Coming Home Well
EP:209 From Service to Success: Former Air Force Major CEO Bob Taylor
Haunted by the specter of war long after his plane touched down, Bob Taylor, a Desert Storm veteran and former B-52 navigator, bravely opens up about his personal battle with PTSD, a struggle many of our valiant servicemembers confront in silence. As Bob recounts the haunting nightmares and the darkness of depression and the profound courage it took to reach out for help.
In our candid dialogue, Bob reveals how embracing gratitude and self-forgiveness became his weapons against the internal torment. Bob's journey, as penned in his compelling book "From Service to Success," becomes a guide map, encouraging veterans to reclaim their lives and rediscover a sense of purpose beyond the battlefield.
Visit patriotpromise.org to learn more
Tune into our CHW Streaming Radio and the full lineup at cominghomewell.com
Download on Apple Play and Google Play
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Thank you for listening! Be sure to SHARE, LIKE and leave us a REVIEW!
Haunted by the specter of war long after his plane touched down, Bob Taylor, a Desert Storm veteran and former B-52 navigator, bravely opens up about his personal battle with PTSD, a struggle many of our valiant servicemembers confront in silence. As Bob recounts the haunting nightmares and the darkness of depression and the profound courage it took to reach out for help.
In our candid dialogue, Bob reveals how embracing gratitude and self-forgiveness became his weapons against the internal torment. Bob's journey, as penned in his compelling book "From Service to Success," becomes a guide map, encouraging veterans to reclaim their lives and rediscover a sense of purpose beyond the battlefield.
Visit patriotpromise.org to learn more
Tune into our CHW Streaming Radio and the full lineup at cominghomewell.com
Download on Apple Play and Google Play
Online-Therapy.com ~ Life Changing Therapy Click here for a 20% discount on your first month.
Thank you for listening! Be sure to SHARE, LIKE and leave us a REVIEW!
Welcome to the Coming Home Well podcast, the show that educates, supports and advocates for the veteran community. Your host, Dr Tyler Pirron, US Army retired, will bring you exciting conversations with amazing guests about resources, research and military history, all geared to helping our warriors to come home well. Here's your host, Dr Tyler Pirron.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to Coming Home. Well, I'm your host, tyler Pirron, and today we are going to have someone who does a lot of things for a lot of veterans. His name's Bob Taylor and he flew in B-52s. He was a navigator, radar operator all the things that make the B-52 such a great thing. He served in Desert Storm and then, after he left service, he said you know, I got some things I need to work out and he wrote a book and he's done some pretty cool things with the VA. He's done some pretty cool things with the other treatment things that are out there. And so, rather than me tell the story, because I don't know it nearly as well as Bob, welcome to the show, bob. Thank you so much for joining us on Coming Home Well, well thank you, tyler.
Speaker 3:It's really good to be here and I appreciate the opportunity.
Speaker 2:No, I really appreciate you coming on because you have this book and I see it, it's up behind you. It's From Service to Success New Mission, new Purpose and a New Journey to a Great Life. And I love this title because I often talk about finding your purpose and finding your tribe. When you get out of service, you know, especially if you've come in early. Your whole life has been the military, even if you're 25 or 26 or 30, and all of a sudden you're Don't have this group of friends around anymore and what the heck am I doing? What's the mission? And so you sort of address it. So how did you end up writing the book? Let's go into who is Bob Taylor and why the heck would you write a book like that?
Speaker 3:Sure. So I served active duty for almost six years and I flew in 11 combat missions and, to be honest with you, I would have thought I'd got through it pretty easily. But six months after I arrived back, I started having these nightmares, and about six months' worth of them, and then, all of a sudden, they just stopped. Just as mysteriously as they started. They just stopped, and so I thought, well, maybe I just made it through, but I did. Retrospectively, I realized that I suffered some depression and irritability and some other what I now know are symptoms of PTSD. And about 16 years later a whole 16 years later the nightmares came back, with what I say was a vengeance, and so much so that I was afraid to go to sleep.
Speaker 2:That sounds terrifying.
