The Dad Bods and Dumbbells Podcast
The hosts Mitch and Bart discuss fitness, fatherhood, and guy stuff to help men live a great life, have fun, laugh, and get a little more fit in this weekly Podcast.
The Dad Bods and Dumbbells Podcast
BONUS Episode: Helicopter Pilot Lt. Col. Brian Slade Talks Elite Mindset in a Kill Box
Two Apaches fly into a Taliban kill box and survive on trust, training and minimal words, then pull the win apart to expose mistakes and build a better playbook. We unpack chairflying, stress inoculation and how preparation can turn trauma into growth without bravado.
Lt. Col. Brian Slade shares his stories of Flying Helicopters in Afghanistan.
• the pretzel maneuver ambush and mutual support
• after-action reviews that prize process over outcome
• directive vs descriptive comms in high stress
• leadership lessons from high school football grit
• commitment, courage, capability, confidence loop
• chairflying as stress inoculation, not just visualization
• crisis sequence: engine out, jammed controls, calm voice
• guilt, ownership and letting go of needless weight
• applying combat-tested tools to work, training and relationships
Go to the show notes to get Brian’s book: Cleared Hot at www.clearedhot.info and on Amazon. Audiobook read by Brian is coming soon—put it in your notes to grab it when it drops
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Welcome to the Mindset Forge podcast. I'm here with Brian Slade, who's a special guest. Obviously, I'm interviewing athletes and performing artists on how they show up for the big moments of life. I've got a true performer in the real world sense, military, Apache helicopter pilot, a teacher of aviation, all that. He's coming today to talk to us about his book, Cleared Hot, and why he believes a prepared mind can help minimize PTSD. But we're going to go into the whole nature of the mindset around military performance, all the things that relate to real-world stress, how to deal with it, and how to show up at your best in that space, and then obviously how that relates to our world, working out, being healthy, being at our best when the big moments show up in our lives. So Brian, great to have you here. Thanks, man, for giving me your time. How are you doing today?
SPEAKER_01:Great. Thanks for having me. I appreciate the time and the opportunity.
SPEAKER_00:I love it. Well, we're right here between Christmas and New Year's, so hopefully holidays are going well for you. You've got the green background, maybe a Christmas theme, or maybe just green screen. We're going to throw some crazy things up behind you there.
SPEAKER_01:The options are endless if you're options are endless.
SPEAKER_00:Maybe an elf on your shoulder. All right, so let's jump right into military buying Apaches into the military. Like if you're in a in a strike formation, two Apaches going into uh let's say Afghanistan, what's your mindset as a pilot, working with co-pilot, working with your team, and how are you thinking about that? Just talk us through a scenario and maybe a little bit of the mindset around that and what you what we can learn from that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean, obviously, as is the case in lots of lots of jobs, um, cohesiveness and teamwork is super important. But in this particular job, it's it's it's so the lack thereof can be can be uh a fatal consequence. So um obviously there's a lot of preparation that goes into jumping into that fight, right? So a lot of stuff uh happens before we're even we're even willing to take that that step forward. But um a story that I I like to tell that kind of illustrates the importance of that team camaraderie is it's uh in in my book, it's the chapters called the pretzel maneuver. And a lot of times we learn things um through experience and it's because we made a mistake, right? But this this particular incident is one where we had great camaraderie, great team supportiveness, but we we attacked the scenario the wrong way, still came out victorious, and so there's a lot of lessons to be learned from that. You know, one, a lot of times when we we get at in real life, if we take off after something, we give it everything, we may win, we may actually accomplish what we wanted to, but we didn't go about it maybe the most effective way. And a lot of times that'll that's easy to pat yourself on the back and say, Yeah, that's how I'm gonna do it again. But but at some times we got to sit back and we call it an after-action review. We have to look at it and be like, okay, what did we do right? What did we do wrong? And how do we need it? How can we how can we apply those lessons going forward? But in this particular uh mission, it's called the pretzel maneuver. I made that that name up and I'll tell you why in a minute. But we had just taken down uh Musa Kalay, and that was a Taliban stronghold. It was the biggest, largest air assault mission in OEF to that point, and I believe still to this to date, it was the largest uh air assault. So we we we brought a lot, they brought a lot of infantry in. We were overhead as far as um as far as support and you know whether they needed attack or or or just escort or whatever, just kind of as a presence to keep the Taliban to think twice from shooting. And so the initial phases of that takedown went a lot less hostile than we thought. Um we're like, wow, we thought we'd got a lot, we'd get a lot more resistance. Well, part of me was like, okay, there's we left this avenue open for for the people that were not in Taliban to to flee. And I was like, you know, I don't like the way that we like say, hey, we're gonna come do this because this is one of the things that we did, is because we didn't want to we didn't want to kill innocents, but at the same time, you're also letting your enemy know what's gonna happen too. And so I'm like, I'll bet you all those bad dudes just came, filtered, flowed right out of there, and they're in this river valley that we called the green zone. And so when we were doing this, we called it yo-yo operations where we had continuous overhead Apache support, we we'd be over until we ran out of gas, and other guys would relieve us. Well, we were getting gas to go relieve the next guys, and I told uh my team, um, and the team consists of a pilot and a co-pilot gunner in in the helicopter, and there's two Apaches, so very supportive inner inner cockpit because there's different delineation of duties and an understanding of what one man's gonna do what versus what the other man's gonna do, so that you can maximize the impacts on on your target, and then also inner flight, so we understand what each other's gonna do and what our roles are in that flight. So I I I I propose that we go up that that green zone, and we you know, our job is to kick Hornets' nests and swap hornets. So I think the hornet's nest is in the green zone, and these guys are like, Yeah, let's do it, man. Um, that's our job. Let's go make it happen. So we were flying up the green zone. So far, nothing to our knowledge, you know. You can't hear, you know, gunfire coming at you or anything. So sometimes we're probably getting shot out, we just didn't know. But as we were flying, we get a call from one of the fobs, the forward operating bases was just on the peripheral of this green zone, and this particular fob's called Rob, Fob Rob. And uh they said, Hey, Apache in the area, they saw us. Apache in the area, we're taking indirect fire from a bongo truck, which is like if a flatbed truck and a little minivan had a love child, that's a bongo truck. And so uh I