On today’s episode Chris Lee, a former Green Beret turned life and mindset coach, shares his journey from serving as an 18 Delta, a Special Forces Medic, to transitioning into a career focused on coaching high performers and purpose-driven individuals. Marcus and Chris discuss the significance of actions over words, the challenges Chris faced during his 10-year military career, and the creation of his coaching business. Chris delves into his goal-setting methodology, the importance of establishing identity before setting goals, and how he helps clients achieve mental, physical, emotional, social, and financial balance. The episode also highlights Chris’s darkest moments post-deployment, the significance of finding purpose, and the leadership lessons he learned from collaborating with Nick Lavery and SSLLC.
Episode Highlights:
02:10 The Journey of Becoming a Green Beret
09:05 Leadership Lessons from the Battlefield
13:51 Empowering Leadership in Business
27:42 The Importance of Identity in Goal Setting
35:28 The Value of Adversity and Physical Capability
40:02 Misconceptions About Special Forces
46:57 Finding Purpose After Military Service
Chris Lee is a former Special Forces Medical Sergeant turned Performance Coach, dedicated to helping others unlock their full potential. He believes that consistent, intentional action leads to exponential success—a mindset that carried him through the grueling Special Forces Qualification Course. From becoming a Green Beret to climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro and launching his own business, Chris has proven that success is built on daily, disciplined effort. Now, he guides others in designing the life they want, creating actionable strategies to achieve it. His philosophy: investing in yourself doesn’t just change your life—it elevates everyone around you.
Learn more about Chris here: excellenceovermediocrity.com
Episode Transcript:
00:32
Acta Non Verbal is a Latin phrase that means actions, not words. If you want to know what somebody truly believes, don’t listen to their words instead, observe their actions. I’m Marcus Aurelius Anderson, and my guest today truly embodies that phrase. Chris Lee is a former Green Beret turned life and mindset coach.
01:02
He helps high performers and purpose-driven individuals redefine their identities, embrace his comfort, and build legacies. Through his one-on-one coaching and online community, he focuses on mindset shifts, resilience, and achieving audacious goals through daily habits. Now, I met Chris through SSLOC, one of the companies that I work with. The Sibniewskis were very, very high-speaking of you. PJ was very high-speaking of you as well, and we’ll…
01:31
connect all those dots to everybody else between the Forge and Nick Lavery and everything else. But yeah, we had a quick conversation last week and it just made a lot of sense. So thank you for being here. It’s an honor to have you on the show. It’s an absolute pleasure to be here. So thank you for the invite. Yeah, it’s, we were saying before we hit record that we need more conversations like this with more people that are actually doing things. And frankly, some of the people that are out there that are sort of in these arenas.
01:58
They give an appearance of being something, but in authenticity is something you can smell from a mile away. So it’s great to have you on. And we’re going to talk about your book, Beyond the Battlefield and everything that you’re up to. But for people that may not know as much about you, you were a Green Beret, which is in special forces. So you were 18. I was an 18 Delta. So one of the medics. Medics sergeant. So tell people what that entails and how important that is.
02:28
I know a lot of guys that carry concealed carry, but they don’t carry tourniquets. And it’s like, you’re probably more likely to pull out the tourniquet in a real world situation than you are a glock. Accurate. And I remember when I got through selections, I always wanted to be an engineer because I wanted to blow stuff up. Because that sounded like way more fun. But based on some test scores and stuff, I was voluntold.
02:57
to be a medic, which I was like, I don’t have any medical experience. Well, are you sure? But yep, rather that started, yeah, I’ll go do that. So my first bit of experience within the Q course of the special forces qualification course was SOCUM or special operations combat medic course. Which includes, you know, there’s Navy SEALs and Rangers and stuff like that to show up to that course as well. But.
03:24
For me, going from absolute zero medical knowledge to being rather well learned in how to treat trauma by the end of it, it was a phenomenal training experience. And you’re right, because I was a medic, I keep a med bag in my truck all the time because like you never know when you’re going to run across a motor vehicle accident or something like that. Concealed carry is great, but a tourniquet goes a long way for sure.
03:52
Yeah, it’s it goes a long way. And again, we can apply to ourselves. You never know who’s going to need it. Again, it’s just like carrying extra ammo. It’s like, I’d rather have the tourniquet not needed. Yeah. Then you did not have it. Exactly. Exactly. For sure. And then so 10 years as a Green Beret, you, you mentioned in a conversation earlier, which when we first spoke, you said that the reason why you became a Green Beret was because it was not guaranteed. You had to earn it literally every moment.
04:22
And then at a tenure mark, something interesting happened for you. Yeah, yeah. I’ll go into that a little bit. So just prior to enlisting in the Army, I was working at a fancy hotel in Virginia. And I remember the moment I was carrying a tray of food out to the patrons in the restaurant at this fancy hotel. And nobody was rude to me. They were all very pleasant. I gave them their dinner.
04:50
And as I was carrying the tray back to the kitchen, I just got overwhelmingly furious. And I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but ultimately it boiled down to, I believed that I had more potential than what I was living in the moment. And so from there it was like, all right, let’s start looking at what is out there. And military popped up and I started looking at all the branches. I spoke to the Marine recruiters at first, but…
05:18
They were confused why I was trying to get in so late in the game. I was 28 at the time. So, and I think you can relate to my story. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And so they kind of dropped the ball on me. And so I went and became a Green Beret instead. And, but the intent behind it. All right. So why the military? Why special forces specifically? And I’m not a fan of participation trophies. My thought is if I’m going to pursue something.
