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How Small Connections Build Real Hope · Moral Injury Support Network Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, welcome to the show, Moral Injury Support Network Podcast.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Dr.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Danny Roberts, president and CEO of Moral Injury Support Network, First Service Women Incorporated, a nonprofit organization based in North Carolina that focuses our effort on helping women veterans recover from traumas experienced while serving in the military.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Today we have a great uh guest with us today, David Woods Bartley, is a three-time TEDTEC speaker, internationally recognized mental health advocate, and suicide attempt survivor.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Drawing on lived experience of more than 1,000 presentations worldwide, he helps audiences move beyond suicide prevention toward what he calls life preservation, creating connection, restoring hope, and helping people feel seen, heard, and valued.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: His core belief is simple connection creates hope, and hope preserves lives.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the show, David.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: Dr.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: Robert, thank you so much.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: It is such an honor to be here.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, women, without it sounding silly, have played a key role in my life.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: Not they weren't there in the background, but I there's several significant women.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I really appreciate that.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, uh our women in our lives, they they work so hard, they do so much for the universe and get so little recognition.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and you know, we're putting together a lot of research that shows that women are in many ways better leaders than men.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a conversation for a different discussion, different time, but I do appreciate you saying that.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um what you know, suicide prevention is is such a difficult subject, and I want to get into your background how you came into this work, but as I'm as I'm reading your bio, you know, I spent 32 years in the army, and most of that in the Chaplin Corps, we we were always as an army talking about suicide prevention, nobody ever had any answers.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I love this approach about life preservation, it's a very positive approach.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm really eager to hear exactly uh your whole take on this and the work you're doing.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so before we get into the specifics of your modalities and your approaches, give us some background how you know, sort of your how you your upbringing, you mentioned uh childhood things and so on.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: Get us up to speed to where you are now.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: Juan, if I may, so I love chaplains.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and and here's how God works.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: Literally, as we started today's podcast, one of my closest friends in the army, uh, chaplain Matthew Akins just texted me.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_02: So awesome.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: And he just pinned on 06.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so he just, so sir, I love chaplains.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'm always working with chaplains.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: So anyway, so I'm the um try to condense this.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'm the youngest of four.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: My three brothers are my heroes, John, Jim, and Tom.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: And they are six, nine, and eleven years older than me.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: So we lost our dad, James Hamilton Bartley, everybody called him Ham back in 1970.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I'm I'm 63.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: He and he was only 40.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: And while the death certificate showed he died of cancer because he was a smoker, he was gutted by depression.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: And and you will probably remember, sir, even though I think I'm a little older than you are.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: Back then they put you in in a uh sanitarium and all the orderlies wore white.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it was like that, it was a bad movie.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: And then my grandfather killed himself by ended his life by suicide when my father was five.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: So if you think of my my God loved my father, I don't know how he made it to 40.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: So there's gonna be a DNA thing that's coming at me, obviously.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: And but it also hit my three older brothers, and you know, I have a particular love for the army.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I've never served, but when our father died, I was seven, my eldest brother was 18.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: So he he enlisted as a loader on an M60 tank in Germany, did two years, made his way to West Point, graduated in in, you know, right after two, right after 1915, the class of 76 was pretty famous.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they had General Odierno, you know, maybe one of the greatest, cheapest staffs of all time.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: They had General McChrystal, who was probably the greatest SF operator of all time, and General Bartlett.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: So my brother Penn won two stars.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: And he he was uh he's an armor guy, he's a tanker.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, when he was a senior brigade trainer at the NTC, I mean that being in the box for him was just like, oh my God, I'm the happiest man in the world.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but he was very proud that he had his ranger tab.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: And in fact, he was the honor grad in his ranger class.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: And and then when he would do AARs with the infantry groups coming through, he had his honor grad flag behind him so that they knew that they're like, did you steal that thing?
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what are you talking about?
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: What are you doing?
