The Reload with Sean Hansen
From Combat to Calm: Unpacking Anxiety and the Quest for Resilience - 199
Struggling with anxiety often feels like waging a silent battle, one that even high performers and seemingly unflappable individuals face. My own journey, from the frontlines of combat to the home front has taught me this lesson all too well. The intense interplay of anxiety and aggression, hidden beneath a veil of composure, can deeply affect personal and professional lives if left unchecked. Through vivid stories from my time in service and the struggles that followed, I offer a perspective that challenges the stoic facades many of us maintain and the resilience required to confront our inner turmoil.
Navigating the transition from military rigor to the civilian's more nuanced landscape has been a profound learning curve. In our latest episode, I recount a pivotal debrief with neurologists and psychologists that revealed the surprising levels of anxiety in my own life—a mirror to the experiences of many clients I've guided. Together, we explore the 'always on' mentality, its impact on our lives, and the subtle yet destructive patterns that emerge from unrecognized stress. By sharing my own battles with rigidity and dark thoughts, I hope to inspire a conversation about the power of resilience and the defining moments that can save us from the brink.
In the realm of conflict resolution and personal interactions, the signals we unconsciously project can shape the dynamics of our relationships and the energy we attract. I delve into the importance of body language, energetic boundaries, and the projection of our internal state onto the world around us. By examining how our behavior influences the conflicts we face and the partners we attract, this episode is an invitation to reflect and act upon the transformative potential of self-awareness. Join us as we tackle the daunting but essential task of breaking our own destructive cycles, finding peace within, and projecting a presence that aligns with who we truly aspire to be.
Are you an executive, entrepreneur, or combat veteran looking to overcome subconscious blind spots and limiting messaging to unlock your highest performance? Feel free to reach out to Sean at Reload Coaching and Consulting.
Struggling with anxiety often feels like waging a silent battle, one that even high performers and seemingly unflappable individuals face. My own journey, from the frontlines of combat to the home front has taught me this lesson all too well. The intense interplay of anxiety and aggression, hidden beneath a veil of composure, can deeply affect personal and professional lives if left unchecked. Through vivid stories from my time in service and the struggles that followed, I offer a perspective that challenges the stoic facades many of us maintain and the resilience required to confront our inner turmoil.
Navigating the transition from military rigor to the civilian's more nuanced landscape has been a profound learning curve. In our latest episode, I recount a pivotal debrief with neurologists and psychologists that revealed the surprising levels of anxiety in my own life—a mirror to the experiences of many clients I've guided. Together, we explore the 'always on' mentality, its impact on our lives, and the subtle yet destructive patterns that emerge from unrecognized stress. By sharing my own battles with rigidity and dark thoughts, I hope to inspire a conversation about the power of resilience and the defining moments that can save us from the brink.
In the realm of conflict resolution and personal interactions, the signals we unconsciously project can shape the dynamics of our relationships and the energy we attract. I delve into the importance of body language, energetic boundaries, and the projection of our internal state onto the world around us. By examining how our behavior influences the conflicts we face and the partners we attract, this episode is an invitation to reflect and act upon the transformative potential of self-awareness. Join us as we tackle the daunting but essential task of breaking our own destructive cycles, finding peace within, and projecting a presence that aligns with who we truly aspire to be.
Are you an executive, entrepreneur, or combat veteran looking to overcome subconscious blind spots and limiting messaging to unlock your highest performance? Feel free to reach out to Sean at Reload Coaching and Consulting.
Welcome to the Reload, where we help unconventional leaders craft the life they truly want by questioning the assumptions they have about how life works. My name is Sean and I'll be your host on this journey. As a performance coach and special operations combat veteran, I help high-performing executives kick ass in their careers while connecting with deeply powerful insights that fuel their lives. Well, let's get kicking today. Well, I guess. Thank you first off for showing up and sticking around. Appreciate that All right, now let's get to business. So this, oh gosh.