05:47
I don’t want to just hand it to me. I want to earn it. And this was a great opportunity, particularly for the attrition rates of selection and then the Q course to follow. If I make it, that means there’s something in me that Cadre Saul was worth making it. You know what I mean? I loved my time in the army. We had a lot of fun, particularly being stationed in Germany. My first team was in Germany. We got to travel all over Europe
06:17
really cool things. But right around my 10-year mark, that’s kind of the point where you got to decide whether you’re going to do 20 or not. And I realized that I was starting to slip into this category of almost autopilot. If I were to stay in the Army, it would be because it was the safe option. As you and I have talked, the job itself is difficult and can be dangerous, but
06:46
but the safety net that the military provides, that’s what would have kept me in. And that kind of runs counter to why I enlisted in the first place. So I was like, all right guys, it’s time for me to go and got out right at 10 years and started my own coaching business, which is like a whole new adventure. It is, and I’d like to ask a couple of other things before we talk about transition. So for people that don’t understand, you can get selected, but the Q course itself is…
07:15
over a year long, depending on what the MOS is, correct? That’s correct. So at the time that I was going through, average Q-course time is about two years for any MOS, with the exception of medics. The medics have another nine months at least tacked onto that. So for me, the Q-course was about three years long, which was interesting because, like by the time I was done with Socom, a year had rolled by, and a lot of the guys I had gone to selection with,
07:45
They were, they were halfway through the queue and I was just getting started. And so the queue course was the most difficult part. A lot of guys approached me and like, how do I get ready for selection? I’m like, dude, that’s three weeks. Anybody can get through three weeks. The queue course is the marathon that you have to show up every single day. Look at yourself in the mirror and say, do I still want this? Yes, I still want this. And then, and then go perform, you know. Yeah. It’s a.
08:12
It’s a marathon and it’s a sprint. It’s a marathon of sprints in many ways. Exactly. Yeah. And that’s, I have a few friends that were in or are in or got in. And that’s what they were saying. It was like, you know, three weeks is tough, but you can embrace the suck for three weeks and pretty much any capacity. But then when you say, do you want to keep doing this? Or like you said, if you have this expectation that it’s going to be a year, year and a half for Q course, and then they’re like, actually, no, you’re going to be a medic, so we need you to basically get a college degree.
08:41
in that amount of time. Right. Yeah. And there’s a, because what else are you doing? You’re teaching your guys on the team what to do. So you can’t not know what direction something goes or, hey, put the tourniquet around his neck if he has a head wound. It’s like, no, that’s not going to fly. We’re laughing because we’ve seen people do that, but it’s part of the understanding. And so in the military, the transition, if I’m transitioning from the aircraft to the ground or…
09:10
to an up-and-coming vehicle or if I’m getting into hot extraction, the transition is dangerous. But you’ve been out since 22, you said, correct? So yeah, almost three years. You’ve hit the ground running. Like you’ve been really getting after it and doing it in the right way. I know a lot of people when they start their entrepreneurial venture or their coaching practice, it does take longer than they want. But you were doing some speaking and you got to share the stage with a gentleman who’s also a Green Beret. Can you tell us a little bit about that guy?
09:40
with how that transpired. So Nick Lavery is a phenomenal human being. His story is absolutely incredible and inspiring. If you haven’t read his book, Objective Secure, go pick it up, it’s incredible. A little story on him, he’s the only above the knee amputee to go back to combat. And he was nicknamed the machine because he’s now part cyborg. So.
10:07
but just a great guy and a behemoth of an individual. So how did he and I connect? We didn’t work in the same groups, so we’d never bumped into each other. But his assistant, Sydney, she used to work very closely with the Special Forces Foundation here in Colorado Springs. And that’s how I met her. And I also knew her husband, Dan, he was in 10th group here. And so when she went to start work for Nick,
10:37
An opportunity came up, he was going to do a speaking engagement in Salt Lake City. And she brought my name up and said, Hey, Chris would be a good addition to this event. So they flew me out and it was an absolute blast. Is my first speaking engagement. So super nervous. That’s a trial by fire, my friend. Yeah, yeah. So we, it was, it was a blast though. And I kind of caught the bug. I enjoy teaching. And so I’m looking forward to doing more events like that.
11:08
But it was kind of during that time that he and I got the chat and it was right after the event. He was signing his copies of books and he kind of saddles up next to me and says, hey, have you ever thought about writing a book? I was like, well, yeah, actually, it’s been on my bucket list. I’ve been considering it. He’s like, yeah, you should probably consider it. And then right around that time, a publishing company reached out to me on TikTok.
11:33
and said, hey, have you ever thought about writing a book? And I was like, okay, I get it. I get the point. Let’s do this. So I pulled the trigger and my first book was published in July of last year. Yeah, Beyond the Battlefield. And we can get that on Amazon and everywhere, right? That’s right. Number one bestseller, I highly recommend it. What I love about this is it’s actually not just a book, it’s a work book. You’re asking people to do work in it. Correct, yeah. I know plenty of people that love to read books.
12:03
but they’re not actually applying the materials. So this whole octanonverbal mentality is everything. It’s like, I would rather you read one book intimately and be able to apply a handful of things from that that are really true for you and to say, hey, I’ve read all these other books. And I’m like, tell me three things that you got from them. And I guarantee that person can’t or they can give me a vague generality and just say, well then why are you in such a hurry to read something that you’re not going to implement or forget, frankly? Exactly, exactly.