knew exactly what they look like. There are tons of them down there. It's like, okay, give us a grid. They gave us a grid. We flew up, we we we flow in on this bongo truck, and uh and I can see it. I mean, like we had the tactical acquisition display, and my co-pilot gunner was like zooming in, looking in. I'm like, dude, I got it with my eyeballs. So we flew over there, no, nobody around it, they were all gone. And you know what they do is they take that flatbed and they like Mad Max like mortar tubes on the back, welded on the top. Right. They make it basically a war machine, but it was never meant to be that. So, anyway, we're flying. I'm about to report that there's nothing significant to report when all of a sudden I see gunfire coming up at us. So I'm like, Fob Rob, nothing. Whoa, negative, and then you know I interrupt by shooting the gun. And so I didn't communicate to my wingman at that point because I was busy engaging, and I was about to key the mic, and then and I and he comes in. I think he said, I got you. So we knew I know what that's all he had to say. When he says, I got you, I know he's rolling in on my six, he's gonna, he's gonna hit the same thing I'm hitting. These are all things that we know as a team already. I break out, as I break out, I see him taking effective fire from what's called the recoilless rifle. They look like flaming basketballs coming up out of the air. And and it's it's on target. It's on target in a way that I don't think he's gonna see it. So I t he's he's focused on what just shot at me. So he's shooting that, rolling in to shoot that. He's not shooting it yet. Rolling in to shoot that, I see this thing happen, and I'm like, break left now. So he immediately, he doesn't question it, doesn't he? Hey, this isn't this is our gun pattern. We already know what we're gonna do, but as soon as he gets a directive call from me, I'm directing him to do something. The assumption is I have tactical situational awareness, he does not. Right? So he's not gonna question, he's gonna break. So he does. I roll in, I, and now I'm now I'm giving descriptive. So I gave him directive, now I'm giving descriptive. You're taking fire from the 030, I'm rolling in hot now. I already know he's gonna abbreviate his turn, come right back around on my six and try to hit what I'm hitting. So he does that, and as he turns, he sees me taking fire from another, we call it point of origin, poo, point of origin. So another poo is hit is uh recoiless again, and he directs me to break. So I do the same thing for the same rolls that I just told you, right? So I break, he rolls in, as I abbreviate my turn to come around behind him, yet another poo, hitting him from a different direction, and I tell him to break. I roll in on it, same thing, back and forth, back and forth. And it's this is why you know it's gonna turn into the pretz and whatever. So we're just we're just doing these these abbreviated turns, rolling in, and what it turned out where we were, we were in the middle of a very, very orchestrated air ambush. Like it was designed to take out Apaches, that's what it was for, right? But we were just throwing lead, and at this point, there is stuff coming up from everywhere. The ground looks like popcorn because it's all small arms as well, like AK-47s and PKMs, those kind of things are all just coming all over the place. So literally, my co-pilot gunner has the guns, I have rockets, they can't shoot at the same time, but it's like good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good. I mean, that's how I mean we're just one after the other after the other.
SPEAKER_00:Launching everything.
SPEAKER_01:Everything, right? And it's just like we're talking to each other. At one point, my wingman goes, Oh RPG, right? And uh I I teased him about it later, and he and what he told me is like the reason I said that is because it went through your rotor disc. He's like, I saw it and it went through your rotor disc, it didn't hit it, but he's like, I thought you're done.
SPEAKER_00:Because that's why when you say rotor disc, the back of the helicopter that has the vertical.
SPEAKER_01:No, the main rotor disc. So the the one over the top. Oh, wow. It went through it, and I was like, Well, maybe that was just you know perspective and all that. I did the math later.
SPEAKER_00:It is possible, like it can pass through it's going fast enough as a velocity upwards that somehow it could miss every, you know, like the blade.
SPEAKER_01:It's actually almost as possible as hitting. Wow. Because it because I I thought it would be like almost impossible, but we did the math with the length of the warhead and the speed of the you know, the the nerd stuff. We did all that, and then I was like, well, maybe it did go through. Um, but he was that's why he goes, RPG. But anyway, we continue and continue and continue until we run out of ammunition, and it started to die down a little bit. I'm like, I'm Winchester, which means you're out of ammunition. And he goes, I'm almost Winchester, and I was like, Never mind, I still have hell fires, which are designed for buildings and tanks, but we're we're still taking fire from tree lines and huts and everything. I'm like, you know, you you gotta if you have you have a sledgehammer and you need a nail, I guess you just use the sledgehammer, right? So we start throwing the missiles down, and then we finally break out of there. So, all said and done, there there was a lot of enemy that were destroyed that day. A lot. Like, don't even know how many. We get out of that thing, and it was kind of like, holy crap, I've never been in anything that orchestrated to that point, and ever actually have never been in anything that orchestrated since. It would we went back home, and it would but this is one of that moment where it'd be real easy to just pound your chest and say, hey, we laid some hate, we won, good job, high fives all around. Which, you know, we did do the high, thank you, you know, thank you. And and but when we really started to dissect it, it was like, yeah, we were in a killbox. We were in a kill box, and the only thing that got us out of that kill box was the mutual support of our team and the understanding of what each of us was going to do immediately upon certain re certain stimulus, right? Certain certain criteria. And we knew that we we could our comms were very minimal, our communications were very me very minimal, but we knew what each other was doing. And I asked him at one point, I said, Jeff, this is the the other the the the pilot of the other aircraft, I said, Jeff, did you ever think about just beeling out of there and attacking from the outside? Because that's how we should have done it, right? And he said, No, I was just trying to keep them from shooting you down. And I said, And I was just trying to keep them from shooting you down, right? And that was really our focus. Was so the teamwork is what kept us alive, but it's also we were in the middle of that thing, and we should have we should have busted out of there and then come back from the outside and attacked it from the outside. They probably wouldn't have been as bold if we weren't in their kill box. We probably wouldn't have killed as many guys or whatever, but we would have tactically approached that problem correctly, right?
SPEAKER_00:They they put you in a place where you they had the tactical advantage because you were kind of in their kill box, they were shooting up at you from all sides, it sounds like it's the only time in my I I got in lots of engagements with the Taliban, lots.
