217. DJ Shipley: On Psychedelics, Discipline, PTSD & Rebuilding the Mind After War

0:00Gary Brecka:I had my best friend get killed on a hostage rescue December 8, 2012. That was a tough thing to go through, man. There's no greater bond than just you 100 % knowing that the guy beside you is willing to give his life and you are willing to give your life for the mission. I mean, you've been in some that are just, you pin down, feel helpless. Your buddy's dying in your arms. This guy's shooting at us. I've got to save him while not getting shot at. And you can't take out the human aspect of it. You spent so much time together. You'll never reach that level of culture in the civilian world because people are not willing to do what you guys had to do to develop that culture.

0:35What is the culture? 1 % better every day, be a pro, be better than you found it, don't be an asshole. At the end of the day, how do you want to be a good Navy SEAL?

0:42Gary Brecka:Be a good dude. And one of the things I really identify with is that you are not afraid to be selfish with the first part of your day so that you can be selfless and give the rest of your day away. I'm trying to live to be 105. and five. I'm trying to be an asset for my family as long as humanly possible. And there's a big physical component of that. I'm exhausting everything I can to be there and be present on the moments where they really need me. What about the mindset of having been a SEAL? What did you draw out of that culture and that career that's now just a part of who you are, not what you do?

1:10I think ultimately, and somebody do really good is...

1:27Gary Brecka:Hey guys, welcome back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. I'm your host, Gary Brecka, human biologist, where we go down the road of everything, anti-aging, biohacking, longevity, and everything in between. Today is a really, really unique podcast. Not only is our guest a former member of SEAL Team 10, but he's a father, he's an entrepreneur, he's a husband, and his advice, I've actually, I told him today, I actually take some of your advice. I started following your morning routine. And if you know anything about me, like my morning routine is sacred. But welcome to the podcast, DJ Shipley. You invaded my morning routine, and now I'm actually taking some advice from you.

2:08Gary Brecka:You know, it's astounding. You know, you've been here for a few hours, and I always end up running a podcast before the podcast with my guest. But it's been great getting to know you, brother. We had an awesome morning. We're both freezing right now because we just got out of a cold lunch. But we did hyper barracks and then we got in the sauna and then did a little cold punch. So we're both, the lights are on. Oh, yeah. All eight cylinders, man. Thank you very much for having me. So, you know, there's so many avenues that we could go down with this podcast. But, you know, what I found really unique about your story, I feel like you were kind of like the uncommon Navy SEAL.

2:43Gary Brecka:I mean, you come from a long line of military in your family, your fathers, your uncles, even your mother, and grandparents, World War II. Your father was a SEAL. Father-in-law, too. Your father-in-law was a SEAL. Your mother was in the military. She was in the Navy. She was in the Navy. So my father was in the Navy, too. So you kind of have no choice, right? Yeah. I find that there's a kind of a common theme that runs through my podcast. And I feel like the people that are the most impactful in this world, the people that are the most passionate, like purpose driven, are people that solved the problem, something in their life.

3:32Gary Brecka:And that became the foundation for greatness. And for you, was that how you were shaped as a Navy SEAL? I mean, because you were actually 17 when you went in, right? So, and I found it really fascinating that you said, you know, in today's day and age, I probably wouldn't have made it just because the qualification, not that the qualifications have changed, but the caliber of the people coming in. There's so much more educated and well-prepared, more than I was. You know, it's 2025. The internet's infinite. They can download a David Goggins and Jocko and all these other people. They can read about the pipeline.

4:09and they can see it on, you know, the Discovery Channel. We didn't have any of that. And the human potential has grown so much. I mean, the barrier for entry, if you look at the screen test and what it takes to get in, it's not a very hard thing to do, but the numbers these kids are producing now, they wouldn't have even looked at me. Really? Yeah, good enough to get through, good enough to make it through. But now the scores are all based off of physical push-up, push-up, sit-ups, pull-ups, running, swimming, all of those things. the numbers are so much greater than what i was able to produce in 2002 it just shows the you know

4:42Gary Brecka:the human potential it's really climbing fast yeah did you go in because your father sort of gave you no choice i mean one of the interesting things and i want you to tell this story but um is when i hear you talk about your story i mean you really grew up in this young environment he actually he didn't take you on missions but he me took you around those guys a lot growing up not just because they were over at the house, but you went out to the base. I grew up there. Grew up there. And so it was kind of like this environment that you were in. And I recall you talking about how you never really around a lot of normal people.

5:20Gary Brecka:Never. So what was that like, being a young kid, father's a Navy SEAL, high achiever, coming from a long line of military families and the sort of growing up around this base because i don't think a lot of people really are in tune with what that kind of youth is like when people think growing up in military they think um major dad right flat top haircut he comes in blouse uniform you know seal teams are very special operations is very unconventional so they never felt like they were in the military you'd see the uniforms and you'd see all the stuff but it felt like more like a professional sports team than anything else but it was the culture the way they were the living out of 15 passenger 15 passenger vans in and out of hotels always gone on the road dropping off dirty laundry but just you know the humor the dark humor just the physicality when these guys would come over i mean i can remember being a tiny tiny child and watching the guys pour into our house and just they all looked like superheroes they're specimens i mean they were freaks and i just i always wanted to be one i really wanted to be a veterinarian like in the back of my mind i loved animals i loved being around that so i'd always say that i want to be a vet i want to be a vet and they would just you don't want to be a vet yeah well i mean you had like chickens goats yeah like every animal in the world when you're growing up so you're you know you're in that farm lifestyle um I grew up on a 300-acre tobacco farm, so I know what it's like to be in that urban environment.