12:32
And, and yeah, that was a big motivator behind a lot of the exercises that I, that I put within the book itself. But additionally, uh, one of the earlier pages, there’s a QR code you can scan and you can download my actual workbook that I give to all of my clients. So, uh, working with the workbook and the book itself to include all of its exercises. Um, my intent is people can, can essentially be coached by me in 150 pages.
13:01
It’s my whole philosophy on how I coach now and hopefully people can get some value from it. And that’s the goal. The, in anything that we’re doing, we need to follow principles and not people because principles are unchanging. They’re resolute while people are fallible and often aware of their infallibility, especially in the heat of battle. So having it there in black and white gives you the ability to, when we read a book or write something down, we literally physically have to detach from whatever the situation is.
13:31
else no longer me or my problem is just on paper or in this book, which gives us a fighting chance to be able to jump in front of the enemy, so to speak, that we’re fighting. I love that you’ve done that. And then that was the beginning of a conversation with Nick and then you continued to do more things with him. You obviously have your own coaching and you’re doing things there, but tell us more about what you’re doing with him in a professional capacity. Yeah.
14:00
online community called the Forge Phenomenal Community. Its intent is to shape and refine one’s capability, one’s ability, one’s mindset moving forward. And so he has a group of subject matter experts that speak periodically, ranging from physical fitness to financial intelligence to leadership. I’ve spoken a number of times on the platform, kind of talking about mindset and particularly goal setting identity shift.
14:30
And kind of through that relationship that was continued and fostered while on the Forge, he very recently, Sydney reached out and said, hey, we have an opportunity. As Nick is beginning to branch out into business consulting, there’s a company that could potentially be a client, but we need to do, in military terms, a pre-deployment site survey. Exactly. Yeah. So they, incidentally, their local
15:00
you Chris, would you be willing to take a week and spend some time with them?” I was like, absolutely. That sounds like a ton of fun. So all of last week, I got to hang out with SS LLC and their leadership team. And it was so much fun for a couple of reasons. One, it got me out of my office, which is my house. And I got to actually go be out in the world, which was great. But the culture that they fostered within that company is just phenomenal.
15:30
And it wasn’t fake. It wasn’t just like the top one or two people. It’s like everybody in the whole company buys into the culture that they’ve established, which is just incredible. And so the hardest part for me was my job is to observe. Observe, take notes, report back. And me kind of, because of what I do, it’s like I want to offer advice, but that wasn’t my role that last week. And so there was a couple of times I had to just bite my tongue.
16:00
say, okay, we’ll see what we can do, you know, and write down notes and stuff. But they’re just such phenomenal people. I really, I really enjoyed working alongside them and hanging out with them for the week. Yeah, you were sort of a FO and forward operator, observer in that point. Yeah. But as you said, Scott Sipniewski, his son, Kathleen, his wife, the chief cultural officer, which shows you how important culture is to them. If you hire
16:28
and fire by culture. If you evaluate, set up a bonus structure based on culture, again, those are principles and not people. So that’s something that’s very objective. How can we attach this? If we fail, because as leaders and at that company, I can say it because I work with them very closely, we would rather have a person that makes a mistake trying to do the right thing.
16:57
with the knowledge that they have, with the intel that they have, with the leadership skill that they have, all will be forgiven then. But if you know better and you’re trying to cut corners, that’s different. And again, that comes back to these ideas, this comes back to all of these principles that we’re talking about. And it makes everything, it doesn’t make everything black and white, it doesn’t. When you were out there, I’m sure that there were, there was a lot of moving parts and there’s a lot of chaos in certain capacities.
17:26
But not in a negative way, that’s just what business is. And I think you may be aware that they’ve gotten there in 40 months. So from zero to where they are now, it’s incredible to see where they can go, to see what they can project, and to see that they’re in a position now where they’re literally choosing how do they want to move forward, what do they want as opposed to a lot of companies that are at this point where they’re trying to just scale exponentially.
17:55
But now the culture suffers. Basically their people suffer, which means that their people’s families are going to suffer. And then indirectly that’s gonna come back to the customer or the client in some way, shape or form. So being able to have that aggressive patience, I’m blown away by them. Scott Sibniewski has been the most malleable coaching client I’ve ever worked with. He wants the truth.
18:24
irrespective of how I deliver it, he’s receptive. He asks himself questions, he asks other people questions. And then he also has the ability to click back and say, you know what, the best thing I can do here is nothing and observe and listen, which I have CEOs and owners that are usually on one side of that extreme or the other, either they wanna be in charge of everything or they don’t wanna have any attachment. And then when something happens, they wanna jump in. But when they do that, what are they doing?
18:53
they’re pulling the rug out from underneath their people. And when people do that, they find that as they go through and they finally get to the minutia of what’s going on, guess what, their team’s already on it. They’re already trying to find a solution. So having a leader that will do that is a testament to what they’re doing and where they’re gonna be in the next two to three years. Yeah, I 100% agree. And kind of relating back to military experience I’ve had.
19:23
I’ve had team sergeants on kind of both ends of that spectrum where it’s like, there’s this one time I had this team sergeant, we were at a range and he’s got guys that specialize in weaponry, ammunition count, how to set up a range, how to run it. Uh, and team sergeant was on the ground counting, counting bullets, individual bullets into an ammo can and his two weapons guys were just standing there like, all right, if he wants to do it, it’s all hit him, you know? And, and, and it’s like showcasing like.
