a very long time. It was a couple of years ago when I started going to the gym. I used to be in very good shape. I’d run, I’d do this, I’d do everything outside or I’d do whatever in my house. But I went to the gym, I didn’t want to be around it because the individual who molested me was a very strong, powerful fit person. So for me, I was like, oh, all those people are bad people, screw them, I didn’t want to be around them.
38:30
So I would do, I’d go out and like run in the snow or like kill myself in the middle of the Dow station in Arizona. It’d be, you know, August, maybe two in the afternoon and I’d be working out outside. But like to me that was okay because at least I didn’t have to go into the gym. So I didn’t like to go to the gym. Things like that, that I didn’t even realize were happening. And then I got older. When that happened, all of that like came rushing forward. So almost, not immediately, but pretty damn quick. The affair didn’t.
38:59
become the problem was the fact that now I was sitting in a house trying to figure out how to deal with these demons that I had not coped with, I had not dealt with. I could do my job, I could do all these other things. I was great at them, but all of a sudden, the shit that I had never focused on got me. It was like, hey, in case you didn’t know this, we’ve been hanging out here for a while and we’re really excited to come play. That’s really what it was, right? Those demons showed up.
39:28
And, you know, obviously, yep, go through divorce the whole nine, all of that. And that was a very stressful and very exhausting situation. But those things were playing on me heavily. And it got to the point where I had actually attempted suicide before and I had gotten to the end where I wanted to attempt suicide multiple times. I think part of that is being high octane, doing all these things. But then also, because I constantly just berated myself, I just felt like, oh, well, there’s no way, there’s no use, there’s no nothing.
39:58
you get to that point and adjust nothing at that point. There’s nothing. Did you ever get put in the dunk tank and have to get flipped upside down for helicopter training and stuff like that? Yeah. Roll over, roll over, roll over. Roll over, roll over, roll over. Right. So you know how like you get rolled over. They put you in that for a reason, right? So you learn which way is up. So when you get out, you can follow the bubbles kind of concept to keep it pretty basic, but follow the bubbles to the surface and you can get air and keep breathing. And that’s the overall basic concept, right? Same thing.
40:27
I just got in the tank. Imagine like it’s the middle of the night. I got in a helicopter. I’ve never been in that tank. I have no idea and it goes down and there are no lights. I don’t know which way I’m going. And so it was that, right? And so I was just swimming deeper instead of coming up to the surface. And so that’s really what it was. As I moved forward, I got to the point where I was like, all right, I’m done. I can’t do this anymore. That’s it. I’m taking my life. And I came within days of actually doing it. I had everything set up, the whole nine, all of it. And exactly how I was going to do it.
40:55
I knew the exact date I was doing it, everything. And I had a lot of lies going with everybody because I needed to make sure that I said my goodbyes, but nobody would have known that I was saying goodbye. And so I was going through all those steps. And I got lucky as hell, right? So I just got lucky. I met Katie a couple of days before, and I never thought I’d see her again. So it’s funny, like we ended up together. She’s Australian. She was in America. I met up with her and her mom over dinner one night.
41:25
conversation that lasted for hours. And I actually was like, Oh, this is fun. Like there was something enjoyable about my night tonight. I hadn’t felt enjoy, I hadn’t felt joy in forever. I just hadn’t felt any joy in my life. And that just feeling joy, I was like, Oh, that was so much fun. And now the irony is, again, now we’re together, right? And not the, the beautifulness of it, but, but I thought I’d never see her again, right after see after just meeting her because I was, you know, like, Oh, I just met her and her mom and
41:54
a great evening and she’ll go back to Australia and never see her again. That’s a whole different story for a whole different podcast, but how we ended up together. But yeah, that miraculous thing gave me hope to get through the next day. And I was like, so joy, there’s something here. I’m allowed to feel it. I need to keep going for that and keep trying to find that and not be ashamed to feel happiness and started pushing towards it, started going towards it, started attacking it, started focusing on my diet, on my running, on my sleeping, on my communicate.
42:24
everything. I just ripped back everything. And there are still things that I have to work on, but that’s life, and that’s part of the process. But it took all of that to really go back and then to look back and especially being molested. And then really, all of that started to come up. So then I had to actually go through that. And I had suppressed that so far down.
