What It Takes To Survive Hell

➡ The text discusses a dangerous encounter in a foreign land, the importance of investing in physical precious metals to secure wealth, and introduces Don Man, a retired Navy SEAL. Don Man, who has served in multiple SEAL teams and worked with the CIA, is now an inspirational speaker and author. He focuses on pushing people to their full potential and encourages everyone to strive for improvement. The text also emphasizes the importance of subscribing to Sarah Wessel’s newsletter and learning about wealth preservation strategies from Joe Lombardi.
➡ The speaker believes in the power of setting high goals and working hard to achieve them. He admires people who are strong and motivated, and gets frustrated with those who expect things to be done for them. He encourages everyone to strive for more in life, regardless of their circumstances, and to not settle for less than their full potential. He uses the example of Reinhold Messner, a renowned climber, to illustrate the importance of setting high-reaching goals and finding ways to achieve them.
➡ The text emphasizes the importance of daily self-improvement in four areas: getting stronger, faster, smarter, and doing good for others. It suggests that focusing on these areas from a young age can lead to success in various fields, including military special forces. The text also highlights the importance of recognizing and working on one’s weaknesses, rather than just focusing on strengths. Lastly, it discusses the value of teamwork and mutual support, especially in challenging environments like adventure racing or military operations.
➡ The text discusses the intense training military personnel undergo to prepare for real-life missions, using the example of the team that executed the bin Laden raid. The training is designed to be harder than actual missions to build confidence and readiness. The speaker also shares his personal experiences of overcoming physical challenges, such as climbing Everest and participating in a 750-mile unsupported paddle across Canada, emphasizing the importance of a positive mindset and finding reasons to achieve rather than excuses not to.
➡ A group of four, including the speaker, had to survive in a hostile environment, eating snakes and dealing with venomous creatures. They fell ill, possibly due to the food and dirty conditions, and had to hide in a hole for three days, observing enemy activity. They were discovered by a local, leading to a tense standoff with 14 armed villagers. Despite the threat of being shot, they managed to convince the villagers to let them leave, and they escaped on a boat.
➡ The speaker shares their experience of enduring tough conditions and challenges during their military training and missions. Despite the hardships, they and their comrades never complained, instead, they appreciated the camaraderie and trust they shared. They also highlight the resilience of people living in war zones who face even greater hardships. The speaker believes that everyone has the potential to overcome adversity, and their experiences have made them grateful and appreciative of their home country.

And we had these little CIA cards, Get out of jail free cards we call them, and they’re little orange cards that we had in our rucksacks. And it said in Arab and in an Arabic language. These guys are just training. If you see them, just let them go. It was all so fake, you know. And then my buddy went to go get his card out of his rucksack, and they just put four AK47s up to his head. And we thought for sure he was just going to get blasted. And they didn’t do that to him. And so they sent somebody to a village to go get a better English speaker.

And somebody came back. They held us at gunpoint overnight until the next morning. And he said, well, you guys trespassed on our land and the penalty is we’re going to shoot you in the back. People assume the financial system is safe. But then banks fail, governments freeze assets. Inflation quietly steals purchasing power. And then many people realize they don’t actually own what they thought they own. Physical. Precious metals aren’t about getting rich. They’re about reducing dependence on systems you do not control. That’s why I work with Miles Franklin to help investors protect and diversify their wealth with gold and silver and other precious metals.

They have a reputation of trust. They are transparent, they help people, they never scam you, and they treat you like a sophisticated buyer. If you want to learn more, or if you want a copy of their private price list, which is not publicly available, go to sarahwhestel.com Miles Franklin. Fill out that form today and start learning how to protect your wealth with assets you actually own that can’t be taken away from a company you can trust. Welcome to business Game Changers and the Thrive Hour. I have Don man coming to the program. He is. He’s amazing.

I wanted to. I asked him to come on. He actually reached out to me. I had a show idea for something else and I thought, how about. And we’re going to do it. But how about if you come on the Thrive Hour and talk about mindset and human. Human potential. Because, I mean, listen to his. Listen to his background. Okay, He’s a. He’s a Navy SEAL, retired, but he was a SEAL for Team 1, Team 2, and Team 6. He served in three teams. He’s a Naval Special Warfare Development Group. He worked in that. And then he was the director of the USNC Cadet for the SEAL Corps for Navy SEAL Adventure Challenge.

Navy SEAL training. So he was the director of the USNC Cadet Navy SEAL Training Academy and a whole bunch of other stuff. And then he is a best selling author and he has been producing these surveys, Surviving man shows where he brings like the top people in the world and pushes them beyond their their levels. He takes these amazing world class athletes and competitors and he gets them to be better. And he is an inspirational speaker and he speaks all over to all sorts of businesses and athletes and all sorts of people. And as you will see he’s extremely humble and he’s not afraid to be around people who are really strong.