Speaker 1:Last few weeks, I've had a lot of interesting conversations around the topic of anxiety, and what's made them so interesting is that the client or the person that I was speaking to because one instance that I'm thinking about was actually not a client conversation instance that I'm thinking about was actually not a client conversation but in each instance, the person that I was speaking with did not seem to recognize their own sense of anxiety in the way that they were showing up, and I thought it would be quite useful for us to sort of take a dive into this notion of how aggression and anxiety play together and where it is that individuals who very often perceive themselves to be cool and calm under pressure, are actually operating in a constant state of anxiety. Now, on the show, I think that you've often heard me I mean, if you've been listening to the show for any length of time you've heard me say on repeated instances that I am in no way superior. All the things that I talk about on this show well, maybe not all of them, but a lot of them I have done, felt, done some more felt, some more, struggled with, etc. Etc. And so there's very often a personal story that I could put into the recording. I don't, at least not always, because, I don't know, it seems like it might get a little monotonous over time, and there's such a wealth of stories that are coming in from the coaching conversations that I have, but today I think it might be useful to share one of these stories.
Speaker 1:So I, as the intro suggests, spent some time in special operations and had a couple of combat deployments to Iraq, and both of them were pretty nasty, one of them more so than the other, and during that time, and especially during the combat deployments, I think I had generally a pretty good reputation I think, at least from what people have told me and I had a reputation for being very, very cool under fire, very calm, under pressure. And you know, there was one particular instance where we were getting shot at while we were trying to do an explosive ordnance disposal procedure, which you know is you know it's pretty complicated you might think like, okay, that's while you're trying to disarm something that goes boom is probably also not the time that you want to be getting shot at. So you know, in response to this, like I was sort of calmly trying to ask the security vehicles to move their position a little bit so that the armored vehicle could absorb some of the bullets that were coming our way and thus keep us safer, which to me felt like a very prudent and logical thing to do, and I don't think anyone's going to argue that. But what people in the security detail said when we got back to the base, after we, you know, did the thing, they said you know, how is it that you can stay so calm when you're in such a terrible situation? Because I was outside of the armor package, so I was getting shot at, my delicate little skins was getting shot at, and so you know, I said to them well, I guess this is how I look at it, the more that the EOD guys freak out and lose their focus.
Speaker 1:The longer that we stay in close proximity to, or relatively close proximity to, something that is going to go boom or potentially is going to go boom, and also the longer that we stay out here, the more attention that we're going to go boom or potentially is going to go boom. And also the longer that we stay out here, the more attention that we're going to draw and probably more people are going to start shooting at us. So we should probably stay as calm as possible to move through the problem set in order to get back to base, which you know you can still get shot at on base, but there's more defensive positioning there. So where does that leave us? I, for my whole life, have been told by friends, family, people that knew me at school, et cetera, et cetera, that I am this very grounded, albeit very intense person, that I am this very grounded, albeit very intense person. And you might think, oh well, that kind of person who is very sort of grounded but can bring a great deal of intensity what a perfect fit for this type of job where he's going to try to safely disarm explosive devices while getting shot at. And I would have said, yeah, I mean, god dang, what a match made in heaven. You know, that's just, that's just all right. What I would have never agreed to is that I was a very anxious person. Anxious person.
Speaker 1:And so fast forward a few years, I'm out of the military, I have a plethora of PTSD symptoms showing up, and I've already tried therapy once or twice, three times, and I've done various other methodologies to try to alleviate these symptoms and to really process some of the things that happened in country, and I feel like I've put a lot of work into it. But I'm still having these symptoms, and one of those symptoms was sleeplessness because of nightmares or just general, I don't know tossing and turning, and it was getting really bad. It was bad enough that I was falling asleep driving places, and that's bad, that's highly irresponsible, and so I wanted to figure out what was going on there so that I could fix that, not only because it was costing me personally, but I had the sensation that, well, one of these days I might fall asleep at the wrong time and then other people are going to have a very bad day because of me and that was something I was definitely not okay with going to have a very bad day because of me and that was something I was definitely not okay with. So I applied to go to a sort of a brain health institute and they specialized in mild to moderate PTSD and TBI traumatic brain injury, excuse me and while I was there I had a conversation. So you take this battery of tests I mean it's like I think you take like a full day of just these various cognitive and behavioral assessments and it is mind numbing. It is in no way a fun experience. But you know I've been through worse.