Speaker 3:They actually were pretty terrifying. So I started to drink a little bit to see if I could just numb myself to go to sleep, and then, when one didn't work, a couple more and a couple more, and I eventually realized that isn't going to work, and I finally came to the conclusion that I needed to get some help. I couldn't do it on my own. I wasn't the best version myself, as a father, as a husband, as a colleague. It just wasn't going well and I got myself behind the eight ball. So I went through the rigmarole to get into the VA and I went through things like a sleep study that showed that my legs were jerking at night when I slept about 270 times an hour. So, no matter what I did, I was not getting restful sleep, and so the human body is not designed not to sleep.
Speaker 2:No, it causes all sorts of problems.
Speaker 3:It really does, and it just builds. These problems just build on themselves, and so I was. I was fortunate in that I think I had one of the best psychologists that I've ever met, and I started to get help, and things started to improve over time, and then I realized, you know what, maybe I'm not alone, maybe I'm not the only one that has had this experience, and so I started doing a lot of research and I ended up spending about six years researching and writing this book, as and you know you brought up when, when we leave, we need to find a new mission and new purpose and a new tribe, and we need to do things, as veterans, that take care of ourselves and help us to become the best version of who we are.
Speaker 2:And so I think that's very true. And so you had these symptoms initially, got out of the service. They kind of went away and lay dormant for 1516 years. That's a long time. But this is a very common story that I've heard from people from every generation the Vietnam veterans from the World War, two folks, korean War I mean every veteran era has had these where you know, like I just had to stuff it down deep inside and I had to suppress it to get all the things I need to do in life, but eventually it comes back because you never really fixed the core problem. So you recognize there's a core problem. Then what you talk to a psychologist in a boom.
Speaker 3:What you said is pretty much what we do. When, when I described the first combat mission, I went on, a lot of things did not go the way that we planned. We lost an engine. The pilots had to deal with that. We lost our navigational system. We had to reboot that. Over the Indian Ocean, we had nine and a half hours of flight just to get to our target and when we got there it didn't go just as planned. 90 seconds before we struck the target, the enemy started shooting at us.
Speaker 2:Like you remember, the enemy gets a vote. They do.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they weren't real pleased that we were coming after them, and so the way I look at it is we took all those experiences at the time and we just kind of put them in a package and set them up on a shelf and just left them there so that we could come back in a couple of days and do another mission. We just kind of put this stuff onto these shelves, thinking, okay, I can just move on. Well, our subconscious minds kind of keep track of all those little packages that we put on the shelf and later on, at a time not of our choosing, our subconscious minds decide oh, I'm gonna open this package and we're gonna deal with it. And so a lot of the things that we deal with are not because of our choosing. They're not at a time and a place, but one way or another our minds are gonna find a way to deal with it. And we're not prepared as service members on how to properly open those packages, how to deal with them.
Speaker 3:And that's the biggest fallacy. I keep telling veterans look, very little that we do in the military is as an individual. Almost everything we do is as part of a team. I was on a six member B-52 crew. We went everywhere together as a crew, we practiced for the mission, we studied for the mission, we did everything together as a team. And then suddenly, when we get out of the military, all these veterans think that they have to solve their problems on their own and isolate themselves. And it's the exact opposite of what we need to do. We are part of a team, whether we're in the military or we are out of the military, and we have to get to the point where we're comfortable saying I'm not okay and I need help.
Speaker 2:That's the biggest thing is asking for help and a lot of people like, oh, that's a sign of weakness. It's a sign of massive strength to say, hey, I need some help with this. We wouldn't think twice about trying to lift up some heavy piece of military equipment or a bomb or some other thing that's really heavy and say, hey, can you give me a hand with that? Oh, of course not. But then when we talk about, you know, this depression or PTSD or something isn't quite right, and we don't have to even put a label on it saying, hey, something isn't right, I need some help, all of a sudden people are like, oh, I'm not gonna do that. But I think people are becoming a little bit more amenable to that. I know in the younger folks they definitely are. But a certain age, probably in the last 20, 25 years of service, that wasn't the case at all, and prior to that, not at all period ever.