SPEAKER_01:It's the only time where I truly felt we were outgunned, outmanned, and out-tacticianed, and we still came out the victors, right? Yeah, and that was because of that cohesiveness that we talked about. That was because of that teamwork. Now we put it up on the board, I started to draw on a whiteboard for the rest of the unit to let them know what happened, you know. And I here's this little helicopter, here's this little helicopter, first shot came from here, and tried to reconstruct it the best I could with aid of our gun tapes. And by the end, you could see that it uh it basically looked like a pretzel. And so I said, Gentlemen, I give you the pretzel maneuver, right? Yeah, and uh and then I and then I said, now let's talk about how we did this wrong. And because everybody that heard it and saw the gun tape were like, You guys, man, you killed it. That's amazing, right? And they're like, Yeah, but we try nine nine times out of ten, one of us takes a dirt nap here, right? Nine times out of ten. This is if you're if you're if you believe in higher higher powers, I have a very strong belief that that we were helped that day, for sure. Because here's the crazy, you want to hear the crazy part, Barton. We have been in lots of engagements where we come back with lots of holes. I've been even I've even not in been in engagements and then come back with holes because I didn't even they I didn't shot us, I didn't even know. So this engagement, there was more ordinance being flung at us than I'd ever seen, and both of us landed with zero holes. It was the most crazy. We had I had four or five people comb both of those helicopters because I was like, there's no way there are no holes in that thing. And nothing, nothing for in either aircraft, and you know it was like I don't know if you ever watched Shanghai Nights with uh with uh uh Owen Wilson and Jackie Chan. But when he walks out long ago, and he like he he raises up his hands, like I'm invincible, you know. It was kind of like that kind of a moment, but then we really kind of talked about okay, what do we do wrong? And we did that in front of the crew. Well, the very next day in that very same area, two crews got into a very similar situation, and they immediately broke contact and attacked from the outside in like warriors. They came back, right? They didn't they didn't run from the fight, that's our job is to fight, but they fought it tactically correctly, right? Correctly, tactically correct. So lesson learned, lives hopefully spared. Um, ours, ours, you know, weren't now in our real lives, how often does this apply? Right? One, the importance of team and camaraderie is evident in all things we do. Whether it's competition, whether it's business, whether it's whether it's even just relationships, all those things are super, super important. And and you have to have your your criteria learned ahead of time, your understanding of what that of of your profession of whatever that is, and then from there you have your SOPs, your standard operating procedures, so you know you know what the other guy's gonna do. Yeah, I don't I didn't have time to explain any of that stuff to him. I just need to know he's gonna do it. Right? Well, that applies in in life so often too. So the time is spent ahead of the event so that the event becomes a non-event, right?
SPEAKER_00:But just the fact that you I mean, there's you go deeper into like your relationship with uh is it Matt or Jeff? Jeff.
SPEAKER_02:Jeff.
SPEAKER_00:You know, like just Jeff trusted that if you said this, it meant you gotta do that, right? You know what I mean? Like there's if there's a trust thing in terms of like you guys just understanding that you guys are this is a m matter of life and death. You say this, he does this. He says this, you gotta do, you know, you gotta just react. You can't change.
SPEAKER_01:There's no time for question. No.
SPEAKER_00:Oh but why?
SPEAKER_01:Like my kid.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, like I don't know if that's the right move here. Like there's an RPG coming, it is the right move.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. Yeah, at one point he had one blow up right in front of him, and the pieces of the RPG hit the canopy, like like a like if you're driving down the freeway and rocks hit. And that's still in leave holes. So I'm just like, I don't even know how this has happened.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and that's you know, you know, you look at let's say somebody runs a marathon, first time they're doing it, right? They've they complete it, but they realize they can look back and see all the places they can could have done it better. Like, hey, you know what? I shouldn't, I shouldn't have done that the day before. Like you start kind of piecing together, okay, it was successful, you know, but it wasn't the optimal way to do it. And I think, you know, in your situation, you guys obviously came out of it unscathed, no bullet holes, which is incredible. But then, but then the next crew comes in and does it the way you you probably you learned was the right way. Sounds like pulled out and then it attacked from the from the top.
SPEAKER_01:An honorable mission attacked with extreme motivation, you're gonna have success. Like your your your your example of the marathon. Honorable mission, I want to finish this marathon. Extreme motivation, I'm gonna get through it no matter what. Did you do everything right? That's when you look back and you're like, oh no, I didn't. I still got through it, but now I can do it and I can do it more effectively. Like the very next day with with the guys, they went out there and they did it much more effectively, much more safe, you know, lesson learned. Because, like I said, nine times out of ten, at least one of us doesn't make it out of there, probably both.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Well, and and those helicopters aren't cheap either. So well, neither are the people. Yeah. Um, well, that's that's a great story. And I think uh, you know, that's the and that's that performance mindset. Like, talk about what you can remember. I mean, you're in the moment, you know, it's life and death, so you're not necessarily having all these like extemporaneous conversations in your head, but what do you remember about that time and just the how you were processing that that moment and and what made it successful?
SPEAKER_01:You know, like I I think I I kind of uh captured it in exactly what we what Jeff and I talked about afterwards because I really wasn't thinking a like getting real deep or anything like that because I didn't have time. Really what what it boiled down to is reacting to what he was saying and being having a my my honorable mission was to make sure he came back alive, and the and my co-pilot in front came back alive. That was what I was focused on and reactive to um everything outside of it that that that could affect that, and so it was reacting, reaction, reaction. Uh uh obviously training was huge in in that like we talked about, I knew what he was gonna do, I knew how we were gonna employ, I knew what my co-pilot was gonna do, and it was very little communication, it was just happening. So it was very reactive. Now, one of the other the co-pilot in Jeffsburg I interviewed it, I interviewed all these guys for the for the writing of the book to make sure we got the story as as accurate as possible. Because this was in 2000 and uh and uh six. So I mean and I I wrote the book the last two years, so there was there was years in between. Um but we had notes and we had gun tapes and we have interviews and so Uh Ad Adam was his go-pilot gunner. I'm gonna call her just like Excuse me. Um and he said he's like about halfway through that thing, I the thought hit me that we're not making it out of this. This this is it. And I said and I asked him and I said what what then? He's like so I knew I was just gonna do everything I possibly could to go out to go out the way I should, right? So I just started I just continued to do our job and continued to do our job, but I really didn't think we were gonna make it out of that. You know, and uh so that he somehow had time to to think that way. Um my brain, I have maybe a smaller brain, I was like very reactive, reactive. It wasn't until post that mission, right, where we landed and we're in a 1G environment, and I was like, holy crap, there was no reason we should be here. I mean this one of us at least, and in the moment one went down, the other one probably would have gone down too, because we were keeping each other in the air, right? We were keeping each other flying by killing the guy that was trying to kill the our our our wingman. And as soon as somebody goes down, you're now your focus becomes very, very hyper focused on something, and the chances of the other guy getting hit are pretty pretty good.
SPEAKER_00:So I think the the one thing that that you know if you if you're you can't out like maneuver a gun, right? Like bullets traveling at incredible speeds, you're if you see a gunshot, you're not gonna be able to tell uh somebody to move left, right? But with a with an RPG, I think and I I have no idea, but I it seems like if you see it launching and heading towards the the other Apache, you do actually have time, you know, to to give that that order and get them to maneuver. Is that correct?