19:54
Hey man, you’re in charge of us. Like we want to work. What is the work, you know, you getting your fingers into every little detail is not your job and it’s, it’s a, it’s not a very efficient way to run things. Now compare that to the, my next team sergeant who just trusted us and, and more so he, he desperately wanted each of us to
20:20
progress as soldiers and individuals. He was always trying to get us schools, always trying to say, hey, Chris, what are your thoughts on this particular situation? And man, we would just run through brick walls for that guy if he asked us to. And it’s just different kind of mindset. He was a little more detached. And I think what kind of came back to that particular situation is when a leader is micromanaging or counting individual bullets for his guys, means he doesn’t trust us.
20:49
and lack of trust. If we sense a lack of trust from our leader, it’s like, all right, well, then I guess I’ll just behave like a private then and not a Green Beret. You know what I mean? Yeah. The idea of the Green Beret is you are an independent thinking. You are this independent, decentralized group that can go out and just do what needs to be done.
21:17
Again, if you’re the one man and you’re in front and we start taking contact and I’m the last man, I’m not going to ask you, Hey Sergeant Lee, can I engage? I feel like we’re getting, I think we’re getting ready to get overrun. It’s like, no, you engage. We all turn around. We trust that guy enough to take the weapon off save. So we need to trust him enough to be able to again, distribute 10 rounds at a time. Guys that are on a range that they’ve already set up. So yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But.
21:47
Leadership, and this is something Nick Lavery talks about a lot, is leadership is a skill that is learned. It’s not necessarily inherent to one’s gifts and talents. And it takes effort. It takes effort to learn how to lead and lead well, which is, in my opinion, SSOLC is like, just really embrace that. Like, how do we lead well? And they’ve absolutely crushed it.
22:16
Again, from my brief experience with him last week. Yeah, I’m glad that we got to have a debrief in the conversation as well too, so that helps us out. And I had Nick on the show last year. It was actually right before Thanksgiving. Okay, yeah. And so him coming out and mentioning similar things about his idea of leadership. And then, you know, I talked to him more about, you know, what was he wanting to teach his sons?
22:45
what were these leadership principles? And again, it came back to all these things we’re talking about, about having the consistency, having the routine, having this discipline, and then allowing those to be the things by which that’s what our compass is essentially. So when we’re in chaos, I don’t have the luxury of being philosophical. If I’m facing adversity, I have to have definitive actions. My squad leader, who was a former Marine as well, was very much of this idea. He’s like, I would rather you be wrong with violence of action.
23:15
and course correct once we’re through the door. Yeah. There’s a saying people talk about stacking whenever they’re getting ready to go into a building. And for those of us that understand that, stacking that they’re referring to is how you get guys to line up in a team. But the one that we talk about in the military is like you stack dead stuff like firewood. You don’t stack guys. Like you’re dynamic, you’re in a position. And now we hit this thing with everything we’ve got. Once we’re in motion, everything is much easier but more flat-footed.
23:45
it’s really hard to not only respond, but even know what to do next. And if we don’t have that ability to be willing to take the chance to be willing to fail, so just like the micromanaging sergeant who is like, don’t move until I say so, that’s not gonna help them get where they’re gonna go. And believe me, at SSLLC, everybody is a leader. Everybody, we want you to own this area. We want you to be an expert in what you do. And we want you to go forward and fall down because I’d rather you make a $500 mistake now.
24:16
make a quarter of a million dollar mistake later from the same thing that we could learn. Exactly, 100%. Yeah, it’s vital to empower the people that are subordinate to you to be able to take action and and have that freedom and not fear of failure. Failure is really just learning opportunities. Some failures are more costly than others, particularly where we used to work. It could
24:45
Try to minimize that as much as possible. That’s why you train all the time. With business, it could cost a lot of money, which affects the bottom line, which potentially could make or break the business, right? But not being afraid of that, or rather empowering subordinates to like lead, from where you are, lead where you are, and go do great things. And failures will happen, but don’t be afraid of them.
25:14
Now, if you’re not failing, then you’re not really pushing yourself. And again, failures will be forgiven as long as you’re actually trying to do the right thing. Right. And guess what? The incredible thing about this is if we apply these principles to work, to our own leadership, all leadership starts with self-leadership. So that vicariously makes us a better husband, a better father, a better wife, a better mom, a better leader in our community. So it benefits us.
25:41
tremendously where all these things dovetail in a way to where it’s like the singular decision of Saying this is where I can do something here It’s about having agency if we’re just sitting back and waiting again as you were mentioning with the other sergeant where? If you’re telling your people that you want them to lead and then they start to lead you slap them on hand at the minute They do then again What I mean you took the time to hire this person you took the time to vet them you’re giving them a salary Let them do their job
26:10
let them earn their keep. And it’s amazing what they can do when you do that. Exactly, yeah. And the other benefit to that is, I’ve found when people have that freedom to actually lead where they are, they do own it. It’s like, no, this is my job I’m managing, or like in SSLLC example, it’s like, this is my project that I’m in charge of, it’s mine. I’m gonna take some pride in it. Versus…
26:39
I have to be told everything I need to be doing or everything I’m doing is a mistake. It’s like, all right, well, it’s clearly not mine. I’m just going through the motions at that point. Yeah, let me just stand by to stand by. And that doesn’t get us where we need to go. Right. And you talk, especially even if we have targets of opportunity, right? Like I had this opportunity, I could go out and shake hands with this person or make a connection or a cultivated relationship. Well, no, they’re probably not gonna want me to do that. But guess what? We just lost.