Speaker 1:So you know I fill out all the stuff and and then you end up going through sort of a debrief conversation with a team of neurologists, psychologists, neuropsychologists I mean it's just a whole crew and you're sitting there and they're giving you their take on the data that came out of your day long process of assessments and they and one of the neuropsychologists she was such a direct person, but in a very kind way, and I probably have yet to master that particular trait myself, but I tend to, I think, oftentimes be too direct without actually being that nice about it. So, anyway, we're sitting there and she says how anxious do you think you are If you had to rate yourself and I said well, is there like a negative rating? Can I rate myself in the opposite direction of anxious? And she kind of laughed a little bit, I think just to humor me. But what she pointed out was that some of the assessments were also filled out by people that knew me, and what came out in the data is that I was way, way harder on myself than anyone that knew me. And combining that and, by the way, that is actually something that I also see when I do 360s with my clients the general trend is that they are way harder on themselves than everybody else is on them. Not in all places, but that's the general trend.
Speaker 1:So, anyway, getting back to me, we're sitting there and she's putting that bit of information together with some of the other things that came out of the assessments, and she said well, we think that you're a very anxious person. And I felt like she slapped me across the face because I had prided myself my entire life on being cool and calm under pressure and I had had some of the worst pressure that a human being could likely go through. I mean, definitely there's worse for sure likely go through. I mean, definitely there's worse for sure, but I had a pretty top shelf high pressure experience and I thought to myself what the fuck Are you joking? I am the furthest thing from anxious.
Speaker 1:And then she started to ask me these questions. You know, how often do you feel totally relaxed in a public setting? Never Because there are threats out there, damn it. I mean, I didn't quite say it that way, but that was what was going through my head, Okay, and you know how often would you say that you are, quote unquote, on point, like really paying attention to what's going on around you, whether it's in the room or while you're driving? How often are you surprised? Never because I am paying attention, because there are threats out there, damn it, damn it. Again, I didn't answer it that way, it just was something that was in my head. How often are you scanning the room or the notional horizon for what-ifs all the time Because you might see where this is going? There are threats out there. How often do you have contingency plans in mind for all of the just in case? Always Because there are threats out there. And wow, it was a really eye-opening discussion my whole life. I thought that I was in a really good spot and I was in a way.
Speaker 1:I think that it's quite useful for us to have the capacity to look ahead, as it were, to plan, to be able to forecast that, okay, this might turn into a bad situation. I think that there is something that is woven deep into our genetic code. After all, in order for us to be here, we are the product of others who made it, who survived, who overcame hardships in order to pass on their genes to the next generation. So there is something to be said for being able to be on point, for being able to predict or forecast that there might be threats, might be threats out there. But the problem is when we fixate on this always ready, always vigilant, always scanning, never caught off guard way of being it costs us, it takes up a lot of bandwidth to always be scanning and to always be thinking about what would I do if? And to be constantly playing what ifs in our mind.
Speaker 1:And in the modern day, most of my clients do not have to worry about some sort of physical attack, but they definitely worry about attacks from competitors. They call them competitors and, by definition, they are competitors. They're not collaborators in the market, they are competitors in the market. But some of my clients, some of them, have a double dose, meaning they come from very traumatized childhoods where they were physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually or the whole buffet sometimes abused and it wove into them, at the deepest level possible, a viewpoint of the world.
Speaker 1:That said, it is full of threats and I must be prepared at all times because to be unprepared is going to mean real pain. You know, none of that bullshit. Like this is just sort of a wound to my ego, kind of pain, but like real pain, like like this is going to physically injure me, kind of pain. And I'm being sarcastic there, right, because even the egoic exit, quote unquote, existential threats are also real pain. They're just not physical pain typically, and so this takes up a lot of time, it takes up a lot of energy and it fatigues us and it tightens us.
