Latest / Hardiness with Dr Paul Taylor / How a Veteran Turned Life's Challenges into Triumphs: Aaron Hale's Journey of Resilience

Transcript

How a Veteran Turned Life's Challenges into Triumphs: Aaron Hale's Journey of Resilience · Hardiness with Dr Paul Taylor

0:10
Speaker 1: Aaron Hale, Welcome to the podcast.
0:13
Speaker 2: Thank us some words to be here.
0:15
Speaker 1: So you have had me on your podcast, and when
0:20
Speaker 1: I was talking to you in your podcast and heard
0:22
Speaker 1: your story and actually interacted with you, I'm like, fucking hell,
0:27
Speaker 1: We've got to get this guy onto the podcast. So
0:30
Speaker 1: just I will do a little bit of an intro
0:33
Speaker 1: on you so that people understand the context.
0:36
Speaker 2: So you your.
0:38
Speaker 1: Ex military serviceman and your combat veteran. You served in
0:42
Speaker 1: both Iraq and Afghanistan as an explosive ordnance disposal disposal technician,
0:49
Speaker 1: which is a pretty frigging dangerous job, right, disposing of
0:53
Speaker 1: bombs of enemy bombs, and you found out one day
0:58
Speaker 1: in twenty eleven, just high dangerous that can be. And
1:03
Speaker 1: can you talk us through what actually happened?
1:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, like the hurt Locker guy except blind no I Yeah, okay.
1:16
Speaker 2: So I started off in the Navy actually as a
1:21
Speaker 2: as a cook, made my way to chef for a
1:26
Speaker 2: three star admiral. But then I decided, after I got
1:29
Speaker 2: my first confirmed kill with an admiral that I should
1:32
Speaker 2: have wanted to save lives. Instead, there was no action,
1:38
Speaker 2: which is great. It was a really boring deployment, but
1:41
Speaker 2: that's when I met some eoity text. These guys had
1:44
Speaker 2: UH all their gear dumped out of their armored truck,
1:47
Speaker 2: you know, the the UH robots, the bomb suits, all
1:51
Speaker 2: that stuff, doing maintenance checks and it was it was
1:54
Speaker 2: like a like a cool guy yard sale. So uh,
1:57
Speaker 2: I struck up a conversation with these guys, and the
2:01
Speaker 2: technical aspect of the job was really a challenging your
2:07
Speaker 2: thinking job, critical analysis, and you know, in the tight
2:11
Speaker 2: knit brotherhood and the fact that their first responders on
2:16
Speaker 2: the battlefield, all of it just all of it just
2:20
Speaker 2: kind of went ding. That's what I need to do.
2:23
Speaker 2: So I put in a request a chit with the
2:27
Speaker 2: Navy to go from cook to bomb tech, and surprisingly
2:33
Speaker 2: enough I was denied. I guess they like my cooking
2:36
Speaker 2: too much. But when my deployment was up in Afghanistan
2:45
Speaker 2: that first time, my enlistment contract was coming up and
2:50
Speaker 2: I'd either have to raise my hand and swear another
2:52
Speaker 2: oath or walk. So I took my service record, I
2:57
Speaker 2: let my contract expire and went over to the Army recruiter.
3:01
Speaker 2: She showed him my service jacket and said I want
3:04
Speaker 2: to be a bomb tech. And again being in two
3:09
Speaker 2: different Wars. The recruiter was like, yeah, welcome, come on,
3:14
Speaker 2: and I got trained up as an EOD tech. Is
3:17
Speaker 2: about a year long deployed direct and then again to
3:21
Speaker 2: Afghanistan this time is an EOD team leader. That's the
3:27
Speaker 2: guy that actually gets into the bomb suit and makes
3:29
Speaker 2: the long walk. And eight months into a year long
3:37
Speaker 2: deployments when I got injured. I was working on a
3:42
Speaker 2: known hazard and ID same thing we've been working on
3:46
Speaker 2: the entire year. It was just these really simple vegetable
3:50
Speaker 2: oil jogs fall of home at explosives connected by a
3:54
Speaker 2: nine volt battery lamp cord and two to a pressure plate,
4:00
Speaker 2: like just a plywood pressure plate. Very simple, very rudimentary
4:05
Speaker 2: and uh scattered everywhere. Uh it just it was a
4:11
Speaker 2: fellow marine eoity tech, uh once said. And it stuck
4:16
Speaker 2: with me every step in that AO was a deliberate
4:21
Speaker 2: act mm hm. So you had to be you were,
4:25
Speaker 2: you had to be keyed up all the time. You
4:27
Speaker 2: had to be on you know, you on watch, on
4:31
Speaker 2: guard for any little disturbed earth, anything that was out
4:35
Speaker 2: of place, because they were there was just littered everywhere.
4:40
Speaker 2: While I was working on this one actually had the
4:42
Speaker 2: robot take care pull the components apart, so it wasn't
4:47
Speaker 2: a like all known hazards had been handled, so I
4:52
Speaker 2: didn't have to get into the bomb suit because I
4:55
Speaker 2: just get it's either the robot or the bomb suit
4:58
Speaker 2: for all unknown and hazards. Because I was handled. I
5:02
Speaker 2: was in my standard battle rattle, and I made my
5:05
Speaker 2: approach on foot just to collect some evidence and get
5:10
Speaker 2: disposed of the rest of it. And there was a
5:13
Speaker 2: secondary device that hadn't been detected yet. He detected it
5:18
Speaker 2: with my feet. Jesus. I don't know if it was
5:25
Speaker 2: the hard backed earth because it was pretty much flat terrain,
5:30
Speaker 2: but I got I can I say I got lucky
5:33
Speaker 2: enough that I was virtually untouched by the bomb blast
5:38
Speaker 2: from my neck down. I don't know how. It wasn't
5:41
Speaker 2: like this thing was hiding up in a tree. There
5:43
Speaker 2: was just nothing around. But I must have been a
5:47
Speaker 2: little bit offset from the pressure plate and just the
5:51
Speaker 2: channeled up and it hit me in the head from
5:54
Speaker 2: kind of the right side. I got punted my bell
6:00
Speaker 2: something good, and lights went out. I lay on my
6:05
Speaker 2: knees and elbows. I was still conscious. I can't tell
6:08
Speaker 2: you how loose it I was, but I did realize
6:14
Speaker 2: that the lights had gone out. I reached up there
6:18
Speaker 2: to At first, I did the functions test, like wiggled
6:22
Speaker 2: the fingers and toes. I'm like, okay, everything seems to
6:25
Speaker 2: be in place. Then I reached up to fix my
6:27
Speaker 2: helmet because I thought it had gotten pushed over my
6:30
Speaker 2: face from the blast. Reached up and it was gone. Uh.