6:52Gary Brecka:You know, skateboarding was your outlet, you know. And then you used to bust yourself up a lot skateboarding. Oh, yeah. It's kind of funny. Oh, I've been hurt. And so, you know, was your dad around a lot? I mean, at that time, he was always on deployment, right? Always. He's gone. i mean i i kind of rough average it out 250 300 days of the year gone wow and that's continuous the entire time but when he was back he put you in that lifestyle you know you're on the base you're around his guys did you did anything strike you like did you notice that culture were you like were you young enough to grasp it like these guys i mean they they're messing with each other they have a funny language they joke a different way they all look like physical specimens but could you feel that culture like as a child taste it it was palpable and you know now that i've i've been on the other side i could see where his frustrations coming back and trying to assimilate normal life there's always a friction point because he'd never heard the words no and now i think back to all the small things like hey guys everybody's got to come out of my house you know we had a hurricane we've got 14 trees falling down and 60 dudes show up at the house with cases is full of beer and chainsaws and they they chop up every single tree no one complains about it they do it they burn it they haul it out that's just what you do you've never heard the word no or i can't do that or it's too heavy it's too long we can't make it they always just did it so you get used to that being the performance anxiety like they've never said no they've never said we can't do it they're always going to find a way because the collective is always trying to solve that problem together yeah i think that's what makes it so infectious because everybody deals with stress and problems all day long nobody has a group where everybody goes i'm going to stop everything i'm doing right now and we're going to solve it together right now yeah and that's what the essence of that culture is i think it's so unique because you know how do you take a uh you know young farm kid because you go you go into the new the seals at 17 years old um so you don't know what combat's like you probably don't even know what buzz is like you have no idea what to expect I mean, you have a little maybe idea of the culture from being around your father and all of his buddies.

9:07Gary Brecka:But I always find it fascinating. I think it's just such a metaphor for life. It's a metaphor for culture, for families, for businesses. How they take these dyspartite guys that don't know each other, they're young, probably can't find your ass with both hands at 17 years old, right? it's not like you have this vision of being on this team and you know you know how to build culture those are not things that are just inherent to you and you go into this program uh which is really designed to weed you out i mean it's really designed to fail you or to break you um and the shocking fact that you're not broken leaves you with a unit that's tight but then talk to me about like the culture building because lots of people do hard things and lots of people do hard things in groups right um it's one of the reasons why i think crossfit was so successful for example because it was the first time you know for most of the people in that class that they pushed themselves to absolute exhaustion i remember after crossfit wads everybody's laying on the floor sweating and but there was that unity you know the conversation afterwards where you're just dripping off sweat and did it didn't matter if somebody was a school teacher another dude was a firefighter another guy was a you know he was there from uh SWAT team from the from the county you were all on the same level for 50 minutes you know um so how does that culture evolved i'm really interested in because there's there's an intentionality to it you're bringing in these guys from all over the country you're putting them through a battery of tests but all that battery of tests is doing is saying who's the hardest who's the most determined who has the greatest willpower who has on on an unbreakable ability to deal with suffering but at the end of that you don't just magically get culture no can you talk about how shared suffering and then a lot of it is the unknown it's the fear of the unknown nobody knows what's coming next you've never done it before in some of the evolutions you do i mean i'll say it to everybody there's a point where your mind will take over and it'll tell yourself you're gonna die right now they don't realize how cold you are they don't realize what stage hypothermia you're in and you're gonna die if you don't say something and you'll look to your left and right nobody's throwing their hand in the air you go i'm not gonna say anything i don't want to get pulled out of here i don't want to get the pro because if my core temperature does drop and he kicked me out of here that's not what i want i'd rather i'd rather die right here in the surf zone close out the whole chapter knowing i did everything i could yeah i think people hit that when the collective hits that same point it's no different than crossfit yeah at a certain point during that wad during that workout you think your heart's going to explode you do and no one else is stopping and you just keep going like there's a little internal governor inside your body you just overrun you go one more one more like we've all done these crazy runs where you're like my heart's gonna stop right now like i have to stop and yet you don't yeah once you do that so many times and you see everybody else do the exact same thing it builds this internal strength that nobody else can feel but you but you get stronger as it gets harder people start to leave they're all quitting you see guys show up to special operations like they look like dolph longer than rocky four you're like really i can't believe that kid grew up and looks like that and wants to do the same thing i do like why aren't you on the cover of men's health yeah and they quit in five minutes yeah how that cold water changes everybody like they don't want to be here and i think that's where a lot of my success was is that was a barrier for entry i have to do all of these things in order to do that and i've been around it so i see what the end state is everybody who I've ever met has gone through this exact same thing they picked up that same boat the same logs in the same water you have to do it yeah if you want a college degree you got to go through college this is my college yeah I have to make it through you know we talk a lot about mindset and I remember you telling a story about how you're you know you're in California you're in you're in the um you're in the surf you're in the water water's cold as shit and you guys are all linked up and you're doing whatever calisthenics and you're going through the program in the water and you're suffering and you feel like you're going to die.

13:29Gary Brecka:And then you look over and you see like a kid with an inflatable, like pink flamingo, like floating in the surface. You're like, how is this 14-year-old boy, 10-year-old boy floating next to me? I feel like I'm going to die. So that's, it's got to be where the mindset comes in. And so during, during Buds, which has got to be the hardest thing you've ever done in your life, I don't know if that is or not. Maybe it's on the mission. Okay. At the time it was. Okay. Cause we're going to get into that too. And at that point, you're not a unit yet. You're just, you're just suffering as a group. Right.

