EP113: Can Macho Men Meditate?

Interview with Jon Macaskill / Navy Seal, Advocate of Mindful Meditation

HOSTED BY PAUL SULLIVAN

When a doctor told Jon Macaskill, a decorated Navy Seal with decades of combat experience, that meditation could ease his mental health struggles, he laughed. He didn't want to hear anything about that "hippie sh@t" - he was an elite warrior who led other elite warriors into and out of combat. So why was what he was doing now not working for him, the doctor asked? That got Jon thinking and led him on a journey to become an advocate for mindfulness within the Seal Teams and for men and fathers more broadly. Learn how this "hippie sh@t" can help all men.

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Transcript

00;00;05;20 - 00;00;22;22
Paul Sullivan 
Welcome to the Company Dads podcast, where we explore the sweet, silly, strange and sublime aspects of being a dad in a world where men really go to parent aren't always accepted at work, among their friends, or in the community for what they're doing. I'm your host. Host of our podcast is just one of the many things we produce each week.

00;00;22;22 - 00;00;41;27
Paul Sullivan 
The Company of Death, with various features including the lead dad of the week. We have our monthly meetups. We have a new resource library for all fathers. The one stop shop to learn about all of this is our newsletter, The Dad. So sign up today at the Company of Backslash. The dad Today, I guess, is John Jon Macaskill, Naval Academy graduate.

00;00;41;27 - 00;01;02;22
Paul Sullivan 
John spent two decades as a Navy Seal. When he retired, he faced a question many Seals do upon leaving the teams. What next? He went to work for a nonprofit focused on betterment. But as he writes, he was struggling with the after effects of being a seal. He gave mindfulness and meditation a try, reluctantly at first, but now it's become a passion for him.

00;01;02;24 - 00;01;10;00
Paul Sullivan 
MacAskill is the father of three, six, five and two and lives in Colorado Springs. Welcome, Jon, to the company.

00;01;10;00 - 00;01;18;15
Jon Macaskill
That's great. Great to be here. I was actually just talking with my podcast co-host about you guys this weekend, so I'm excited to be here.

00;01;18;18 - 00;01;32;17
Paul Sullivan 
That's good, that's good. You know, I got to start off with the obvious, elephant in the room here. You live in Colorado Springs. Do you know that that's where the, Air Force Academy is? All the real estate around Annapolis gone. Did they? Did it.

00;01;32;20 - 00;01;35;23
Jon Macaskill
Keep. Keep your friends close and keep your enemies closer.

00;01;35;23 - 00;01;59;00
Paul Sullivan 
So, All right, does that verify that? You know, we've had, you know, some of your seal brethren on, in the past. You, Jimmy may, on the podcast, we featured, Clint Bruce, as a lead dad of the week years ago when I was still at the New York Times. One of your fellow seals, got me on to the basic Coronado.

00;01;59;03 - 00;02;21;07
Paul Sullivan 
Coronado Island. Perhaps we did not have full approval for me. You know, and I've learned over the years, I mean, there is a level of commitment to becoming a seal, to staying seal, to doing all the things that seals do. And at the core is this deep, deep bond among the men, to figure out spirit.

00;02;21;07 - 00;02;45;16
Paul Sullivan 
But it's not always something that translates outside of the teams. You know how was that for you? You know, 20 plus years in and it comes a moment like a professional athlete, you can only do this, you know, for, for so long. What was that moment like for you when you decided to leave the teams?

00;02;45;18 - 00;03;15;14
Jon Macaskill
Yeah. Well, I, I decided to leave the teams, actually, before I transitioned out of the military. I'll try to keep the long story pretty short, but my my now six year old daughter, when she was very young, she had a massive tumor on her liver. And she had to have, a pretty significant surgery done. And at that point, and obviously being that she's now six, you know, that the surgery was successful.

00;03;15;17 - 00;03;57;19
Jon Macaskill
But at that point, I realized that I wanted to shift my priorities. My priorities had been, you know, the military number one, two and three and somewhere down, down the line, family was there. And, that that was definitely a reason to shift my priorities. So I actually, at that point, filed some paperwork to transfer into what the Navy calls full time support FTEs, which are the folks who are working full time, but they're technically reservists, supporting the regular reserve force, and enabling them to mobilize should they be required.