In fact, that’s what he wants. He wants people who are mentally strong, physically strong, however, you can be better. He wants that and he embraces it and is not personally intimidated by that. And think of how our world could be if you could. You and everybody around you wanted everyone else to thrive and wasn’t intimidated by that. Right? You wanted that. How can I help everyone become better? And so that’s what this episode is about. So hold on to your hats. We’re going to talk about this before we get into it. I got to remind you, please subscribe.

Whatever channel, whatever platform you’re on, please subscribe. I need the subscribers. Also go to my newsletter. Go Sarah Wessel.com and subscribe there or go to S. Wesell substack.com that’s where my newsletter is host. But it hosted but it’s now right on my front page of my website and my shows are all streaming from the front page of my website. So you can always go to sarah.com and see all the latest shows. You can either watch it on Apple on video and audio. Apple now has video and audio or it’s on video too right on my front page when it airs live.

Otherwise all my pass shows are there as well. And be sure to subscribe though because that’s how you get notices of everything that I’m doing. And I have exclusives, I have have webinars and replays and things. And so I’m going to keep building that out and get focused on these things. But before we get into that, I just had a show with Joe Lombardi. This was our Friday night economic review. Always do my economic reviews in different sections. He is sharing with you what the top people in in our country are doing to preserve wealth. And there’s different strategies that they use.

And if I would have done this with my kids, I was smart. I set up this some investment with when they were little. But if I would have done what he told me, they would have had four times more now than what I said because I Didn’t realize that just the way it was structured and how you, you avoid taxes, how you funnel money into it, and it’s all legal, but you avoid taxes and you make more money, it compounds faster. I would have, like I said, it would have been four times larger what they had if I would have followed some of these methods.

And anybody at any, any age can do it. And if you are interested in learning more on how you know the different methods, he works with so many wealthy people, and they’re wealthy because of these strategies. You can go to sw hawk.com and you can learn more. And it’s never too late to redirect some of these and set them up properly so that you are in better financial shape. And especially if you have kids, you have grandkids and get them going immediately, because if you get somebody going when they’re a little baby, get them going immediately on some of things, they, they will be comfortable later.

And for you that’s older, you can at least shield yourself from some of these taxes and have better earning potential. So again, sw hawk.com okay, let’s get into this. This is a beautiful conversation with former Navy SEAL Don Man. Hi, Don. Welcome to the program. Oh, hello, Sarah. It’s nice to be here with you. Thanks for having me. Well, I know you had to go and get to a parking lot because your Internet was out. You guys are having storms all over Virginia. Just like a Navy seal. You’ll find a way to make this happen, right? Yep, yep.

I’m in a parking lot and it’s working fine. Well, you are. A lot of people say you’re the goat, you know, of the Navy SEALs, you’ve done. You’ve been on three different Navy SEALs teams. You’ve trained different Navy SEALS groups. I mean, if I read your bio correctly. Let’s see, you were the director of the USNC Cadet SEAL Corps, Navy SEAL Adventure Challenge, Navy SEAL Training Academy, director of the Naval SEAL Training Academy. You got to tell us what that is. And I mean, a whole bunch of other stuff. You were part of Navy Seal Team 1, Scene 2, Team 2 and Team 6.

So, wow, what a background you have. And then all the different challenges that you do on, you know, broadcasting with some of the top athletes and competitors in the world. So you’re going to be great for this thrive hour. But you got to tell me, what is the director of the Academy? What. What was that? Okay, well, I have to start out by saying in media and hype and everything that happens, I’m definitely not a Goat in the SEAL teams. You know, I’m not, you know, I’m. I was just one of the guys and actually I have a feeling of guilt that I didn’t do a whole lot because we had a 30 year time span in the SEAL teams where there wasn’t a lot of action.

The action came before I was in and after I got out I went to the CIA for 25 years afterwards. So that’s. So I was in all the war zones and everything with the CIA, but with the SEAL teams, we were doing what we called chasing the rainbow. Always looking for the action and we found it on occasion and we thought we were pretty busy, but it doesn’t compare to what’s happened since 9, 11, 25 years ago. What’s going on now, I suppose. Right? What’s going on now is probably the worst. Yeah. And I admire you because even me throwing, I had to do that because I wanted to see how you’d react.

But even show throwing the goat at you, you were so humble and you’re like, no, that’s not me. And I think that’s a sign of somebody who really has reached the pinnacle is the humility that you have. And I always say that the top warriors in the world are humble and they’re not threatened by other strong people around them. And you, you seem to always want to build strength around you. It’s a, it’s a character that, that you have and I really admire that. And I think it’s part of this. Why you coming on this thrive hour is such a important for me because that character that you have of wanting people around you to be strong and doing what it takes and not thinking it takes away from you.

Can you talk about that a little bit? Yes. Well, thanks, thanks for saying that. I think that that’s true that I do like being around strong and motivated people. I really agree with that actually, because I get really frustrated when I’m around people who don’t do much or who don’t try, you know, who don’t try and expect things to be done for them. And you know, we’re so fortunate to be Americans. We’re spoiled rotten compared to most people in this world. And so we all have it in us to do what a lot of people in this world are doing, and that is to get up and just work really, really hard at what you like to do or what you have to to raise your family.