14:10Gary Brecka:So they, that camaraderie, that culture has not started. This is the weeding out process. You can feel the culture in the cadre. And I think that's one of the things that nobody ever gets to see unless you're, if you'd be exposed to it early you can watch the subculture inside of it so you can see the class is getting pounded and you can watch the instructors they'll go off to a little corner they're drinking coffee they're dipping copenhagen they're talking smack but you can see how much they love each other because they've all been through this before and it's like man i really wish i had that cup of coffee i was over there well if i ever want to have it i gotta get through this do you get to see the culture from a distance and the closer you get to graduate and the more you feel like you're connected to it really gotta go through all these steps but they bring out the best and brightest to be button structures they're all physically fit they represent what the essence of being a seal is so well so when they come out there and they're leading pt they're a freak really oh and they're in it with you a lot of times too right they're leading the pt so you get a guy that'll drop down and i mean you'll do a 500 push-up workout that's 500 and i mean wide grip close grip diamonds all kinds of crazy stuff and you go mount the bar and they'll have a guy that will hang on that bar for five straight minutes doing pull-ups and guys are cycling through and he's not dropping and you're looking at him like how is he able to do that he's been prepping but he sets the bar so high you think you'll never be able to get there yeah like he's been right here with me falling out after his first set of 10 like he can't hang on the bar anymore he's so exhausted but they always give you this pinnacle like if you just keep going you'll get to that spot just don't take your foot off the gas i think you do a really good job of showcasing that yeah and i mean a lot of the culture is based on you we we talked about this in the sauna today like i mean your training has got to be as difficult as the combat situations that you're going to go into so that you're not shocked by the exhaustion the temperature change you know the environmental shifts you're prepared because your training was so difficult that the missions become, as you said earlier, routine, right?

16:18Gary Brecka:I know exactly what I'm going to do at this second, at the next second, at the next second. And, you know, when you, when you, when you graduated or you, you know, you, you completed this, is that where the culture really began? Is that where you really, because at some point, a SEAL has got to be willing to exchange his life for his, for his comrade right and i think there's no like greater risk there's no greater bond than just you 100 knowing that the guy beside you is willing to give his life and you are willing to give your life for the mission that level of trust must be something that's really difficult to emulate in the civilian world, right?

17:11Gary Brecka:I mean, the mediocrity and averagism of life after you've done something like that and then taken those skills, deployed them in combat, which I want to get into too, coming back from that, doesn't life seem like very mediocre? Very mundane, okay. Yeah, most people have never had an opportunity to sacrifice himself for something they couldn't take with him like you'll sacrifice for 100 million bucks but you won't sacrifice for 70 grand a year right knowing you can't take the pinnacle of that profession you can't take it with you once you're gone at a certain point in your career you realize that and you just don't care yeah you just want to play another game right talk about tom brady yeah he could have wound that thing up and retired early and still been the greatest ever yeah he wasn't done he wanted to play one more game that's very much for him and not for for anyone else yeah yeah it's like for the group yeah and for his team yeah you got to be willing to sacrifice it for the group yeah once you see people how far they're willing to push you'll do evolutions you're like there's no way i can do that there's yeah there's no way i can do it and then as soon as you get through it it's like a little confidence boost like well if i got through that well i can get through this i can get through this somebody said it the other day like if you change the entire selection, in order to do that, you had to run the Moab 250.

18:37If you want to be on this team, you have to run the Moab 250. Every single person would run the Moab 250. Really? If that was the new selection process, everything else is up. Get through this evolution, you can do this job. Everybody would do it. Wow. The attrition rate would still be the same. The training protocols would be the same or be different, but you'd still get through it. Yeah. If everybody had to climb Everest, you'd have a lot less people but they would still climb Everest when did it first click for you like

19:04Gary Brecka:when when did you decide I am in the right place this is the right time this is what I'm meant to do like when did that when did that culture snap into reality for you was it after Bud's was it after you actually performed a mission was it like it's probably uh probably halfway through my first deployment i was in iraq 2005 we had operation red wings in afghanistan happened with marcus luttrell that was the other half of my seal team yeah when that thing happened that shock was our own little private 9-11 that's when the publicity i think of the seals just just started i mean you were in it it was very much a i i feel just a very secretive organization beforehand i mean a lot of people didn't even know that we had them um um the movies didn't really start coming out until like 2002 ish yeah i mean we had charlie sheen navy seals back in the day the greatest movie ever made yeah you had tears of the sun with bruce willis you had a couple things but yeah i mean it wasn't i mean kids made fun of me in high school what's your dad do he's a seal right no he's a commando and they're like what's up oh god nobody knows yeah say it now everybody knows right it's a household name now but it wasn't back then like you were doing it for something that nobody else could would ever see yeah i've said that before like i've seen 12 people do the most amazing things you'll never get to see i can't explain it to you you'll never understand yeah but the juice is totally worth the squeeze it is and i think that's really when you get invest in the culture when you watch that group of people do the most heroic things you've ever seen and no one else will ever witness it outside of us 12 right i never even talk about it right Some of the things that have humbled me the most is I have seen things that almost haunt me with how heroic they were, and they don't even talk about them.

20:54They don't even debrief it. Wow. It's like, what? That was just a mission. One of my very first times, I brought it up and debriefed. Like, are we not going to address this incident that happened? And he looked right at me. He goes, when you get in the end zone, act like you've been there before and walked out.