SPEAKER_01:Well, there's there's flight time, right? So it depends on the distance and everything, but like with the recoilless, it's a big round. With the RPG, it's a big round. So you can see it from origin and its trajectory. Like you can see you can see it very, very, but it is a quick, you I mean, you you don't have seconds, you have milliseconds. I mean, it's it's you have to react quick. Um, I mean, maybe you do have seconds. One, two, then you're done. You know, so maybe you don't. But like with a bullet, it's the same way, except for you can't see a bullet. Like, so if the bullet's coming, you can't. I mean, if it's a long ways away and you had this like perfect vision, you could tell a guy to break away from that bullet because there's there's distance. Now they cover a lot of distance quickly, but but you can't see it, so it's not gonna you can't tell them to break from bullets.
SPEAKER_00:You you have the advantage of of like the the like the the flame behind it or whatever, you know. Yeah, big flash for me.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, no, there yeah, big flashback those things help rocket motor, it you know, it you but it's still super fast. I mean, that's why that's why it went arp, it was too late. It was through the root. I mean, that was too close. He was right underneath me, shot straight up, he couldn't get it out in time. And he was looking right at me. You know, he couldn't even key the mic fast enough because it was too close.
SPEAKER_00:So you talk about teamwork, you know, you played some high school football. Take it take me back to just the beginnings of your understanding of teamwork and how that kind of led you into boot camp and and and into the military and and kind of paid dividends for you just in terms of how you how you became a leader.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so I had this strong desire to play high school. I well, I had a strong desire to play football before high school, but my parents were like, you can do every sport but football, because you know, football's pretty, you know, violent, and it is. And it and it is. But I wrestled and I did MMA, you know, I did other violent stuff, but for some reason football was the was the no. And uh not because of that situation, but because of other situations. I moved out at 15, and that allowed me to play, right? So now I could now I can play. I have I'm my own I'm my own boss. And and I started to play football, and and my first year was a sophomore year. I'd never played before before that. And so I, as you can imagine, I sucked because I'd never played it before. And and I hate sucking. I really hate sucking at anything. And so, you know, I was just like, I'm gonna, and I am super comp I was, I still am competitive, but back then I was like ridiculously competitive. Everything was a race, everything was a competition, everything, everything. I was that guy that's like they're like, let's go to the store. Well, let's race. You know, I mean, it was just it was just that way.
SPEAKER_00:And I think my son's like that, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:It's like yeah, it's almost annoying, you know, like board game is life or death. No, it's not, it's a board game, you know, it's just it's just a stupid board game. So I think I've matured somewhat. I'm still fairly competitive, but but uh I don't I'm not racing to the store, uh, maybe in a car. Uh but I I had a coach, and and he was hard. I mean, he'd probably get fired now, um, just because of how he talked to us, and is it but basically he he said, You show me commitment, you show me commitment, show me commitment, and then and you're gonna have to have courage. He talked about what courage is. It's not not being afraid, you know, it's it's running into things you're afraid of, right? It's running through things you're afraid of. It's that that's courage. So show me commitment and courage, and you will have increased capability. Our team, our team will have increased capability, and that resonated with me. And I added after that, I was like, and increased confidence because once you've seen that increased capability and what it can inflict on your your team, your your opponent, now your confidence is is growing. And when that happens, that's that's a that's a continued growth model. Like it doesn't have a ceiling. You can continue to grow that for you know, as there's no ceiling to it. And so one particular incident my junior year where I actually started the end of my sophomore year, I started to get it. I started to start, I started to to figure out you know how to how to play this game, and it started to they say the game slows down for you. Well, the game doesn't slow down, your mind just is speeding up. You're starting to figure out what's you're you're reactive, much like in what we're talking about with the scenario with the pretzel maneuver, you're reactive due to the training and the experience you've already had. And so it starts to slow down. You're able to do things at a faster speed and it feels slower. So in my junior year, I was starting both ways of offense, defense, and I played every every special team. So when the game started, I was on the field until the game ended, right? And I and I loved it. I loved it. And um, but at one particular game, I went to tackle a guy who'd who'd come in right at me, and I lowered my shoulder and drive my legs and hit man. I hit that sucker, man, I hit him hard. And and my teammate was coming from the other end, and as my arms went around him to wrap him up, he hit my hit my hand, right? And he shoved my left middle finger all the way back into my hand. So like it was basically complete, you couldn't see my left finger.
SPEAKER_00:Um it folded on its side like this way, no, in inside, inside, like oh, like yes, slid into the hand.
SPEAKER_01:Basically, it popped above the hand bone and and slid up above it inside the hand. So there was loose skin, no bone. Anyway, that happened and it hurt, obviously. Like I felt, I was like, oh, you know, but I didn't look at it, I just like shook my hand, and I was like, oh, you know, because you know, you get bangs and bruises.
SPEAKER_00:You tried to flip them off and it didn't go well.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, like it's not gonna, it doesn't send the same message. So then I went down to get in a stance for the next play, and when I put my hand on the ground, I didn't have the return pressure from the middle finger because it wasn't there. And I looked down and I like, oh crap, my finger got ripped off. Like, that's what I thought because I couldn't see a finger. And the plays in motion, ball gets snapped. I actually get the tackle on the next play, which is pretty crazy, and like claim the fame for me. But because afterwards I gotta say, hey, you know, we're watching the video, and everybody knows what happened and when it happened, they're like, You got the next tackle. I'm like, I know. And so then I came out tapping my helmet, and my coach, like I said, hard-nosed guy. I never came out and I was starting the game to the end of the game. I start walking towards the the sideline, tapping my helmet means you're injured. And he's like, What the hell are you coming out for? Right? And I'm like, Coach, I'm not sure, but this doesn't look right. And I held up my hand. Oh, and one of the other coaches is like, stop the game, we gotta find a finger. They're radioing up to the booth, and everything.
SPEAKER_00:Because if you hold your hand like this, it's gone. Like, there's because he doesn't know that it's back here.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's like is there's like bloody skin that was there because the skin didn't go and its skin still existed. But I wasn't wasn't really looking at that, you know. I was just like, There's no finger. And as I got closer to the sideline, I'm holding my hand, and one of the assistant coaches came up and he's and he could see my fingernail. My fingernail was like sticking out of that skin. He goes, I don't think your finger is gone, I think it's in your hand, right? And and he's like, I think you just need to pull on that. And so I reached in there and I pulled, and it just I always fit like I grew up on a farm, so to me, it was like it was like an animal giving birth. It just slid out, and there's this slime, and everything is like blue. Uh and then I I started to get pretty dizzy. I was like, ooh, ooh, and he's like, You good? And I'm like, Yeah, just didn't realize there was a finger in there. So we go into halftime. That was the second quarter, go into halftime, and of course, back then, you know, this different than it is now. They're like, Can you play?