27:08
million dollar project because you didn’t go out and say hi to somebody that you could have easily made an impression on. Exactly, exactly. And you talk so much about, and here in your book, and then in what you’re working on, about goal setting. Can you give us sort of a rundown of what that looks like and frankly why it’s so important? Because some people don’t want to set goals because honestly, subconsciously, they don’t want to have something even out there to go to aim for, which is sort of choosing to have an excuse even before it comes.
27:38
but talk to us about what that looks like for you and why it’s so important. Yeah, before I start talking about goals with my clients, I always ask them or instruct them, tell me who you want to be first, because that becomes the foundation. So it’s really identity. Tell me the kind of individual you want to evolve into, and then we’ll start tacking goals on top of that. Because, I mean, how many times have we…
28:06
have we started chasing after goals or heard of people that started chasing after goals and they realized those were goals that were imposed upon them by parents or friends or whatever. The example I use is like, you know, on Instagram and TikTok, you see people chasing after the Lamborghini or the McLaren. And so you start doing that because it’s expected of you. Where in actuality, all I really wanted was a cabin in the woods and some peace and quiet, right? And so
28:34
have been the identity first. That foundation, it acts as a filter. Say no, guilt free. It’s like, hey, thank you. I know you, you suggested that goal because you care about me. You want what’s best for me, but that goal doesn’t align with the kind of man I want to become. And so I’m going to say no and chase after what I should be. And so, so back to your question. Identity is always first. Who do you want to be?
29:04
and then let’s start tacking goals on top of that. And I break life down into five categories. So mental, physical, emotional, social, and financial. And each of those could have subcategories to it. I think those are the heavy hitters. And the reason I do that is because in actuality, it’s hard to compartmentalize your life. If you’re lacking discipline in one area, it will probably bleed over into the other areas.
29:32
And so if we can address each of the areas, then you’re set up for success. And as we, as my, my clients and I started navigating our, what kind of goals do you want to chase after? I use the smart acronym that I’m sure we’ve all heard of. So specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time-bound, mainly because it just makes sense. It’s a, it’s a, it’s an easy acronym to kind of structure how you’re going to set your goals. And the first, first thing we address is like, all right, let’s get specific.
30:02
you know, getting healthy this year is not a goal. That’s like, it’s too vague, it’s too ethereal. Like let’s get specific. You know, specificity is something like, all right, I want to drop 25 pounds. So I want my body fat percentage to be 10 to 14%. I want to be able to bench 225 for reps. I want to be able to back squat 315 for reps. I want to have a resting heart rate of sub 50. You know, the…
30:31
That’s specific. And that’s something that you can then measure and then create a plan to get to. Because then you can track progress to see whether you’re there or not. And as we’re navigating those various areas of life, I found you sometimes run into stuff that’s hard to quantify. So the emotional area of life for me, the identity that I’m striving for, the person I’m trying to evolve into is, I am the calmest man in the room.
31:02
And for me, it’s important, primarily, I’m pulling that from my military experience. Like if you’re rolling up on an emergency situation, you can’t be panicking. You have to be calm. Otherwise, nobody’s going to get helped. So for me, being calm is really just a better means by which I can solve problems when they arise, because they will. But how do I measure that? How do I…
31:29
measure in a bucket how calm I am, you know, at the end of five years. I would argue that it’s actually kind of hard to quantify, but I can measure the practices that will lead me to my desired end state. So for example, prayer and meditation on a daily basis, I can track how many times I’ve done that over five years. And I’m willing to bet that consistent meditation and quiet time, practicing the calming of my mind will lead me to that.
31:59
that desired end state of the calmest man in the room. Does that kind of make sense? It absolutely does. And my follow-up would be, was that sort of your natural proclivity, like your just sort of, your nature was to be calm, or did you attain that from this sort of practice? Admittedly, growing up, I was relatively reactive to things. Like if a chaotic situation showed up, I would get emotional in the moment.
32:29
my military training, particularly the medic aspect of it, it helped a great deal with that and kind of maintaining this like stoic, I need to solve this problem and not get angry about this problem. Additionally, seers school helped too. So survival evasion resistance escape. There’s a POW simulation throughout that. And you can’t get emotional when you’re getting slapped around. Like you just have to… Yep.
32:56
Roger that. Okay. Yes sir. Can I have another? So, uh, so, so I attribute a lot of, um, that particular goal in my life to things I learned while in the military. And I’m grateful for those lessons. And, and so being able to kind of evolve out of having emotional responses to things to
33:20
I do want to make this clear. Uh, I’m not saying that you should ignore your emotions. Uh, emotions, I think, tell us a great deal about what’s going on and how this situation or this individual, how I feel about it, but just cause you’re having an emotional feeling doesn’t mean you have to read the act based on that emotion. And so, you know, my medic training and then seer, it allows me to feel the emotion, but
33:47
create a little bit of separation between stimulus and response. And now, now I’ve got this like safe space where it’s like, man, that, that was really frustrating or that was incredibly scary. Now I can breathe. Now I can think. Now I can act and start solving the problem, whatever that problem might be. Yeah. That classic Victor Frunkel example of between stimulus and response. There is that space. And I’m, I have found the same thing you have. If you meditate or if you pray that gap, that space,
34:17
gets a little bit bigger and then that compounds over time. It also gives us the ability, I always say that emotions assassinate the truth. So when you’re in it, again, absolutely feel the emotion, experience it. So I can feel anger, but I don’t have to act from a place of anger. Exactly. Anger is a signal, it’s not a mistake. It’s an indication that there’s something in congruence somewhere. So.
