SUFFER BETTER

“The special operations community is not comprised of people that put a cape on and go to work. They are very normal people that are tasked with doing some exceptional things at times, but they suffer from the same ailments of life that everybody else does. And you can easily create this unrealistic expectation that they can do anything, that they can tolerate anything, that they are impossible to knock down. And that isn't the case, man. They're normal, exceptionally average people.”

“I don't think you should outsource killing and killing through a screen, even though I think that that's the way that the world is probably headed. I think that removes the burden associated with that. I think it should scramble your eggs for maybe the rest of your life. Not like destroy you, but it should change your optic on humanity in the world.”

“Psychological strength is rewarded almost everywhere. In the gym, it's discipline. In business, it's grit. In public, it's composure. But what you are praised for in public, you often pay for in private. Relationships don't reward endurance. They require attunement. If your default strategy in life is to absorb discomfort and override warning signs, you will do exactly that when someone repeatedly hurts you. What looks like strength from the outside becomes self-abandonment on the inside.”

“Whatever it is you think you're going through. Please do not convince yourself that you are the only one struggling with it. If co taught us anything that it should be that isolation or even perceived isolation is one of the most damaging things to the human brain. We are every person I've ever met in my life is more defined by their similarities than by their differences. I have never asked for help and not received it. And I have been like in tears, overwhelmed with the number of people who saw that I needed help but didn't say anything cuz they were waiting for me to ask.”

“Then there's human on the loop meaning kind of just overwatching the AI. And then the phase that I think terrifies everybody is human out of the loop. Cuz if we take humans off the loop, I don't know how you combat that as an adversary without doing exactly the same thing. Because if it can think and make decisions faster than any human that's any of those earlier phases, then you're already at a tactical disadvantage. And then we end up working for robots for our daily water ration. And I don't think that's great. I don't want Terminator to become a documentary.”

“I know I don't want people to die, but if nobody ever died in training, you are not training hard enough. The training has to be a reverse engineering downstream real world requirements of the job that you are expected to do. And it is a dangerous job. You cannot prepare for that by avoiding danger and training. Because if no one ever died, there wouldn't be anything on the line.”

“People quit when they focus on how far they have to go. What they are all expressing is a moment where they became overwhelmed by the situation that they were in and they started looking at time literally time. How they viewed time was the determining factor on the decision that they made. So instead of trying to get from here to here and only looking at that distance, you slam these two together. So there is a microscopic step that you can take and you only focus on that step and then the next one and the next one.”

“I've reframed how I view failures. I now consider them tuition payments. Some of my tuition payments have been relatively inexpensive and some have taken me to the brink of bankruptcy. Cost of doing business is a great way to look at this stuff though, dude. I'll take a $5,000 mistake that would save me 500,000 later on, you know, and that's that's really all it is.”

“I never once was concerned about somebody essentially ordering a drone on the internet. Not that that's how it's being built in or made in Ukraine specifically in Iran has some smaller ones as well, but having that be a kinetic option on the battlefield. Didn't think about it a single time. And I am glad that I am not a part of that because I mean I have an internet connection just like anybody else. And I I don't go searching for those videos, but sometimes they find you and people running away from basically a DJI drone that detonates.”

“Until you view yourself as the author of your life, you'll be the victim of it. It means until you stop blaming everything else around you for the course and trajectory of your life, you're just going to be a flag in the wind going with the direction that the wind is blowing. And for clarity, you have almost no control over what happens in your life, but you have complete and total control in how you respond to it. And that is being the author of your life.”

“You get ambushed. The actually the worst thing that you can do is just stay in place. If you stay there, though, because you're scared because you don't want to die, both of which legitimate emotions, and your enemy starts to come around the corner, it's going to be where you die. I'd rather have see people take maybe even take a step in the wrong direction, but get some momentum going. Obviously, correct for your mistake as quick as humanly possible, but dude, get the wheels running.”

“I'm at a place now, as I'm getting closer to 50 than 40, that I actually think the pursuit of an easy life is a mistake. I think that the grind is actually what life is all about. It's a It's not a matter of whether you're going to have a a hard life or an easy life. It's an ability your ability to determine how well that you can suffer along the way and trying to enjoy the journey.”