00;03;57;22 - 00;04;27;25
Jon Macaskill
So I transitioned out of active duty seal, to reserve seal. Now working within the reserve community. So, I transitioned out of the Seal teams technically prior to leaving, but I was still a Seal. Still connected with the community, but not not deploying like the my my brothers were. And that was the the initial kind of shock emotionally to what it looks like to leave the brotherhood.

00;04;27;29 - 00;04;30;03
Jon Macaskill
I. What was it? Were you.

00;04;30;03 - 00;04;31;15
Paul Sullivan 
In California? Where were you when.

00;04;31;15 - 00;04;33;13
Jon Macaskill
You know, sorry, I was in Norfolk.

00;04;33;13 - 00;05;00;12
Paul Sullivan 
Virginia. You're in Norfolk, Virginia. That's okay. So when you're there and you transition, you know, into this new role, but you're still hanging out with your buddies, you're surely still going to the gym, you're still working out with them doing all this stuff, but then they leave. And as you know, listen to the podcast. And when we do, man, you know, you leave and it's not like you say, hey, here's where I'm going, and send me a letter, and I'll call, every Wednesday at 5:00.

00;05;00;14 - 00;05;10;13
Paul Sullivan 
You go, you go. And what was that like for you in the beginning? This turns out, well, you were, you know, these your brothers, and you were kind of in a, in a sense, you know, left behind.

00;05;10;15 - 00;05;36;28
Jon Macaskill
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I had prepared for it administratively, and I thought that I'd prepared for it mentally. But one piece that I had definitely not prepared for was the emotional toll that living had on me. And, Jimmy was actually in buds with me. Jimmy, and I go way back, I ended up rolling to the next class, but he and I initially started buds training together.

00;05;37;00 - 00;06;09;07
Jon Macaskill
That guy's a, He's a force to be reckoned with anyhow. So, yeah, he is. So, I struggled with the emotional toll. And what I mean by that is the special operator or the special operations community is like this bullet train compared to, you know, that the conventional force, they they do what they do very well, but they're, they're, slower moving train, if you will.

00;06;09;07 - 00;06;34;24
Jon Macaskill
And, and I please don't take that is not on maybe conventional forces. Please don't take that. You guys do what you do. Very well. We do what we do very well. And so if you look at it, the special operations community is like this bullet train that you're on and you're moving along super fast. And then when it's time to get off, you get off that train and you turn around and that train is gone because it's moving so fast.

00;06;34;26 - 00;06;56;13
Jon Macaskill
And there's a big question like, whoa, wasn't there supposed to be some time of, you know, celebrating who I was and what I did within that community? And there's really not a whole lot of time for that. That just keeps on moving. So there's kind of this sense of abandonment by the special operations community. Like, I felt abandoned.

00;06;56;16 - 00;07;17;24
Jon Macaskill
But at the same time, the flip side of that same coin is I knew that train was moving. I knew it was continuing to do what it needed to do. Yeah. And my brothers and sisters on that train were still putting themselves in harm's way. And here I was now going to sit behind a desk and, you know, go to Starbucks in the morning and order my coffee a certain way.

00;07;17;24 - 00;07;35;23
Jon Macaskill
And, and I felt that I had abandoned them. So I felt abandoned and I felt that I had abandoned them. And that was an emotional, toll that I wasn't ready for. And, it took me some time to, to work through the process. So that's, that's what that did to me.

00;07;35;26 - 00;07;53;04
Paul Sullivan 
You know, that story of yours reminds me of an old friend of mine, Admiral Straw. He. He ran, defense logistics. And when he was done, you know, top admiral in the Navy when he was done, he went and got a job, at Estee Lauder and, you know, increased his salary 15 times and was running logistics.

00;07;53;04 - 00;08;21;22
Paul Sullivan 
And he was like, I hadn't even know this world existed, but there was a sort of glide path for an algorithm like that. Who had done logistics in the Navy, then done logistics for all the armed services to go out Seals. It's getting better now, but there isn't. You know, what is the typical glide path that I mean, while you are all elite, what you do is so unique in a lot of ways, doesn't necessarily apply to the civilian world.

00;08;21;22 - 00;08;36;25
Paul Sullivan 
I mean, when Jimmy was on Jimmy, Jimmy's been divorced twice, you know, and he's now really kind of reconnecting with his kids. It's there's so much strain and there's so much devotion to seals, you know, what is that? You know, glide path to help you guys go into something else or what was it like at least in, in, you know.

00;08;36;27 - 00;08;38;06
Paul Sullivan 
Yeah. For instance.