21:10Gary Brecka:Really? Wow. Wow. like i've seen quite a few things up until that point and that was definitely the most heroic thing i had ever seen you don't even want to talk about it yeah okay wow okay that's the bar recognition yeah not the glory what was the first time that you ever saw real combat because you know before we just to preface this when we were in the sauna we were talking about how i've had this fascination with um not just professional athleticism but like a professional athlete that can dominate their sport over a really prolonged period of time. You know, like a Lance Armstrong, seven Tour de France's, you know, a LeBron James or Michael Jordan or Tom Brady, who's not just excellent or excellent once, but is excellent over a prolonged period of time, which means they were able to block out all the other noise, right?

22:01Gary Brecka:All the pleasures of the flesh, all the fame, all the fortune, you know, all of a sudden and going from virtual obscurity to fame, which has its own set of challenges, and block all that out and stay excellent for a long period of time. That's always fascinated me. And I described to you how a former wide receiver from the running back that had won multiple Super Bowls was telling me that he described this moment where he would break off the line and he would be barreling down the field, giving exactly 100 % of every ounce that he had in his body. He knew that he did not have one more ounce of energy or effort to give.

22:49Gary Brecka:And he would tell me, like, at that moment, there would be 70 ,000 people in a stadium, and I could, like, hear a single voice, right? I could hear one person saying, Go, Billy! And he would, like, cue into that one voice. and he knew you know 25 yards later that the trumpet player was standing too close to the sideline and that's where he was going to go out and he's going to wipe out that trumpet player and what he told me was he's like I could feel the ball snap like I actually knew the ball was in the air even though I hadn't looked back to see that it was in the air I could feel the defender coming across the field to hit me and at that moment just given 100 % effort and I would put my hands up i would grab the ball that i would get hit would end but he he said there was that period he would just chase that moment like a rat to cheese and i have to imagine because i know nothing about combat but by grace of god i've never been shot at so um and i've never shot at somebody but i have to imagine that when you're in a combat situation and and the risk is not whether you win or lose a game the risk is whether or not you go back or you know you go home in a coffin or you you come back to maybe see your family like they the level of risk the stakes in a game like that the level of trust and confidence that you've got to have on the people around you can you can have zero doubt not just in yourself but in whether or not the people that are on your flank are going to do exactly what they're supposed to do like where does that come from and can you talk about like what was the first time that you saw real combat and you came back and you're like this was worth it this is for me fortunately for me in that first deployment you got to see a face full of combat the entire time but it skewed over the years it got more violent more violent more violent in 2007 it really uncorked in fallujah you really got some some really serious combat in your face close proximity it can't be ignored and then all the things that would freak out normal people they no longer freak you out and it's because the training has been ingrained so much and they've taken it so above and beyond what's necessary to normal people that nothing phases you anymore like you're walking up to a door you're under night vision there's not an ounce of starlight there's no moon it's jet black and as you're walking up all you're seeing are infrared lasers i mean a foot off your head covering everything around you and if that door opens as you're touching it they're going to take a shot right past your head and you don't move you don't you don't need to he's going to make that shot every time and you just trust it because you've been exhausting all the resources the boys are those are your boys behind you with the they're training 52 weeks out of the year i mean they're exhausting everything they can mentally physically spiritually emotionally tactically to make sure that we don't ever have to say no or i can't do that can always make the shot we can climb up and over the mountain we can jump out of the plane we can do all the things and you build that trust through time like i've seen you show up every day you're in here at 5 a.m you're in the gym you're at fight club you're on the range you're in the kill house you're jumping the wind tunnel everything you have to be great at you're really committed to greatness in all those areas unfortunately for us there's not a whole lot of room for anything else right so all the external stuff, you kind of got to block out and really be good at compartmentalization.

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26:46Gary Brecka:Your taste buds and your biology will thank you. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human podcast. When you're in that moment, like a real combat situation, how much of your confidence comes from planning that you're confident that you know what to do, even if the situation shifts?

27:08Gary Brecka:no plan ever survives first contact like it doesn't it's like mike tyson everybody's got a plan to get punched in the face it's yeah like for us because you're so diligent in the debrief and all the planning you're so meticulous all the operations kind of stack on top of each other you can draw information from this one and apply it to this one but when it rapidly changes everybody just adopts a different tactic right now can't do that we got to do this and you don't even call an audible you just do the audible it just naturally transitions into it but that's because you've only been thinking about that one thing the entire time like tom brady's not thinking about pickleball no he's not thinking about his golf swing he's watching game film and just studying this one thing so he can when he gets on a line of scrimmage he can read it in real time right i mean all the little micro moves that are happening he's just processing information everybody on their team the exact same way they're just processing speed is so fast compared to the opposition that unless you just get us in a mud suck and get really lucky we're going to solve that problem really really fast regardless of whatever you're going to have to do yeah i mean i remember you talking about the amount of preparation that you went through um you know phones emails patterns um you know you know it hit on a on a target that was going to be watching a their favorite football game that day, football by soccer, that day you knew if you took out the satellite, he would get up from the football game, go to check on the satellite, and that's where contact would be made.

28:42Gary Brecka:The amount of preparation and investigation and intelligence that you would do beforehand, was that a lot of the confidence that you had going in? So when you got out of that, when you jumped out of that plane and you were on your way to the ground, you'd technically never been there before. I mean, maybe you had a model city that you had used or a model compound that you had used, but you'd never been there before. You don't know how prepared they are. You don't know if something's changed in the plan that you had hoped would be executed. I find that fascinating because it's such a metaphor for life, for business, for our families, that people are not adaptive.