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I've lived on post.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, he's my guy.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so what happened that was just an aside, um, but important, important aside, that um, you know, so I'm seven years old, and my father dies in 1970.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: They you know, we really didn't talk about grief.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'm sure it was a word, but you know, and so right what I made up, I know, with all the therapy I've had since, is that well, dad must not have loved me very much, or he would have stayed longer.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: And and and and I'll talk a little bit later a lot, actually, about this power of belief.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm I'm referring to it in the secular format, even though I'm speaking with a great chaplain.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I look at DNA is inert, but it can be triggered.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I think if you you look at it, it's almost always triggered mental illness-wise, is going to be by trauma.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I had two principal traumas.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: One, I was seven when my father died in 1970.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, that's the and then just to keep the the to keep it concise, when I was 12, I was a new member of a Boy Scout troop, and I was tortured, I was sodomized in ways that are beyond description in terms of their horror, and I was raped on two different occasions, and and this incarnation he wasn't even a human being because you wouldn't do that to a child.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: He would tell me, sir, he'd say, David, these are important initiations.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, And don't worry though, because all the boys go through it.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll never forget, he'd always put his finger up and he'd say, Man, remember, remember, we don't talk about this.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, of course.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, it wasn't until, and I'm sure you've read some of her works, the great Maya Angelo in her autobiography, I know why the cage bird sings.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: And that's her, she was 12 years old when her mother's boyfriend raped her and said, If you tell anybody, I'll kill your brother.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: And her brother was her world.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: And she says, There's no greater agony than bearing the weight of an untold story.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: So we think about, you know, and I and I and this whole concept of moral injury is is is near and dear to my heart, not just from my own personal experience, but I had I've had a chance now to to present at four different MTFs.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I didn't I knew the concept, and the colonel asked me to talk about it.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, so I I'm I'm 12 years old, and then what begins is like a cancer for me on the inside.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: I just it it it becomes this acute, acute, acute self-hatred.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: And and one of the things in in the work that I do around suicide, I introduce some very different concepts.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: And for me, they came from God, since I'm in the presence of a chaplain, I can say that.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um what I tell people, if I if I'm like a couple weeks ago, I was at Fort Riley with the big red one, and and I'll show I was gonna kill myself by jumping off a forest hill, the forest hill bridge, which is two hours outside of San Francisco in Sacramento, where I live now.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I tell soldiers I like, look, I wasn't gonna kill myself because of what I was thinking or feeling.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: I was gonna kill myself for the very same reason that you signed the contract to put that uniform on.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: And then I'll let them think about that for a second.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll say, And I'll show a slide that says, belief is the most powerful force in the universe.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: And you think about like, oh my gosh.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: And and and sir, to me, this is the golden ticket.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: This is the golden ticket as it relates to suicide.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason is, because you know this better than I as a man in the cloth, the one thing that belief isn't is truth.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: So, in other words, I can change it.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: So we know, and here's where I'll just add in science because they think, okay, man, you know we appreciate your passion, but no, okay, here's science tells us that the foundation of our beliefs create the paradigm from which we think.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: We know that our thoughts give rise to our emotions, we know our emotions drive our actions.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: So, right now, in in suicide and relationships and everything else, what we're doing is we look at behavior that makes no sense.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: We're like, all right, man, just think good.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: I can't think any different than the paradigm of my beliefs allow me to.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: So we there's there's units in the army now where I've gone in, and before before I go in, and we do this anonymous survey, and it asks soldiers, tell us what's your core belief about yourself, about the army, and about life.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like, no one's ever asking those questions because that's what's driving the behavior.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: So, so I'm growing up, you know, I'm hiding all this.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: I I grew up in Maryland outside of DC.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, my mom remarried.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: My my my my beloved stepdad and I, I'm a touchy-feely, sensitive dude.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: He was not not not physically abusive in any way, but it just our our house ran like a business.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: So thank god thank god I had my best friend's house.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: Because man, they would like you could be you could go over there at like 2300 having a pizza party.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, whoa.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: So then I moved out to California in '89 because I I was really I knew my eldest brother really well because he became my dad, but my other two were six and nine years.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: That was a whole nother life.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I went to move to be with them, and I've stayed out here since.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: Ultimately got married, uh, amazing woman who's still one of my dearest friends.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and we ran this incredible animal sanctuary.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so I don't know if you love animals, but I would imagine you do.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: This place was just badass.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: It was incredible.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we had a it was called a chance for bliss, and we had as many as a hundred at any one time.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: We had 25 horses, 23 dogs, all of whom lived in the house, like think barracks.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's another kind of BCT or AIT, or I don't know what it was.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we had nine popular, we had all, but see, the the the incredible soul power of my beloved, who again is still one of my dearest friends, we only took we have 15 different species, three types dying, which was most of them.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: We were mostly an end of life, some sort of special need, or like really, really old.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll tell you, my wife came up with ways to take care of dying animals that like no one in the world was doing.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, having been raised by a two-star man, I literally picked up every piece of manure every day.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, people would come and they're like, this doesn't make any sense.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: How can this all work?