42:51
that I didn’t even realize it was a thing almost. And then when that started to come back up, it started to come back up with a vengeance. And I started to dream nightmares basically of that. All of that started to come back. So I had to work my way through everything. All right, let’s go back to the beginning. I was a human being and another human being did not find value in me. Okay. All right. That sucks. But…
43:21
I did not do that. He chose to do that. I have to get through this with my father, right? Okay. I did not molest me. Somebody else did. They did make me a victim in that moment. And I’m not one now. Like, literally, this sounds harsh. I’ve talked to people, they don’t like this, but I’ve told them like, when it stops…
43:43
you’re a victim of those circumstances that you now at that point get to start choosing whether you want to be a victim or not. Now that is not an easy thing when we’re talking about molestation, but it is real. You at that point get to start the process of trying to take back the power that that person has over you. And you get to start feeling that. And it’s again, I waited way too long. But once I started focusing on it, I got it. I was like, okay, I control this now.
44:13
I get to attack this. I get to be a better person for this. So all these things started that and it’s all these happen and you couple this with stoicism and reading a lot about stoicism. I started to learn my brain. I’m not a brain doctor, but I started to learn my brain. I really started to understand my emotions. I started to realize it’s okay that I feel anger because that’s a completely natural thing to feel.
44:40
But how I express that anger is 1000% my choice. Same thing with joy. Same thing with like every single emotion, love, like despair, all of it, everything. You’re going to feel that thing. You’re gonna feel it. You’re a human being. What you do with that feeling, how you handle it and come through it, process and use that is 1000% up to you. That is a horribly hard thing to do sometimes, but the honest answer is no matter the scenario, that will…
45:09
That is always the thing is it is your choice. So, man, that’s powerful. And there’s so much in everything that he just said in the story. Anybody that I’ve ever met in the military, anybody that I’ve ever met, that’s been through range of schools, SEAL training, even infantry school. And I’m talking kind of about suicide or thinking of suicide. Understand that.
45:37
just tell yourself, I just need to get through today. I just need to make it to lunch. 100%. My squad leader told me that when he was trying out for certain things, he would just say, I’ll quit tomorrow. Absolutely. And that’s what it was. So he gave everything. And for you talking about meeting Katie? Yeah, Katie, yeah. Meeting Katie, the beauty of that was you were able to be truly your entire self because you didn’t think you’re gonna see her. I really didn’t. After that. And so she got to see
46:07
you really were, which also kind of ferreted out who you really were underneath all of this pressure, underneath all this unresolved trauma. And let’s talk about that. I mean, girls are raised a certain way. You know, you act like a lady. Men, boys as we are raised, we’re raised in this, oh, they’re fighting, boys will be boys. So you have that for men, it’s like this overt depression where we act out to a female.
46:36
it’s covert depression. So that’s why girls, if they commit suicide, it’s usually between the ages of 16 and 21, very high risk. And usually they do something that’s like take pills or even if they’re doing something to deal with their stress, it’s an eating disorder. It’s cutting themselves in a very, very subdued way because that’s what they were taught to do. So to them unresolved trauma looks like maybe promiscuity, maybe, fear, maybe.
47:04
maybe alcoholism, but they want to keep it quiet. Boys is the other direction where all of a sudden again, boys will be boys when they act out, whether it be from trauma, whether it be from molestation, they’re starting fights. They want to fight. Oh, I always wanted to fight right now. They want it. They want it. Disrespect the door. They want to sneak out of the house and go for a joy ride. Oh, yeah. And those are the ones that again, they are abusive. They are acting out.
47:33
Again, when they want to commit suicide, can you tell me how you were going to do it? I can tell you. Yeah, I can tell you multiple. Funny enough, the first time I decided to do kind of the pill version, right? The first time I actually ever tried to commit suicide, I didn’t want to have to sit. There was so much traffic. You lived in Atlanta, you know. Oh my God. Yeah. 75 going northbound after five. That’s exactly right. And that’s exactly that is quite literally what I was doing. I pulled up.