34:47
It should get our attention. It should wake us up from the mediocrity of scrolling our phones or whatever. But even today, because people don’t have that connection, they don’t center into themselves, they don’t know who the hell they are, what they want. Everything just becomes this very transient emotion that’s seeking another distraction, another cheap dopamine head, another sugar high, whatever it is, more caffeine, and I’m not saying that those things are bad, but I’m saying that those things are.
35:15
Again, they’re short-lived. And the neurology in our body, as humans, we were designed that that neurology only gives us the best feelings when we’ve worked hard for something. So if it’s not difficult, we don’t respect it, just like what you were saying, that got you to become a green brain in the first place, knowing that it was gonna be hard, knowing that failure was not only an option, it was probably the most conceivable option in many situations.
35:43
We have to have that because unless we have some sort of adversity pushing us, we never know what we’re capable of. We never know what dormant strengths are within us until we’re at that place. Right. And in today’s society, in the United States, for example, it’s become difficult for people to even get out of their house to go physically to a movie in a movie theater. Because they know if they just wait two weeks, they can just order it from their phone or from their TV. And if they’re hungry, guess what? They can order that.
36:12
The biggest thing they have to do is get their happy ass off of the couch and go waddle to the door to get the food and sit back down to consume whatever this is. And there’s nothing wrong with doing that. I’m just saying that there is value in difficulty. There is a tremendous amount of power that can come from having a skill set that even if you’re not a warrior per se, having a warrior skill set is everything because
36:41
It serves you in any arena that you enter in, knowing that you’re in great shape, not from a vanity standpoint, but knowing if my car breaks down and it’s 10 degrees outside, I know that I can run to a gas station and be fine. I know that if I have to carry something, a heavy amount of weight on my back, I can run to wherever we need to go. If it’s a person, I can do it. But if I don’t have that, and I’m in a situation where I don’t have the, like we may not have those luxuries, even in today’s society, we see how quickly things can change.
37:11
whether it be a fire or whether it be a hurricane. And if we don’t have the skill sets at our disposal at our back pocket, just like a tourniquet, then it leaves us unnecessarily vulnerable. Yeah, I totally agree. Having capability is like one of the first steps with one creating confidence, which then allows for that calmness in chaotic situations. If I know I’m physically capable to grab my daughters out of the house, if it’s on fire.
37:40
without hesitation, I’m not going to struggle with that and get them to safety. That helps a little bit with my capability to navigate chaos. If I’m struggling to get myself out of the house and now I also have other people to worry about, it just adds another layer of chaos to the chaos. So yeah, I totally think you’re right. Physical capability is kind of a baseline. I was on a podcast last week.
38:10
And the question was asked, like, Chris, what are your thoughts on Ozempic for young men to lose weight? And my thought was like, you’re missing the whole point of physical training. It’s losing weight, like I put it in my book, it’s just calories in versus calories out. I’m not a nutritionist, but ultimately that’s the equation. So if you want to lose weight, just do it. But that’s not the point behind physical training.
38:38
point behind physical training is, is to sculpt your body to the way you need it to be in moments where you need it to perform. Additionally, what goes along with that is the mental fortitude that is forged amidst that training aspect. When you have a lot of weight on your back and you’re squatting and now you know you have to go back up, there’s a mental component there that, that must be overcome of like
39:07
man, this is really uncomfortable, you know? But the more uncomfortable things you do, the yes, it makes your body stronger, more capable, but it also makes your mind more capable of like, I can withstand difficult. And the more you do that, the greater opportunities I think present themselves. Yeah, I call it the adversity scale. It’s like, what’s the 10 on your adversity scale? And when you reflect on that,
39:37
And then you say, wait a minute, I’m pissed off because my latte is not hot enough. Really? Resilient enough to overcome that, or I’m upset that there’s traffic. It’s like, I, this again, it helps us detach. And it also helps us say, man, why are you bullshitting yourself? Why are you making this bigger than what it needs to be? If we know that this is not a big deal, stop making it a big deal and begin to execute on changing everything around it. So exactly. Exactly. And there’s a lot of.
40:07
misconceptions around being in special forces. What’s the biggest misconception that you hear? I mean, we all know like Rambo is a green beret. He was an 18 Delta by the way, he mentions it in the third one. So, but the way he operates is not typical for a team. Like he was a lone guy out, you know, crushing it in all the movies. And that’s not really how we operate.
40:37
Additionally, I would argue that the intent behind being special forces is to be able to blend in. Our job is to be able to go work with folks that are native to a particular country, work alongside them, blend in, adopt their culture to then build them up as a force. And so there’s a lot of green berets out there that don’t look like bodybuilders. They just look like regular guys.
41:06
can blend in places, which I think is an asset. The difference, I think, of what people anticipate when they see movies and stuff is the Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Esther Stallone style body type and then run it and gun it and by themselves. It’s like that’s not really what we were designed to do. We’re designed to, like I said, blend in and almost be forgettable. I was talking to a guy just the other day.
41:36
I have this like exercise whenever I check into a hotel, I try to, I try to be as forgettable as possible. So so when if asked later, the clerk at the desk will be like, yeah, I mean, he checked in, but I can’t really remember what he looks like. That’s the goal. I want to be able to gray man disappear. You know what I mean? Yeah, hide in plain sight. I like it. It’s I think it’s a good skill to have. And then
42:04
Obviously it’s nice to be able to turn on the charisma if you need to, but as you say, it’s you dictating that as opposed to having it dictated to you by the outside environment. Right, exactly. That’s where there’s a lot of skill. And then since you’ve been in the coaching arena for a few years now, what is the worst piece of advice that you hear continually parroted by other people when it comes to this, whether it be goal setting, whether it be performance, something that you hear that just makes it’s like nails on a chalkboard.