6:37
Speaker 2: And that's what I thought, Oh, this is wrong. My
6:41
Speaker 2: first sergeant's going to kill me for losing that. I
6:44
Speaker 2: was at.
6:45
Speaker 1: Your first was that your first thought was about, shit,
6:47
Speaker 1: I've lost my helmet.
6:49
Speaker 2: It's me say. The first thing to go through my
6:52
Speaker 2: mind was blast over pressure. But yeah, the first thing, really,
6:58
Speaker 2: the first thing I thought of was the battle situation.
7:02
Speaker 2: I just gotten blown up, and I was thinking complex
7:06
Speaker 2: ambush where they'll set off night and everybody's looking at
7:11
Speaker 2: the explosion and that's when they start taking you start
7:14
Speaker 2: taking small arms fire. So I was thinking about my team,
7:18
Speaker 2: I was thinking about the security court on. I was
7:19
Speaker 2: thinking about everybody was probably looking right at me. Uh.
7:23
Speaker 2: And I wanted to get back to my guys and
7:29
Speaker 2: get back in the fight because at the moment I
7:33
Speaker 2: didn't think that anything was wrong. I just got knocked
7:36
Speaker 2: over and I couldn't see because my helmet was over
7:40
Speaker 2: my face. Except I found out that I was wrong,
7:45
Speaker 2: and what what?
7:46
Speaker 1: What did you realize and the gravity of the situation,
7:51
Speaker 1: Like can you remember when you were like, oh shit,
7:55
Speaker 1: I'm in big trouble here.
7:57
Speaker 2: Well did you? Did? You? Dan? Just block? It was
8:01
Speaker 2: funny that there's a there's a fellow U. S Service
8:06
Speaker 2: member of former Navy Seal Jason Redman, who got shot
8:12
Speaker 2: in the face and lost his helmet on the battlefield.
8:16
Speaker 2: So we often joke about the first thing we thought
8:18
Speaker 2: about instead of getting off the you know, off the
8:21
Speaker 2: X was getting that darn equipment back. But for him,
8:26
Speaker 2: he had nods on his helmet and he didn't want
8:29
Speaker 2: to give you know, that sensitive equipment to the bad guys.
8:33
Speaker 2: Me I didn't want to get in trouble with my
8:35
Speaker 2: chain of command, so I guess he was Anyways, Uh, yeah,
8:42
Speaker 2: I I realized that there that I couldn't see, something
8:48
Speaker 2: was definitely wrong, but it was it. It took about
8:54
Speaker 2: forty eight hours to get from from the battlefield through Landstool,
9:01
Speaker 2: the d O D, the US Military hospital, and Germany
9:08
Speaker 2: to back to the United States. They held me in
9:13
Speaker 2: Germany for about twenty four hours because they didn't want
9:16
Speaker 2: me to do in that transatlantic flight altitude after uh,
9:21
Speaker 2: the head injury and swelling chases. I'm not I'm not surprised.
9:25
Speaker 1: I'm surprised they actually got you out of Afghanistan to
9:28
Speaker 1: Germany so soon with a pretty horrific traumatic Brian injury.
9:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, what's the deal they were They took me half
9:38
Speaker 2: away and they're like, you know what, that's probably not
9:40
Speaker 2: a good idea.
9:45
Speaker 1: So at what point? So so you get you then
9:48
Speaker 1: you go to Germany. You're you're obviously a war at
9:53
Speaker 1: this stage that you know, you've lost your sight and
9:57
Speaker 1: you're probably a word that's the had you completely lost
9:59
Speaker 1: you hearing at that stage as well?
10:02
Speaker 2: No, and okay, no, of course both my ear drooms
10:06
Speaker 2: were blown out perforator where they go the ten panic membrane.
10:15
Speaker 2: But I could still hear. Of course I'd lost some hearing,
10:19
Speaker 2: especially my right ear, taken some inner ear damage, but no,
10:23
Speaker 2: I still had my hearing. I'd lost my right eye
10:30
Speaker 2: almost completely. In fact, the eyelids had gotten few as together,
10:35
Speaker 2: so I had like this permanent wink of the gun,
10:39
Speaker 2: but the eye was gone. Uh, the left eye had
10:45
Speaker 2: there was like a piece of frag that went right
10:47
Speaker 2: across the bridge of my nose and gashed the left
10:50
Speaker 2: eye just enough that it was could put and I'd
10:55
Speaker 2: cracked my skull. The blast had cracked my skull and
10:59
Speaker 2: a few plays is around my sinuses, so it was
11:02
Speaker 2: leaking threebol spinal fluids right right out my nostrils, like
11:09
Speaker 2: right out the sinuses. So I had this drip so
11:15
Speaker 2: that all that going on, but at least I could
11:17
Speaker 2: still hear some. It wasn't until almost four years later
11:25
Speaker 2: that found out in a pretty harsh way that the
11:31
Speaker 2: what they called it encephalocial. They took a piece of
11:34
Speaker 2: septum and patched the cracks of my skull. It didn't
11:40
Speaker 2: basically plugged it up with cartilage, but it was either
11:45
Speaker 2: still a slow like a small lake, or it had
11:49
Speaker 2: come open. And you know, a path out is also
11:53
Speaker 2: a path in. So I contracted bacterial meningitas oh jaesus.
12:00
Speaker 2: That will put me right back in the hospital four
12:03
Speaker 2: years later, twenty fifteen, that it came closer to killing
12:10
Speaker 2: me than the bomb blast, my goodness, and in the process.
12:17
Speaker 2: In the process there I lost my hearing and it
12:22
Speaker 2: dissolved the fine hair cells in the cochlear that are
12:27
Speaker 2: the actual receptors of sound. Yeah, not only that, but
12:32
Speaker 2: but the other thing that's in there is the hair
12:35
Speaker 2: cells for a vestibular balance, and I lost I lost
12:40
Speaker 2: that too. Shit.
12:43
Speaker 1: So and with the initial blast, iron, did you sustain
12:48
Speaker 1: any frontal lobe dam each because you know it's obviously
12:51
Speaker 1: losing an eye. You're right, it's right there, always your
12:55
Speaker 1: frontal lobe pretty much intact.
12:59
Speaker 2: I don't know. Oh uh, I can't remember piano lessons,
13:05
Speaker 2: but then again, I don't think I ever took them.
13:12
Speaker 2: I frankly, I don't think so. Uh. The truth is,
13:18
Speaker 2: I after coming back from Afghanistan and the bomb blast
13:26
Speaker 2: and recuperating at the Walter Read Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland,
13:35
Speaker 2: did you actually didn't stay there very long? About a
13:38
Speaker 2: month and a half, just just to patch up the
13:42
Speaker 2: burns and do some surgeries and try to save that
13:46
Speaker 2: one eye which just didn't take. But uh, after you know,
13:52
Speaker 2: kind of fix it up my face the best they could.