48:02
I pulled off of the base at the time I was based there. I pulled off of the base and there was a ton of traffic. And I was like, I don’t want to deal with this shit anymore. Now, obviously traffic is not going to be the thing, but I was so stressed in life. And the irony is at the time I hadn’t, I’d come off of an injury not that long before that. And I had a…
48:26
prescription for Vicodin and everything else they get it. I usually have a hundred milligram motoring because that’s what they give us. Ranger candy as they like to call it. But the honest answer is like at that point, they were like, hey, no, you need this. So I had Vicodin and I had a whole bottle of that kind of stuff that I’d been going through. I was down to my last couple. So I had a couple of those and I had a shit ton of Tylenol and I just went to a hotel and checked in. I was like, hey, yeah, I’m not going to make it home. So I’m just going to do this because that traffic sucks.
48:55
And I went in and I took all the Tylenol that I had and I took those and I drank a bunch of stuff and I should have died. And instead I spent all night like just vomiting everywhere and shaking and just disgusting. And I woke up the next day, I fought through it, passed out for a little while, woke up the next morning, got dressed, went to work. And just was like, oh no, I got to go back to being myself. I got to go do my job. I got to go laugh and joke with the guys and blah, blah, blah and all the stuff we do. And I just went back about my life.
49:25
you know, this, this happens. And then I started thinking about it all the time. A couple of years later, I was like, God, how great would it be to just like, just driving to this frigging tree like right now. Like, and I just, like, it just kept going and kept going, but I kept working and kept working. And because I kept like, I try new challenge. I really think one of the best things for me is that I kept trying challenges from a work perspective. Like I want to go do this.
49:48
My whole life was crumbling and falling around me, but I kept finding another opportunity and challenge inside the military, so I kept going. And whenever I’d get that word that I could go do that job or go try that thing, it was like, I’m going. And then I get it. And I just keep attacking and attacking and attacking, and that would keep me going. So I look at it and I’m like, thank you, thank you so much for every opportunity I ever got because it’s what kept me going. But whenever I finally decided I was done that time, I walked into a place that I rented, I moved down into the DC area from my assignment down there.
50:17
I looked up and it was basically like imagine like you walk into the foyer and there’s like a staircase that goes up. You know how DC is, everything’s crammed. So like everything in that whole region. So everything for me was just built straight up. So straight up and then over top was an open banister area, right? Like an overlook. And then it went to the third floor. It was all just like straight up, like stacked up. And I just looked and I could see the very top of the top floor, like at the third floor steps. And I walked in and I was like, I’m going to jump from that.
50:47
And I just waited until I was waiting until a date, a specific date, because that was the date that I had found out that my ex was pregnant with China. I was like, if I do it on this day, the people that know me will know why I did it, but nobody else will. And I can fake it so that way there’s insurance money and all that stuff. And I was like, I need to make sure I take care of people and I don’t want anybody to know and I need to see it. So I planned it. And I was like, I will break some of those rails on that banister. And then I will go to the top and I’ll drop a…
51:16
thing of laundry down, like it looks like I tripped and slipped and fell. And I will literally just dive straight through those banister rails and I’ll be two floors down and I’ll kill myself. Like I’ll die. That was in my head. And I walked up and down those stairs for months, waiting in anticipation for that day. I gave up on my life, right? Like I did my job. I went to work and did my job, but I gave up. And that is probably the worst fail I’ve ever had is when I look at it and I go, I gave up and I gave up for months. Didn’t matter what I did.
51:46
I gave up on myself. I just 100% gave up on myself. I failed myself. And I failed myself for months. Wasted half a year, basically. That’s the way I look at it now. I wasted half a year thinking I was trying to get better. But at the same time that I was thinking I was trying to get better, I was not getting better. And then I was like, I’m just going to do well until I get to that day. So the irony is the day I got there. I struggled through that day, but I got there.
52:16
because I’d met Katie a couple days before. And I was like, all I have to do is make it through this day. And if I make it through this day, I got it. And I made it through that day. And I spent most of that day just on my knees, just crying, just a miserable human being just lost. I got up the next day. I was like, okay, I have a whole nother year until that day comes here. So I got a whole year to get better.
52:45
And I just started going and I just started working and working and working at it. And it was horribly tough, but it was so amazing. Um, and it’s amazing how when I started doing it, 30 something years of tearing myself down, went away like that. And I started to feel improvement almost instantly. It’s instant, right? Like you can’t miss the sun. If you’re in, if you get flipped in the tank and you know, you see the sun, you’re going to, you’re like, I need to go that way. Like.