29:23Gary Brecka:They crumble and they get stressed from change. I think it's our expectation that we set, and then we're constantly disappointed that things don't meet our expectation. Our spouse doesn't meet our expectation. Our business partner doesn't meet our expectation. Our competition, our partners. So when you're a SEAL, how much of that planning is giving you the comfort when you're in that zone and your life is on the line? Like what does a typical mission look like building up to that moment when it's go time? A lot of it depends on your currency, right? In the height of the global war on terror, sometimes depending on where you are, sometimes two times a day.

30:09You hit a daytime, you hit a nighttime. Sometimes it's three or four a night, back to back to back. Sometimes it's a dry spell. Might be a bigger target. You know, you've been after this guy for a while. you think you have a group of intelligence folks all they do is build a target package on this guy they have watched every move he has ever done for the last six months no blinking coverage they know everything about him and they're just spoon feeding to you so you go in there you're eating lunch and you're just watching the isr feed watching the satellites where does he go where doesn't he go right-handed left-handed he's always he's kicking a soccer ball at 2 p.m with his kids it's 6 p.m he's walking next door and he's coming back with an rpg like okay he's got a motorcycle stage two houses down his wife doesn't know about blah blah this is how he's doing all this so you really get to see a real picture when you drop down on the floor of it it always looks different but if you've done your homework i know how many doors how many windows inward opening outward opening is there a storm door is there is there 10 on the windows i mean you can tell everything how high the walls are how many sections of aircraft ladder we have to bring me all the different things when you get there i have gone through every possibility every contingency we've been through so this happens option two here we go yeah option two is not gonna work go to three three's not gonna work going to four boom boom boom four's not an option make one up here we go and i mean it happens so fast because everybody's an individual thinker you might be looking at this gate going i don't know how i'm gonna get through this and he comes over and he's like we're going up and over the top and we are up and over the top yeah yeah i mean like you don't even have time because everybody's on the same page as you yeah some people just farther in the loop process than you are yeah so that's where the strength of the team comes and i know a lot of a lot of different organizations they put so much pressure on developing the individual and there's nothing wrong with that yeah for us it's a strength in the group yeah we don't do solo missions that's not our jam we do everything as a group and that's really where the source of strength comes from because i know you were just as committed as i am if you weren't you wouldn't