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: You have predators and prey and all that.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: So, and on June 2nd, 2010, we're the cover story in the life section of USA Today, and 14 months later, I'm about to I'm about to jump off a 730-foot-tall coach.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: Be like, what?
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: And and so I'm I'm I'm remarried, I'm 63, and this is my favorite part in the whole brief with soldiers.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: I say, I'm 63, my wife is 43 because I have game.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_02: That's right, yeah.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, that's my and now I had I have three, I have I I'm not a stepdad, I'm a bonus dad.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: Because the kids have a great dad, awesome dude, they're bonus moms.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like, wow.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: She's so now I have these experiences which are so different.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I just I I use stories from the sanctuary that adapted for mental health.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: And and then, you know, God has given me these ideas around suicide that I'm like, wow.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, so this was like two, I started speaking about 12 years ago.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: I was gonna I was gonna end my life 15 years ago.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: And about 12 years ago, I it got into speaking, and um, and I never liked the term suicide prevention, which is like just really don't like it.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't, you know, what am I gonna offer?
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm literally walking, so now I only have two dogs, I'm kind of a loser.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: Lexi's right here to my right, left, whatever, she's asleep, and then Percy's over here.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um and here's what the voice said, and it was it was the voice of God.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: It said, he said, they don't call it an anti-drowning jacket.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, whoa, no, they call it a life preserver.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and then so then my mind went crazy.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, wait, yeah, a safety belt is not an anti-crash belt.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: People don't hope to live addiction free, they want to live sober.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: You and I don't have death insurance, we have life insurance.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: So that's so that's the whole and it's not just cute, you know.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: I can't go in and talk to you know the 101st airborne and say, oh, let's just talk about life preservation.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know, no, we we we there has to be some some aspects to it to get down to think, okay, what is it about this change that works and it works on like crazy uh different levels, and and it's just like expanding.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, I had just this epiphany, I was doing something, I'm probably walking the dogs and had this thought.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, you know what?
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: Suicide's actually not the problem.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: Hopelessness is right.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: So we're like it's just kind of the analogy would be like, well, the gun is not the problem.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: The gun is a means to an end, but but what it what what belief brings a soul to bel to to believing that this is the way.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: And and yeah, so it just it's there, and there's there are commanders who like, okay, this, you know what?
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this year, so I I I did with he's now Lieutenant General uh Lombardo, who was the two ID.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: I did all of the second division, second infantry division, I've done the 101st, first calve, just was that um uh first infantry, and then a whole bunch of other different um just that and these commanders are really embracing this whole thing of life preservation.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: So on the on the con ops, they don't say, well, okay, David's gonna talk about suicide prevention.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: No, this is here's the con op.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: This is life preservation week.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: We got our chaplains involved, we got our MFLAX involved, um, we got you know we got all these these people.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think that I think what's the attraction is it's doable.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: Because I because my belief is you know, when two or more are gathered, okay, we can we can say that secular or spiritual.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: Connection happens.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: Nothing bad is gonna happen in connection, it's not.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: And and I use the Brene Brown definition, which is phenomenal.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, everything she says is phenomenal.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: I define connection as the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, when they feel heard, and when they feel valued, when they can give and receive without judgment, and they derive strength and sustenance from the relationship.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: Well what else is there?
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: And and my assertion is, and I don't have initials past my name, I I don't I'm not, I'm not, I don't have your level of of acumen and credibility and and all those in time of service.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: My assertion is there's only one thing that comes out of that, and it's what I'm experiencing right now with you is hope.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: And hope is not an emotion, hope is not hope is not a feeling, hope is an experience.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: It is in and whenever you want.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: I we I can dive into what distinguishes it.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I the TTPs that I give to I said you can create connection with anybody, anytime, anywhere.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: I promise you.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: I do this from the time I get up in the morning to the time I go to bed.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: Because the other part of it is it's mutually it helps me.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: This is as much as I I hope and I pray, dear God, let me be a value to to Dr.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: Roberts, like it helps me.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: I I haven't, you know.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think um one of the one of the things that I think is tricky in military circles, and I'd love to hear your take on this, is that um I I remember so three years ago, probably, I was having a conver conversation with the command server major of the army reserve, and I was trying to sort of make a very similar point that you were about connection and about um you know leaders connecting to their subordinate soldiers, and the CSM, great guy.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: I I liked him a lot, he was mountain of a man, like a big, body, scary person, you know, and he was the New York City cop.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so so, but he was he was a good a good dude.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: I really liked him.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um but when you and I think he was trying to embrace what I was saying, but the difficulty is when you're talking military people, especially combat arms, right?