53:14
It became very obvious very quick that I could improve, I could survive, I could do these things if I just focused on that. And I just went for it. I’m here now, right? Like I’m breathing. Like that was years ago. And it’s just been working on that over and over and over every single day trying. I still fail at a lot of things, but still like trying to go get better. That’s what I’ve done. Like that’s just…
53:40
I’m very basic. I’m at the public school, I’m enlisted. So it’s not like I have the most sophisticated approach. I’m just like, well, I can just work really hard at finding joy. And that’s what I started trying to do and gratitude. And that’s all I did. I started going towards that. Man, sometimes it is simple. It’s not easy, but it has to be simple because in the heat of battle, complexity is the enemy of our execution of trying to get that plan going. That’s what slows us down. That’s what creates drag. Yeah.
54:09
we’re no longer no longer high speed at that point. And what you’re talking about is you’re speaking to that victim mindset. And how because I was in that place too, for a long time. Can you tell us why you believe some people stay in it? Because again, some people see adversity, they get through it. It takes a while because we have to process it. But then once we’ve kind of gotten through that, and we don’t try to bypass the emotion, right? Once we actually accept it, now we can begin to move but
54:38
Why is it that some people get stronger from it and other ones just stay there and they essentially just had this meager existence for the next 40, 50, 70 years and call that a life and then they’re done? And I understand why, but I think they’re terrified of the vulnerability it’s going to take to get out of that. Because what happened was in that victim, that thing that happened, whether it was, whether you were molested or whether you were beaten or whether honestly, whether you grew up with nothing. Like whatever the case may be. Somebody…
55:06
and your family died like tragic death, like whatever it was, you became a victim. And all of a sudden you realize how vulnerable you were to being a victim, right? That’s real. That sucks, right? Like you’ve been in martial arts your whole life, right? So I feel very confident in my ability to get away from the average person in the sense of like, I’ve played rugby, I’ve done a lot of combat tactics and stuff like that. Nothing like that. But you know how we do those classes and stuff like that. I’ve done them on military bases, MCAP, stuff like that. So I’m used to…
55:34
wrestling and that kind of stuff, right? So I feel confident in the sense that like, if needed, if I got in a tussle with somebody, I could get away. My ego tells me I don’t need to like fight them anymore. Like I’m over that. But like, I feel confident enough. However, having said that, I also because you’ve been in martial arts your whole life, if me and you start to get into tussle, you know what you’re doing, all of a sudden there’s going to be a real vulnerability that happens to me. And now I’m going to be like, oh no, oh no, I’m in trouble. And that’s going to be real, right?
56:02
So instead of what I think what happens is instead of people going back out on the mat of life, me and like, well, I’m probably going to get my ass handed to me for a very long time, but I’m going to stick with this so I can learn how to get through this so I can work on it. I think what happened, I know what happens because it did it to me for a long time. I was like, I’m not going to be that vulnerable ever again. And what happens is you find comfort in all that pain, you find comfort in that like fear, you find comfort is messed up as that sounds.
56:31
Well, I don’t know what the hell everything else is. And I know how awful this is and it’s awful, but it’s my awful. And if I stay here, then it’s there’s that, then there is a false victimhood. Right. And I will say this because I tell young people this, especially I said, listen, when you’re making some shit up to just try to act like a victim, that’s even worse because you’re on purpose trying to become a victim, there are real people that go through real things that don’t have time to deal with.
56:58
the falsehoods that you’re trying to just manipulate in your brain. Life can be really tough sometimes and you got to fight through it, but that doesn’t make you a victim. That just makes you a human. Same thing on the victim side. You have to be vulnerable now. You’re going to have to do the work to fix yourself. You can look for people to help you. You can have guides. You can have mentors. You can have preachers and you can have spouses and best friends. You can have all those things, but you have to be the one to actually do it.
57:27
you’re not willing to be vulnerable with the fact that at a moment in time, you’re proven weak, right? Like in some version of life, like, because that’s the way to look at it, right? Like I fell prey to a person because I was a weak person because I was young. I was an easy target. Got it. Okay. This happened. Got to get past it, man. Like you got to, you got to, you got to be vulnerable and become a better man. And I just started working at that. And I think that’s what people want to do. So, but yeah, you got to get back out on those mats and that concept.