Speaker 3:My wife and I were on a vacation over in Europe and I met someone that was in the Vietnam War and suffered from depression for 40 years and had the chance to read my book. And we just started a conversation back and forth, a dialogue about what his experiences were. And he started to ask me, based on the book, about different strategies and things like that and it just made me feel so confident in the message that I'm giving out, the whole reason that I wrote the book. You know I wake up in the morning and I can tell you right now in my top 10 list there is not a line item that says talk about my own mental health challenges.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that's not on anybody's.
Speaker 3:No, but I do it, and I do it gladly because it leads to other people sharing their stories with me and opens up a dialogue where people start to talk about. You know, I experienced this. I had trouble with alcohol, I had trouble with nightmares, I had trouble keeping a job, I had trouble with my relationships. The thing I started to realize, in both my research and now as I talk to veterans, is, for everyone that thinks they're alone, there are 22 million veterans in the US. About about half of those struggle, whether it's with a job, relationships, ptsd. It's some kind of struggle.
Speaker 3:And when you realize it, you're not alone. You're part of 11 million people that are going through life trying to figure out a path through these struggles so that they can come out on the other side. And the more we try and do it as an individual, the thing I say is when we try and soldier through the people that suffer for that effort, for our kind of lackluster effort, even though we're doing our best to soldier through, the people that suffer are friends and family. The people that care about us most are just at a loss of how to help us and we don't invite them in. And so, as much as we think we're doing everyone a favor by trying to do it on our own, we're actually because we don't reach out. We then become the problem. We become more of a burden to those around us because we're just not involving them. We're not. We don't realize that they're the ones that are put on earth to help us, our friends and our family.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they wanna be there, they wanna help, and you're giving them the stiff arm and like I got this. But in reality all you're doing is giving them the stiff arm and nobody likes to be pushed away, and that's a fact. But it's also a big challenge for folks to go get help and to sort of get on that healing path. And you mentioned something really interesting which I think is really core to this is about self forgiveness and then also healthy living habits, cause those two things go hand in hand. Obviously, we see a lot of self medication with alcohol and drugs, and I've even seen it with exercise, where people were just so fanatical in the gym and we're not even gonna talk about crossfitters, cause you know that's a whole different breed but a joke but these healthy habits often go hand in hand with sort of self forgiveness and getting yourself back on the right path, as opposed to getting blotto every night and trying to sleep.
Speaker 3:So a friend of mine who often has given me good advice says Bob, it's never just one thing, it's about 10 things. And it's true, it's never just one thing. It's not just get a good night's sleep, even though that's a really big one, it's not just stop drinking, it's a whole. They call it holistic because it's a whole process. It's joining, rejoining a tribe, finding a new passion, getting a good night's sleep, eating right, establishing a good gratitude mindset, a grateful mind. If you're practicing gratitude, it's impossible for two ideas to simultaneously occupy your mind One of gratitude or one of wallowing and misery those are the things that you need to do or one of wallowing and misery. Those two cannot coexist at the same time. So if you practice gratitude, you kind of push out the negative aspects and it opens your mind up to much more positive things. And, like you said, the effort of self forgiveness is a really critical thing, because as veterans we're harder on ourselves than anyone else could be.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 3:And people blame themselves. Well, if I would have been on that mission, John wouldn't have died, or I should have been there. I could have been there for that person. All of those things that the person that sacrificed their life. The last thing that they would want is for the veterans around them to suffer because of that sacrifice. And so we need to kind of put some of that stuff in perspective, not hold ourselves accountable, forgive ourselves and realize our best days were not a period when we were in the military, but our best days are in front of us and when we can start to put that in perspective, we have a wonderful life ahead of us.
Speaker 2:That's a really important message and I think that that really resonates with a lot of folks, because it is easy to wallow in the oh woe is me. Life sucks, I don't know what I'm doing, this isn't working out, I'm not where I want to be with a career, my significant other is leaving or whatever, because you've been pushing them away. There's all these attendant problems and it's just like the opposite corollary of people make their own luck. Well, yes, but people also make their own problems, sometimes with that path of problems that you were talking about and it's not on purpose.
Speaker 3:It's not like veterans sit around how can I be miserable or how can I make things worse or how can I make bad decisions. It's not like that, it's just we're not. You know, I think I was an incredibly good navigator and radar navigator. I think I was very good at what I did. I was trained for years to do what I did and that's what I was trained to do. I wasn't trained as a psychologist. I wasn't trained as a psychiatrist.