And we all have that in us. I guess my frustration only comes when I see people who aren’t like that, and want things given to them or not. Work hard and just expect the bare minimum. And Sarah, when I got out of the teams, I did serve team 1, 2, and 6, and I spent 21 years in the Navy, and I loved every bit of it, and I felt right at home. And it was where I was so fortunate to find the SEAL teams. That’s just what I needed. And when I got out, I kind of was in the civilian community, although I went in the agency, but you’re still around civilians now more than military.

And I realized in great disappointment that a lot of people, like I always believed in setting your goals really high. And I call them macro goals. And then I reached. I made up these ladders, little micro goals where you’d finally climb every micro goal, achieve it, and then finally reach the macro goal. And so to me, just pick some really outrageously difficult macro goal, and then when you set that series of micro goals up, you’re going to reach it unless something, you know, beyond your control happens. But when I got out of the Navy, I realized a lot of civilians and a lot of military people, too, not in SEAL teams, but a lot of military people as well, they set their goals low and way below their ability to do more.

And they met those goals and they were happy with themselves. And actually, I should say, I feel sad for those people because they’ll never achieve all they have the full potential of achieving. They just don’t. They won’t get there. And something in them never was sparked for them to shoot up higher or to reach higher goals. And I look at Reinhold Messner, he, you know, he’s the greatest climber in the world. And I like to say that a lot of people say, wow, you’ve done a thousand of these competitions and the hardest ones in the world, and you got hurt on Everest, but you’re up on Everest.

And what do you think about all that? I said, well, if I showed these to my hero, Reinhold Messner, this list of events, he would laugh. And some were double Ironmans, two Ironmans in a day, and big events. 1010 Day 11, Day 12 Day Non Stop Adventure Races. He would kind of laugh and say, yeah, it’s nice. You like running around the park, I guess, you know, he would laugh, maybe. And he’d say, what I like to do, I like to pick up this backpack and put it on. I don’t take oxygen. I go alone, and I’ll climb the north peak of some mountain that’s never been climbed, and I’ll do it alone.

And I’ll tell my friends and family I should be back in a couple of months. And for me, that is so extreme. But what I love about Reinhold Messner, the greatest climber that’s ever lived on this planet, is he knows how to reach way deep down inside. And a lot of us don’t even. Nobody goes that deep, as far as I know, but we all have the ability to. And the people who don’t set their goals high, they don’t even touch that ability. And I like to go deeper and deeper and deeper and just trying to set high reaching goals and find ways to get there.

And of course, you don’t get there in all of them, but you certainly get a lot further in life than if you didn’t do it that way. And I use people like Reinhold Messner as an example. Well, do you think that a lot of people don’t set high goals because they’re conditioned, that they can’t achieve something? I do think that. Yep. I do think that. And that might be from the peers or their parenting, the parenting or the schools. So I think every generation gets a little softer, a little easier. You know, my parents generation that was a World War II generation, they went through the Great Depression and had nothing.

They went through, you know, their families went through World War I and had nothing. And then World War II hit. And like my father, he just quit high school, and his two brothers and sister, they all just quit doing what they were doing and they went to fight the war because the country was calling them. They didn’t even think twice about it. And so the whole country was united in this way. And they went off for four years. And my grandparents had four stars in their doorway because all four kids went off to war and they came home, they never complained, they never talked about it.

Even the quiet generation, the greatest generation, they never spoke of it. But they saved the world and they came home and built the greatest country that’s ever existed on this planet, in my opinion. A lot of opinions. And that generation, those traits, you don’t really see it as much anymore. And there’s a lot of reasons. One, you know, World War II was the Japanese and the Germans. And we knew what they were doing. There was no denying it. Not to give an excuse to people who don’t get up and do something big. But now you don’t really know what the news is telling you the truth or not.

So you can’t really blame the folks who, who don’t want to jump out and say for in that case, join the military, because you don’t really know what the wars are for anymore, you know. Yeah, I was going to push back a little bit on that, but that. But the thing of the idea of reaching more and deep and striving to be more personally, that is universal. That has nothing to do with whether you don’t agree with the wars or not. You can do it for everything in life. Absolutely. You could do it being a better mother, a better brother, a better neighbor, a better worker, a better baseball player.

And, you know, in the early days of the Ironman triathlon, the greatest guy. He was the go. He was the greatest of all time, David Scott. And he won seven Ironmans. And before his first one, I was getting ready for my second one, and I said, dave, how do you stay in such great shape? He said, well, I just don’t take any days off. And then like, ping. A light bulb went off. And then I didn’t take a day off working out for that year. And then the next year came by. I said, okay, I’ll go this year without a day off.

So I went over 21 years without ever taking a day off of exercise. And I mean, good, hardcore workouts. And it was because of Dave Scott. But then as I grew up a little bit and matured a bit more, I realized, you know, life’s not all about working out. It’s not all about racing and fitness, all that. But. And then I also was getting questions all the time. How do you become a seal? How do you become a marine? How do you become a mountain climber? And I would just ramble on and talk and hopefully the answer would come out.