Speaker 1:You know, when I was looking at getting into the military, I used to think, man, I want to be the hardest dude out there, I want to be hardened because I'm going to go into a bad place and in order to survive that bad place I've got to be hard. And I thought I was and perhaps other people would say, yeah, you were, but then again, what I was also was rigid and rigid. Things snap, and that's what happened to me. There was enough stress, long enough that I snapped and I've mentioned it in the past that you know I had real struggles with suicidal ideation, real moments where I had my gun to my head and was slowly starting to squeeze the trigger, and each time something popped up that allowed me to get through that moment. Thankfully, you know, if you're listening to my show and you don't like it, I don't know, maybe you're not thankful, but in either case, for me, these moments where I was rigid, I was more oak tree than willow and I think that that often sets sort of a false polarity. Do you want to be the oak tree or do you want to be the willow? I don't think you have to choose between either of them. I think you get to try to be both in a weird way.
Speaker 1:But a lot of times when I work with executives that are sort of hardened by life, hardened by years of competition in very competitive market spaces, or, if I'm dealing with special operations, combat veterans, the trend is the same Rigidity versus resilience. They don't have the capacity to throttle down, they don't have the capacity to shift gears. They don't have the capacity to look out at their world and not see just threats spilling all over each other. And what I would wish for them is for them to be able to have the capacity to engage that threat aware mindset and the ability to respond, but then also to be able to shift gears and to recognize, like, okay, yeah, I don't need to be on high alert all the time. I certainly don't need to be so ingrained on high alert that I do it unconsciously all the time and I can give myself back some, some energy, I can give myself back some relaxation. Fuck you know, I don't have to be so tight all the time.
Speaker 1:And if you look at the definition of anxious it is an adjective, in case anyone is confused about that and the very first definition in miriam webster that pops out is characterized by extreme uneasiness of mind or brooding fear about some contingency, characterized by resulting from or causing anxiety. It's a little bit circular. If we look at the word history because you know how I love the word history comes from Latin anxius worried, disturbed, uneasy, marked by or inducing anxiety or distress, An adjective derivative from the base of angere I'm not sure how to pronounce that which meant to choke, cause pain, to afflict or vex. First known use 1548. Boom, right.
Speaker 1:So here we are thinking that we're cool, under pressure and yet the whole time operating from this vexed, agitated position of looking for threats, and before you just start throwing your phone all over the place and telling me God damn it, sean, there are threats out there. Yes, I know, I was in a fucking combat zone. I know that there are threats out there and I know that there are threats at home as well, and there are people in every country who go home to very physically unsafe households where they're mistreated by the people that should be loving them the most. I get that should be loving them the most. I get that. And if somebody is in that unsafe environment, then, yes, I would implore them to use whatever means they could within whatever legal means.
Speaker 1:This is getting a bit slippery. Obviously, if you have to defend your own life, that is clearly, I think, something that most legal systems are accepting. But, you know, do your best to get out of that scenario. Leave, can you stay with friends? Can you drop out of sight, you know? So, yes, I'm not naive. I know that there are real threats out there, but I also know that there are not always threats present, and I know that when I was in that state, and am I still that way, I think that I've done a lot.
Speaker 1:I think that I've managed to make a lot of progress on that front, that I'm not constantly viewing life as full of threats, and some of the corroboration of my internal assessment of that is that I feel less tense generally, I feel more relaxed. I actually wear an aura ring, so then that tracks a lot of my stress levels throughout the day and quantitatively, it seems to be going in the right direction. People around me seem to suggest that I'm not quite as intense anymore, and a lot of my intensity was driven by the perception of threat. I just didn't jump up and down and I wasn't super excitable because I felt like, okay, well, I need to stay calm and I need to be focused and I need to be ready to hit it if I have to. But I came to realize that, yeah, I am kind of an anxious person, and so what did I want to do about that? Did I want to live on high alert for the rest of my days? No, no, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 1:Now there's another sort of offshoot to this conversation that I was having. Well, one of the conversations that I think is also germane to this general discussion, and that is where it is that there's a history of aggression and fighting. You may not fight with your fists, but what about other ways? You may not fight with your fists, but what about other ways? Maybe you fight with your words, your tone of voice. That was, oh man. If this is the show and tell hour, I guess I'm showing and telling here. So that was another thing.