13:56
Speaker 2: There wasn't much they had for me Walter Read of
14:00
Speaker 2: they were doing all sorts of amazing stuff with prosthetics,
14:05
Speaker 2: with ampts, but again, neck down. I was good to
14:09
Speaker 2: come They're like, you can't stay. You don't have to
14:13
Speaker 2: go home, but you can't stay here. And they sent
14:16
Speaker 2: me to a VA hospital Veterans Affairs in Florida where
14:23
Speaker 2: they have a TBI spinal injury unit. And I got
14:30
Speaker 2: there for you know, for a couple of weeks, and
14:34
Speaker 2: I had a neurosurgeon do one of those acuity mental
14:40
Speaker 2: acuity tests all of everything you could do that wasn't visual.
14:47
Speaker 2: So yeah, the memory tests or tell me how, I'm
14:52
Speaker 2: going to give you a whole list of your words.
14:56
Speaker 2: You tell me which are piece of furniture and vehicles
15:00
Speaker 2: or whatever. And he came back a couple of days
15:03
Speaker 2: later said, you you scored a ninety six percentile and
15:10
Speaker 2: math a ninety six percentile in UH general knowledge. And
15:18
Speaker 2: I was in a ninety ninth percentile in memory. And
15:24
Speaker 2: all I could think of was my EOD competitiveness and
15:27
Speaker 2: I could I can do better? Can we do that again? Whatever?
15:34
Speaker 2: You take the test? And so so me.
15:37
Speaker 1: So you come out of hospital, right, and and you
15:41
Speaker 1: are completely blind, Well, what's what's going through your head?
15:47
Speaker 2: Like? Talk me through that.
15:48
Speaker 1: There must have been some incredible lows and and and
15:53
Speaker 1: then you know there there's I presume there's some kind
15:57
Speaker 1: of a turning point to sort of talk us through that.
16:01
Speaker 2: Well, to really understand that part, you got to back
16:06
Speaker 2: up to two weeks before the bomb blast. For a
16:10
Speaker 2: year long deployment, every US service member is required to
16:14
Speaker 2: take two weeks of R and R two weeks of leave.
16:17
Speaker 2: So I was just coming back from two weeks of
16:23
Speaker 2: R and R. Actually had the luggage in the back
16:26
Speaker 2: of my armored truck when the incident happened. I just
16:29
Speaker 2: got picked up from Kandahar and was jumping in a
16:32
Speaker 2: supply convoy to head back to work, and there was
16:34
Speaker 2: an ied in the road, and they said, you want
16:38
Speaker 2: to take care of this. I'm like, co QRF, I
16:41
Speaker 2: mean no, yeah, I'll get it. But while I was
16:45
Speaker 2: on home, I was in the DC area on my
16:52
Speaker 2: vacation when I found out that one of my fellow
16:57
Speaker 2: team leaders from my company, a good friend of mine,
16:59
Speaker 2: had gotten injured. So I was was the first one
17:03
Speaker 2: to see him come out of ICU that they wouldn't
17:07
Speaker 2: tell me what had happened to him, the doctor patient privilege,
17:12
Speaker 2: but they said I could wait in his room, and
17:14
Speaker 2: sitting right beside his bed on the chair was like
17:17
Speaker 2: one of those donated piles of clothes that there was hoodie, sweatpants, shorts,
17:26
Speaker 2: T shirt, and one shoe, so yeah, you don't have
17:30
Speaker 2: to be a rocket surgeon. And the going out, and
17:35
Speaker 2: so my buddy gets wheeled in. And to know this guy,
17:39
Speaker 2: he's got a great personality. I don't know if it
17:41
Speaker 2: was part of anesthesia he was coming down from, but
17:45
Speaker 2: he comes in with this confused look and then a
17:47
Speaker 2: great big grin. He's like, hell, what are you doing here?
17:52
Speaker 2: Because he thought I was back in Afghanistan and then whispers, hey, dude,
17:58
Speaker 2: like conspiratorially, he goes, I think I kicked myself in
18:02
Speaker 2: the faces. That's the sense of humor. And the worst
18:08
Speaker 2: thing he could say about the situation was that it
18:11
Speaker 2: ruined a beautiful calf tattoo. So two weeks later, I'm
18:20
Speaker 2: sitting in the same I'm laying in my own hospital
18:25
Speaker 2: bed just down the hall, and I'm coming to groups
18:30
Speaker 2: of the fact that I'm gonna be blind like lights
18:33
Speaker 2: out for the rest of my life, and I'm not
18:36
Speaker 2: too pleased about it. You know, all those things all
18:41
Speaker 2: that I can't what ifs y me's just the demons
18:44
Speaker 2: and the self talk in the back of my head
18:47
Speaker 2: or just running through my mind, and they're just they're
18:49
Speaker 2: crowding all the space. And you know, dude, like just thinking,
18:55
Speaker 2: I can't be I can't be a soldier, can't be
18:57
Speaker 2: an EOT E tech, I can't be a husband, father,
19:00
Speaker 2: I can't be a man. I can't provide, I can't
19:03
Speaker 2: drive anymore with all that stuff that I can't do.
19:06
Speaker 2: But then yeah, my buddy, Yeah, Kyle comes wheeling in
19:14
Speaker 2: his wheelchair and he wheels right up to the side
19:17
Speaker 2: of my bed. He's like, hell, dude, you got to
19:19
Speaker 2: feel this. Give me your hand, okay, you know soldiers.
19:24
Speaker 2: I don't know what he's up to, and I don't know.
19:27
Speaker 2: I do not want to give him my hand. He's like,
19:30
Speaker 2: come on, come on, you gotta do this. And so
19:33
Speaker 2: it takes my hand. It puts it up under like
19:35
Speaker 2: the palm up to the chin, his chin, and I
19:38
Speaker 2: feel two weeks of stubble, right, you know, military grooming
19:43
Speaker 2: standards all that, and he goes you know, these marine
19:48
Speaker 2: EU and E texts here, they have this liaison guy
19:52
Speaker 2: and as soon as they come out of ice you,
19:54
Speaker 2: he asks them how you doing, And of course the
19:56
Speaker 2: marine is like I'm to saying I'm going fine, And
19:59
Speaker 2: as soon as they say, he hands him a razor
20:01
Speaker 2: and says, we'll get back into rigs and he goes, dude, heil.
20:07
Speaker 2: We don't have that liaison in the army, so nobody's
20:12
Speaker 2: here to tell us we can't. You know, we have
20:14
Speaker 2: to shave. It's driving the marines nuts. You've got to
20:17
Speaker 2: grow your beard out. It's something small, it's silly. Yeah.