SPEAKER_00:I mean, I don't I think now hold on, you're not that old though. So I mean I'm 46. I'm 47. Okay, so we're yeah, yeah. Yeah, so you know, those footballs.
SPEAKER_01:It's different. I mean, now I think there's no way you play. They don't they don't even ask that question, right? So then they like, can you play? And I'm like, commitment? Okay, this is courage. I this is where I have to demonstrate courage, right? Yeah, and so we wrapped it up, and I went and played the rest of the game. Not only did I play the good rest of the game, I had a hell of a second half, right? And and guys, and I was telling them let's meet at the ball, and and and they saw what I was doing. They're like, dude, his hand, his finger was gone, and then he's out here, he's doing this. Well, then we can do this, right? And and I saw the importance of always being willing to do what you ask your men to do, and not only just be willing to do it, but do it with intensity, and they'll follow. Not only will they they follow you, they will want to follow you, they will want to do perform better because holy crap, you know, and so that was the first inkling of a lesson of leadership that I had. I was like, and and and then I gotta be able to play that forward in boot camp, just always be willing. They made me the platoon leader in boot camp right off the bat, and and like I had to prove I was always willing to do what was asked of us, even the most intense way possible, and then everybody gets in line, and we we won everything, right? We won everything, and it wasn't because of me, it was because of the guys I had, it was because they were willing to see and and follow. But it you had to do that commitment, the courage, and then the capability comes, and then the whole unit has more confidence. And when you have confidence, man, you can walk with that swagger. You know, you can people will see it, people will feel it. You've already started to win that battle before you've even stepped on the battlefield, and uh, and that's that's really what I learned from football. And I went and I played college ball a little bit too, and it was a different feeling, it wasn't the same type of thing for me. And and what I didn't see at that time, and in hindsight being 2020, is like, why didn't I just try to be the catalyst for change? I could have been the catalyst for change in that college arena too, but I didn't even try. And and so looking back, I'm like, wow, why didn't I see that? You know, I could totally have done that, but yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think you know, being in it your sounds like your coach has really created a great culture for you to just like kind of become who you wanted, you know, who you could be in that space, and then going to college, it wasn't like that. Yeah, it was different. But that and that's I think those are lessons too, like that, you know. I mean, you we move from different as different cultures in our life, and we have to decide like is this some is this worth it to me to like get in there and and and be a catalyst for change, like as you said, and like you know, and sometimes not doing that can teach you like if I don't, like, and maybe that's what I'm supposed to be doing, like bringing that kind of mindset to to teams.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and and so that lesson applies everywhere, right? It applies everywhere. Like, yeah, you what am I attacking right now? What am I afraid of? I that that's why I always thought what are you afraid of? Fine, identify that fear. Identify that fear. Usually it starts with a behavior, then there's you can drill that down into there's a belief, and then from that belief, there was an something that caused a fear, right? And so that fear created a belief that it spurred a behavior. So you work it backwards and you find that fear, and then you you be okay with that fear, and you look that fear in the face, you deal with that fear, you know, whatever the way, whatever way is is applicable based on whatever that fear is, and and that's where you're gonna that's where it takes the commitment and the courage because you don't know what's gonna come on the other side. You don't know. You you can learn that there's a pattern, that when you face an obstacle, you face a fear, and you come out the other side, the pattern is that you've grown from it. I I challenge people that all the time. Look back at your life and see your greatest wins, your greatest, your greatest, get greatest gains, your greatest whatever. It's always after getting through an obstacle, after getting through a trial, after getting through a goal which is a self-imposed obstacle, right? That's where we get our greatest wins. And so you can recognize that that's a pattern and have use that as fuel to get through and attack your fears, but that but you're not gonna know what that gain is until you're through it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and you think about your high school, you know what happened to your finger, not letting that define the rest of your game, like caping it up, going back in there. Like that, there's something in that that allowed you to be who you were in that moment of the pretzel, you know, the pretzel uh pretzel maneuver pretzel maneuver. Like, I mean, in a sense of like we start as we start winning at things that are making us afraid, we start to like build a confidence around like you know what I can handle these big, these bigger and bigger situations.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and you start to look for them. You start to you like you start to crave that resistance because you know on the other side of that resistance. I mean, you talk to bodybuilders all the time, that's that's muscle building one-on-one, right? The resistance is what creates the muscle, right? And so you get stronger by pushing through resistance, and that's not just physical, I mean that's emotional, that's mental. That's that's everything kind of grows that way. Through resistance, we get gains.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's it's interesting. This in this world that we're specifically in now. I mean, your book I think is you know another one of those kind of opportunities for people to look at like where am I not specifically you know putting myself like deeper into that, like not necessarily the pain cave or like in these physical feats like David Goggins or Cam Haynes or some of these guys who are ultra marathoners to the nth degree, but but like just always thinking, you know, from this world of self-help and this like, hey, say a bunch of like happy mantras, and like, you know, let's journal and feel good to like no, let's go do hard things, let's go build confidence knowing that like I face my fears, I get through them, I learn from them. Like real world stuff. I think that's such an important thing.
SPEAKER_01:I think there's a synergy in the two things that you just said. You do those hard things, and you taught you the self-talk, whatever stuff to get through those hard things. And then, yeah, sure, if you want to journal about it, journal those things. That's what I did, that's what the book is. It's yeah, it's a jerk, it's a journal, right? And it and it helped. It helped me actually figure some things out, like that I didn't even realize I figured out. Right? I like I think I figured them out subconsciously. This just brought it into the conscious when I when I did do that. So I think there's a place for all of that, but but it starts with actually action, right? You have to, well, you could say it starts with the thought first, but but basically the thought can be in your head as much as you want until you actually take the action, you're not going to experience the growth.
SPEAKER_00:So let's go to your book, you know, why I believe a prepared mind can help minimize PTSD. Now we know that with you know military people spending time overseas, there's a lot of issues of PTSD, things like that that that kind of haunt people after after their service. What have you learned? You know, talk about your your perspective writing this book and what you've seen and how people can actually minimize that uh by having the right mindset.