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: Is there's this sense that we don't connect with soldiers, we we are in charge of them, right?
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so and so now I I I find that senior leaders have a much easier time with this, right?
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um understanding connection and they they tend to soften some as they get most of them tend to soften some as they get older, they learn to be a little bit come more compassionate, understand that there are many different ways to lead.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: But I start off in the infantry, I spent 10 years in the infantry as an enlisted person, and um, you know, nobody ever talked to me about connecting with my soldiers.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: I think I did it sort of inherently, uh, I think it had to do with my own background of not having a connection to my father and wanting to connect with people and so on.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: But the average NCO is not gonna you talk to them about connecting with their soldiers and being connection, it's like that's not what we do here, right?
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: So have you encountered resistance to that?
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: How have you how have you worked through that?
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: No, well, that's you know, sorry, that's a that's a great, that's a great question.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I'll so one, I've not encountered resistance per se to my face.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, there might have been something, and I think part of it is, you know, I somebody told me it was a chaplain.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: It is my incredible guy, uh Lieutenant Colonel Willie Newton uh jr.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: He's the the division, he's the division chaplain for first cap.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: He's a great guy, just love this man.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: He said, I said something, and he said, Well, David, realize you're you carry the rank of the CG.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: I said, What do you mean?
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: He said, Well, you know, General Felty, you know, brought you here.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: So you carry that rank with you.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: He said, David, I do too, as the chap as the division chaplain, I carry the rank of the CG.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, oh wow.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: And that wasn't, you know, you know, sir.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't, he wasn't being boastful, it was just, it was more and so, and then I think it also when I mentioned I was raised by a two-star who did 42 and a half years, there's some I I don't know, but but here's here's what what I I did.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: This is and I love the timing of the question.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: So the last, the most recent brief was at um Riley, it was either two or three weeks ago, and we did, I don't know, like 3,000 people.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we did I I love to brief.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like you can brief me all day long.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: So, and I don't know whose idea it was, it might have been mine.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I I at first I was regretful.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: We did a two-hour training for the E5 and E6s, and I'll admit, sir, that I was nervous going into it because I had never done that just for them.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, oh man, I hope this goes well.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: And and the tough ones.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: Oh man, I yeah, it's kind of that's like, oh E5, E6.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, oh, okay, you know, you're talking squad, maybe platoon, and you know, they know, but anyway, it went phenomenal.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: And and part of it was what my brother taught me early on, because when he, you know, he had been a soldier like you before he became an officer.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so I had asked him some years ago, I said, What did you do?
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: You know, before phones, what did you do?
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: And and and you this will ring a bell for you.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: He said, Well, David, back in the day, you kept a book on everybody.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: So he has 11 things that he he knew about every person he was, no matter what level of command he was.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: So I said, Well, 11's gonna be too many.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I just filled it down to five, and I called it five easy pieces when I'm talking to these E5 and E6s.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Look, so the first thing is I'm big on names, and then and and it it's and I can go for days on that.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: But I said, okay, you need to know the person's name because I was blown away.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: How many people on a squad don't know the first name of the people that they're working with?
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: Like, are you kidding me?
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: That is ridiculous.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, that stops now.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: So their name, their preferred name, like I hate Dave.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: Please, sir, don't call me Dave.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, sir.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'll love, I'll love you, but don't call me Dave.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: So Dave, and then I always like to know what's the story of your name?
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I was named, you know, who just okay.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: No that first.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: Second, who are the important people in your life?
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: That may be your partner.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Third, what are the important dates?
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: So if every January 25th is the anniversary of the day that your your first dog that you love died, you as a you as a leader need to know that.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: Because when you know that, and then you create connection out of the blue on that day, you want to talk if you if you want to solidify a soldier's connection with you, do that.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: Then the fourth thing is what's your what's your core belief?