Speaker 3:So I think we have to, kind of like that commercial says stay in your lane, bro. We have to decide what we're good at do those things. But then when we need help from someone, that is, if we need our car repaired, some of us might be talented and skilled at doing it, but very few people pull their cars in and tear them apart and put them back together again anymore, Because we're not trained to do that. If we have a problem that we're not normally trained to do, it should be okay to say you know what? I need some help, and I think people underestimate the amount of help and just the basic skills that we can practice. That will improve our mindsets.
Speaker 2:Now to be clear not one book and not one thing will necessarily solve everything, but if you're on the right path of hey, I want to try what works for me, because everybody's an individual and what works for me may not work for you and vice versa, or down the street, but you went and did some interesting things to try to deal with this depression and PTSD and the challenges that you were facing. Let's talk for a moment about the trial that you went through. I guess that was probably with the VA. I remember they were doing one like it.
Speaker 3:It was outside the VA, but it was a clinical setting that I did. It was a treatment called MDMA and it's a synthetic.
Speaker 2:I was a cop. That's a party drug.
Speaker 3:Yeah, on the street it's probably referred to as ecstasy or, I think, even molly, but the thing is is this drug has a significant benefit and I will tell you that it was the most transformational experience that I've ever had in my life. It allowed me to. I have not been on antidepressants ever since the treatment. Wow, it has completely changed my life in a way that I will look at February 2 of every year as almost like a rebirth, because the amount of self forgiveness and what I refer to as almost like a ritual cleansing of my I would describe it as my soul or my spirit. I was cleansed in a way that it's hard for me to describe in words, but it just significantly changed who I am and how I relate to other people in the world.
Speaker 2:So I'm always a stickler for the mechanics of these things. So you're doing this clinical trial. Is it like a one day? Is it a week Like? Is it every day? How did that work?
Speaker 3:I had three preparatory sessions that were kind of around what's my situation? Where am I at? In my treatment? I had to. At one point I had to stop taking. The antidepressants I took were in a class called SSRIs. You can't be on SSRIs while you're and take MDMA, so I had to get off of it and apparently SSRIs are addictive and you can't just cold turkey it.
Speaker 3:So I had a month of weaning myself off and then came to the realization that there was a reason that I was on them, because it put me in a pretty bad place as far as irritability, depression. All those things came back full on without the medication.
Speaker 2:So the medication was working, just not getting you to where you really needed to be.
Speaker 3:It was maybe in the beginning it was working at a 10 and then it gradually went down to a 9, 8, 7. So it just was not working to the level and I was kind of out of medication options and so that's why I went through this treatment. But it just so. The treatment itself was just one day, so I went into a clinical setting, took about an hour to an hour and a half for the dose to take effect. The clinician kind of set up an environment with music, I wore a headphone, I laid on a bed and then the experience came. The whole thing lasted for about five hours and then my perception lasted for about 20 minutes and then after the five hours it kind of came back to the normal reality but transformed.
Speaker 2:That's amazing. I mean, we've interviewed folks that were doing the clinical trials, we've talked about it here and coming home well, but I've never heard the other side of the patient side. So I'm finding this fascinating, because there's such promise based on not just your own experiences but lots of research about the effect on some people to have this transformational change and sort of a brain rewiring of hey, here's all these things that kind of got jumbled and it sort of resets them. And that's the way it's been described to me and it sounds like it had a very, very significant effect for you. How long ago was this?
Speaker 3:So it was last year in February.
Speaker 2:Okay, so like a whole year on, things are still going great. Yes, I probably will have another treatment, but that's what I recall from talking with the clinicians. It's like a tune up, so to speak.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I am nowhere near where I was before the treatment, but I can just tell that some of the symptoms I had might be returning to a limited degree. Just what you experience in life when you go through life and you have this depression and you have this irritability and some of the things that you struggle with in your relationships, and just the way that you think and do things. It's hard to imagine what life would be like without those issues.
Speaker 2:Right and as crazy as that sounds.
Speaker 3:Yes, right, but I'm kind of like okay, that's my life.
Speaker 2:That's just how it is. Depression.