SPEAKER_01:Right. So that's why I wrote the book. I downrange I had a lot of crazy experiences, and and so did a lot of people, so do a lot of people. And we all come back in different degrees of of development based off of those experiences. Some of us digress, some of us progress, right? Some of us actually experience growth, and some of us come back with something they call a disorder, right? So from the same stimulus. And that bothered me when I came back. That bothered me, and I was like, why? I feel like I came back with growth, lessons learned, a better version of a better version of myself because of the stuff that happened. We we hear this all the time. So-and-so made it through these terrible things, blah blah blah, and despite all odds, became this amazing person. Wrong. Not despite all odds, because of all odds, they became that person. Like those things became foundational to a better version of who they are, the version that we see, right? But we also have the other side where never saw it coming, guy took his own life, right? So those are the same stimulus, but a very different result. So I started to ask people with letters behind their names because it bothered me that it didn't bother me uh as more than it did. I mean, I'm not saying that I I didn't relish in taking lives. That's not something I've ever found joy in, but it didn't derail me either. I just understood that it's ugly and war is ugly. My job is to be in part of that ugly. I can be in the ugly and participate in the ugly, but the ugly doesn't have to be in me, right? Doesn't have to stay in me. Right. Which which was something that I could I I could delineate. And so when I talked to these PhDs and whatever, we he said, okay, let's drill down. If you want to figure out why, then let's figure out why. So we really went into like what my daily patterns and everything I was doing downrange and even before, and my life background, all that stuff. We really went into all of that to try to. I wanted to see if there was something we could teach to help people be more resilient, right? To prepare for trauma because trauma is inevitable. I don't, I don't, I don't care if you're military or not. Trauma is trauma, pain is pain. The brain will send the chemicals the same way the brain. Sense of chemicals whether you're seeing somebody blow up or you were privy to a molestation. There's just all kinds of trauma out there. But it's all chemically very similar. So um we did find some stuff. Some stuff I can't teach. I can't teach uh whether you were raised in a nuclear family or not. I can't teach whether you uh you know experienced abuse as as a kid or a child or whatever. Those things I can't change. But there were some things that we did come up with seven principles. There was more than that, but I put seven principles that I thought were easily teachable in the book. And one of them that I like to just share when I'm on these podcasts is something I call chairflying. And it was something I was doing on a daily basis. It's a practice of basically visualizing certain things, but um when you go through flight school, they're like, hey, chair fly these these maneuvers because you're only gonna get like four or five times to fly them in the actual aircraft. You need more than that to get good at them. So you go through them hundreds of times in your head. So when you kind of the same thing with the the sports, right? So that the game slows down, so that you're not you're you're reacting instead of thinking it through. You have to be able to do that in order to get the to do the movements necessary to affect the emergency procedure before you crash, right? So so that's that's kind of what chair flying came from, but but then I I took it to a different level when I got downrange. They made me an aircraft commander, meaning I'm in charge of the aircraft earlier than I probably was ready, but needs the army, right? So we need aircraft commanders, hamana, amana, boom, you're an aircraft commander. And so I was like, holy crap, I don't know, I don't know where I stand as far as capability on this one. I have I'm gonna show the commitment, I'm gonna show the courage, I'm gonna I'm gonna step out the door and I'm gonna light that thing up. But where's my capability? I don't know where my capabilities are at. So I amped up my chair flying and I added a I call a meditation piece, which was basically just um breathing exercises. It was just breathing exercises to get my mind in the right spot. I call it making your garden fertile. I'm gonna plant stuff in my mind, and I want it to take root and want it to grow, right? I want it to be there. So I would do the breathing exercise and then I get into the visualization. And it's to to demonstrate this, I'll tell you a story. We were turning in to engage the enemy, hadn't engaged him yet. We're rolling in, just got cleared from the ground, cleared hot on this azimuth. As we roll in, my co-pilot takes around through the leg, shatters his femur, his leg pops up, wraps around the slope like we're in a bank. He's screaming on the intercom. Screaming. And I know what happened. Because he's screaming. I don't know exactly what happened, but I know he just got shot.
SPEAKER_00:So is he in the Apache? Are you an Apache on this one?
SPEAKER_01:I was in the Apache.
SPEAKER_00:Was he next to you or is he the copilot back behind you?
SPEAKER_01:He's in front of you.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, in front of you, okay.
SPEAKER_01:I can see his helmet, that's it. Wow, okay. The top of his helmet. I can hear him because we have an intercom that's voice activated. So he's screaming, and you think that that's the number one, that's the number one uh concern. It wasn't, it was number three. Because at the same time, when he's screaming, you and I I don't know if you got the video of this or not. Uh they usually send it in the media kit if you had it. But there's a gun video of this, and you hear him screaming, and you also, if you pay attention, you hear this doo doo doo doo, rotor RPM low, right? Rotor is what makes the helicopter fly. And right RPM rotations per minute is very important for that to happen. So when it's low, it means you're gonna crash, right? So I have to deal with that. The reason it's low is because at the same time he got hit, one of my engines got shot out. You have two engines, but you don't have enough power to really fly normally, which is one, right? So as soon as that one engine's gone, the rotor's slowing down, right? Also, when I go to roll us out of the bank, I realize my flight controls are jammed. So that's number two. So those two things are priority over him screaming and take all the time you want, you got seconds, right? Because we're at 300 feet falling. It's not gonna take long to hit the ground, and so I have to dump the the control in my left hand, which is called the collective, and that's what makes you go up and down. Counterintuitively, if you're falling because the rotor is slowing down, you need to speed up your fall, right? So against what your gut wants to do, which is pull up, and we're falling, I don't pull up, right? You gotta do the opposite. So that only happens through practice, mentally, physically, all those things. So I slammed that down, and at the same time, I broke into what's called backup control system. You the the Apache has a backup control system, you have to sever the mechanical linkage in the controls, and to do that take some pressure. You gotta slam through it. What happened? My controls were jammed because his leg was wrapped around it. I didn't know that at the time. But when I slammed it over, of course, he screams again because I just unwrapped his leg and and it did snap into the backup control system, which I at the time we're in a bank. The way my controls were were situated, I would have to slam in the direction of the bank, which means I would exacerbate the bank even further. And it's a sloppy control system once you're in the backup, it's really like no power steering, you know, sloppy, whatever. Um, so Boeing, who makes the Apache, says that when you go in the backup control system, there's a one-second easy on, meaning one second, nothing happens. It doesn't take effect. And I always remember thinking when they told us that, I was like, who cares? In that moment, I remember going, please work as advertised. Now I know why it exists, right? Yeah, and so I slammed in, brought it back to center. It worked, it didn't, it did the one second. Thank goodness, because I probably would have snap rolled it and we would have landed upside down in front of the Taliban and probably been on Al Jazeera. So, so I bring it back to second, right back back to center. We fly, the collective I slam the collector down, and actually goes rotor RPM low, rotor RPM high. So like that worked, like so, and then I can start focusing on my copilot. Like, where were you hit? We need to put pressure to that wound. We didn't, and we kind of limped the helicopter out of there. Okay, why do I tell that story? It's a cool story, who cares? It's how did all that all that stuff that I just told you all happened in like one to two seconds? If that right, because it had to. There was no other way, survivable way. If it took longer than that, we're done, right? Did it happen that way because I'm amazing, or did it happen that way because I did the chair flying so many times and other world experiences had created a reactive a reactive state where that's what I was doing. I wasn't consciously thinking through the things, I knew what I needed to do. I knew what I needed, I was reacting to the situation, and we're and we got out of there. So when I go back to the chair flying, we do the meditation. Now you start to visualize. You visualize, for example, your engine getting shot out and you're losing power and your phone.