32:10Gary Brecka:be here yeah what's an average team size that that you would do a deployment with a mission with it all depends on the target size but no more than let's say more no more than typically 20 guys and that's it's all the supporting assets i mean it's everybody you do it in very small teams yeah like a typical assault team is five to seven people really i mean hopefully you have two assault team so i mean you run out of bodies really really quick yeah i mean we have done some really complex stuff with nine guys ten guys really you get done at home you're doing debriefing like i'm glad we didn't have 50 people yeah i had 50 but a nightmare yeah what about 25 like 25 would have been a zoo too yeah sometimes less is more because you got to get you got to get in and get out yeah right if you don't mind me asking what was the gnarliest mission that you ever went on anytime you introduce water it's always gnarly that ocean is big black and scary and it's unforgiving he doesn't care who you are doesn't care how much you've prepared one slip up and now you're soaking wet you're freezing cold and the surf zone is just consuming you yeah so we did one in we did one off the coast of africa that was very dicey shark infested waters and the whole thing and the reason that thing became so complicated is because they didn't want us to kill him they wanted you to capture him yep so you have to put hands on that becomes the issue because if you don't want to be captured and you have an ak and grenades and suicide vest it's very hard to capture you so if anything goes wrong any early warning network dogs are barking he happens to walk outside to smoke a cigarette he usually doesn't do that after midnight now it's one o 'clock in the morning he's standing on the front porch smoking a cigarette very dicey very different so all those different things but anytime where you are anytime where you're kind of hamstrung like you have to bring him home alive yeah what if he doesn't want to come alive like now i've i basically assumed all this risk to put myself in position to put hands on him and now it goes lethal like i still have this thing in the back of my mind i don't want to have to say no you told me not to kill him i'm going to exhaust everything in my arsenal to not kill this guy right but at a certain point we're gonna have to do something because now we can't get out of here right now we're pinned down Somalia is very unforgiving in the crowds are massive so I think you know I don't have a good reference point but I think you know people think of Somalia and they're like okay it's they're they're chucking spears and rocks I mean but apparently not you seen Black Hawk Down yeah that's exactly how it is really that is everybody's armed and these guys yeah it's one of the best war movies ever made and how how how accurate of a depiction do you think that was pretty accurate i mean you have to ask tom saturday and the boys that were on the ground but from my experience i went there exactly 20 years later to the day our operation was 20 years after mogadishu in the beltway was so concerned they don't want anybody to go into mogadishu really very gun shy over that helicopters getting shot down that's not what we want americans getting drugs to the streets we're trying to avoid that at all costs so they had to assume a lot of risk for us to be able to go and do that but i mean i tell people my very first time i ever drove into mogadishu in broad daylight you know we're in this big convoy and there's a dog you're very visible yeah i mean it's not yeah i'm a white dude i i'm not the whitest dude you'll make yeah you know what i mean tatted up yeah we're driving through here and we've got a bunch of ethiopians wearing m wraps we're doing the whole thing and right in the center of a car market there's i call it a loose traffic circle and there's a dog sitting there with a human arm hanging out of its mouth no oh wow there's no police there's no red lights it's whatever you want everybody's walking around with ak's machetes and you just don't know what they're doing you don't know what they're you don't speak the language yeah it's violent and it's not it's not organized enough that you really have i would imagine like a specific hierarchy if we wipe out this hierarchy then they're all disjointed they're sort of this loose band it's all tribal of yeah very very tribal what was the mission there we were going after uh going after a bad guy who'd done a bunch of bad stuff he did a he did a mall attack killed a bunch of people and yeah we were we were supposed to swim in grab him extract him get him out to a vessel and then prosecute him later for crimes against all the things he'd been doing and everything was going great the swim in was great everything was in approach and we got contacted on the roof so three-story building and all the intel that we're getting is this is beachside bungalow like this is a place he goes with the family to chill out to kind of rest and regroup and that's we were talking about the football game okay we're gonna go over there twist off the satellite he'll walk outside wrap him up peel him over the third story swim him out the whole thing will be over how do you just swim somebody out that doesn't want to doesn't want to go that's one of the things we talk about physical readiness like sometimes you have to you have to subdue people and you have to force them to do something against their will physically and that's a superhuman feat so you have to be able to over power them we had a bunch of things we were trying to do and we got guys set on the roof the whole thing was getting ready to commence and a guy came out of the third story cracked looked out our guys don't shoot him because he can't see a gun yet next thing you know ak comes around the corner he's shooting at you skipped off one of the boy's helmets shot a strobe off his helmet and the whole thing cracked off when it did all three fours lit up real sustained gun fire belt fed machine guns ak's everything going off all in one shot so he was that ready yeah so what they didn't tell us is we had a gap in coverage so we weren't seeing everything and they were hauling dirt out all day long they were digging out bunkers the entire time sandbag positions in there getting ready for a fight i don't know how they knew if they knew it was just bad coincidence but when it went it went all floors shooting out all the windows i mean throwing grenades out the front door right in front of you i mean but you can't kill him so at a certain point you have a right to inherit self-defense i have to be able to shoot back but in the back of your mind the last thing he said was don't kill this guy right like but i you can kill everybody else though you don't know who they are you can't see them they're just they're shouting and they're shouting swahili and a mix of english and it sounds like arabic you don't speak the language you don't know who he is and you can't see him it's not like i walk into room three you were sitting here and like i'm not going to shoot you i'm going to shoot everybody else yeah like that so it puts you in this weird shift of now i feel like a failure like what are we gonna do now well now we have to get out of this place right now we've got technicals massing the whole city's coming alive just like black hawk down they're gonna surround us and we're all gonna die as soon as that starts happening it starts calling in other assets right they start coming to that site yep his wife's on the phone springing up everybody and they've got all these little tribal pockets that are all over the city and here they come oh boy so now you're getting the updates how deep were you at that time how many guys uh about 20 20 guys in and now we've got technicals that are massing they've got dish goods they've got belt feds they've got rpgs and they're all closing in on you so we've got to get out of here we got to get out of here right now yeah when we're blocked off they're shooting out of every corner of this place and the only egress is right in front of the front door right in front of the gate where he's shooting now you're lobbing grenades back and explosive charges trying to get a little bit of gap and coverage and it it never stopped it felt like that hollywood that rambo belt that machine gun just and it never ends it was like that wow and you only have so much ammunition because you brought what you brought you don't take a whole lot and that's the difference in special operations you watch a lot of guys you know if you ever seen a documentary restrepo those guys are running out with nine ten twelve magazines right we're running out with four right because you know you shoot what you kill like i don't need to have 12 round magazines that's not the gunfights we're trying to get in that's not typically what happens and yeah i mean it it got dicey really really fast now guys are blown up massive concussion bleeding out of your ears bleeding out of your nose it's a nightmare and then you got to get those guys out um were there any guys that were injured i mean severely injured i mean i was injured a bunch of the guys were but it was a lot of tbi a lot of concussive stuff and then you know torn shoulders torn hips just from the surf zone very unforgiving you know boats flipping over and just yeah a lot of bad stuff happens and then so you retreated from that and went back out took back off did everybody make it everybody made it that's where camaraderie comes from you know and i mean i mean but i mean you've been in some that are just you pin down feel helpless everybody shot up you know your buddy's dying in your arms essentially and you're like oh my god but this guy's shooting at us i've got to save him while not getting shot at what are we going to do here and you can't take out the human aspect of it you spent so much time together like my best friend now you know cole fackler started all these businesses with him we've done all these deployments together went through buds together like i spent more nights consecutive sleeping next to that dude than his wife ever will yeah 180 days at a shot like no break really every breakfast every lunch every lift every op for years now why is that is that so that you know everything about them you do yeah so i mean and the trust level by the time you're in business i mean trust is not an issue yeah right i mean because you know you get back into that civilian life and that's that's what i'm so fascinated about like how does this culture evolve to the point where everybody knows that everybody else will take the same level of risk with their life that you will and there's never you never second guess that right it's because you never hear no never hear it in what training anywhere hey come over here help me do this yep come over to my house on saturday six o 'clock in more and help me move yep everybody they just do it always you never hear no you naturally just build trust through that wow i need for you to do this physically they're in the gym every day they can pull it off physically hey i need to make this shot they make the shot hey we gotta do this jump they make the jump you've never failed so far and that's because you're exhausting all the resources and the training you're not missing a day you're living this like it's your only thing yeah if you look at the work ethic it's like he's putting in the work yeah he's showing up he's a true believer he's bought in and I can see it.