00;08;38;08 - 00;08;58;04
Jon Macaskill
Yeah, we're definitely getting better. And I, I joke about this all the time. Similar. My, my wife was Navy and she was an orthopedic physician assistant in the Navy. And guess what she does now outside of the Navy, she's an orthopedic surgeon. But that transition for her looked completely different than my transition looked.

00;08;58;06 - 00;09;11;15
Paul Sullivan 
I mean, John, let's be honest, like you, you've got three young kids. It's probably best if you don't jump out of a helicopter to deliver them to daycare every day. I think that might scare. It'd be kind of fun at first, but all like the dust that that throws that, that wouldn't be so good for the other kid.

00;09;11;17 - 00;09;40;09
Jon Macaskill
Right? Yeah. Now the the glide path. I don't know if you can define a specific glide path for what that looks like, but thankfully, the special operations community is getting much better at helping special operators and those within the special operations community in figuring out what their own individual glide paths look like. Like there's organized organizations like the Honor Foundation that, is is actually run by one of my old bosses.

00;09;40;12 - 00;10;03;08
Jon Macaskill
That helps to identify. Sure, the administrative pieces of the transition. Hey, what your resumé should look like, how to interview, but also figuring out what your why is because that's that's a piece that's kind of given to you in the military. Hey, you serve the country and the the greater good of the country in the military. And then you get out and you're like, well, what do I do now?

00;10;03;08 - 00;10;35;03
Jon Macaskill
Right? Like you mentioned in the very beginning. Well, the the Honor Foundation helps with that. There's the Commit Foundation. There's, there's other, other foundations that are out there that are helping with that transition. The mental side, the the emotional side, the administrative side. So it's it's definitely getting better. And, you know, for for those of you who are listening to the show later and you know, the some seals, you may you may say, well, you're probably going to go and write a book and you're probably going to go and be a public speaker.

00;10;35;03 - 00;11;00;18
Jon Macaskill
And you wouldn't be wrong. I have my book sitting right here is a short little book, Unleashing Inner Strength. That's that's my short book. And, and I do do public speaking, but that's not for everyone. As you know, all the jokes that are out there, there's plenty of seals who go into corporate America. There's plenty of seals who go into the nonprofit space, like you mentioned before, there's there's plenty of seals or special operators as a whole doing other jobs that are out there.

00;11;00;18 - 00;11;24;14
Jon Macaskill
But if you really dissect it, what I think most of us have in common is we go from serving as a special operator, whether that's a seal, whether it's a Green Beret, whether it's, an Air Force PGA, whatever the case is, we go serving, go from serving, and we look to serve in a different capacity, whatever that may look like.

00;11;24;14 - 00;11;36;03
Jon Macaskill
And I would say that the preponderance of us are continuing to serve outside of uniform. So that's the glide path is figuring out how you can continue to serve after you hang up that uniform.

00;11;36;06 - 00;11;49;20
Paul Sullivan 
Yeah. How are you trying to figure out the world before you discovered mindfulness and meditation? What did that look like back then and what position? Where you and where you said, okay, I'm open to this. I want to try this.

00;11;49;22 - 00;12;20;07
Jon Macaskill
Yeah. It was, around 2015, middle of 2015. I was struggling from something that had happened, a decade earlier. Or at least that that was a portion of what had gotten me onto, some serious depression, anxiety, survivor's guilt, moral injury. And, I was addressing it. I tried, with, honestly, a false approach to faith.

00;12;20;10 - 00;12;49;10
Jon Macaskill
I was married previously, and I tried to, go into, a faith because I thought it would fix the marriage. I thought it would fix me. And and it didn't do either. Then I tried to address it with prescription medication, and I tried to address it with alcohol and they numbed me. They numbed me to, the pain.

00;12;49;10 - 00;13;07;18
Jon Macaskill
But it also numbed any sense of joy or any sense of drive or any sense of fulfillment. And I got to a very dark spot in my life. And in 2015, I went and sought, some additional counseling. And this one counselor sat across the table from me and he says, I want you to try mindfulness and meditation.

00;13;07;18 - 00;13;27;24
Jon Macaskill
He slides this pamphlet over that, you know, talks about what that is. And, and I've told this story a few times, and this is what I talk about. So this part sounds rehearsed. But, I laughed in his face, and, I was like, hey, man, I didn't come here to hear about this hippie dippy woo woo meditation stuff.