42:34
The example that came to mind was, I see a lot of advertisements or, yeah, I guess advertisements for, get a beach body in 90 days. And I run counter to that. For me, it’s like, I don’t wanna have abs in 90 days. I wanna have abs for the rest of my life. My goal is to outperform my grandkids when they show up, hopefully not for a long time.
43:04
And that kind of dictates how I coach. So the timeline I typically work with with folks is five years. And I’m going to paraphrase a Bill Gates quote, but he says, we often overestimate what we can accomplish in a year, but drastically underestimate what we can accomplish in five. And I’m in total agreement with that. And if you try to cram so much,
43:32
self-improvement into 365 days. Oftentimes, there’s just not enough time to get everything done. So one, you feel like a failure or two, you didn’t quite meet your goals or three, you quit because it hurts too bad. If you can spread that timeline out to five years, it’s just far enough away that you can build some momentum. I call it the compound interest of effort. It’s far enough away you can build some momentum, but it’s not so far away that it’s
44:01
It’s still like dream state, ethereal, you know, five years for me, it’s like, I can still kind of see five years down the road. And so, so if the goal is to get abs, like the goal should really be to maintain a healthy body into perpetuity. How do I say that? Into long, long life, you know, like old, yeah, old age, like you should, you should desire to be healthy forever. Not
44:29
not just have a beach body by summer. You know what I mean? And so when I see stuff like, you know, get ripped in 90 days or whatever, it’s just like, it might work, but how sustainable is it for the long haul? You know? I think that’s a great point. And also we see a lot of people that maybe they attack that thing for 90 days and then get burned out, get tired, get injured. And then the rebound is brutal. It’s almost worse than when they started.
44:59
And then also any event that you have that you’re trying to prepare for, you know, it’s a marathon, it’s whatever it is. If it’s a physical endeavor, we learn more about ourselves in the process of preparing for it than that actual event many times. Like understanding, okay, I have to reverse engineer this thing. Like if I’m going from the couch to a marathon, what does that look like? How do I go from like to the monumental by doing these incremental?
45:27
My first three runs that week are going to be two miles at an easy pace, three miles at an easy pace after a day off, four miles at an easy pace after a day off. And then slowly allow myself these really, really broad strokes to get where I need to go. And then as you do that, you start to understand this is where I have friction against consistency or motivation or discipline or diet or consistency, whatever it is. And that shines a very bright light on those areas. But once you’ve done that,
45:57
When you do that work consistently, like you’re saying, building that momentum, that 1% increase every day, that gives you something that’s undeniable, but then it serves you again in any arena that you enter. So the goal is to take those broad strokes, take those principles, and then apply them across everything else. And then like you said, if you have discipline with what you can put in your mouth, you can pretty much find discipline in any other area of your life that you need as well. Exactly, exactly.
46:27
Yeah, there’s a lot of power in that, a lot of wisdom there. I’ve never met a person that’s been a high performer that has not gone through adversity. As a matter of fact, there’s usually a direct correlation to how much adversity they go through, can process, and then transfer into something powerful. Can you tell us about an adversity that you went through in your life that at the time you didn’t know how you were gonna get through it or if you would get through it, but then on the other side of it, you look back and found that it was a tremendous opportunity, a tremendous gift for you.
46:57
Yeah, it was right after we came home from Afghanistan. And when I enlisted in the army, I had this kind of picture in my head of what I wanted to achieve, what I wanted to accomplish. I mean, growing up as boys, like we want to be the hero of something. And I thought this was going to be my opportunity. Up until that point, I hadn’t had any combat rotations. I deployed the
47:24
Estonia and Denmark and stuff like that, but those were training missions. And so in 2021, when we had an opportunity to go to Afghanistan, I was like, all right, this is my opportunity to answer the question, do I have what it takes? And the deployment itself was frustrating because we essentially weren’t allowed outside the wire. We were kind of locked into our base.
47:52
I remember we’d been there for maybe two weeks and this was right after breakfast. We hear this, this loud boom. So we, we all throw in our kit, run outside and there’s this mushroom cloud, just relatively close, but often the distance. And so we, we, we jock up and we started loading onto VIX and, and then we got told to stand down, um, because what had happened was, um,
48:20
the base that was adjacent to ours, the Afghan base, was hit with a vehicle-borne IED. But we weren’t allowed to respond because that was their base, even though they’re our allies. And so we were like, and that was like the deployment. Towards the end, when particularly once we made the announcement that we were pulling out, the Taliban started rocketing the base, intentionally hitting empty buildings just to antagonize us.
48:48
they knew we weren’t able to do anything. And so fast forward, I get home from that deployment and wife and the kids went on vacation so I’m home alone, drinking a little bit too much and I’m like, what did I just spend 10 years of my life doing? Like, what was the point? And I got to a pretty dark spot and pulled my side arm off top shelf, my office and put it in my mouth.
49:18
And I’m incredibly grateful I didn’t make the decision I couldn’t come back from in that moment. But I was on the abyss. And that’s why I talk a little bit about purpose, particularly in my book and on webinars I do. It’s like, if you’re lacking purpose, that abyss can be real close. And that’s a dangerous place to operate in.