Speaker 3:I'm irritable. I have these issues and that's just the way things are. And when, all of a sudden, those issues are gone and you can experience a relationship in the way that I think we were designed as humans to experience a relationship, it was wonderful. And that's what I want people to understand is when I talk about a new journey to a great life. There are experiences in relationships and there are success. However you define success, there are paths to success and experiences in life that you can't even imagine, and that's what I want. Veterans who have the veterans have the raw materials that you need to succeed in life.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely.
Speaker 3:They have the discipline, they have the dedication, determination, they have the ability to just kind of I call it like paratrooper in and just figure it out. They're great at leading and taking responsibility and doing all the things. These are all the raw materials of what any person with great success has. So there's no reason for a veteran to simply struggle.
Speaker 2:Nope, no, this is a yeah, and just to get by Right.
Speaker 3:Just, some people are just getting a job so that they can figure out how to get to the next day, and there's so much more available to them.
Speaker 2:So there's so many resources out there. The problem is and this is something that we've discovered here at Coming Home well, is that people aren't aware of the resources till it's a crisis. And then they say, oh, I wish I knew then what I know now. And that happens I mean, that's a Many times in the military until it's a crisis, it's not a problem.
Speaker 3:My biggest regret in life my number one biggest regret in my life far any is that I didn't did not seek help sooner.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because who?
Speaker 3:knows what my life would have been like if I had experienced that level of happiness and joy for that 16 years that I didn't get the help. And, like I said, the book is aimed at veterans, but it's also aimed at the family of veterans. When veterans say so-and-so doesn't understand me, they don't understand. That's one of the common things. The purpose of the book, too, is to help family members understand what their veteran is going through and how they might be able to help, but to be able to and I think it helps families understand that there is something just really special and wonderful if they can work through some of these issues that the veteran's facing.
Speaker 2:You know, I see that a lot and one of the things that I always find so interesting is, you know, maybe he's not just a dick, he's dealing with some issues and there's a lot of veterans and there's a whole vet bro society where they're just being jerks. You know, sometimes that's a cover for other insecurities and it's a lot of things, but sometimes, and more often than not, at least half the time, we know people are dealing with issues and hey, if we address those issues, they're not going to be the jerk anymore and that's a big message. I think a lot of people especially if you're a round of veteran that you need to take into account like, hey, this is solvable. This is not like, hey, this is who they are from now on until the end of time they can get help. Because there's a lot of things that people go through and everybody's different.
Speaker 2:You know, and that's one thing that you know, when you're a young gung ho soldier and you're out there and like, oh, that was nothing, everybody deals with trauma and stress and the mortality of those combat situations. Or there's a lot. I've seen more people die in non combat operations than I did in combat and I've been to Iraq. I've been to Afghanistan. I've been all over the place. I see more death in training and being in the motor pool and accidents. You see more of these things Now, obviously, combat has its own thing because somebody's actively trying to kill you, which is a very unnatural situation for anyone to be in, but there's a lot of things that happen. So all I had to say is that there's no judgment on why someone's having stress. You're like oh, everybody's service is special and unique and it doesn't matter if you're the supply sergeant or the guy who makes the chow hall. You're all facing very serious risks and how someone deals with that matters.
Speaker 3:I met a mother I you know, I take these books to different VAs and I do book science and things I met a mother whose son was a meteorologist, so someone that briefed pilots and air crews on the weather and and, and she shared with me how much he's been struggling. And so what I told her is look, you don't have to be in combat to struggle. Veterans, people in the service, know who they are, they know where they fit, they receive incredible training. They're they're part of an important mission. They're doing things at the highest level, probably more than what they ever thought possible. And then, when they leave, that just stops, and then they have to figure out who am I? What should I do? I was doing something that was really important. Is there anything available that's really that important? And so those are.
Speaker 3:Those aren't just minor life struggles, those are major life struggles. And so you know, you said there's not just one thing that we can do. There are several steps that we have to do. There are several things that we can do to get better. The one thing, Tyler, that kind of seeps into my mind is in 2023, the incidence of suicide increased. So there's 48,000 veteran service organizations and in spite of all that effort and the number of people that care and the number of people that are really trying to help veterans, the numbers went in the wrong direction.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they were going down for a few years and spiked right back up.