SPEAKER_00:So you're actually visualizing what if these things happen, how will I respond? Yes. So instead of just invisible, because I I think a lot of people would visualize like the perfect flight to like nothing going wrong. You know, I I I used to visualize before basketball games, and I would visualize myself making free throws because I was bad at it. I would literally like visualize myself shooting and switching the free throw. But you're saying, hey, visualize when the shit hits the fan, how do I respond? Is that correct?
SPEAKER_01:So I'm still visualizing winning. I just have to get through the nasty, and how am I gonna get through the nasty?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_01:So you visualize, like if your engine's shot out, you visualize what you're gonna do, and you visualize to the point where you get like a point where you have to think. Like, oh, what do I mean to do here? And then you make that decision now. Make that decision, start back over at the beginning, get to where you go right through that without having to think, and hit your next choke point. And you do the same thing with that, and then you start at the beginning. And you work all the way till you go from start to finish without really having to think. You know, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that, it's just gonna go right through it. Then you throw in some contingencies. What if this doesn't manifest like it's supposed to? What if and and then you go down to I go down to how am I gonna how am I gonna stay calm? How's my voice gonna be? How am I and I don't know if you listen to that video or not, but if you did, we're gonna put it on the show.
SPEAKER_00:By the way, for people listening, where that's gonna be in the show notes. We want you to get a visual of this that you can follow along.
SPEAKER_01:So basically, um I I I took a deep breath. I just went that that quick. You know, while I was while I was doing other things, I and then I and then my voice was was calmer than it is right now. My heart was probably playing Flight of the Bumblebee, but my voice was was calm because I knew through chair flying that is necessary for us to get to the end result we needed. We needed to be very methodical, very quick, and and keep it calm. Keep keep the situation under control. Right? And so all that happened for you know, that was really there was a lot of stuff happening there, but that was all things that have gone through my head many, many times through chair flying, whether my co-pilot being shot, uh, backup control system, I'd already been in backup control system for reels, and an engine had been shot out earlier in this mission. So there's real world stuff too that I was drawing on. But all of it put together, no, I hadn't pictured that exact scenario. But there's enough overlap and enough neuroplasticity, right, to where I've already run these things in my in my head that it called on and brought them, put them all in right in the right order, right? You know, exactly where they needed to be. But once again, that's preparation, right? That wasn't being a hero in the moment, that was putting in the work, putting in the work to have the the stuff to call upon. Now, how do we apply that in our regular lives? It's as simple as as basically saying, I have a conversation with my significant other. Those always go super well, right? Men and women, we always communicate perfectly.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, yeah, we shut that down.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so you you know, you can kind of chair fly your side of that, right? You this is what's gonna happen. And then she'll probably do she might do this, or how do I avoid her from doing that, you know? And and if she does do that, what am I gonna do? And you know, you just kind of go through the from start to finish, and you know, I I've had great success with that. Uh uh difficult conversations with colleagues, whatever the case may be. Okay, so that's all preparation for physical things. How does that help PTSD? That's just the part I didn't know until afterwards. Okay, this was something I was doing my whole deployment. It was something I did before my deployment. I got it more and more robust, uh, more of a practice. Um, and the and the and the PhDs were like, there's there's a psychological term for what you were doing. It's called stress inoculation, right? You're inoculating yourself to stressful situations, you're giving yourself a weakened dose in an environment that you control, so your brain is already coping with that scenario in a in a in a less significant way. So when the real one happens, it just bounces off. Like a regular inoculation with a weakened dose of a virus. We give it to our body, we create antibodies, and then when the real one comes, it's not that big of a deal. We might get a sniffle, we might get some some some act like when is there no post-traumatic stress? Maybe there probably is, but did it derail me, or did it make me into a person, make me into a better version of myself? And I would say it made the latter, right? And so I I pictured blowing up people before I blew up people, right? And and how I would deal with that, and how I would feel about that, and how you know, and and so it just weakens the effect of the actual trauma when you've given yourself a stress inoculation. So that was one of the principles that I that I we outlined in the book. There's six others.
SPEAKER_00:Um but but well this look that's I mean, I think I don't think I've had somebody, you know, talk about uh visualization the way the way you just did. I mean, I think visualization is used in a lot of performance. You know, you you visualize performance, you visualize how it's gonna be, things like that. But I don't, you know, using it in a way to really inoculate the the ability for stress to kind of overwhelm us or take kind of take us over, you know, take over our our psyche in that moment is a key thing that I've never heard before. That's really interesting. I I want to ask you, and I don't know if you've had a scenario that you felt this or you've spoken with other soldiers who have. I think so often it's the you know when things go wrong and we are responsible for maybe killing or or doing something incorrectly that uh that allows someone on our team to be killed, you know, um in in battle. Like that that can create a different type of you know guilt, stress, anxiety that I I think would be hard, harder or maybe equally as hard to kind of process, understand, and get through. Talk about that from your perspective.