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: What's the most important belief that you have about yourself and also just about life?
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: Whatever that is, whatever it is.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: And then the last thing is, what's the most important thing that you believe I should know about you?
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: I tell you what.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: So imagine, sir, you have a squad leader and they have 20 people, they know all of that on every single one of their soldiers.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: Game over.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like, yeah, that's just and it's that's none of that is touchy feely.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's why that's why I love about it, because when you when you when when you hear connection from a hard uh if I if I'm a hardened infantry NCO and I'm hearing connection, connection, I'm like, this ain't church, brother.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: But the way you the way you you talk about it now as we're talking about, oh, I've been taught that from the beginning about knowing soldiers.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: And we we uh just when I was a team leader squad leader yes, I had a book on everybody.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: People don't have that now, and so but but but it was all like demographic information.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: We weren't we weren't I I guess what I'm saying is your approach is like hey, I'm not asking you to be a touching feeling, I'm asking you to be a hardcore infantry leader that you are just know the important things about your soldier that makes them who they are.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: It also can help you not only, you know, life-preserving connection like you're talking about, but just if I want to motivate them, if if I know we have a hard job coming up or a hard mission and or or a stupid mission, right?
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: One of those where I go, This is dumb, man.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: Why are we doing that?
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like a garrison thing where we're gonna get you know exactly all across the drops, and we're gonna pick up trash or whatever.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: But it's like if I know that stuff about you, it's like, okay, how do I motivate my guys?
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I know this is really important to them, and so I can appeal to that, not to manipulate, but just saying, hey, I know that family's more important than anything.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: If we don't get this job done, we're we're not gonna see our family.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: If we do get it done, we'll leave early.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: We can have the family time, whatever, but let's get the job done, whatever.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's one example.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: But I love what you're talking about, that connection, knowing that stuff about them.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not just their demographics, their name, who you're married to, where you live, but what really makes them them.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: No, well, thank you, sir.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: And it's just, and you know, I I I've I've watched my brother, I'll never forget.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: He, I don't know if he was in, he must have been an 05, probably an 05, maybe an 06.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: No, I don't know.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe maybe he's a major.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: But I'll this this I will never forget this because I said, hey, you know, he's taking command.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: I said, hey, maybe he's being an exo.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: What's the unit like?
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll never forget, sir.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: He said they're like whip dogs.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll tell you, this black machine.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, he is um, I'll have it right there.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: The mat he he is a and let me tell you what, he is not an easy guy.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: I can promise you, he is not easy.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: But you know what he is, sir?
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: He's fair, he's loyal, he's a teacher, he's a mentor, he's patient, never raises his voice.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I mean, the worst thing is if I'll say sometimes if I've screwed up, there'd be a steely silence.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, oh my god, nope.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, he's the he was the master of the handwritten note.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll never forget this one because I have to bet he's a like if you met him, you would well, you would know.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: But other people, they would never know.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you were a two-star general?
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: Like he he's very unassuming, yeah, and he's very quiet, unlike me.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: So war's going on, he's you know, busy, and he finds out that one of his more senior, senior officer's wife's mother dies.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: So he finds out, and what does he do?
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: He writes a note.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: So my brother, I said, you know, hey, can you send me some like you know, some what how do people react to some of these?
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, Okay.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: So this man, this officer writes back and said, Sir, how in the world?
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: There's a war going on.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: How do you have time to acknowledge what's going on in my life?
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: He said it differently, but that was the I'm like, oh my God.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: And then so this was kind of the chicken and the egg thing.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I do this with leaders.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, at the end of it, he says, Sir, I've got to tell you, I've been in this business for 23 years, and this is the finest unit I've ever been part of.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: So then it's, you know, what came first, you know.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right, right, right.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: And and and that's what, sir, that's what he did.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, and I have I have a bunch of notes.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, he taught me one day, constantly teaching me, he says, Well, what does the TSA do?