00;13;27;24 - 00;13;54;02
Jon Macaskill
I'm. I'm looking for medication. Right. I see, not meditation with a t. And so he says, you know what? If I had something that I could give to you that would improve your performance mentally and physically, personally and professionally and as a special operator. And I'm sure Jamie would attest to the same, we're always looking for something that's going to give us an edge, give us an edge over the enemy on the battlefield, or give us an edge over our body right next to us.

00;13;54;02 - 00;14;13;10
Jon Macaskill
We're always looking for an edge. And so now he's sold this meditation to me as this performance harassment. So the next day I sit down as a Type-A personality and I think to myself, I'm not. I'm going to crush this meditation. And I download it an hour long meditation.

00;14;13;10 - 00;14;17;10
Paul Sullivan 
I'm going to be the most meditating, meditating guy in America right now.

00;14;17;10 - 00;14;38;07
Jon Macaskill
I'm going to meditate so hard and, yeah, the, the, that meditation lasted about, I don't know, 25 seconds. And my mind was on everything except that meditation. And I was frustrated. And I get, get up and I go to the doc the next week and I'm like, hey, man, that meditation stuff is not for me after all.

00;14;38;09 - 00;14;52;09
Jon Macaskill
You know what else you got? And he asked me what I, what I did, and I tell him what I just told you. Yeah. He said, that's like going into the gym and getting under 350 pounds on the bench press without ever having lifted weights before or lining up at the starting line of a marathon without ever having run a step before.

00;14;52;09 - 00;15;06;26
Jon Macaskill
You can't do that. You got to work your way up. Yeah. And so he introduced me to this practice called box breathing, which is just breathing in for a count of four, holding for a kind of for breathing out for a kind of four, and holding four, kind of four and doing that 4 or 5 times. And I was like, doc, we we've done that in the Seal teams.

00;15;06;26 - 00;15;25;24
Jon Macaskill
We do that on the shooting range to control our heart rate, lower our heart rate, lower our respiratory rate so that we can shoot better. But we don't call it meditation. We don't call it breath work. We don't call it box breathing. And so I started to implement just that simple exercise of box breathing into my life whenever I would get anxious.

00;15;25;24 - 00;15;42;20
Jon Macaskill
And then I started to see that it had an effect, a positive effect on me. It had a positive effect on the way that I saw the world and the way that I responded. Instead of reacting, I would respond, give me a second to change that reaction into a response. And then I started to think, you know what?

00;15;42;20 - 00;16;03;02
Jon Macaskill
If this works, maybe I should give full blown meditation a a chance again. And I started, you know, with a ten minute meditation and then, work my way up to 15 and so on. And I started to see changes in myself. But then I thought maybe it was just the placebo effect. And then I had a guy come up to me at work and he put his arm around me.

00;16;03;02 - 00;16;15;07
Jon Macaskill
He's like, hey, John, I gotta talk to you. And he pulls me aside. He's like, what are you taking? As in like, what? Medication? Yeah. I'm like, well, here's my chance. I either tell him that.

00;16;15;07 - 00;16;16;25
Paul Sullivan 
I'm to fess up or National.

00;16;17;01 - 00;16;32;23
Jon Macaskill
Or fess up. Yeah, fess up that I'm doing this woowoo meditation stuff, and I, I took that chance and I told him, and what I expected was this response where his eyes were going to glaze over and he's going to turn around and walk away and never talk to me again. But the exact opposite happened. He actually leaned in.

00;16;32;23 - 00;16;52;25
Jon Macaskill
He was like, what? Really? Tell me. Tell me more about that. And so I told him exactly what I've told you thus far. And and he started meditating and I started to see changes in him. And so meditation not only changed my life and quite literally saved my life for the better, but I've seen it change other people's lives.

00;16;52;28 - 00;17;14;27
Jon Macaskill
And so now I view it as a as a duty and an obligation to pay it forward with whoever will listen to to what it is I have to say about mindfulness and meditation. And because my background is somewhat different than most, folks who are teaching mindfulness and meditation, it opens some people's minds and hearts that normally wouldn't be open to this stuff.

00;17;14;27 - 00;17;22;25
Jon Macaskill
So that's, that's why I do what I do as, you know, why I'm a practitioner and why I'm a teacher of of this stuff.

00;17;22;28 - 00;17;40;10
Paul Sullivan 
Yeah. I was just going to say that because, you know, like your your initial perception was it was some hippie dude coming up to you with his tools, and let's all meditate. But you were like, no, man. I was a Navy Seal. I was in the teams for this long. I done some bad shit. But, you know, one of the things it does is it breaks a stigma.