Speaker 3:Spiked right back up and that's really upsetting. And I mean upsetting is a really inadequate word.
Speaker 3:But I think may right and I and I think, okay, I've got this book. Donations are coming in and I'm able to get these into the hands of veterans and we're starting this dialogue, but I wish there was more. I wish, and is my book a cure? No, is a psychologist a cure? No, but it's a path. I asked a psychologist. I said hey, how many veterans, if they come to see you and you create a care plan and they follow it? She said they follow it. I said yes, they follow the care plan. How many of those veterans get better? She said everyone. She said not all better. Everyone that comes to me and follows the care plan and does the work, every one of them get better. And 35% of any veteran that goes into the VA, every veteran that goes into the VA, has a 35% less likelihood that they'll take their own life.
Speaker 2:That's true.
Speaker 3:And so my book isn't a cure, but it's a step, and if I can get a veteran any veteran to take one step away from suicide, that's a win. All we need is for them to take one step away instead of a step towards. Absolutely and so we don't have to fix the whole world, we just have to get a veteran. Instead of taking a step towards, take a step away. And that's a great way to put it, no that's absolutely fantastic.
Speaker 2:We're talking with Bob and his book from service to success, new mission, new purpose and a new journey to a great life. I love the title I've said that before because we talk about purpose and mission and tribe and sort of like who am I? And we've talked and I've talked a lot about what you did is not who you are, and a lot of people whether in service, that's their entire identity. We've all met people that you know that that is every bit of their being at all times. And then when they leave service, those are the ones who have the biggest challenge because their entire identity is wrapped up in their job or their rank or their duties or something, and they've armed stiff, stiff armed everybody around them, all their family, all their friends, because that was my identity. And now they're really struggling.
Speaker 2:You see that a lot of people are in the early 40s, they're retiring and all of a sudden they're having heart attacks a few years after they leave service. You're like that's crazy. You should be out there enjoying it. You also see with depression and you also see where this people aren't able to fit in. So I really like Bob Taylor's book here. It's fantastic. There's a number of things to go check out. If you go look through the book, it's available on Amazon. It's super easy to find. If you're looking on YouTube, you can see it right behind him. So I really appreciate that. Bob, you also do something that I find really interesting. What is the Patriot Promise Foundation?
Speaker 3:So the Patriot Promise Foundation was formed specifically with using the book as a roadmap. So, like I said, in my research I realized I'm not the only one. I found out the problem is much greater than just a few. And so what we identified is there's a process that we can take that start heading veterans in the right direction. So when a veteran comes to us, we'll get them into just a quick health check how you doing? You getting sleep? Mm-hmm, are you? You know? Are you or are you struggling Physically with anything? If you are, then we'll just point you in a direction. We're not gonna try and take care of you. Same thing with the mental health check-in. That's just where are you? How you doing. If you need help, here's the VA, here's other, so resources of help.
Speaker 3:And then the other thing we're doing is we're building a program to Reprogram veterans with new life skills, using the book as a roadman. So how do you build? How do you start practicing gratitude, how do you practice self forgiveness? And then you know, I've been very blessed and fortunate to have a successful business career. I I run a Healthcare business that we sell about a hundred and twenty million dollars each year into the federal government not and so, yes, I've struggled, but I've been able to overcome that adversity and I've been able to create some great success.
Speaker 3:So I'm Not only do I want to just talk about my mental health challenges.
Speaker 3:I want to talk about what you can do to achieve the highest levels of success in life mm-hmm however you define it, if it's with family, if it's a Hobby that you want to become excellent at, if it's business and you want to Earn a lot of money, there are things that we can teach people on what they need to do to be successful, so we're going to create a certificate program that teaches these Tools and life hacks and how to achieve this level of success.
Speaker 2:So that's quite. I love the fact that it's pairing with the book. It's. You've done a lot of time, effort and and personal Research into this. What was the most surprising thing that you learned, as you're developing the Patriot promise plan of action, but also with the book, something that surprised you. You had your own story, your own experiences, but I'm sure that there were things that Weren't quite so clear to you until you were doing the research.