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, uh, well, they keep us safe.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: He said, exactly.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: He said, two things, David.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: First, culture eats strategy for breakfast.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, oh man.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: Then he said, if you think about the TSA, the importance, David, when you're a leader of doesn't matter what size organization you have.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: When you see something that's important, somebody's going through something, something achieved something, what what not just at a hail and farewell and everything else, but what you want to do to protect the culture, you need to be, it's TSA.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's timely, it's specific, and it's authentic.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: He said, You don't tell you don't say somebody good job.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: No, you're specific to what they did.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: And and I think sort of people just he was, I think it's when he was at 369 at Fort Stewart.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I mean, he was just infamous in a positive way for taking notes and notebooks.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: You know, people say, Well, hey, sir, bubba, and they say, Oh, wait a second.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: And he'd go back and freaking have the note.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, on this day, you said this.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: But you can tell how much he was loved.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: Somebody took the time they did this video and had this guy this guy in an old tanker helmet and a huge paper mache notebook walking up the hill.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, and I just before I forget, because this whole thing with moral injury is is I I I'll be honest, I really, I mean, I knew it was a term, but I I was was with um, he was then Colonel uh Matthew Mapes was the CEO at Evans Community Army Hospital in Fort Carson, just like the cream of the crop.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_01: And this is one great man.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: He's now the chief of staff for the 68th Theater Medical Command over in Germany.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: So we're having a lunch with all the 06s, and this the one says, Hey, you know, I'd like you to talk about moral injury.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, I I don't exactly know what that is.
• 28:52
  unknown: Right.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, Well, David, imagine this.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: And he was a he was a doctor, of course.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: He said, Imagine you're a doctor, and let's say you're you're a specialist, and you have all the training and the equipment and the access to everything you need, and then you have a patient come in, and for whatever reason, be it monetary or some other thing, restriction, you can't do what you know you can do for that patient.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: And they suffer as a result of your inability to fully express all that you can.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my god.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_01: That would just, I mean you know, you have to sit idly by and watch somebody suffer.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, holy cow.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: That just that would be devastating.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I so I said, okay, you know um and it's it's interesting when it comes to that, and I'll just throw this out because this is a newer thought.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I go back, so the the question becomes people say, okay, well, I alright, I I'm tracking when your your belief creates thought, thought creates emotion, emotion creates action.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: That's I mean science tells us that.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_01: And the question becomes, well, where does belief come from?
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I say, well, it's this.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's everything in life is an experience.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_01: Experience is what creates belief.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: And and my assertion is every belief, every every experience either creates a brand new belief, adds to an existing set, or blows up one.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: That and and then I I tell stories throughout these.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_01: And um so with with uh with moral injury in prepping for today, and I thought, you know, what for Dr.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: Roberts, what can I offer for the especially the women out there that are suffering with moral injury?
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I think I'm this is kind of raw, so it's not quite as smooth as I'd like it to be, but and it it almost it almost seems well I'll just say it when there is an experience of moral injury if we are able to share that experience with somebody else, I think that that could it could reduce the possibility of a belief that could be created.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_01: Does that make sense?
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I think um uh that does make sense.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: When we when we're working with uh moral injury and women veterans or military women, uh what we're most often talking about is institutional betrayal of some kind.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: So you have people think moral injury and you're talking women, it's always MST, and it's not.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: It it mst can be a context, but most often it's some betrayal by the institution failed to protect, failed to support, failed to um, you know, do what it promised it would do.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, has all these policies, not just the military, but we see this in the medical field, we see this in the law field.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: Institutional betrayal can happen to anybody, but it it's the organization, the institution did not do what it said it would do.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: It didn't punish the people that need to be punished, it didn't support the people that need to be supported.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: It created an environment where um, you know, people were made to suffer and nothing was done about it.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where it goes to the telling the story, right?
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: Of like what women have to do is hold so much of this in because there's no one to tell.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: There's the you know, I was sexually assaulted.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: I know if I report it, I'm not gonna see justice.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm much like uh very likely to be retaliated against.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: At the very least, I'm gonna people are gonna say, I just had sex with a guy, and now I'm guilt, uh, feel guilty, so I'm trying to take him down, all this kind of stuff, right?
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever, whatever it is.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, or I know that the person who is who is harming me, not just MST, not just military sexual trauma, but in whatever way, is the golden boy is being supported by like I am at incredible risk to try to take a stand against this person.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: So who am I gonna tell?
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: Right, and so so I I think I think you're on to something in that sense of like I have to keep it in, and then and then as you and then going back to your belief thing, as you keep it in, you begin to think there's something wrong with me, it's my fault, I'm the one, I'm the good.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so you have this guilt of I should have stood up for myself, I should have said this, I shouldn't have let that person get close, I shouldn't have, whatever.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: And now, what kind of a soldier am I?