Speaker 1:For years, my entire life, I have heard from friends, family and girlfriends that voice and knowing what would really, really really hurt them emotionally, and I'm not proud of that. And with each passing year, as I look back at the way that I used to be, it's like God, you know what was I thinking? Or, more importantly, what was I feeling, what was behind that reactionary way of being? Because there are times. I remember one time my dad came out. Oh God, I don't want to talk about this, but I will because I think it will benefit you. My dad came out and I'd been reading some book I don't remember some book for pleasure at the kitchen counter and I'd been by myself, I don't know, for maybe an hour or so, and my dad came into the kitchen and he said, hey. And my dad came into the kitchen and he said, hey, you might want to think about how it is that you react to people, because you have this way of putting poison in your voice and your mom's been in the bedroom crying for the last couple hours based on something that you said to her. So I don't know. It might be worth thinking about what's going on and how you treat people.
Speaker 1:And that was so devastating for me, because the real devastating part was I had no idea what I had said to my mom. It was such an ingrained reaction that I had no idea what was going on. I was completely on autopilot. She must have said something that some part of me didn't like and that some part of me decided to give her a taste. And the fact that I couldn't remember what I had said. I had zero consciousness of it. If you put a gun to my head, I would not have been able to tell you what I said, and the way that my dad delivered that bit of news was so much more effective than if he had yelled at me or scolded me. If he had tried that, I probably would have entrenched and doubled down and just been like, wow, she probably deserved it and you're not going to tell me what to do. But he, he didn't, he just made an observation. Now, obviously he made it pointedly. I mean he definitely was trying to get me to pay attention and learn something. But it was so much more effective than him yelling at me or trying to punish me for it Because it was punishment enough for me to think, oh gosh, you know I love my parents and sure we piss each other off sometimes, and all family members seem to have that trait. But what was it in me that felt that it needed to be so reactive?
Speaker 1:Now, when someone in your life tells you that they're not competitive or that they don't fight, well, similar to the anxiety piece, they might be so unconscious of the way that they fight that they don't even recognize where they're positioned, sort of mentally and emotionally. And with my type of client I would say, yeah, most of them do not fight with their fists. And with my type of client, I would say yeah, most of them do not fight with their fists and they, I think, in many ways kind of look down on that as being somewhat barbaric. Personally, I do think that there is some value to knowing how to physically defend yourself and I also think that there is real character development that comes from being punched in the face, because it humbles you and it teaches you. Ah, actual violence is a thing that I do not want to engage in unless it is really important, meaning I'm defending my life or I'm defending the life of someone I love, because when you've actually been exposed to real physical violence it tends to shift your lens a little bit and you're like huh, okay, that can get pretty serious. So I do think there's some value to it. But if you run into somebody who says that they don't fight, they would never condone such behavior, go ahead and tell them that their idea is stupid and then see what they do, because typically with my kind of client again, they don't tend to fight with their fists, but they sure as shit will throw down and go to war if you critique their ideas, because they see their ideas as their worth and thus it is their sense of self that you are attacking. So that's just a little I don't know interesting tidbit, I guess.
Speaker 1:But when we continued to dive down into this history of aggression. At some point we kind and really sort of dispassionately evaluate all the different combative instances that we've experienced, and whether they're physical or whether they're simply an exchange of words. And then we have to ask ourselves huh, am I the common denominator here? Yeah, most likely. If you have repeated instances of altercations, physical or otherwise, then you, I think, would really benefit from thinking about you being the common element in all those encounters. Now, is it statistically impossible that you're finding all the disagreeable people in the world? Well, no, I guess I can't say that it's statistically impossible, but it's not likely. It's really truly not likely.
Speaker 1:And you might be thinking that is unfair, sean. There's no, you don't understand. I'm minding my own business and then people mess with me. Or, alternatively, I don't know what's an reasonable request and people continue to just dishonor the requests that I have. They're pushing into my boundaries. That may be true and in fact in certain instances it probably is true. But if there is a history of aggression and fighting, most likely you are the common element in all of those encounters because you were the one that was there every time. And if the cast of characters is being changed out in terms of the people you're fighting with. Yeah, you're, you know you're it. And it's not to say that the violence or the aggression or the conflict is not justified. Again, there are going to be times where it is, but that's not a get out of jail free card, so to speak.