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44:13Gary Brecka:Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human podcast. How do you manage a family or, you know, even if you're not married and have kids, God forbid at that time you do um you know how do you how do you manage a family um how do you assure your family when they're hearing all these stories that it's not going to be you because there's not a whole lot of communicado going on i'm sure there are dark period you know dark meaning no communication periods um i can't imagine what it's like for a spouse to go through something like that were you married during this time i was i got married in 20 2009 so i had already been a seal i had done three or four rotations my wife's first husband was a seal got killed with marx luttrell on the ground oh wow red wings so her dad's a seal so she was already oh okay she was a veteran herself she's a little conditioned okay so she was yeah you know that's the hardest lie you'll ever tell yeah it's not gonna happen to me right so she could see the transition but why She could see the transition from starting at team 10 and then transition over to the national mission force, tier one element.

45:26You have to change. And that group becomes smaller, more intimate. And now you don't leave it. Now, you know, you're up, you're out of the house at 5 a.m. You're not coming home till 11, 12 o 'clock at night. Training all night, always with the boys. Everything you do is with a group, even on weekends. You're all doing it at somebody's house. You're eating brunch. You go to the normal place and three or four guys in the team are in there. Sliding all tables together. everything becomes one big community yeah and you can feel the resentment build up like you're spending so much time with them and that's your justification do the best in the world yeah if i want to elevate they're all better than me they're going to drag me up with them but i've got to be there i've got to be in that van i've got to be on that airplane i've got to be in that hotel room i have to be at his house like we have to all be together that's the only way because there's so much non-verbal communication there's so much buy-in and if you're running a nine-to-five have scheduled with us you're not a true believer yeah so a lot of guys just sacrifice the household wow it's not the thing you want to do it's the thing you have to do but the divorce rate in special operations over 100 it is oh yeah oh yeah i'm a unicorn like the fact that me and my wife are still married and we shouldn't be she should have divorced me multiple times she should have you ever heard my story like i i burned a candle at both ends and yeah but i mean most guys been divorced two and three times my first my first uh true chief or second one i think he'd been married six times really i mean it's they're not used to it so guys you know they graduate high school you've got your girlfriend she goes off to college you join a navy you come back together she has no idea she's gonna be sitting at home in a city she's not from for 300 days solo she doesn't know what that's like she doesn't want that life so she leaves you what do you do collapse on the team take it take it and run yeah i've got my boys i'm good you keep doing that same thing until you retire to get forced out medically or whatever and then you have nothing left yeah so that's not what i tell guys now but in the moment i wouldn't change it yeah you have to be able to sacrifice everything else because and that was my big turning point when i really started to isolate and wall myself off from my family because i saw the risk i had my best friend get killed and he was a true believer like nick check was one of the greatest navy seals that has ever walked this planet there was no denying it everybody knows it really and he got killed on a hostage rescue december 8 2012 when he got killed it crippled my wife and where was that i can't understand he was shot yep crippled my wife crippled me i because she knew him

47:57Gary Brecka:oh yeah very well because he was one of your boys that was in that sphere constantly i went the buds with him we did our first platoons together he went over the tier one command right before i did pulled me in now we're in the same team i mean before his first deployment with that organization he retiled my entire kitchen floor him and my wife together like he left there covered in soot from cutting tiles and jumped straight on c17 and flew to afghanistan no yeah i mean he is one of the greatest humans that's ever lived wow and when he died i was uh i actually had my both my uncles one was an army ranger one was a marine they were in town of virginia beach and we were eating at yard house and i got a phone call from one of my friends and he goes where you at he's like i eat dinner with my uncles walk outside walk outside and he's like hey man um nick got shot okay how bad is it it was a long pause and i could feel my anxiety start to build up i could feel the goosebumps coming and you could tell by the whimper in his voice he's like he didn't make it and i fucking crushed like my i'm so surprised i didn't throw up yeah i mean i walked back in there i sit down at that booth and i could feel my wife staring at me because she saw the number she knew it was one of the guys from the team and my hands were shaking and i'm staring right in between my two uncles and i could fear burning a hole in the side of my head and she goes what's going on i went nothing i have to go to work and she grabbed me and spun me and I looked at her made eye contact and I just started convulsing just no ugly crying at that table and I was like he's gone she's ugly crying we drive into work and do the whole thing and that was the hardest thing because he was the reason or one of the reasons he was one of the things I used to justify how much time you spend at work showing up early staying late training on weekends Christmas morning New Year's everything everybody was doing that wasn't me that was a cultural thing that everybody did because it buys down the risk and she looked me and she goes if it buys down the risk how is he dead yeah it's a dangerous game it's a dangerous game but right now i have to exhaust all the resources to buy down as much risk as humanly possible at the end of the day you run into an eight-foot room with people belt that machine gun shooting at you yeah it's dangerous yeah and that's what happened now why weren't you on that mission with him were you not so we had extortion one seven happen when all the guys got killed in the helicopter crash i remember 6 2011 all the bullshit that came out in the media about that that had to be so frustrating i've heard you talk about it but it frustrated me it frustrated my father who's he was a navy captain he was a navy seal but um it frustrated the hell out of my father he was like i don't believe in you know ban and free speech with these people dude i have goosebumps thinking but i've never been so mad never been so disgusted with people for saying the things they were saying people that have absolutely zero inkling into what's going on there they have no line into it at all probably never even served in the military just on there there's just the keyboard warriors you know and even some of the family members those guys came on like it was an inside job yeah not an inside job anyway that happens and every other team had to cough up some bodies to refill all those people so nick got put over and that was the best of the best of the best on there if you look at him i mean the amount of combat experience was on that helicopter will never be recreated never i hope we never go to a conflict that long but i mean you had guys in there with 14 15 16 combat rotations so think about that in the vietnam guys come back and like we've got three tours in vietnam that's substantial this dude's got 16 to afghanistan wow the amount of experience in between that dude's two ears you're never gonna understand yeah the amount of things he's forgotten about hunting humans you'll never even understand yeah you lost them all in one shot well we got a back film you back film and that's what happened to him that next deployment got killed in a hostage rescue and you know i looked at her and i was like it wasn't for a lack of preparation it wasn't for a lack of commitment yeah his number got called yeah and he went through it with no hesitation and that's what happens to me that's what happens to me yeah you gotta exhaust all the resources but that was a tough thing to go through man i just i walled that up and i just i never wanted to think about it again i keep a picture of him in my refrigerator i see him every day but i haven't processed at all i keep that special little box buried way down deep and every now and then it'll uncork and come out and yeah it sucks man and the reality of it all reality of it reality of it but you went on after that i mean i mean that happened 2012 yeah i didn't retire until 2019.