00;17;40;10 - 00;18;04;03
Paul Sullivan 
And my background before is, as a business journalist, we tried really hard. As I said before, do you, you know, off guard to break that stigma between masculine and money? You're in we're in this mental health crisis. You're able to go forth and break that stigma between, you know, masculinity and, you know, mental health care. When you, you know, are able to connect with men, connect with fathers around this, what are some of the things this is?

00;18;04;04 - 00;18;17;25
Paul Sullivan 
What are the breakthrough moments that you have? What are the things that really allow you to to get those guys to see the value of mindfulness, the value of meditation and how it can make them a better version of themselves for the personally, but also for the people who love them.

00;18;17;27 - 00;18;42;02
Jon Macaskill
Sure. One of the one of the moments that I definitely saw it in me was I, I started practicing, I started to see the benefits. And just like we do with the gym, many of us will get these benefits from the gym. And after a while we drop off, kind of fall off the bandwagon like I had fallen off the bandwagon with mindfulness and meditation again.

00;18;42;02 - 00;19;10;12
Jon Macaskill
Coming back to my my now oldest daughter when she was first born and I, you know, I was like, hey, I've got this mindfulness meditation stuff down. I'm just going to put it aside for a little while because, you know, I'm a brand new dad. First time dad didn't have a whole lot of time, did not have a whole lot of energy and kind of reprioritize things on meditation, quite honestly, had fallen off so I hate to admit this piece, but it's it's relevant to your audience.

00;19;10;14 - 00;19;29;19
Jon Macaskill
So, you know, when it was my turn to feed this little girl this little miracle in the middle of the night, I actually got upset. I was like, what is this three year old or sorry, three week old little girl? Why is she crying in the middle of the night? She's disturbing my beauty sleep. And, you know, it'd be much my turn.

00;19;29;20 - 00;19;50;16
Jon Macaskill
I would go through and I'd warm the milk in the bottle warmer and go through and feed her, put the bottle in her mouth and have it right there in my arms again. This beautiful little miracle. And what am I thinking about? Not her. I'm thinking about work. I'm thinking about what I had screwed up yesterday, or what I had on the plate for tomorrow, or whatever the case was.

00;19;50;18 - 00;20;13;19
Jon Macaskill
And then she would finish the bottle. I'd put her back in her crib, and now I've spun myself up. Yeah, thinking about what I screwed up or what's on the plate tomorrow. And I would go back to my bed and I'd be wide awake, and I would I would actually almost resent this beautiful little girl for waking me up and spinning me up in the middle of the night again, interrupting sleep.

00;20;13;21 - 00;20;40;21
Jon Macaskill
So I was like, you know what? I have a tool for this. I've used it before. Let me get back into mindfulness and meditation. I started getting back into it and I noticed that when I would get woken up to when it was my turn to feed her, I would actually look forward to that time. And I would go through and I'd warm up the bottle and in the bottle warmer and I'm I'm with her, you know, holding her in the kitchen.

00;20;40;21 - 00;21;00;12
Jon Macaskill
And then I'd go back to her room and I'd put the bottle in her mouth and she'd reach up with her little fingers and grab my thumbs, and she would make all the little noises that, you know, a one month old or two month old makes. And I appreciate that time with her. And I appreciated the fact that I had this beautiful little miracle in my arms.

00;21;00;14 - 00;21;18;07
Jon Macaskill
And that's what I thought about. I was there, present in the moment. Then I would take her. She would fall asleep in my arms because she would probably feel the energy that I had. Like, now I'm more calm. She would fall asleep in my arms and I would put her down in the crib and I'd go back to my bed.

00;21;18;08 - 00;21;23;28
Jon Macaskill
Now, because I haven't spun myself up into this frenzy, I'd be able to go back to sleep.

00;21;24;00 - 00;21;33;05
Paul Sullivan 
And then the next morning you'd wake up and your wife would say, you're even more beautiful than you were the night before because you got all your beauty sleep is. That's the punchline here?

00;21;33;08 - 00;22;01;13
Jon Macaskill
Indeed. You got it. No, but but it would. I would feel better. And I would feel, you know, more alert at work, because now I'm getting my sleep. But I'm also meditating again. But that translates, you know, that that anecdote translates to where I am now as a father. To two weeks ago, two weekends ago, I did a 56 hour digital fast, and I was just in the moment with my kids.