Speaker 1:So it's taking a look at what. What are you projecting unconsciously into the world? Come on, sean, I don't project unconsciously. My mind is a steel trap, sharp, always on guard. I know exactly what I'm doing every moment that I'm doing it. Hmm, hmm, okay, probably bullshit.
Speaker 1:There's so much about the way that we carry ourselves that shows up unconsciously, and humans have evolved for millennia, which is a long time, in case anyone doesn't know, to be aware of posture, to be aware of facial expressions, micro expressions, and, yes, there is variability from culture to culture. But within your culture, you have a very highly tuned and adept way of reading a room. I've had so many clients who have said things like yeah, I wasn't sure what was going on, but as soon as I walked in the room, it just felt off. That's not ESP. I mean, you walk in and you can sense, you get this sort of micro snapshot of how people are carrying themselves. You get this sort of micro snapshot of how people are carrying themselves. Are they laughing, are they relaxed, or are people looking down at the desk or the table, because right before you walked in the room there was some big ass chewing that happened of one of the people in the room. I don't, I mean whatever. I mean the, the. The examples are too numerous to spell out here, but we've we have most likely all had experiences where we just couldn't put our finger on it, but we knew something wasn't right. And so much of that is the human animal's ability to, on an unconscious level, understand body language, what is being expressed without words, because in reality, that is the majority of human communication, and that's part of the reason why text, whether that's email or whether that's text messages, can be so inflammatory, because nobody knows Like. Is this a joke? Is this? Should I take this seriously? Where's my emoji? To let me know? Oh, ha, ha, lol, har, har, har. So this body language projection piece is quite important.
Speaker 1:And how is it that you carry yourself? What is the set of your facial expression? What is the set of your shoulders? How do you make eye contact? Do you just stare at the ground and sort of huddle into yourself. And this is kind of an interesting little exercise, impromptu exercise that we can do on the fly Curl yourself in, look down at the floor furtive glances up and then immediately back down and curl those shoulders over, right, so you're just sort of curling into yourself. How does that feel? Does it feel confident? Some people live there in that posture not just because of their phones. They live in that space because they're scared. I had an employee once who would look at the floor and there's that joke how can you tell the difference between an introverted engineer and an extroverted engineer? Well, the extroverted engineer will look at your shoes instead of his own shoes or her own shoes. But boom, I think I have like a sound effect that I could make, but I'll just stick with that. Now, alternatively, thrust your chin forward and your chest out like really exaggerated and just chest up, chin up, really getting in somebody's face. How does that feel? That posture Does it feel, I don't know, aggressive maybe, and then allow yourself to try to find the middle ground between those two. And what is your facial expression doing? And how long do you hold somebody's eyes? I was having a conversation with a friend of mine recently and yeah, the conversation came up. And yeah, the conversation came up.
Speaker 1:If a man in most societies at least, if a man looks at another man who he doesn't know and makes direct eye contact for more than 1-1000, 2-1000, then chances are that other man is going to start to wonder if something's up. And I think, again, there's this element of sort of animal ancestry, and if you watch two wild animals stare at each other, there will shortly be a contest of dominance. Who is running the show here? Now, if you know each other, then eye contact isn't threatening anymore. It's not something that inspires concern over the pecking order, but we have this animalistic side of us and so quite frequently when I've worked with individuals who have a sort of a history of run-ins and they're coming from the perspective of man, I must find all the assholes in the world. Chances are no.
Speaker 1:Actually there's something going on in the way that you project yourself. And for those coaches out there or people out there that are more into sort of there, that are more into sort of energy, which I don't know Science hasn't explained everything to me there might be something about energy in terms of how we're projecting ourselves, not just a physical manifestation or physical expression, but sort of energetically. Are you putting vibes out in the world of, yeah, don't fuck with me? Because, oddly enough, a lot of times when we put out a vibe of don't fuck with me, people come fuck with me and it's just like huh.