But because of Dave Scott’s advice to me, now I’ve. I’ve changed that a bit. I’ve. I’ve made it greater, I think I said, now if you want to become a seal, this works for any profession, though. Any profession. Every day just do something to make yourself stronger. Like, every day, you figure out what that is. It might be CrossFit, it might be the gym, it might be your home gym, might be Pilates, who knows? But you figure it out. Don’t expect that workout plan on a silver platter, but every day do something to make yourself stronger.

And I love saying this to young kids because if. If I followed that back those days, I mean, I would have gone so much further in my life. And if young kids follow it, I think they would go a lot further than if they don’t. But every day you have to just do four Things, number one, get stronger each and every day. And number two, get faster each and every day. And if a SEAL is what you want to be, you have to do fart licks and speed work and hill work and sprints in the pool, but you have to get faster each and every day.

And you have to measure it and figure out how you get in faster each and every day. And the third thing you have to do, if it is a SEAL you want to be, is get smarter every day. Learn what the SEALs have done since World War II and, you know, Normandy and Vietnam and the Gulf wars and the 90 countries they’re in now fighting. And then also learn to shoot weapons. Pistols and long guns and shotguns and learn to skydive and learn to dive. But just get smarter every day. And most importantly, every day, just do something good for somebody.

And that could be anybody. Just if you see somebody who needs help, just go help them. It doesn’t matter who it is. Just always do something good for somebody. So you only have to do four things every day. And if you did those four things every day, and you start at 12 years old, say, and you really were motivated, and he did these four things every day. When they go to selection for Delta Force or The Marines or SEALs or whatever, they just might be the strongest guy there, and they just might be the smartest, and they will be the fastest.

But most importantly, they’ll be the person everybody wants in that team because they’re so used to giving. And a good team member in a SEAL team is someone they don’t even really worry about themselves. They just worry about everybody on their team. And then they don’t really end up having to worry about themselves because their teammates worry about them and take care of them. And so when I say this, like bankers or cooks or doctors or something, they say, I don’t need to be stronger in my job, so. Well, you could be a stronger leader. You know, you could be stronger at something.

Maybe not physically stronger, but I don’t have to be faster, but you can be more efficient that speed. Just how can you be more efficient at what you do? So I think those four things could work for anybody. Well, is it stronger? One of the things when I did a lot of coaching is identifying the weaknesses, and every day spend time working on one of your weaknesses, because so many people who coach teams, for example, they spend all their time on a lot of them. This is the biggest mistake is they spend their time on their strengths because then they feel like they’re doing good.

And the teams look good on the ice or wherever you’re on, but if you, you don’t spend time with your weaknesses, you’re not really going to get better. Yeah, I couldn’t agree with you more on that. You know, I’m a victim of doing that myself. Like things I like doing, I’m good at, I do those more often than things I’m not good at because that’s natural. Yeah, yeah. But, yeah, I think that happens all the time too. But boy, if like a person like you, if you’re able to bring that out and the people on the ice, you know, or anybody you’re training to say, well, yeah, you’re really good at that, but maybe you could bring this one up if they, they realize they have a weak.

Because we all have weaknesses, of course. And if you, if you, you focus on that weakness and kind of bring it up to par with the rest of the team, you almost have an obligation to do that. I think. Well, and I think in every, in every profession, like, okay, what am I, what is my. And it’s so hard to do it because the last thing you want to do is because the stuff you’re weak at is the stuff you don’t like to do usually. Right. It’s okay. How do I spend a little bit of time getting better at this every.

It’s hard. Like you said, I’d rather spend time doing something. And you want to lean in the things that you’re good at. Right. Because that’s what in life, what’s going to get you far but spending that time on that weakness. Yeah. And we, I, I believed in that my whole life and I’m better at recommending other people to do that than I had been myself. I know. Because it doesn’t make you feel good. Yeah, but it’s so true. You have to do that. You have to. And so like even in an adventure racing where you have five people and you’re gonna go do a 600 mile non stop adventure race, I’d always, always get the people together.

It’s usually four or five people on a team, at least one female on every team and said, and I taught this adventure racing academy for years and a SEAL training academy for years and it was the same philosophy and that was, okay, we all have weaknesses. So the best thing for your team is to come to the table and say, hey, I’m really bad at map reading. I, I can’t read a map. I can’t, I’m not very good with orientating a map. I’m not very good with judging distance. I’m really bad. I could use some help on that.

But I’m really, really good at, say, rappelling. I’ll help everybody set up the rappel device and their gear and I’ll show you the best places to rappel. I’ll show you the fastest and safest. But I need help. And if, if everybody on the team was able to say, I have a weakness, I need help. And someone else on the team said, I’ll help you with that. But boy, I am really bad at say, whitewater paddling. And someone will say, well, boy, I’ve been doing whitewater paddling for 20 years. Let’s go out this weekend, I’ll give you some.