49:46
And if you feel as though your purpose has been pulled out from underneath you, that’s a real dangerous place to be in. And so in that moment, you have to figure out, create, sculpt, devise a new purpose for your life. It’s vital. And so, so for me, kind of in that moment, I still had maybe six months left in the military or maybe, maybe nine months. And that’s when my buddy started.
50:16
telling me, hey man, you should probably consider coaching. I was like, I don’t know. I don’t know if I have anything to say to anybody, but he kept pushing me and eventually kind of got to where I am. But yeah, I’m almost reluctant to tell that story because it’s not like I saw something horrific or, I mean, I’m incredibly grateful. All my buddies got home safe. Nobody was…
50:41
Well, one guy was injured, but that’s because he was benching too heavy in our gym and the team house and tore a pack. But other than that, like my guys were safe. And so I will always be grateful for that. But kind of feeling as though my purpose had been pulled out from underneath me, I look back at all the birthdays and anniversaries I had missed being deployed in various places all the time away from my kids that I’ll never get back. It’s like, wow, what was the point?
51:10
And it was kind of in that moment where it’s like, you got to find a purpose or begin sculpting your purpose moving forward. If, if your old one isn’t working out anymore. So what advice would you give to people that are trying to find purpose now? It’s okay. If you can’t fully articulate it in the moment, the example I give is, um, imagine your purpose is a block of marble in front of you and
51:39
you know somewhere in that marble is the artwork that you want to reveal. But even if you don’t know exactly what it looks like yet, you can start chipping away at the pieces that don’t belong. Do you know, all right, that corner, I don’t need that. I’m going to remove that. So what does that look like for establishing purpose? Start asking yourself, what don’t I want my purpose to be about? Well, I don’t want my purpose to be about being lazy and watching Netflix all day. So that will dictate.
52:09
behavior on a daily basis moving forward. If I don’t want my purpose to be about scrolling TikTok all day long, that’s going to dictate how I behave in a certain way. If I don’t want my purpose to be about being alone on my deathbed and my family’s nowhere to be seen, that’s going to dictate how I engage with my daughters moving forward and how I maintain that relationship.
52:39
week to week, I’m thinking generationally. At some point, I hope I have grandkids, not for a long time, but at some point, I would like to be a part of their life, which means that’s going to dictate how I interact with and foster the relationship I have with my children currently. You know what I mean? I think that’s great advice. And I think that vicariously figuring out what we don’t want gives us an idea of what we do, just like you’re saying.
53:08
to piggyback on what you’re saying, these things that you don’t wanna do. And if you’re not sure, then ask yourself, what pisses you off? What angers you? And then try to do the antithesis of whatever that is. If you see a person that’s being disrespectful, well guess what, respect’s gonna be big for me. If you see a person being discourteous, or you’re seeing a person being rude, guess what, I’m gonna be courteous, I’m not gonna be rude. I’m going to over-index this other direction. And then when you do that, now you have these areas like a Venn diagram that overlap, and you’re like,
53:38
I don’t want to be on TikTok and I don’t want to be a dick. Guess what? I’m going to go this direction. Right. And then doing what you’re talking about, doing what you’re talking about in your book, what you speak about on your channels and everything else. I think that’s something that not only veterans, but every person that’s listening to us needs to hear. You’re a leader. Even if you’re not an official leader, you’re leading somebody. There’s somebody that looks up to you. If you’re a parent, your child looks up to you. If you’re married and you don’t have a child, your spouse.
54:08
looks up to you in some capacities. Take that ownership and take that responsibility. And once you do that, it adds gravity to everything that you do and every decision that you make from the amount of water that you drink, the kind of food that you put in your mouth, the workouts that you do, everything else. And eventually as you’re doing that, I always say that if the path before you looks simple it’s probably not your path. And feeling sort of lost on your path is fine because just like in land nav,
54:37
clover leaf around to find it, or at least have a direction to go. But it all comes back to knowing who the hell we are, because that’s the location of where we are on that map, because you can give somebody general directions. But if they’re not in the right place, they’re going to be walking around in circles and then they literally spend part of their lifetime, like you said, upset, concerned about why all this time that I wasted or all the stuff that I thought that I was making this difference. And I really wasn’t, I was just kind of stalling. And I think.
55:07
the work that you’re doing is tremendous and more people need it. So tell us more about where can we learn more about you? When are you speaking next? Where would you send us to direct to learn more about everything that you have going? Yeah, so I’m on TikTok and Instagram. Both of my handles there are coach underscore Chris.Lee. I also have a website if you’re interested in either booking a call with me or setting up kind of a speaking engagement called fiel
55:36
My books on Amazon, Beyond the Battlefield, be thrilled if you supported me in that way too. So thank you. Yeah, this is the kind of book that if you have a company, you could buy like a bunch of them and you guys could work on it together. Or if you have a group, a veterans group, a men’s group, anything like that. And when you buy those kind of books and it’s a workbook and you’re doing it together with other people, it creates accountability, it creates retention. And now you guys are more not only inclined to put the material into play.
56:05
but now you get to hear multiple perspectives on a similar exercise. Exactly. And that makes you a better leader, right? Because we should be asking for as many orientations as we can to know what the best option is, as opposed to just saying, I know what to do, let’s go get it. It’s like, yeah, maybe it doesn’t hurt to wait to listen to get the rest of the intel, so. Exactly, exactly. Chris, thank you so much, my friend. I appreciate you. It’s my pleasure. Thank you for having me. Of course.
56:33
Thank you for listening to this episode of Acta Non Verba.