Speaker 1:It's weird how I attract this and I have coached people through all kinds of attraction issues, negative attraction, whether it's from a dating perspective or problems with team members, or problems with an employer, or you know, I always seem to find the company that's just terrible. You know, looks so good on the surface and then when I become a member of the company, employee of the company, then I start to just see all the dysfunction and all the infighting and et cetera, et cetera. I was like, okay, well, what about? You might be attracting that. Or, alternatively, how are you potentially unconsciously looking for it? Is there something inside of you that believes, yeah, that's what I deserve? And I had a client and she had a terrible track record with men, men who treated her very poorly and consciously, explicitly, she would argue to her last breath that she felt that she didn't deserve that and that she was certainly not looking for it.
Speaker 1:That would be absurd. But when we started to peel back the layers, we started to see some of the traumas that she had been subjected to by her mother and a couple of weird things that happened between her and her dad. We started to see, maybe, okay, maybe there's a part of you that doesn't feel that it deserves better. There's a part of you potentially that feels that, yeah, there's a part of you potentially that feels that, yeah, being with a partner that betrays me, being with a partner who mistreats me, being with a partner who I feel I cannot trust, I cannot let my guard down around, thereby affirming that I have to stay in this ever-present vigilance and anxiousness. There was something inside of her that was motivated in that direction and a lot of it in that particular instance came from deep down not feeling that she deserved better and, coupled with that, truly at a deep level, not loving herself, loving her own sense of self. So the human psyche does some pretty weird shit and it often runs itself in circles that are very counterproductive. But again, if we look at the data and we see a common history and the common denominator in that history is you, then it's beneficial to start to look at. Hmm, what am I putting out there? Or what am I unconsciously seeking?
Speaker 1:I had friends in the special operations community who would put their hand up to go on combat deployment after combat deployment, after combat deployment. If anybody got hurt or killed, they would first one's hands up, boom, I'll go. And there was one colleague I don't want to call him a friend because he definitely was not a friend but there was a colleague that I had in Fallujah, and Fallujah was terrible. Fallujah, fallujah cost us a lot of lives my unit, uh, and and other units as well and he had already done a seven month deployment Actually, it was longer than that, I think it was like a nine month deployment. And then he volunteered to stay with us because somebody had gotten hurt, and so then he went through that, the rest of that deployment, which he came to us with six months left. So he'd done nine, now six, so 15, right, I'm bad with math. And then he volunteered to stay even longer, and I don't know what the United States Marine Corps was thinking, but they approved it. And then he finally had heart complications due to stress.
Speaker 1:Who would have thought, you know, doing more than 15 months of straight combat in a very hot area of operations would lead to cardiovascular complications, like no shit really. But turns out his life back home was in the shitter. Wife wanted to divorce him, kids hated him, and I honestly believe he and I were not on close enough terms for us to delve into this kind of topic. But I honestly believe, in looking at what some of my friends have done, I think some of them wanted to die because they felt a lot of pain when they would get home. Things at home were really bad and they didn't know how to solve it. They didn't know how to fix it, and so they would just put their hand up to go back into combat and maybe something out there will take care of this for me by killing me, because I can't bring myself to kill myself. So again, we do weird things. Humans are very strange creatures and they have very odd ways of trying to deal with stressors, especially stressors. They feel they cannot escape, and that is a big part of coaching is to and therapy for that matter to give people options, to give people the sense that, oh shit, okay, yeah, I actually can find a way out of this box.
Speaker 1:Now one final topic, I guess, that I wanted to cover tonight is this idea of where it is that we are still fighting even though we have power, and that often it's a function of still feeling insecure. Now we have righteous fighting, I believe. Right, there's, there's, it's typically things that are condoned or approved maybe not openly approved, potentially, but at least condoned of and accepted by our society. Self-defense, for instance, you can kill another human being, which is normally one of the worst taboos in a culture killing one of your fellow society members but you can do it and generally have a sense of approval from the society if you are acting in self-defense, self-defense. And then you can also do it if your loved one is an eminent threat to their life.
Speaker 1:And then things start to get a little fuzzy once we get outside of sort of the family and where it is that good Samaritans who are attempting to fight for somebody that is being victimized on the street, I don't know, at least from a legal perspective in the United States is not a clear case you start to wonder about well, what is somebody's motive? And well, were they really acting in defense of that person? It becomes much fuzzier, but we still generally have a sense that if we are defending ourselves or somebody else, that typically the average person is like yeah, that seems pretty fair. If we're defending a child, for instance, then all of a sudden, oh yeah, yeah, we want to encourage that behavior Because collectively there's a recognition that our children are physically helpless and that they need to be protected when there is a physical threat present. So that is one style of fighting.