20:24
Speaker 2: And I did not want to laugh. I wasn't in
20:26
Speaker 2: the mood for it, but I was. I didn't I
20:29
Speaker 2: didn't have the capability of not laughing. So he helped me,
20:34
Speaker 2: just like jar me out of my stupor. And then
20:39
Speaker 2: it also helped me remember that I'm not the only
20:43
Speaker 2: one in pain here. I don't have a monopoly on pain.
20:46
Speaker 2: There are these warriors up and down the hallways, and
20:49
Speaker 2: they're all going through their own personal battles. So who's
20:54
Speaker 2: to say I have a good enough excuse to quit.
20:59
Speaker 2: I can't quit. I'm still alive. I still have a
21:03
Speaker 2: job of duty to do. I'm even if I don't
21:07
Speaker 2: know how yet. I am still a soldier. I am,
21:12
Speaker 2: for the time being, still a neoti tech, a sergeant
21:15
Speaker 2: I'm still a husband and a father and all those
21:18
Speaker 2: things that I don't I don't think I can do,
21:22
Speaker 2: but I'm not. I haven't been fired yet and I'm
21:26
Speaker 2: still alive, so I gotta I gotta figure it out
21:28
Speaker 2: so that I can't turned into how can I. It's
21:32
Speaker 2: just it was just a paradigm shift, a change in perspective.
21:38
Speaker 2: And like most of my promotions in the military, the
21:44
Speaker 2: shift happened before I was ready. I was I was
21:49
Speaker 2: perfectly content content uh moping and complaining and brooding. But
21:56
Speaker 2: my buddy came in. He shocked me out of it,
21:57
Speaker 2: and he said, okay, in his own way, he said,
22:02
Speaker 2: you got to focus on the future. You're going to
22:05
Speaker 2: focus on what you can do, and that's what I do.
22:08
Speaker 1: M interesting and and when that, when that turn happened,
22:12
Speaker 1: did you vacillate back and forth for a while from
22:16
Speaker 1: from you know, from yeah, I've got to move forward
22:20
Speaker 1: to then back into all of the what IF's and stuff.
22:24
Speaker 1: I presume that there was a bouncing back and forth
22:27
Speaker 1: or or were you just like a runaway tree and
22:30
Speaker 1: up you.
22:31
Speaker 2: Remember that the perpetual like uh, it was like a
22:36
Speaker 2: like a like a desk toy.
22:38
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, but the ball, so you flick the ball?
22:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, yes, kind of that's
22:44
Speaker 2: kind of be in my mood. It's a perpetual cycle
22:48
Speaker 2: of going through challenge, saying this sucks, and then saying, okay,
22:53
Speaker 2: snap out of it, and then let's let's get back
22:56
Speaker 2: to work. And it happened big time when I contracted
23:01
Speaker 2: the meningitis. Man, I'm sure, I'm sure to take his cheeses.
23:04
Speaker 1: You're trying to get over one massive, massive shock and
23:10
Speaker 1: trauma to your life, and then cheese is just as
23:13
Speaker 1: you're getting back on your feet, you get another one.
23:16
Speaker 2: What was worse the first one on the second? That's
23:20
Speaker 2: hard to say. That's hard to say. Really, this is
23:22
Speaker 2: a good question because the first time it was tough
23:26
Speaker 2: because I was brand new right to the trauma. I
23:30
Speaker 2: was to something as drastic as that, and I had
23:35
Speaker 2: to struggle through. And then but then the second, like
23:39
Speaker 2: the second time, I guess the illness and going deaf.
23:45
Speaker 2: I got home and I'm sitting at my breakfast bar
23:50
Speaker 2: the counter on the stool, and I'm holding on to
23:54
Speaker 2: the counter because I lost my balance and I would
23:57
Speaker 2: fall right off the stool and I was radio silent
24:02
Speaker 2: lights out. I was trapped in my body and like
24:05
Speaker 2: the whole world ended at my fingertips. And yeah, I
24:10
Speaker 2: was none too pleased about that either. And I was
24:13
Speaker 2: just again going through all of that, and this time
24:16
Speaker 2: it was like, when have I paid my dues? When
24:21
Speaker 2: when has this soldier been, you know, paid his fair fare? Right?
24:26
Speaker 2: And I was like, I went through all this blindness
24:30
Speaker 2: stuff and I was doing okay. I learned how to
24:33
Speaker 2: be blind, learned how to navigate with the cane. I
24:36
Speaker 2: was running marathons, whitewater kayaking, I was climbing mountains. I
24:40
Speaker 2: was doing stuff I didn't considered when I still had
24:43
Speaker 2: my sight, and I was speaking. I was talking and
24:47
Speaker 2: inspiring and motivating, and it was just doing all this stuff.
24:51
Speaker 2: And I was learning how to be a father to
24:53
Speaker 2: my first born. I didn't mention on that first. And
25:01
Speaker 2: then the two weeks of R and R back to
25:03
Speaker 2: the States coincided with my first son's first birthday. Oh wow,
25:12
Speaker 2: So I got to see him turn one and got
25:15
Speaker 2: to see the whole family gather around for Thanksgiving feast,
25:20
Speaker 2: and that was that was the last page in the
25:23
Speaker 2: photo album. So I went through all of that the
25:26
Speaker 2: first time and I was doing okay, and then all
25:30
Speaker 2: of a sudden, I get knunk to the mat again,
25:34
Speaker 2: like rocket getting pummeled, and I'm thinking, this is this is?
25:40
Speaker 2: Can you give it to the next guy?
25:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, Jesus Christ, I mean, I mean, losing losing one
25:47
Speaker 1: of your senses, particularly your sight, has got to be
25:51
Speaker 1: pretty friggin horrendous to try and reinvent yourself and navigate that,
25:55
Speaker 1: but then to lose your hearing on top.
25:58
Speaker 2: Of that fucking helmet, It's and and what what?
26:02
Speaker 1: At what point did you decide that a fucking blind
26:10
Speaker 1: and deaf person could create a podcast?
26:13
Speaker 2: I caught the fuck. Well, it's funny. I've got this
26:22
Speaker 2: very limited input, so I've got an overdeveloped output. But
26:30
Speaker 2: an interview based show is definitely a challenge. Uh, well,
26:35
Speaker 2: the thing was okay. So I'm sitting at the breakfast
26:37
Speaker 2: bar and I'm totally deaf, and I've got I'm totally blind,
26:41
Speaker 2: totally deaf, imbalanced. I'm listening list all my senses, my
26:47
Speaker 2: sense of humor shopper never but it's holding on by
26:50
Speaker 2: a string. Oh but uh, it wasn't like before the podcast.