57:56
take a lot of beatings. So, but you’ll get there. And I said this yesterday, there’s the difference between the victim and the casualty. And we will all be broken by adversity. We will all be victimized by something at some point in our life if we haven’t yet. But again, like you said, do we choose to stay down? Do we choose to get stronger in that part where we are broken? And that’s, Henry Rollins has a comment where he says that scar tissue on your skin is actually stronger.
58:24
because it becomes more resilient. So we have to decide, am I going to allow this to be the thing that makes me stronger? Am I going to choose to embrace this? And the thing is, oftentimes we don’t embrace it once. Oftentimes it’s multiple, multiple times. It’s just like layers of pain. It’s just like trying to learn a skillset. And for so many of us, when we’re close to adversity and that’s the thing that hurt us,
58:53
We want to get away from it as quickly as we can. I put as much distance between us, but if we have the courage to stay close, well, it’s open or the courage to reopen it because it hasn’t healed. That’s right. We can find out what’s in there. We can find out what we continually get tripped on. Well, we are continually being victimized by, or again, the devil we know, right? Oh, well, this sucks, but at least
59:21
I know what this victim mentality feels like. At least I had this identity, and now that’s the person that surrounds themselves with more people that corroborate that belief, that encourage the behavior, that point that thing out to them. And then those are the people that are victimized and they can’t wait to be victimized by anything. They’re victimized by your opinion, your appearance, your freedom of speech, the way that you voted, the way that you didn’t vote, the way that you didn’t speak, the way that you hold yourself.
59:49
And again, that’s a projection of them. That’s right. Not you. So again, what is it? It’s not the event, but it’s the way that we think of it, the meaning that we assign to it. And that goes perfectly into your epitavious quotes. So yeah, yeah, absolutely. That’s exactly right. It’s our opinion of it. Like it’s so true. That’s life. That’s good communication. You don’t know what the conversation will hold. You just love it. Do it wherever.
01:00:12
I think for people to hear that too is like, understand that like I’m a 40 year old man who has been through the things that I’ve been through that I like, I know the things I’ve been through, right? So that’s what I’ve been through. I’ve been through the things you’ve been through and we’ve all done our own thing. But even now, like, I don’t talk about it every day, right? So like, for me, like, that is a very terrifying thing to talk about, but it also is immediately healing. It’s healing. And a big part of that too, and this is important for somebody. So if there’s a young man, especially that’s listening to this and has gone through that.
01:00:42
like that one of this kind of things and this feel these emotions. You are a grown man and I’m a grown man. We are having a conversation right now. We are looking at each other. Obviously people are listening to us, but like we are able to look at each other. I have just sat here and said, these are the moments that I felt weak as a man. These are the ways that I felt expendable as a man that I felt like I could be laughed at or humiliated or insulted or deep bashed. And you as a man sat there and accepted.
01:01:07
me for who I am now and me for what I’ve gone through and embrace that. And that for me, that is a very healing thing, right? So to be terrified of it and to hide from the truth of it for years, like decades, and then to turn around and to, if asked, open up about it and then to be accepted by that person, whether they accept me or not, but to have that is healing, but to endure that pain of talking about it, but not in a victim way, but in a, I’m going to heal from this conversation way.
01:01:36
is a massive thing. And so for young women also, but young men, I’m a man, so that’s what I know. So, but young men, like, you have to talk, understand that that person may not feel comfortable with you talking about it, because they may not be comfortable with it. But that may be because they don’t know any better, right? Like, they’re going to try their best, but you need to start talking to somebody to start to heal. Because it won’t go, it won’t get better. It won’t get better. You have to, you have to work on it. So
01:02:06
Here I am forward healing from things that happened when I was a little kid. And I think that’s a beautiful thing that people can, they can find in their own vulnerability. Well, the beauty of it is you’re turning this into something that you have in the courage to share your story will help others heal. It will embolden them to be courageous in this endeavor themselves. Again, it doesn’t happen overnight. You don’t just talk about it once or think about it once or think about talking about to somebody once and then it’s all good. It does take multiple exposures, but just like anything in life.