SPEAKER_01:So interestingly, interestingly enough, uh when I did the the chairflowing stuff, I had chairflown me getting injured, I'd chairflown my wingman getting shot and injured, I'd chairflown me and my co-pilot getting shot and injured. I'd never chairflown him getting hurt, me being fine, right? Because I think that was probably a coping mechanism. You don't want to picture that because that's the worst case scenario, right? Right. You'd rather that that hit your leg because you're I'm the one on the controls. So, and when we we had to do a roll-on landing in the backup control system, which had never been done before. So um we we rolled it on to at the place where he was gonna get in the hospital. The emergency vehicles were actually on the wrong end of the runway because stuff happens, and so when I got down the emergency shutdown, I I pulled him out of the seat before they got there because I knew that we didn't, you know, time was not on our side, so this wouldn't needed things needed to happen. So I forklifted him out of there. He's about my size, which you know, 230, 240 pounds. So you know, adrenaline helped. I bring him out, and about that time the firefighters and the MS people are coming up to the side of the aircraft. So I stepped down, and as we pull him out, his wound in his leg, I swear it paused right in front of my face, and it's a huge gaping hole in his leg, and there's muscles hanging and twitching and blood dripping and and bone fragments falling on the you know, it's it it was just it was very graphic, right? Yeah, and it was and I was just staring at it, and he's a kind of a comic comedy comical guy, and in fact, even in the in the flight, you'll you'll hear him like getting to a point where we're joking back and forth a little bit with a hole in his leg, right? And so uh he sees me staring at that wound, and he said this as a joke, and he said it to make it light, and he said all these things, but it it didn't have that effect. He he said, You got me shot, right? Now he was saying it as a joke, but it hit like an anvil. I was like, he's right. I did get him shot, right? I could have carried more speed, I could have done this, I could have done that, and then you get into this black hole of thought, right? And a woulda, and a coulda, and a shoulda. But here's the deal. You take any, well I'm just talking military, but this applies to regular life too. You take any scenario, any scenario, and there's things that you could have done better. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't, right? Sometimes the things that you did wrong actually turn into this great story like the pretzel maneuver, right? We there there should have been a lot of holes in our bodies that day. And instead we tell we talk about that scenario with joviality and wow, that's cool, and all these kind of things. How different would that story be if one of us, just one of us, took one in the leg? Would we would we I mean we did talk about what we did wrong, but how much more weight would that carry? Right? And that that was true of any engagement. I had to come to peace with that reality before I could come to peace with what happened to him, right? The reality is there's always something you did better. Were you purposely slacking in the moment? No. Were you were you do you know, was there things you could have done differently? Absolutely. Would there always be? Yeah, and that's a trickle down. You you could go down a rabbit hole forever, right? Right, and it it did carry weight with it though. I mean, eight years later he posted something on Facebook. He wasn't in my company, he was augmenting. I I wasn't he wasn't even part of our company. He came down only time I ever flew with him, right? And and then he went to Germany and I didn't see him. He wasn't there when we came home. He wasn't so for years. I mean, there was some communication, but for years I hadn't heard about him. And then he posted on Facebook, I think it was eight years later, on to the day that he got hit. And he said, eight years ago, or whatever the years were, this day this happened, and I will be forever grateful for Brian Slade for and then he went into all these things that how he's been able to be with his kids and all these others. And I realized at that moment that that I I've been putting kettlebells in my backpack and and one of those kettlebells was you got me shot. Because at that moment, when he said that, that kettlebell got taken out. And it was and it was just this big weight off my shoulders. So, you know, how often are we putting those in our backpack and we just get used to the weight, you know? And and and the only one holding that weight, the only one letting that weight be there is us. Right? He didn't care that weight was there. You know, he he he was he was grateful for eight years he was grateful. And I'm carrying this weight because that's me doing that to me. Right?
SPEAKER_00:When he told when he said that you know, eight years later, when he was able to was he write that or speak that truth, like I think oftentimes we carry weight thinking we they they need us to, or or we are doing this because they feel that way and we wanna we want to understand or or you know not not you know if if if he you know because if he had you know never let go of that feeling of like and even if it was just a like a quick comment that he didn't actually mean what what let's say he actually meant it and he carried that with him. Like I think there's almost an obligation as a human being to carry that weight and say, you know what, I take responsibility for doing that, knowing that you've suffered because of that. But when he said that and told you that that that that you know you could let that weight go, you could take that kettlebell out of your backpack. Like that's I mean, that's that's kind of a beautiful moment there.
SPEAKER_01:So I've thought about that exactly what you're saying. Uh a couple uh I was like, what if he what he what if he did resent me? Like, what if what if he resented me the rest of his life? And what I the the conclusion I came to is it's still me that's choosing to carry that weight, right? It's still like it's not healthy, it's not healthy, it's not helping him now. Take responsibility, yes. Take responsibility. We were there that day, we were fighting, and I was on the controls. That those are all facts, right? Is it my fault he got shot? You can't you can't do that, and especially in war and a lot of things in life, because there's just so many variables, like technically, yeah, it is because I was on the controls. But we're if you're if you're trying to assign blame, you're already in the wrong in that scenario, right? And so at some point, for me to be completely healthy, whether he said that that phrase, which did help, yeah, which did help. But if whether he said that or he held resentment, I needed to take that kettlebell out and let it let it go. Because it's not helping him, it's not helping me, right? Take responsibility, yes. Yeah, I mean 100%. Ownership, accountability, absolutely, but that doesn't mean carry weight with you forever.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, you are it's like you you have to choose to use that. Whether I mean use a lesson, use it for good. Like let it let it let learn the lesson that needed to be learned in that moment and let it go.
SPEAKER_01:Agreed, yes.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, dude. I I mean, this has been this is awesome, dude. We're we're we're an hour in. I feel like I could spend hours more just going through every point of the of the seven points of the book. But I want people to be so excited and interested and like wanting more that they're gonna go out and get your book. Uh so in the show notes, we're gonna uh leave the links to how you can find his book. Uh tell me, uh Brian, is there an audiobook coming out, or is that already out where we have that? So, yes, there is I'm gonna tell you, podcasters love audiobooks. It's like they're like uh they're cousins.
SPEAKER_01:So here's the deal. You guys need to put it in your notes, in your phones, to if you're an audiobook person, that it's coming out. It's not there yet. I did the read, I read it. And and so it's way harder than you think. I didn't even imagine. Yeah, it's so I took 16 takes to get through that book uh and and and to make it where I feel like it's okay, it's good enough to go out there. Uh and and so we're now in the editing. I've I've recorded it all. I I've it's all done recording. Now they're editing it. So probably in the next month or month or two, it'll be available in audio. But right now it's on Amazon as a book. Uh, it's also at my website at www.clearedhot.info. Um and and and it is don't I always tell people on on these podcasts, it's not an instruction manual, it's a kick-ass war story that has lessons insidiously thrown in there with great teamwork, great, great stuff that you can apply to your life, but it's not overly didactic, right? At the very end, we have an epilogue that really kind of encapsulates all the lessons learned and the seven principles and all those kind of things. And then we're developing actually a curriculum for people that want to take it to another level. But the book, if you want to just read the war story, read it. You'll have you'll love it. If you want to read it with the intent of understanding things, you'll you'll love it. So it's multifaceted, and it doesn't just apply to the military, not even close. It was written in a way that applies to every single human being on this planet.
SPEAKER_00:I love it, man. Uh so guys, go to the show notes, check it out. Uh, cleared hot. Uh, lessons learned about life, love, and leadership while flying the Apache gunship in Afghanistan, and why I believe uh prepared mind can help minimize PTSD. My man Brian Slade. Thank you so much for your time.
SPEAKER_02:Thanks, Martin.