26:57
Speaker 2: I'm sitting sitting there just trying to figure out what
27:00
Speaker 2: the heck am I going to do next? I couldn't
27:03
Speaker 2: get on the treadmill because it felt like somebody's stealing
27:08
Speaker 2: the rug out from under me. In three hundred and
27:10
Speaker 2: sixty degrees different directions. Man, I couldn't. There's so many
27:16
Speaker 2: things that were just if they had figured out how
27:18
Speaker 2: to do and I learned it, going from I can't
27:23
Speaker 2: to how can I? But then this time it was
27:27
Speaker 2: I'd gotten I figured out I guess the reward the
27:34
Speaker 2: fulfillment in sharing the story. In fact, as former Green
27:40
Speaker 2: Beret Colonel Scott Man is about to release a book
27:46
Speaker 2: and just interviewed him, it talked about the generosity of
27:50
Speaker 2: scars and sharing your scar story as a way to
27:56
Speaker 2: connect with others to heal not just them, but you're self.
28:01
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, it's really terrific.
28:03
Speaker 1: But he.
28:05
Speaker 2: He just puts in in simple terms what I'd experienced,
28:10
Speaker 2: and it was in the sharing. So I turned the
28:15
Speaker 2: how can I into how can I? So that I can?
28:19
Speaker 2: I mean teach? So so it became that was the purpose.
28:25
Speaker 1: That's purpose, and that's the that's the driver then of everything.
28:29
Speaker 2: I guess I just figured out I'd keep doing, figured
28:33
Speaker 2: out what I could do right, And of course I
28:37
Speaker 2: did what anybody in my situation would do. I started
28:40
Speaker 2: a fudge company. I fudged company chocolate. Uh but uh,
28:49
Speaker 2: the long story short, I started cooking. I went way
28:54
Speaker 2: overboard on on for desserts on a holiday and it
28:58
Speaker 2: turned into a business, which made that an e commerce business.
29:02
Speaker 2: I started speaking again. I started running again. I was
29:05
Speaker 2: I took the trekking poles I used to take into
29:07
Speaker 2: the mountains and I would do it this weird like
29:11
Speaker 2: spider walk crab walk thing out to my mailbox and back,
29:16
Speaker 2: and that would be exhausted. But I did something more
29:20
Speaker 2: than I did the day before, and I'd go down
29:23
Speaker 2: down to the next driveway and then then come back.
29:27
Speaker 2: And then I'd get down on the treadmill and I'd
29:29
Speaker 2: hold onto the stability barge with like a g I
29:32
Speaker 2: Joe kung fu grip, and I would just hit the
29:34
Speaker 2: quick start, you know, half a mile an hour. What's
29:38
Speaker 2: that kilometers? I don't know, but I would just I
29:45
Speaker 2: would hit the speed up button, go a little bit faster,
29:48
Speaker 2: one beap at a time, And within a year I
29:51
Speaker 2: was running. I ran my first comeback marathon, which happened
29:58
Speaker 2: to be in my hometown and my high school twentieth reunion.
30:06
Speaker 2: I came back and ran my fastest marathon.
30:08
Speaker 1: Ever changes when you're blind and death. You've run your
30:12
Speaker 1: fastest marth than ever. And then then you ran something
30:18
Speaker 1: called the bad Water one three five, which is an
30:21
Speaker 1: ultra marathon and the first blind and deaf person. I mean,
30:28
Speaker 1: what what's the thinking of? Yeah, yeah, I'm just going
30:32
Speaker 1: to do an ultra marathon now, and and then how
30:36
Speaker 1: rewarding did that fail? I mean, do you do you
30:41
Speaker 1: see over those victories as you're going on and are
30:46
Speaker 1: they the things that keeps driving you forward?
30:50
Speaker 2: Well, just to answer, of course, because I went off
30:53
Speaker 2: on a tanger there. But the podcast is that after
30:58
Speaker 2: I've gotten the cochlear implant.
31:02
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, sorry, we should we should say the listeners.
31:04
Speaker 1: If he's planning death, how are we doing this interview yet?
31:06
Speaker 2: Sorry?
31:07
Speaker 1: So you got a cochlear implant?
31:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I got. I actually got two, started with
31:13
Speaker 2: my right ear, but that was the one that had
31:15
Speaker 2: more damage on the inner ear to a scaring and
31:17
Speaker 2: it didn't take. So I got the cochlear implant on
31:21
Speaker 2: the left ear and it was it was almost six
31:24
Speaker 2: months of being you know that sensory deprivation now until
31:32
Speaker 2: I could until it was turned on. But it took
31:36
Speaker 2: rather six months or more of tuning in and learning
31:41
Speaker 2: a whole new way. My brains has to learn this
31:44
Speaker 2: digital signal. And uh it was almost an entire year
31:49
Speaker 2: before I could actually have a conversation. But I was,
31:53
Speaker 2: I was. I was hearing again, a right. I could
31:56
Speaker 2: hear podcasts, I could hear audio books, I could hear you.
32:00
Speaker 2: I text the speech, read emails, which is not so great,
32:03
Speaker 2: but uh m hm, I could hear again sort of.
32:08
Speaker 2: And people have started inviting me onto the podcast and
32:12
Speaker 2: I tentatively do zoom calls, and I do think I
32:14
Speaker 2: can do this. I think in I'm really unemployable, uh
32:23
Speaker 2: for a number of reasons, not just the disabilities on
32:25
Speaker 2: the face, but uh so I thought, you know, I've
32:29
Speaker 2: got this business going. Uh. We started investing in real estate,
32:33
Speaker 2: which another crazy idea, you know, investing in distance real estate.
32:39
Speaker 2: And I start a podcast because I kind of take
32:44
Speaker 2: an idea and I extended out as far as I
32:48
Speaker 2: can quote unquote see and I try, I try aiming
32:53
Speaker 2: beyond the horizon, yeah, like like the running and yeah
33:00
Speaker 2: bad water.
33:01
Speaker 1: Uh.
33:03
Speaker 2: When I started first started running. It was because I
33:08
Speaker 2: was I was chasing a few mentors. It was Eric
33:12
Speaker 2: Winemer is the first blind person to climb Everest and
33:16
Speaker 2: the Seven Summits.
33:17
Speaker 1: Uh.
33:18
Speaker 2: And when I was trying to figure out how to
33:21
Speaker 2: stay the hell away from my being stuck in my
33:24
Speaker 2: house and trapped by my couch right feeling sorry for myself,
33:29
Speaker 2: I started looking these guys up. I found Eric just
33:33
Speaker 2: he kept popping up blind. I was, I was doing
33:35
Speaker 2: Google search, is a blind plus outside blind plus and
33:39
Speaker 2: uh whatever? And Eric popped up like he climbed Everest.
33:44
Speaker 2: I could do something and I saw I saw him out.