Speaker 3:So I think the number one thing was that I discovered that it was a Much bigger problem than what I understood. I just had no idea. I Knew I wasn't alone and I knew there must be others out there.
Speaker 2:I had no idea.
Speaker 3:There were 11 million others out there.
Speaker 3:Right and I didn't. I also didn't realize how common Some of our own Foybles are. You know our, when we're depressed, how Commented is to isolate ourselves, how common it is to do the opposite of what we should do to help ourselves. So those were kind of the surprises. As I did, the research and the realization of these are solvable things. I've I've met a couple people that are struggling tremendously and need Significant mental health care, and I'm not. I'm not programmed to be able to help those people. But for the most part, what people are dealing with after service is Absolutely trainable. You can, just like you were, trained to do your mission. You can be trained to succeed in life and I think that's a phenomenal lesson that I learned.
Speaker 2:That's fantastic. I'm always interested in the insights because, you know, whenever we have a hypothesis like I'm gonna go do this research and I Never know it, if you're doing science right, if you're doing research right, you should be surprised. And now that's one of the things I'm always most curious about is what were the surprises? So that's a good one about finding hey, I'm not alone. I knew there are others, but there's 11 million other people too. This is not nearly Hidden away. It's not an unknown problem. You're not like one of three in the country right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like, hey, you have a lot of a lot of people around with you, so I'm a big fan of the VA. I know a lot of people have had challenges with the VA and and we all have. It's like any other bureaucracy in the world. It's like dealing with the IRS and the D fast, the military, pay people all at the same time. You know it's a challenge, but it's like every bureaucracy if you work it, it'll work for you.
Speaker 3:Well I, I tell veterans what part of your mission was easy you know getting into the military Not easy for a lot of people right.
Speaker 3:I'm getting fully trained. Not easy Doing a mission, do it, go into combat Stuff was not easy. So why, suddenly, when we get out, should we expect that everything should come easy to us If, if you decide that you need to go to the VA, it is not going to be easy, I'm sorry. It it's a. It ultimately will provide great benefit to you and your entire family. It's worth it. It's worth the the, the extra effort, the forms that you have to fill out, the visits that you have to make. But, like you said it's, it's almost identical to everything that we do while we're in active service. Yeah, it's, it's. If you don't ask, the answer is always no, that's something I always tell my kids.
Speaker 2:You know, like, whether it's applying for a college or doing some event or going for a sport, if you don't try, the answer is going to be no, and and actually that's sometimes when you ask.
Speaker 3:You get told no the first time, yep, and if you don't try, it's always going to be no?
Speaker 2:The answer still might be no, but at least you're trying. Then you say, okay, I need to change this, I need to do this, I need to provide this, I need to show up to the appointment that I blew off. You know, whatever it is, because I've seen it all. I'm sure you've seen quite a bit as well. So you've got the Patriot promise and the book again, which is available on amazon From service to success, new mission, new purpose and a new journey to a great life. It's kind of long, so I have to read it. I don't have it. My, my sorry, bob. It's all right, bob. We've talked about a lot of things, but I'm sure there's something that we haven't that I haven't asked about.
Speaker 2:What should I have asked you About what I haven't asked about? What should I have asked you about but haven't?
Speaker 3:you know, a lot of times I forget to talk about this in in these visits. But If if people go to the patriot promiseorg or g, they go there they can buy a book and donate books to other veterans.
Speaker 3:So you can buy one, donate one, donate five, donate 10, and. Or you can just donate, and I've been shy about asking for donations, and my wife recently lost a cousin that was a military, former military service member, struggled for years and died from suicide, and I just decided that I'm not going to be shy anymore. There's something that we can do. If it's just, you know, if you could join me and just help me put a book in the hands of a veteran and help them take the one step away from suicide. That's all I could ask for, and so if there's anything that I, you know, would would like for people to do, is just go to the patriot promise of dot org website and either Buy a book, donate more or just donate money, and we'll make sure.
Speaker 3:I don't make any money at all from the foundation. I don't make any money from selling books. Um, everything I do goes into getting Books into the hands of veterans and getting them the resources that they need to get better. So I'm not making this plea to my personal benefit. I'm making this plea to the benefit of other veterans and I just ask people to contribute.