00;22;01;13 - 00;22;23;16
Jon Macaskill
I didn't have my phone on me. I didn't have my computer in front of me. I was there in the moment. And that you feel good about because you're present with your kids. But they also feel good about it because they sense your presence. If you're not present mentally or emotionally with your kids, they know that. Yeah, they know that.

00;22;23;18 - 00;22;47;04
Jon Macaskill
And that either can degrade your relationship with them or if you are present mentally and emotionally with them, it can build your relationship with them. So I think as a, as a father, mindfulness meditation is critically important to, to being the father you need to be, to being the husband that you need to be, spouse that you need to be.

00;22;47;06 - 00;22;49;16
Jon Macaskill
Absolutely. It's critical.

00;22;49;18 - 00;23;10;23
Paul Sullivan 
And I love that. So one of the things we do every week is we have Screen Free Sunday and that's nice. You know, it started off to get our our daughters off of their phones. But my wife and I because, you know, when your kids get older, you'll see this firsthand. They become hypocrisy seeking missiles. And so like if you tell them to do something and you do the opposite, they pointed out to you, and then you feel like crap.

00;23;10;23 - 00;23;27;01
Paul Sullivan 
And so we we started to do pretty much, you know, the same thing. And, you know, what do we feel all the time with? Oh, we go for walks, we play board games in the summer. We do. You know, when it's warmer, we do nicer things. But in the winter you kind of you figure it out and sometimes they're board the boards.

00;23;27;01 - 00;23;27;22
Paul Sullivan 
Okay.

00;23;27;25 - 00;23;43;11
Jon Macaskill
Board is okay. I literally said that this very morning. Sorry to interrupt you, but yeah, you know, I'm driving my my six year old, my five year old to, school into pre-K, and I drive a minivan. And I'm very proud to say that I drive a minivan and,

00;23;43;14 - 00;23;46;17
Paul Sullivan 
We're going to edit that part out.

00;23;46;19 - 00;24;07;19
Jon Macaskill
I also drive a, GMC 2584, which is, that's my my truck. But hey, my, my, it's shuttling vehicle is a minivan, and it has a DVD player in it. Yeah. You know, it's it's like 20 minutes from. I live on a farm outside of Colorado Springs, and I drive them into school and they're like, hey, can we watch a movie?

00;24;07;19 - 00;24;13;11
Jon Macaskill
I'm like, no, you can't. We're just going to be in the moment. And they're like, But I'm bored.

00;24;13;11 - 00;24;14;01
Paul Sullivan 
I'm like.

00;24;14;03 - 00;24;26;02
Jon Macaskill
It's okay to be bored. And after a little while then my daughter and my son start talking, and then they started playing. I spy on the drive. I'm like, there you go. See? Yeah. You don't have to have a screen on all the time.

00;24;26;04 - 00;24;40;25
Paul Sullivan 
Now they figure it out. They fill the time. Yeah, yeah. When you, you know, men talking mindfulness, it says it all, you know, right there. But when you're really working to, to connect with fathers, to connect with other men, and you know, if they're coming to you, they need you, you know, they're they're, you know, you're not recruiting them.

00;24;40;25 - 00;24;53;07
Paul Sullivan 
There's no draft. They're coming to you because they want to be there. What is the the most common level or layer of initial resist that you face?

00;24;53;10 - 00;25;24;03
Jon Macaskill
Yeah. That, I mean, it's it's the stigma that surrounds the word mindfulness. Mindfulness is this is just perceived as this hippie dippy woowoo stuff that is very mystic and, doesn't have any science or data behind it. And, and there seems at least among men, there seems to be this perception that it's weak and and it's not at all.

00;25;24;05 - 00;25;53;05
Jon Macaskill
It takes a lot of time and dedication and discipline to sit down and practice some level of mindfulness, whether that's, you know, a meditation, a formal meditation or a mindful meal or even a mindful conversation like we're having right now. We're in the moment. I'm not on my phone or texting or on my computer. Aside, opening up all the different windows behind our conversation, I've got you on my screen and you only and that's that's all I'm focused on.

00;25;53;07 - 00;26;32;29
Jon Macaskill
That's a that's a mindfulness practice in and of itself. And that takes discipline and strength to practice. And as you practice, you develop more discipline and more strength. And there is data and science and physiology behind it. It's not just this mysticism that that somebody is talking about to you. It is actually there's something to it. And, and I personally I needed to understand that too, which is one of the reasons I got more into mindfulness and meditation is when I started to dig into the science behind it, and I understood what was happening.