33:47
Speaker 2: I went mountain climbing with him. Uh. Then there was
33:52
Speaker 2: Lonnie Bedwell. He's the first blind person to kayak the
33:56
Speaker 2: entire length of the Grand Canyon Class five whitewater in
34:02
Speaker 2: a solo kayak ship. So I saw him out and
34:07
Speaker 2: I'm a kayak with him. That's crazy. Anyhow. I started
34:15
Speaker 2: when I've learned about blind running, blind runners, blind running,
34:21
Speaker 2: and I registered for four marathons within the span of
34:26
Speaker 2: four months before I'd run anything longer than a ten k. Wow.
34:32
Speaker 2: So I kind of tend to bite off more than
34:35
Speaker 2: my I can two and just start gnawing like hell.
34:39
Speaker 1: There's a there's a there's a famous race car driver
34:42
Speaker 1: in Australia called Peter brock And and he says, one
34:47
Speaker 1: of the keys to life is to bite off more
34:49
Speaker 1: than you can chew and then chew like fuck.
34:52
Speaker 2: And that's that's pretty much you. Yeah. I guess maybe
34:57
Speaker 2: I just stole that from him and don't realize it.
35:00
Speaker 2: I do that a lot. I can never remember who
35:06
Speaker 2: to a tribute a quote to, and I bought them anyways,
35:10
Speaker 2: so I just claim.
35:11
Speaker 1: Well, if you watch them, then you've redone the quote
35:14
Speaker 1: and then it's it's definitely yours. I mean, so you
35:19
Speaker 1: you've you've you've run that bad Water Ultra Marathon, the
35:22
Speaker 1: first blinded death person ever. You've also done a two
35:26
Speaker 1: hundred miles plus run from the African coast inland all
35:31
Speaker 1: the way up Killy Manjaro to get up to the
35:35
Speaker 1: summit where you can see fuck all? What what what
35:41
Speaker 1: is the what's the drive now? Like for all of
35:46
Speaker 1: the incredible stuff that you've done, what is it internally
35:51
Speaker 1: that just keeps you going?
35:54
Speaker 2: Is it the inspiration of others or is it just
35:56
Speaker 2: because you're a lunatic cognitive dissonance. Uh. You know, actually
36:02
Speaker 2: that may be a part of it, you know, cognitive
36:06
Speaker 2: dissonance or what is some of the terms. I did
36:09
Speaker 2: look these things up, like uh uh uh fading effect
36:14
Speaker 2: bias and the uh was it the end the peak
36:23
Speaker 2: end rule? Okay, So, fading effect bias means that we naturally,
36:32
Speaker 2: our brains naturally allow negative emotions to fade faster from
36:38
Speaker 2: our memory than positive ones. So okay. Uh. The peak
36:44
Speaker 2: end rule is that our brains compress entire like you know,
36:52
Speaker 2: the suffering your episode, like a like a horrible uh situations,
36:59
Speaker 2: We'll remember the toughest moment, the toughest part of it,
37:04
Speaker 2: and that we got through it the end ye so so,
37:10
Speaker 2: and then the cognitive dissonance we just we start forgetting.
37:15
Speaker 1: Uh.
37:15
Speaker 2: We ignore what we don't like and focus on the
37:19
Speaker 2: fact that we survived. So and this is that's just
37:24
Speaker 2: your your your powerful brain at play. When it comes
37:27
Speaker 2: to why did I decide to run across Kenya from
37:31
Speaker 2: the shore? As me? I do this every time with
37:37
Speaker 2: a with a like a marathon, ultra marathon mountain climb.
37:41
Speaker 2: Before it starts and after it's over, I'm like, man,
37:46
Speaker 2: that was awesome. I can't wait to do another one.
37:48
Speaker 2: And in the middle, I'm like, I cannot believe I
37:50
Speaker 2: taught myself into this. What the hell am I doing?
37:56
Speaker 1: So that's interesting day, you know, talking about cognitive distitition,
38:00
Speaker 1: it's in the feeling affect bias gives a little bit
38:03
Speaker 1: of an explanation, but there is there is a massive,
38:08
Speaker 1: massive internal drive that that orients your energy towards that
38:14
Speaker 1: right now, do you think that that was always in
38:18
Speaker 1: you or do you think that that has grown partly
38:22
Speaker 1: because of what you've been through and the inspiration of others.
38:26
Speaker 2: And you know, how much of that do you think
38:29
Speaker 2: is nature and how much nurture? That's the thing we
38:34
Speaker 2: are nowadays. We're so comfortable that we're killing ourselves. And
38:41
Speaker 2: I am I am not you know, I am no
38:45
Speaker 2: different than anybody else. I'm just an average drow that
38:47
Speaker 2: got thrust into a very uncomfortable situation. And I had
38:54
Speaker 2: small glimpses of it, just a touch of it. You're
38:58
Speaker 2: growing up, you have these really tough episodes and then
39:03
Speaker 2: you you have a sense of accomplishment when it's over,
39:08
Speaker 2: and then kind of kind of plateau, like you get comfortable, Okay,
39:11
Speaker 2: I accomplished this, I could put up my feet and relax,
39:15
Speaker 2: and I would do that until the next time I
39:18
Speaker 2: was surprised by the next thing. But the military being
39:23
Speaker 2: deployed and you know you tech and constantly training and
39:28
Speaker 2: trying to prepare for the next battle, right, that changed
39:38
Speaker 2: my mindset instead of waiting for something to come to
39:44
Speaker 2: start putting myself into that training mode, pre preparation mode,
39:50
Speaker 2: trying to make myself harder to kill than anybody's ever encountered.
39:56
Speaker 2: And when it comes to these challenges, it's kind of
40:00
Speaker 2: the same thing. I'm going to meet that the negative me.
40:07
Speaker 2: I'm going to meet my demons. I'm going to face them,
40:11
Speaker 2: and so I yeah, bad water. That's that's one hundred
40:15
Speaker 2: and thirty five miles to Death Valley with the hottest
40:17
Speaker 2: place is on the planet, and it's two hundred and
40:20
Speaker 2: eighty two feet below sea level in the middle of
40:23
Speaker 2: the desert, and you've got to run out of the
40:25
Speaker 2: desert over three mountain ranges and up to the Mount
40:31
Speaker 2: Whitney Portal. Mount Whitney is the tallest mountain in the
40:37
Speaker 2: contiguous forty eight stays, So it's about twenty thousand feet
40:46
Speaker 2: of Kulti Dane and then, of course one hundred and
40:51
Speaker 2: thirty five miles. But there's this one one portion. There's
40:57
Speaker 2: one part. It's like the Crucible of the Crucible, and
41:01
Speaker 2: it's called the Father Crawley Climb. It's the Second Mountain
41:05
Speaker 2: Range and it's seventy somewhere around seventy eighty miles in.