And I think that is an excellent team because there aren’t any egos and there’s nobody trying to hide their weaknesses. They’re putting it on the table and we all have them. We all have them. As a matter of fact, we might have more weaknesses and strengths if we really look hard at ourselves. And when I say weaknesses, just maybe they’re not up to par as where they could be. Just a short break from the program to share with you an amazing peptide to help you lose weight. It’s stronger than Ozempic and why it’s because it not only reduces your appetite, but it also burns fat.

These other GLP1s on the market, they do not burn fat, they just reduce your appetite. This one retrutide is stronger. It’s considered a next generation peptide because of that. And man, does this work. I’ve been using it for two and a half weeks and I’ve already lost £11. And I cut my dose in half because I was losing weight too quickly weekly. And that kind of freaked me out, to be honest. And so I also am taking this 5amino 1 mq in capsule form. This helps by making sure that you lose fat, not muscle. And so in conjunction, I’m using both of these.

This will work whether you have this or not. And I am telling you, it’s amazing. If you are interested in getting this, I have the link below or you can go to sarahwestel.com on the shop. You can use a coupon code Sarah Sarah to save 10%. If you have questions about your own use, you should either consult your doctor or you can join Dr. Diane’s tribe. And I have a link below to that. It is only a dollar for the first week. You can ask her any question you want and get all your answers to this.

How to take an injectable and there shouldn’t be any fear in doing that. It is easy and straightforward. Go to sarah wessel.com under shop or use the link below and remember to use coupon code. Sarah. That’s right. Well, how do you, how do you get that some of the top athletes in the world, the top Navy trained Navy seals, how do you get them to get to that next level? You know, how do you get them to dig deep and, and just, and get, you know, rise their level, raise their level. So we have a saying in the SEAL teams.

The more sweat and tears you put into training, the less bloodshed in wartime. And what that means as a SEAL training officer at a couple SEAL teams, the advanced training officer at SEAL Team 6. And what we would do is we would make training so, so, so difficult. And the guys are in way better shape than they really have to be for most missions. And usually if you go into a building and you’re clearing it left, right, left, right, everyone’s clearing the building. You usually don’t have three snipers and suicide vest on, people running at you and maybe explosions in there and a whole group of enemy fighters coming your way.

But in training we always added all those elements just to make them think on their feet and oh wow, we have an 8 mile extraction and we got to do it fast, so you got to be in shape for that. Oh, and by the way, you’re carrying 75 pounds of gear. So we always, always beef the training up to fit the missions we would put into training, which for most part were always easier than the real missions. And like for instance, the bin Laden raid, I had just left the team when the guys, you know, they, they were training for that and we were training for it in the Agency, like everybody wanted to go get bin Laden and team six got him.

You know, Rob o’ Neill shot him and killed him. But those guys came back to me and I trained a lot of those guys for other missions, but not the bin Laden raid. And one guy said to me, he said, you know, Don, training was never that easy. It was like shooting paper targets. We had, our training was always so much harder. You made our training so much harder than it had to be. When we went into Abbottabad, Pakistan to get bin Laden, it’s easy, but isn’t that point, isn’t that the point? So that it is easy? Because if it’s hard when you’re going into a target, that’s when it becomes super dangerous.

Yep, yep. As a matter of fact, the guys Were so relaxed even though it was only an hour and a half Hilo ride in to Abbottabad where, where Binh was and, and half the guys on the helicopter on the way in was sound asleep. They’re just, I’m going to get a little power nap now. They weren’t even that anxious because they’re pretty sure it was Bin Laden. But they had just trained over and over and over in every scenario you can picture. And in their minds they were so confident that whatever comes their way they’re going to be able to handle it.

And that was training over and above what they needed. We didn’t really know what they needed, but it always often ends up being that the training was far more than what the guys needed and just helped their confidence and yeah, dish it, bring it on, dish it out. We’ll, we’ll take it. And that’s the mindset for the teams. The military, you know, these difficult sports just. I learned Sarah, like anything that was tough and challenging. I was kind of quiet type of guy. But I wouldn’t have been boast upon my chest or anything like that. But I’d listen to the challenge, I’d look at the challenge or look at the mountain or SEAL training or something.

I’d say, well, there’s no reason in the world I shouldn’t be able to do this and I am going to do it and period. And I can make a lot of reasons why I’m not going to do it, but my mind just doesn’t go there. It’s how I am going to do it. And I think that could work for anything. Just not find reasons why you can’t do something, but find reasons why you can’t. All the ways you can do something. And, and, and for my life, it worked for me. For, for the, the life I chose just mainly physical type things, but it just, it worked for me.

It didn’t matter how hard it was to me. For instance, when I came back from Everest, I was really hurt. I almost died up there and, and my brain cavity had filled with fluid and my chest cavity filled with fluid. What did you do on Everest that you almost died? I was trying to climb it and okay, yeah. And so, and I had a really strong team. You know, the woman on the team, she, she summited seven times. She’s the first one to do it without oxygen. We had such a great team and sometimes hape and haste, high altitude pulmonary edema or cerebral edema just comes out of nowhere and the greatest climbers in the world just boom.