00;26;33;02 - 00;26;52;03
Jon Macaskill
Then I started to think, oh, yeah, it's just like the gym. It's it's like we're using a muscle and strengthening a muscle. And that's the focus muscle. And as you start to strengthen that focus muscle per se, then you start to be more present in the in the moment, throughout your day, throughout your life and with the people that you love the most.

00;26;52;05 - 00;27;15;01
Paul Sullivan 
You know, this is going to sound like a joke, but it's not meant to be. But I'm listening to this and I think if you'd rebranded this something like, Navy Seal, elite Mental toughness training, you'd have a line out the door and you could do the same stuff that you're doing with mindfulness. It's almost like it has the sort of branding problem more than any other run.

00;27;15;03 - 00;27;24;20
Jon Macaskill
The the Navy at their boot camp, they do mindfulness training. They've started doing it. And it's not called mindfulness. It's called warrior toughness.

00;27;24;24 - 00;27;28;07
Paul Sullivan 
It's a that's a that's a way better brand for men. Yeah.

00;27;28;10 - 00;27;32;10
Jon Macaskill
Oh 100%. And what's funny, is it was.

00;27;32;12 - 00;27;37;23
Paul Sullivan 
Can I, can I do that for my lazy boy as a dad? Can I like the lazy boy back? And do you know warrior toughness?

00;27;37;23 - 00;28;00;07
Jon Macaskill
Warrior toughness? Yeah. It was it was partially created by a friend of mine, a teammate of mine who I'm actually having a conversation with later today. Steve Drumm. He's a retired master Chief Seal. And his joke is that he teamed up with a psychologist and, and a Navy chaplain. And a joke is what happens when a Navy Seal, a psychologist and a chaplain walk into a bar.

00;28;00;09 - 00;28;01;19
Jon Macaskill
The warrior toughness program.

00;28;01;19 - 00;28;25;24
Paul Sullivan 
It's a pretty good joke. John McCaskill, thank you for being my guest today on the Company Dads podcast. One final question for you. Whenever we can, we like to leave, listeners with, you know, a couple actionable, nugget, you know, for the dads, for the fathers, for the men who are listening to this. And I say, okay, you know, this, maybe for me, maybe not.

00;28;25;24 - 00;28;37;25
Paul Sullivan 
If you could tell them, you know, one, two, three things that might put them over the top and convince them that, you know, giving mindfulness as a man is, is a thing that they should try. What were those one, 2 or 3 things be?

00;28;37;28 - 00;29;17;23
Jon Macaskill
Yeah, I think I'll tell them one. And that one thing is you are not alone in your struggle. Like every parent feels that they are the only parent who is having struggle x, Y, or z and they start to beat themselves up and start to tell themselves these negative narratives, negative stories, and it's just a downward spiral. While mindfulness and meditation can be very helpful in putting a stop to those negative stories that we tell ourselves, and realizing that you are a human being and you are doing the best that you can and these struggles that you're in, you're not alone.

00;29;17;23 - 00;29;35;17
Jon Macaskill
You look to the left and right, and you see fathers and mothers who are also struggling. And as you start to practice mindfulness meditation, I feel that it actually bonds us together and allows us to see ourselves in a different light. So that's, that's one my one little nugget for you.

00;29;35;19 - 00;29;39;14
Paul Sullivan 
Perfect way to end. Thank you again, John, for being my guest today in the Company Dads podcast.

00;29;39;14 - 00;29;41;11
Jon Macaskill
Thank you Paul.

00;29;41;13 - 00;30;06;22
Paul Sullivan 
Thank you for listening to the Company Dad podcast. I also want to thank the people who make this podcast and everything else that we do. The company dads possible hell, they're mirror who is our audio producer Lindsay Decker handles all of our social media. Terry Brennan, who's helping us with the newsletter and audience acquisition, Emily Servin, who is our web maestro, and of course, Evan Roosevelt, who is working side by side with me.

00;30;06;22 - 00;30;24;11
Paul Sullivan 
And many of the things that we do here at the Company of Dads. It's a great team. And we're we're just trying to bring you the best in fatherhood. Remember, the one stop shop for everything is our newsletter, the dad. Sign up at the Company of dads.com backslash. The dad. Thank you again for listening.