41:11
Speaker 2: You've already been running for an entire day. It's one
41:15
Speaker 2: hundred and twenty something degrees fahrenheit and exhausted, creaked and
41:21
Speaker 2: dust and sweat and salt, actually no sweat, it just
41:25
Speaker 2: don't sweat. It's gone. And fatigue, emotional fatigue, physical fatigue.
41:34
Speaker 2: And you're running up this mountain and they switchbacks on
41:37
Speaker 2: a road. It's like a state highway too. So there's
41:42
Speaker 2: cars coming screaming, careening down this road. And you gotta
41:49
Speaker 2: remember that I'm I have the balance issue, and we're
41:55
Speaker 2: on a road where they're about This racecourse is about
42:01
Speaker 2: half a dozen uh local, state, federal police entities making
42:11
Speaker 2: sure that nobody gets killed. All right. There's lots of
42:14
Speaker 2: rules and you cannot cross the painted white line. You
42:19
Speaker 2: have to be on the on the shoulder of the road.
42:22
Speaker 2: And so I we we came up with this this
42:29
Speaker 2: system because I I used to run side by side
42:32
Speaker 2: with just a little tether being held between my sided
42:36
Speaker 2: guided and myself now doing that for a decade and
42:41
Speaker 2: the race director two days beforehand says, map can't do that.
42:47
Speaker 2: You have to you guys have to stay on the
42:48
Speaker 2: outskirts of the road and it's only about a foot
42:52
Speaker 2: foot foot and half wide. Uh, you know, bounce shoulder
42:56
Speaker 2: with so you can't go toolbrust So you're gonna have
42:59
Speaker 2: to go single file somehow. So with two days to spair,
43:05
Speaker 2: we did this trekking pole. We rigged it up so
43:09
Speaker 2: we taped the tips of the trekking poles to by
43:13
Speaker 2: by the pacers belt and they ran ahead of me
43:17
Speaker 2: and I would hold the trekking poles. We would just
43:20
Speaker 2: run like that. But on this this Father Crawley climb,
43:26
Speaker 2: there's a the switchbacks or kind of like racetrack that
43:30
Speaker 2: beveled around the curve. The curves and with everything else
43:36
Speaker 2: going on, as soon as we hit one of those,
43:38
Speaker 2: uh one of the switchbacks, it was tilted and it
43:44
Speaker 2: was like the road was trying to pull me across
43:46
Speaker 2: that white line right into traffic, and it terrified me
43:54
Speaker 2: and I that was definitely the moment I'm like, I'm
43:57
Speaker 2: talking to myself, going, there's no way you belong here,
44:01
Speaker 2: There's no you should not. Who did you think that
44:06
Speaker 2: you were to think that you could have done something
44:09
Speaker 2: like this and all those things. And it was that moment,
44:16
Speaker 2: after a good, good freak out. Uh, And it's some
44:21
Speaker 2: talking off the ledge by my crew that I remembered
44:27
Speaker 2: this is exactly why I'm here. I came here to
44:30
Speaker 2: meet that voice and to prove to myself right that
44:38
Speaker 2: I can do these hard things, that I am tougher
44:41
Speaker 2: than what I tell myself, and that I can accomplish
44:44
Speaker 2: so much more, and that each time I've challenged myself,
44:50
Speaker 2: I realized that I can reach a little bit further.
44:53
Speaker 2: And I did Bad Water. And then just like a
44:58
Speaker 2: month ago, I came back from Africa and we ran
45:01
Speaker 2: two hundred and four miles from Mombasa from the Indian Ocean.
45:06
Speaker 2: We touched the water and we ran and wow, was
45:10
Speaker 2: that brutal. That was hot again punched, It was basically
45:15
Speaker 2: trying to get out of that city. It was like
45:20
Speaker 2: it wasn't even there wasn't even a warm up period.
45:23
Speaker 2: It was like getting punched straight in the face. As
45:25
Speaker 2: soon as the bell rang and a nine days of
45:30
Speaker 2: running about a marathon a day. Took a couple of
45:34
Speaker 2: days off just to recuperate, put the hiking boots on,
45:37
Speaker 2: and then climbing nineteen thousand foot mountain incredible. And it
45:44
Speaker 2: had been raining. Oh my gosh, it had been raining,
45:47
Speaker 2: so the trails were super slick and muddy. So it
45:52
Speaker 2: was like the first portion before we got above the
45:56
Speaker 2: tree line, it was like something out of the Indiana Jones. Yeah,
46:00
Speaker 2: just crawling, scrambling, sliding, sliding backwards. It was so hard.
46:06
Speaker 2: And I got to meet that other mea a few times.
46:11
Speaker 2: You have just epitomize.
46:13
Speaker 1: Sorry to jump in. Stanley Beacham, who is a sports
46:19
Speaker 1: psychologist and clinical psychology I've been interviewed a couple of times.
46:22
Speaker 2: He said to me. We were talking about hardship, and
46:26
Speaker 2: we were saying that, you know.
46:29
Speaker 1: The key to one of the keys to good life
46:32
Speaker 1: is to take on as much challenge and responsibility as
46:34
Speaker 1: you can tolerate. Not that will break you, but you
46:37
Speaker 1: can tolerate. But he said something really poignant. He said,
46:41
Speaker 1: every now and then you need to walk right to
46:45
Speaker 1: the edge of yourself and stir into the abyss, and
46:49
Speaker 1: you need to walk out what the abyss is telling you.
46:52
Speaker 1: And then you walk back and he said every now
46:55
Speaker 1: and then you walk to the edge of yourself again,
46:58
Speaker 1: and you find out that over time you have to
47:00
Speaker 1: walk further to reach the edge.
47:04
Speaker 2: That that is kind of you in a nutshell, isn't it.
47:07
Speaker 1: And then you're not walking, you're running a friggin ultramarathon
47:11
Speaker 1: now to reach the edge of yourself because you've been
47:14
Speaker 1: extended at that far. Look for me, you are the
47:20
Speaker 1: the epitome of hardiness. I know you've interviewed me on hardiness.
47:24
Speaker 1: But control orientation, having that that deep, deep belief that
47:30
Speaker 1: you control or heavily influence your destiny no matter what
47:34
Speaker 1: the universe throws at you, and then you focus on
47:36
Speaker 1: what you can control, and you know, viewing adversity is
47:40
Speaker 1: challenged to stretch you.
47:43
Speaker 2: And then.
47:45
Speaker 1: Connecting that with the commitment orientation of having a deep
47:49
Speaker 1: sense of meaning and purpose in being fully engaged in life.