Speaker 2:That's absolutely fantastic. Sometimes all it takes is that little bit of nudge, that little bit of resource, that book. Hey, I'm not alone. There's other people, there's lots of 48,000 veteran nonprofits out there, veterans, vsos, there's. Everybody wants to help, except. Here's a plan. Here's an easy way to do it. At patriot promise dot org, go check out the website. Uh, try to skip out on the amazon and you can find it there too. Go to patriot promise dot org and check it out. Bob, before I leave, may I ask just one last thing? What else does somebody else need to know about patriot promise, the book, or what bob taylor's been up to?
Speaker 3:well, um, I'm just like pretty much every every guy or gal out there that's just trying to find their way through life, that has has gone through service. I really feel a connection to veterans that aren't experiencing the best that life has to offer there are. The one thing I'll tell you is that there is a gap. You know many of the veteran service organizations help veterans find a job. They help veterans get the health care. You know equipment that they need tuition for their children. You know physical things that help veterans. There is not as many tools out there to help change the mindset of veterans, and that's all I'm trying to do is just one little piece at a time, help a veteran, change their mindset, open up their minds to something better in life, and that's what the Patriot promise is about.
Speaker 2:That's absolutely fantastic. It doesn't have to suck. I mean, that's the biggest thing. No, when I got hurt and I was medically retired, my life was like, oh my gosh, what in the world am I going to be doing? Like I've been in the Army since I was 17. And it's been many years and I was like, what the heck am I going to do? It all worked out Great opportunities.
Speaker 2:Probably and I say this with a bit of irony is that getting hurt was the best thing that could have happened to me. Many more doors opened, a lot more things that could have maybe never happened otherwise. But if I was like, oh this sucks, I'm just going to curl up in a little ball and just survive and just sort of eke out in existence, that would be a horrible way to go. And it's because I had friends and I had resources and I had people that I could reach out to and talk to and some of this gallows humor. It's always amazing Anytime you get veterans together, no matter which era it is, whether it's a World War II person and a Gulf War or any of the terrorism years, they all get together and it's like they all just sort of speak the same language.
Speaker 2:It's amazing, like I mean the vernaculars changed, the uniforms have changed the missions and there's a lot of jobs that don't exist anymore and a lot of jobs that never could have existed in the past, but they all come together and they all share that message.
Speaker 3:I interviewed a World War II navigator from a B-24.
Speaker 2:Oh amazing.
Speaker 3:I was stunned at the similar experiences that we had. He flew 42 combat missions in the Pacific during. World War II. But you know, using the sextant and doing navigation and just the similarities and, like you said, the language that we speak, it's just like an automatic, it's a true, true brotherhood.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that camaraderie, and I think that is probably the biggest challenge. People want to and, like you mentioned earlier, people want to isolate, try to fix it myself or just sort of deal with it, because you know like hey, I'm just going to close up and that's the exact opposite of what you need to do. Folks, we've talked about this a lot, so go check out Bob's book. It's really a great roadmap. Go check out patreonpromiseorg. We'll put all the links in the show notes so you don't have to try to write it down as you're driving. If you're listening to the podcast on your way to work or something, it'll be in the notes. You'll be able to click on it. Super easy. Bob, thank you so much for joining us on Coming Home. Well, I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2:You have a personal story and you sort of transformed it into a call for action. You know sort of a plan. People like plans in the military. You know the five-step military decision-making process, the orders process. We all know it, and it's a lot easier to follow steps than it is to say, oh crap, I have no idea which way I need to go, what I need to do. Having a plan is like the first step to action, right?
Speaker 3:Right, well, tyler, I do want to thank you very much for the things that you do. First of all, very gracious hosts, very welcoming, made this very easy for me. I appreciate that and I'm very happy for it. I can tell you're doing something that is greater than just yourself and that you found a true mission for yourself, so I'm happy for you.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, bob Taylor. From Service to Success, new Mission, new Purpose and A New Journey to a Great Life, also involved with thepatriotpromiseorg. Bob, again thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 1:Thanks for joining us this week on Coming Home Well with Dr Tyler Pierron. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others, post about it on social media or leave a rating and a review. Thanks again, and until all are home and all are well, this is Coming Home Well.