52:30Gary Brecka:wow so you were deployed after that too yeah right after it yeah um and were there other guys deployed with you that that were also very close to him that yeah never talked about it never talk about it nope just one of those unwritten risks of the job you don't want to think about it yeah because it sucks because in the military when people die there's only one or two things it was either a freak accident or that guy wasn't really as good as we're going to make him seem during his eulogy right you're always going to paint him up like oh he was the greatest he was the greatest no he wasn't yeah he was c average at best he was a nine to fiver yeah he did a very hard job but was he exhausting all his absolutely not no he wasn't yeah 30 pounds overweight blah blah blah this dude was a phenom in everything he did everybody knew it really if you take a you take a hundred people you don't want to be on the other side of him in other words no you take a hundred people that work that organization 96 of them are absolute true believers a couple guys squeaked by but even them they're so good that it doesn't really matter right it all kind of averages out but when you lose a guy like that and that was like extortion every single dude they lost was like that yeah all of me oh yeah you just see the families you see everybody else and you see all of us well yeah i never thought that would happen to us i never thought that would be a reality the same thing for june 28th like my father was in the military there was no combat going on back then a little bit of skirmishes grenada panama somalia but not that he was involved in right so i wasn't going to funerals this entire time so that was not a part of the culture no navy seals getting killed was a freak accident guys falling off the back of a truck and hitting their head guys dying in a parachute accident drowning like randomness not like that and getting shot out of the sky with the best pilots in the world which is not something that i ever thought was going to happen even though you get numb to the risk yeah because you're so successful like that'll never happen that's an anomaly then it happens to you and you're like oh my god have i just been lucky this whole time were you ever deployed when you lost somebody close to you on a on a deployment not lost nope no game really should have lost banged up a bunch of them oh yeah because i've heard you talk about ieds and and and the danger of that and how you were in a convoy multiple times and it was either the one in front of you the one behind you or it was delayed when it went off um or for whatever reason, your number just didn't come up.

55:06Gary Brecka:I mean, how that doesn't play in the back of your mind when you're on one of these missions. We were talking a little bit in the sauna earlier about where mindset sort of integrates with training. And this is where I wanna bring this back down to the every person, because I think so many people can benefit from not just the mental toughness, but the mindset that you developed and the mindset that you still have today. I feel like you apply a lot of your, you know, your military training to your life still today. So, you know, back in, let's just call it civilian life, father, husband, father of two, you're seven and 10?

55:52Gary Brecka:12 and seven. 12 and seven. And so, you know, 12 and seven year old's wife. You're in the real world now. Um, you know, so what about the mindset of having been a SEAL, um, and having been such a part of a team like that, the ability to set that kind of culture outside of a SEAL team, it's impossible. I mean, you, you'll never reach, um, and correct me if I'm wrong, but you'll never reach that level of culture in the civilian world because people are not willing to do what you guys had to do to develop that culture. So what do you, what do you take away from that? You know, building a business, raising a family, being a husband, like what did you draw out of that culture and that career that's now just a part of who you are, not what you do?

56:44I think ultimately, and somebody do really good is you'll have a guy who is the exact representative of what you're trying to mass produce. It could be your boss. It could be a dude who's three or four guys down on the team, but he's the guy. If you close your eyes and imagine what you think a Navy SEAL looks like, open your eyes and he's standing right there. Okay. Close your eyes. What is he going to say when he opens it? Opens his mouth and he says, you're like, okay. Get him on the flat range. He does the thing. Get him in the shoot house. He does the thing. jumping out of airplanes he does the thing he represents the best of what it's supposed to be right what my job is to emulate that my job is now there's 50 of us sit in a room i need one representative to stand up and be the example i should be able to just you brian get up you're our guy if everybody represents what we think the essence is then we set it it's really hard to do that or ask for it if you're not representing yourself so that's the first thing the guys i I really modeled myself after they lived and breathed it.

57:42They woke up, they did fitness, they did fight club. They were on the flat range. They did all the core things they had to be. And they represented the group really, really well. And they would always say, it's like, the culture is not going to morph to you. You have to morph into the culture. And if you don't, you can't be part of it. We don't take half timers, part time, beat it. You got to live it at full value.