They got hape and haste, and you don’t really know why you get it. But Lydia Bradley, the female on the team, once said, she goes, don, this doesn’t seem to be bothering you. You’re the oldest guy on the team. Isn’t this bothering you? I said, well, right now I’m feeling great. I’m feeling great. And then once we got to the. These ladders up on the ice walls, it’s called the Kumbu Icefall. It’s the most dangerous place on Everest, and a lot of people die up there. But I was climbing it, and then it started getting dark.

And then I started putting my head down and just fluid was coming out of my nose and mouth. And then I forgot where I was. And then I was having a hard time breathing because I got the cerebral edema and pulmonary edema. Boom. Up climbing those ladders up on the ice field. And when I got to the top, I had passed out. And the greatest Sherpa in the world won. Everybody who’s ever read Into Thin Air or any of those Himalaya books, Everest books, they know about this guy. He was our Sherpa and he saved my life.

And so he asked me if I could. If I could stand up and walk. And. And I kept passing out and kept passing out. They were all sure I was going to die. And then we got to this wall. He said, can you repel? I said, of course I can repel. I felt like saying, of course I can repel. I’ve repelled all my life. But I couldn’t speak because there was so much. What is a repel? What is repel? Like rappel off a mountain with ropes. Okay. Or rappel out of a helicopter or something. And because we had a repel off this hundred foot wall, ice wall, and he went down, and I was just choking and coughing and I got the rope and I had my rappel device.

And then I realized I forget how to rappel. I lost my memory. So I lost my memory. I lost my vision. It looked like it was dark out, but I just lost my. My vision. And so I finally made it back down and barely got out of there alive. And so I was home, rehabilitating, recovering, and I was choking and coughing. I hated going up the stairs to go to bed at night because I had to walk upstairs. And I hated walking up to my mailbox as it was a long walk. And I got a call from Canada, a reality TV show, saying, we’re doing the 750 mile unsupported paddle Across Canada.

Would you like to be considered as a contestant? I said, well, I’m suffering from hape and haste right now, and I’m having a hard time coughing because. Talking because I cough so much. But, yeah, I’ll do it. I’ll do it. I couldn’t think of a reason why I couldn’t. All I had to do is paddle like this, 15, 16 hours a day sitting in a big wooden boat. And it took about a month. And, you know, I wasn’t going too cardio. Wasn’t too much cardio. It was just physical pull. Every now and then, I’d have to get on the other side of the boat.

And it was a prize money, and I was able to win. You know, we won and then was able to pay off my house with the prize money. I couldn’t. Awesome. How much did you win? It was over $100,000. Good for you. But it was the thing. It was supposed to be over a million. They kept cutting it down, but I couldn’t think of a reason why not. I couldn’t think of a reason why not do this paddle. And I always thought of reasons why I could. I think, well, I could sit here on my couch and I can exercise in my living room.

Yeah, I could paddle. So it’s just like your mindset. I think it’s a mindset shift. Instead of. I can. I can think of a lot of reasons why I’d rather sit and watch tv. But you need to think of why you want to get stuff done. So what are some of the. Give us some of your extraordinary experiences as a Navy SEAL that really. That you are willing to share that just kind of change the way you see the world. Okay. There was a mission in the Middle east, and four of us got handpicked for it.

So I was so proud as kind of a new guy on the team. And we had to go to Egypt first and meet with our counterparts. And they were showing us all the things they could do, and we were teaching them shooting and all the things we do. And so they were taking these frogs and banging them the heads on the boot and then peeling the skin back and eating the frogs. And. And they were doing this with snakes and is, you know, killing the snake on the boot, putting the underside of the neck in the mouth and peeling the skin back and eating the snakes.

Yeah, we were doing this with them. And then the venomous snakes, they did the same, but then they take the venom sacks out and eat the snakes. So we were doing this as well. Well, was It. Okay. Did it taste good? Some people say it tastes like chicken, but I didn’t think it tasted good. I like chicken. It gave you the protein you needed. You just, like, sucked it up and did it. Yep, that’s right. So we did all that and then. But we all got sick. The four of us got sick. And then we had to go down to the war zone, which I don’t mention where this is.

And the four of us were sick. And it was a helicopter drop where you drop a rubber boat, call them rubber ducks, drop a rubber boat into the ocean and you parachute into the water. Then you get in the boat, and the water was infested with sharks. And because the Arabs, what they would do, they would kill all these camels and they’d put all their intestines and guts and everything in the water. So there were sharks there all the time. We were scared to death of jumping in the water where all these sharks were. So we jumped in the water and jumped in that rubber boat as quickly as we could get it, you know, inflated and ready to go.