47:53
Speaker 1: You are the friggin poster boy of hardiness. But what
47:58
Speaker 1: would you because I do have to to wrap up unfortunately,
48:01
Speaker 1: because I've got to go for for an appointment, But
48:04
Speaker 1: what would you say? What would your message be two
48:07
Speaker 1: people who are at really going through tough times in
48:13
Speaker 1: their life, and you know it's all relative, right, But
48:16
Speaker 1: anybody listens to you, who's got he's gone fucking hell,
48:19
Speaker 1: I haven't had a heart. But it feels in the
48:22
Speaker 1: moment like it's hard and it's it's it's relative to
48:24
Speaker 1: the individual. What advice would you give somebody who's really
48:28
Speaker 1: struggling right now?
48:30
Speaker 2: No, yeah, it's funny, thank you, by the way, incredible compliment.
48:36
Speaker 2: But well, I would say is ironically, it's it's about
48:42
Speaker 2: perspective where you see the world. Yeah. People, you know
48:48
Speaker 2: the famous marshmallow uh, the famous marshmallow study experiment. I'm
48:56
Speaker 2: not even sure it was ever real, but uh I
49:01
Speaker 2: heard I've read somewhere about who which which kids were
49:07
Speaker 2: were more successful in in the challenge of not eating
49:12
Speaker 2: the marshmallow, and they recreated these with cookies or whatever.
49:17
Speaker 2: But we're talking about these kids who, like there was
49:21
Speaker 2: these kids who would consider it a challenge, right, would
49:26
Speaker 2: look at it like a puzzle to solve, rather than
49:29
Speaker 2: something to survive or something to endure. I just got
49:35
Speaker 2: to get through this, you know, I have to. I
49:38
Speaker 2: have to endure this, and I might you know, you know,
49:41
Speaker 2: might be better and might get later. There were others
49:44
Speaker 2: that looked at the their own resistance to the marshmallow
49:51
Speaker 2: as a puzzle itself, as a challenge of reading or
49:55
Speaker 2: listening to the audiobook, thinking there was there were kids
49:58
Speaker 2: that would It was like some kid who like literally
50:01
Speaker 2: cracked his fingers, stuck his tongue, eyes like, all right,
50:05
Speaker 2: I got this, let's go. Let's go. Yeah, yeah, literally
50:09
Speaker 2: talking to the marshmallow saying you will not break me. Right,
50:14
Speaker 2: And that's that's perspective and changing your perspective, just a
50:21
Speaker 2: simple change of perspective. Is there's so much power in that.
50:25
Speaker 2: It's so hard to describe, just because I know, being
50:30
Speaker 2: having that narrow tunnel vision and how hard it is
50:34
Speaker 2: to try to change your perspective. But just stepping out
50:37
Speaker 2: of that one paradigm into another one means the whole world.
50:41
Speaker 1: M Yeah, and and and I think there's there's an
50:45
Speaker 1: element here when we bring the neuroscience into it. There's
50:48
Speaker 1: an area of the briand that has been identified as
50:51
Speaker 1: the tenacious brand. For me, it's the challenge muscle. It's
50:55
Speaker 1: the mid anterior cingulate cortex. And and what they find
51:00
Speaker 1: is that in people who have more persistence and more
51:04
Speaker 1: grit that this part of the brain is bigger. But
51:07
Speaker 1: here's the thing, as you well know, Aaron, that brain
51:10
Speaker 1: has incredible neuroplasticity, and you develop that part of the
51:15
Speaker 1: brain by doing hard things. This is the thing, right,
51:20
Speaker 1: is that the area of the brain for persistence actually
51:23
Speaker 1: gets bigger when you do hard ship and then you
51:26
Speaker 1: find you have a better drive to do other hard
51:32
Speaker 1: things and you are just the epitome of that. Oh
51:36
Speaker 1: my god, wouldn't it be awesome to have an image
51:39
Speaker 1: of your brain before this accident happened, and an image now,
51:42
Speaker 1: I I would bet my house that you're made antier
51:47
Speaker 1: or singular cortex has grown in size something significantly, but
51:52
Speaker 1: all because of attitude, right, It's really the attitude that
51:56
Speaker 1: drives it.
51:59
Speaker 2: Well, I tell you what, I'd like to call it
52:02
Speaker 2: Aaron's first law of kicking ass, which might have been
52:07
Speaker 2: appropriated from somebody else too. But uh, you know, a
52:10
Speaker 2: body of motion tends to stay in motion, and a
52:13
Speaker 2: body arrest. Well, it's just in Rutia. I used to
52:17
Speaker 2: be the all American slacker because I'm just at rest
52:22
Speaker 2: all the time. But then I just kept moving. I
52:26
Speaker 2: started moving. Uh. Sometimes I got blasted into motion. But
52:33
Speaker 2: now it's almost harder to not do something than to
52:39
Speaker 2: do something harder because I'm already moving in that direction. Yeah. Man,
52:45
Speaker 2: that is figging awesome. And unfortunately I do need to
52:49
Speaker 2: wrap this up.
52:49
Speaker 1: I do want to have another conversation, is to you
52:51
Speaker 1: Dine the track actually because lots of things are popping
52:54
Speaker 1: off in my head. But but for now, I mean,
52:57
Speaker 1: I would just like to say you for being such
53:01
Speaker 1: an inspiration to so many people, Like anybody who listened
53:06
Speaker 1: to this podcast cannot come if you come away from
53:09
Speaker 1: this podcast without goosebumps. You are a sociopath. That is
53:13
Speaker 1: quite clear in my mind. But I really tip my
53:17
Speaker 1: hat to you. I could only hope that if I
53:22
Speaker 1: was to go through, you know, severe adversity like you have,
53:26
Speaker 1: I could only hope that I would have a fraction
53:30
Speaker 1: of your personality and your drive because you are an
53:33
Speaker 1: absolute inspiration.
53:35
Speaker 2: Thank you very much. I'm out your service. And by
53:38
Speaker 2: the way, we all do you do. You've got it
53:40
Speaker 2: in you. I mean, the all American slacker can do it.
53:43
Speaker 1: Everybody's going then, yeah, you just you just need to
53:48
Speaker 1: start into the bits long enough, right, I think that's
53:50
Speaker 1: the key. So Aaron, we're going to send people the
53:53
Speaker 1: Point of Impact podcast and definitely something that people should
53:58
Speaker 1: listen to your website, Point of impact dot com, anywhere
54:02
Speaker 1: else that people should go socials sort of thing. And
54:05
Speaker 1: and and my last question after you've answered that is
54:08
Speaker 1: have you got a book and yet?
54:10
Speaker 2: And if not, why not? Sorry Point of impactpod dot com. Yes,
54:16
Speaker 2: just to clever and uh, I'm not a book yet,
54:19
Speaker 2: working on it, but.
54:21
Speaker 1: Cover We we'll give you, We'll give you a little
54:28
Speaker 1: bit of leeway, right, but but you know, get your
54:31
Speaker 1: fucking finger out of your arse and get.
54:32
Speaker 2: On with it, yes, sir, Well, thanks dog anytime. Thanks all,