Speaker 1:When we are in this sort of righteous fighting, I don't know. I think generally that can be a good thing. It can be a good thing for us to recognize what are boundaries worth protecting and then protecting those boundaries. Are boundaries worth protecting and then protecting those boundaries? Going back to that physical posture exercise, I'm not trying to convince you and I don't think I would actually even condone people adopting this passive victim posture where they're sort of caved in and they can't make eye contact, where they're sort of caved in and they can't make eye contact. At the same time, I think that second posture where your chin is jetted forward and your chest is thrust out and it's kind of this like yeah, I'm going to come at you. I don't think you should be the aggressor either, but being able to calmly and decisively defend a boundary can be very powerful, and I think that distinguishes itself the righteous fighting from egoic fighting.
Speaker 1:Egoic fighting is typically a result of where we feel insecure and we're flaring up because something inside of us feels that it's unsafe. But just because something feels unsafe doesn't mean that we actually are unsafe. Oftentimes it's these long-entrenched, long-standing insecurities that cause us to pop out and to show up in this very reactive oh, do you want some Right? Whether it's questioning somebody's idea, whether it's well, one of my friends used to say mean what did he say? Mean mugging, mean mug. Someone like mug is in your facial expression. Well, that guy was mean mugging me, was he? Or was he just looking in your general direction? And you happen to be in the way? So you know, there's all kinds of ways that we flare up over things that we perceive to be threats that are not.
Speaker 1:And if you need some food for thought on this, just think about your reactions to your family, you know, your wife, your husband, your partner, whatever. Think about the ways in which you have become highly defensive over an innocent observation or some offhand comment or something they said that wasn't even meant for you and that you feel like you've got to die on that hill, especially if you are a person who has worked to achieve power. Now that power can be positional, can be the boss, and I have clients who they're the boss and they, unfortunately, when they're triggered and their lower self takes over instead of their higher self, they bully, to put it bluntly, because they have the authority, and then they rant and rave and yell physically yell, scream and cow people into submission because they're the boss and they determine whether someone continues to work there or not. Or alternatively, power can be I don't know. You spent years learning martial arts so that from a physical threat perspective, maybe you should be walking around with that quiet confidence. But if you're not, if you're jumping at every single provocation and I know, from your perspective it might seem justified.
Speaker 1:But again we have to look at what is the stuff that we're putting into the world? Or where do we keep putting ourselves into environments that are going to exacerbate a competitive or argumentative space? Maybe you're not quite as secure as you like to think you are. Maybe you're not quite as secure as you like to think you are, in which case it's not generally a matter of getting more title or power in a formal sense. It's generally not a function of getting more training so that you can be deadlier with your fists of fury. It has more to do with where you are on the inside, where you are in, truly accepting that, yeah, you're quite capable now. You're not the person who was victimized when you were younger, that you actually have strength and skills that you have attained over the years that were not present when you were little.
Speaker 1:And if you want to go on to sort of a real Jedi level to recognize that, no matter how much power you amass or no matter how deadly you become with your fists of fury and your concealed carry weapon and whatever else you might have as physical protection, there's always going to be somebody or something out there that's going to be more dangerous and that you will not match. And it is the willingness to walk in the world, the willingness to walk in a world that does legitimately have threats, but to walk in that world that does have threats, without the compulsion to carry armor, whether that's literal or figurative. That, my friends, if you can get to that place deep inside yourself, then it will never matter if something or someone physically hurts you or throws hurtful words your way or criticizes your ideas. You will be beyond it. I wish I could say that I am there. I have moments, and then I have a lot of moments where I'm not there, so it's a real journey for me as well.
Speaker 1:Anyway, I think I've done this one to death at this point and my brain is getting a little fuzzy, so I think I'm going to call it right here. If you're enjoying the show, I'd love it if you would, oh gosh, like subscribe, follow, leave a review. If you really want to go the extra mile, that would be amazing, or don't. It's totally up to you. But until next time, take care of each other.