And then we had to go up to this. It was on three sides of this piece of land, was water. And. And we had a gist. All it was is a reconnaissance. We wanted to see what enemy activity was going on at the airport, which was off to our right, and at the shipyard, which was off to the left. And this little piece of land we’re on, if we found a place to hide for three days, we could look at. We could see all the traffic coming and going in both places. But there wasn’t a place to hide.

So we dug a hole and we buried ourselves in the hole. And we put desert camouflage netting over our heads. So in the hole there were four of us, and we had long hair and beards at the time. And we had our weapons and we had goggles because there was a terrible sandstorm up top, but the sand was blowing inside, so our noses and ears were packed with sand. And we’re still really sick. We’re really sick. And so we all had diarrhea and we’re all vomiting, and you couldn’t leave the hole to do that. Were you guys really sick because of the snake and the frogs? We.

We think so, yeah. And it was so disgustingly dirty in Egypt, too. Even the water just looked like it was tan. Color wasn’t clear. Okay. It was just dirty everything. And when you walked, you just felt like there were fingers on your face everywhere. But there were flies. It was. It’s just real dirty. Oh, you were. You had. You were coming out both ends and you’re in a hole. That’s awful. Well, it got worse, so, no, nobody complained, though. So. And then at high tide, the hole filled up with water, and we’re up to our necks in our own sewage, and we couldn’t get out of there.

And I was a medic, so I was able to get IVs and the other three guys. And one of the guys tried getting an IV in me, and he kept poking my arm, and all I got was, like, 10 infected wounds. He couldn’t get the IV in me because when you’re really dehydrated, it’s hard to get an IV in somebody. But as a medic, so I was familiar with doing it more than the other guys were. So then on day three, we had our other stuff, our boat and our motor and all the other stuff buried in a hole, buried with sand next to us.

But the hole we were in had camouflage netting it over us. So if you walked right up to us and you’d see the camouflage netting and you’d see four guys sitting there, but from afar, you really couldn’t tell that anybody was there, and that that was the point of the camouflage netting. And so on day three, this guy was walking through the desert, and all his clothes were blown and his scarves and everything. His Arab clothes were just blowing in the wind. And he was walking toward us, which was strange because there was nothing where we were.

And so we didn’t have a place to hide behind anything because there was nothing there. So that’s why we dug the hole. And then he got closer and closer to us, and we all got each other up and waking up, and we’re just like, sitting that hole of three days. And we had the goggles on, we had our weapons. And he comes up closer and closer to the hole, and then he looked at the netting, and then his eyes got really big because he saw four guys with goggles holding weapons pointed at him. And he just raised his arms and he muffled something, and then he ran off.

So we knew we got caught and we had to get out of there, and so we had to get out as quickly as we could. So as soon as he left, we got out of the hole and we started undigging the other hole with the boat and the motor and all that stuff in it. And it’s probably 9 or 10 at night or something now, and it was dark anyways. And then 14 guys came over a little berm and they caught three of us, we were undigging the hole and preparing the boat. And one of the guys was on watch and he said to us, his name was Mark.

He goes, guys, put your hands up. You never hear, put your hands up. And we looked over and 14 guys just pointing weapons at us. They looked like kids, really, but they all had their fingers on the trigger. And so we put our hands up and they circled around us. They put us in the middle of the circle. And they were scared to death. We were scared, too, but I think they were even more scared than we were because they didn’t see people like us before. And they see these four people in the middle of their desert, you know, with shovels, three of them with shovels and one with a weapon.

So we put our hands up and they just circle around us. And one who could speak broken English was saying, down, down, lay on the ground. We shoot you in the backs. And we said, and broke. And broke. All we knew was English. We said, no, we’re not doing that. We’re going to get in that boat over there and we’re going back home. And we had these little CIA cards, get out of jail free cards we call them, and they’re little orange cards that we had in our rucksacks. And it said in Arab, in an Arabic language, these guys are just training.

If you see them, just let them go. It was all so fake, you know. And then my buddy went to go get his card out of his rucksack, and they just put four AK47s up to his head. And we thought for sure he was just going to get blasted. And they let they. They didn’t do that to him. And so they sent somebody to a village to go get a better English speaker. And somebody came back. They held us at gunpoint overnight until the next morning. And he said, well, you guys trespassed on our land, and the penalty is we’re going to shoot you in the backs.

And we said, no, we’re not going to let you shoot us in the backs. We had nothing but our hands up from there. What we’re going to do, we’re going to inflate that boat over there and we’re going back home. They said, no, down, down. We shoot you in the backs. And our mindset was, we don’t lose. We don’t lose, even though it looks bad. 14 guys with weapons on us with our hands up in the air, and we’re arguing with them. No, you’re not going to do that. But we won. We still won. We Got out and got out alive how? They just eventually said, okay, we won’t shoot you.

You’re gonna go on your boat. You convinced them because you just like your perseverance. Yeah, it was a perseverance, but basically they couldn’t say all those words. All they said is, go, go, get out of here. They’re just. They didn’t want to kill you anyways. They. They weren’t really your enemy. Right. They were just a village. People protecting their village, I would assume. That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. It was a war zone. It was a war zone. And they all had AK47s, and so they’re used to killing people, but they didn’t shoot us at all. Do you think your little card that said you guys were just training, help.