01:02:37
this is a process, this is a practice, this is like meditation, this is like the practice of being present, the practice of nutrition, the practice of communication, working out whatever. We’re never going to get to a place where it’s like, yep, I think I’m good. Like you said, even today, even me, like I still have numbness from the middle of my arms to my hands and the middle of my shins to my feet. But I’m grateful for that because that tethers me to that adversity. So I will never forget that.
01:03:04
I never forget what it felt like to be in that place. And so in a lot of ways, that’s why I am pushing myself physically because when that was taken from me, I was like, God, I could have done so much more. And you’re doing the same thing with your story, your origin of where you came from, leading to the military, being able to see what that does. And guess what? Now you have this really powerful capacity to see when there’s toxicity.
01:03:31
in masculinity or in leadership or any of this stuff, because you’ve been, you’ve been party to it. You’ve been a victim to it. Yeah. So when you see that, and then what else happens when you see somebody that reacts in a certain matter, you’re like, something’s happened to that person. I’m not sure exactly what it was with physical, emotional, sexual, whatever, but you can at least recognize that. That’s right. And just like they say, you know, skill recognizes skill, you know, game recognizes game. It’s the same thing with these kinds of things. So
01:04:00
But that started with your ability to have that presence, have self-awareness, not beat yourself up unnecessarily. It’s like, yeah, of course, none of us are perfect. We all have the works and all, but that acceptance is the beginning of us being able to heal not only ourselves, but the rest of the people around us. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Nate, Nate Gladden, fantastic. Thank you so much for being here, my friend. Where can our listeners learn more about you? Where can they go support you? Where can they find out more about what you’re up to?
01:04:29
podcast, everything you’ve got going. Yeah, I’m on LinkedIn, Nate Gladden. I’m on Instagram, Nate Gladden. And obviously, so I have inhe and the website is called inheriting manhood. The website I have not, I’ll be completely honest upfront with your people. I have been very, it’s set up as a blog. I have not put a blog up there in a very long time. I need to get back to it. But I have turned my attention to just trying to really communicate with my audience via the podcast. And that’s where I’ve been focusing.
01:05:00
are on there are actually podcasts because I’ve read them. But yeah, the podcast is where most people can find me. I’m not great on social media. I’m not going to blow anybody’s mind, but I pour my heart and soul into doing the podcast. So I’d say the Inheriting Manhood podcast is probably the best place for them to find me. I’m going to be on there soon. That episode will be out soon. And then our episode will be out. This one will be out in a couple of months. So we’ll have some nice lag to kind of create that exposure for everyone. So brother, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for being open and honest.
01:05:30
It’s hard for us as men sometimes to be vulnerable. It’s hard for us as humans to be vulnerable, frankly, right? Man, woman, whoever, whatever you identify as. Yeah. There’s a lot of- Absolutely. It’s tough to do that because there’s that fear of, like you said, rejection, all that stuff, but that’s the first step to being able to get to the next place that you want to be. And unless you want to perpetuate that in a negative way for the rest of your life, you got to start there, right? Yeah, that’s good.
01:05:55
You have to get going. Any parting thoughts, anything you want to leave our listeners with before we get off here? Actually, you know what? I want to embarrass you for a second. Go ahead. You have just given, because I do a podcast and I talk and listen and all that kind of stuff, a phenomenal ability to carry the podcast, carry the guests through the podcast. For people that are listening, maybe they don’t understand that.
01:06:23
be the person doing the podcast and trying to make sure that you’re trying to serve that person that you’re talking to by doing them right, making sure you’re communicating, trying to get something for your audience, but at the same time, not making it seem like you’re on a podcast. That’s not an easy thing. I know that sounds silly, but that just came to me. God, this felt comfortable. I don’t feel comfortable talking to you anyways, but man, that felt comfortable. So yeah, kudos to you, my friend.
01:06:52
Like I said before we started, I just want this to be the best interview I can make for you. I want it to serve you, your audience. And as far as I’m concerned, when it’s a triple win like that, you win, I win, the audience wins. It’s impossible for it to not make an impact on the people that it should be hitting. So thank you for that. Thank you for everything, my friend. Thank you.