Oh, because they can’t read. Oh, they couldn’t read, but. So it didn’t really help. But it was. But you. You told them that. It was kind of BS and I think they understood maybe every 20th word we might have said. So you got, why do you think they let you go? Maybe people talking to one another, even though we couldn’t really understand each other, we’re looking at each other in the eyes. They were warriors, too. We were. And we just. I think they almost appreciated that, our attitudes, no, we’re not going to hurt you. You’re not going to hurt us.

We’re just going home. And I think they just felt, okay, we’ll just let you go. They didn’t want to kill anybody. They didn’t want to kill. They just. Yeah. Interesting. How did that. How did that change your mindset? Well, what I loved about it, my favorite part of the whole thing, is as bad as it was in those days, in the hole and the sewage and everything and being sick, nobody complained. And we all loved what we were doing, and we all knew we were trained to put up with anything. Nobody complained about it. That’s the part I love about it.

Nobody complained. Nobody said, I should have been a pilot or something. I should have been something else. We just loved being there together. And we all trusted each other 100%. Like, we knew we had each other’s backs. And, yeah, it wasn’t a bad experience, really. Because of that, it ended up not being a bad experience. Nobody’s ever complained about it. Were you. I got this fly that keeps going on. Were you. It’s. It would be hard not to. I mean, complain. I mean, I don’t know if I could not complain. I mean, you had to have been like, oh, God, this is awful.

Let’s just get through it. Or. You didn’t even say that. I mean it. You didn’t even think that. You just knew you had to do it. But that’s part of your training, right? Yep, yep. But, you know, and I know you know this, but, you know, maybe to other people, if you have that mindset, you can do anything. It helps in whatever you do. Right. And never in SEAL training has there been any training saying, okay, we’re going to put you guys in a hole, you’re going to use it, go back for three days, and you’re going to be really sick.

We’re going to do that for training. We never had training like that. But just the mindset, the can do attitude, just. It’s called a combat mindset, we call it in the military combat mindset that no matter what, you’re going to win, the other guy’s going to lose. And if you get wounded or hurt or shot, you’re going to be recovered, you’re going to recover and, and you’re going to win. And that mindset’s instilled in all the training and then everything we ever do. And Mike Day, who just passed away a little while ago, Mike Day was a seal, and he went in on this mission and he got shot 27 times.

He didn’t get shot in the face or the neck. He had body armor on. And a lot of the shots, I think like 17, went into the body armor and he was wounded, and he kept. He was helping the women and the children in that building, and he killed the enemy. And he came out, the helicopter had already arrived, and he said, hey, I think I need some help. And he was shot 27 times. He didn’t even let that stop him from going on with the mission. And, and that I believe, of course, that was a seal, but I believe we all have that in us.

We all have it in us. And then what I do, Sarah, often, all the time. So we’re privileged because we had this great military training, and it helps you in everything you do and all that. But then I look at the people and the war zones, you know, whatever side, both sides, I look at the people in the war zones who go through so much more than we ever did, and they’re not trained. They’re just poor people trying to live. Yeah. And they go through much, much worse than being in a hole with sewage in it for three days.

And, you know, they, they, they bury their families. They’re. I mean, you know how bad it is I think of those people, that they have it in them and they’re surviving the ones who do survive, and we have it in us. And the things I’ve done physically, those thousand or so competitions and seal training and mountain climbing and all that, those I chose to do because I love that stuff. So it was all by choice for me. And I never had a hard life. I never had anything difficult in my path that I couldn’t get over, other than the things I chose to do.

So I feel blessed and grateful that everything that I did that was hard is because I wanted to do it. We’ve never been attacked, like, what’s going on in the Middle east now or anything like that. And we’ve never had to put up with anything like that unless you’re over there. But then when you’re over there, then you come home to the United States. You know, it’s like a US Appreciation tour, I used to call them. You know, you just. Wherever you go, it could be really bad, but then you get to come back to the place you love.

It almost is a. Yeah. It teaches you to appreciate here. And every time you went on a mission, you appreciated your country even more because you got to see that contrast. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And. And it makes you want to preserve what we have, I would assume. I mean, I’m putting words in your mouth, but, oh, no, that’s. Preserve what we have and preserve what we had, too. That’s right. Yeah. Re. Reclaim what we had and just say, enough. This is not gonna. Well, okay. Where can people follow you? Where can they. I know you always have television programs going and you have books out.

Where can they learn? And you speak, right? You do speaking tours, you do inspirational talks. Where can they learn more about you? Maybe see how they can. Maybe somebody has a business that they want you to speak at or they want to watch your television program or buy your book. Where can they go? Well, I think the easiest place is I have a website, and it’s US Frogman with two ends. US F R O G M A N N. And all the other social media sites are on that, too. But that’s pretty much. So nice talking to you.

Thank you so much for coming to the program. I really appreciate it.
[tr:tra].