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: What kind of a person am I?
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's the shame piece.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm no good.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and what we try to teach people is especially when you're talking institutional betrayal, the guilt and shame you carry, that's not yours.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yep, the guilt is on the people who did who are not supporting you like they should.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: Shame on them, right?
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so helping helping them work through that and understand, um, even where you know, often there's a case of like, I should have done this, I should have done that, I should have stood up against this person, say, for instance, I should have reported this.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, well, you made a survival decision, you made a decision to survive your career, to continue to have a career so you could pay the bills, so you can take care of your family, and you intrinsically knew that if you stood up for yourself at that moment, or if you stood against that very high powerful person who has much more rank than you, you were gonna be destroyed.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so you made a survival decision, but because you've been taught you have these beliefs that you're supposed to be a person of integrity and never violate that, and all the army values and all that stuff, and those matter more than anything that there's something wrong with you.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: And what I say is the people who violated you, they're the ones that are violating the army values.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: You are maintaining the best you can, you maintain the best you could your sense of survival, well-being, and whatever.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: The shame is you were put in that situation in the first place, and so it's not just about women, but men encounter the same kind of thing, and so um, it goes back to that belief, helping shape that belief that this was not on you, this wasn't your fault, you're not a bad person.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: You actually made an honorable decision to take care of your family in a in a by you know looking the other way when you knew there wasn't another option, or that that sort of thing.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_01: So no, and I I sorry I agree.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's like literally like falling on the sword.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, and then it's like yeah, sorry, but the other thing I I try to teach people, and I think this goes into this life preserver approach, is that you're as valuable as anyone else.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: In the military, we make a decision to sacrifice our lives for the good of the nation, the good of the community, or whatever, but that doesn't extend to every aspect of your life, that extends to me doing my military service, and so in that sense, I'm willing to sacrifice, make the nation more important than me for the sense of preserving the nation by potentially giving up my life.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: But that but that doesn't extend to I need to sacrifice myself for someone else who's being selfish, for someone else who's who's not doing what they're like.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: You talked about connection.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: Connection, you you mentioned there's safety and connection, and then you what I loved, you went on to explain that connection doesn't mean I just know you, I'm just because there are people that can harm me that I know, but real connection is when I care about you, you care about me, my best interests are in your mind, your best interests are in mine.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: We're not giving up ourselves for each other, we're offering ourselves.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: And if and if if you're gonna be connected to me, you're gonna accept all that I am, not ask you to be less than I am for you, right?
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: That whole kind of thing.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_00: Does that make sense?
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_01: Is that oh sorry, exactly?
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_01: It and that's why I love the simplicity of what Dr.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_01: Brown talks about.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's just seen, heard, and valued.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, you could you could do a whole talk, we could talk for an hour plus on every single one of those silos.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_01: You think about this, and I I did I meant to say it before because I I love definitions because I'll use that.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, well, here's the definition.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_01: So the definition of belief is this unwavering confidence and acceptance in something that one knows and feels to be true without needing actual evidence to support such a feeling.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_01: And now I say, you know the other way to say that is you make it up, you make it up, yeah.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_01: That's the fluidity.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, as we we apply it to sexual assault, me as a sexual assault survivor, and you know, all the other things.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_01: You know, here I am taking care of dead animals or not, excuse me, dying animals in the USA today, and I think I'm worthless, useless, stupid, pitiful, grotesque, ugly.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_01: I like it.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I what I believe is that the world would be better off without me.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_01: And people say, Well, that's not true.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_00: Truth has nothing to do with a great point.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't truth, truth.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_01: And and and my my son, he's an amazing writer.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_01: And just recently he came up with this line.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, oh my god.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_01: Now I have a now I have a slide with his name on it.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_01: He says, suicide will never make sense because belief doesn't have to.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I like that a little.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_01: Ethan Sewell is my is my beloved son, and and that kid can write.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's a little upsetting.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_01: He's a little, I think he's a little better writer than I am, which I'm like, look, you're I'm 63 for God's things.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um I have a similar thing.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: My son is a great writer too.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I think so the the you know, in in response to trauma or really anything in life, if if we if we are grounded in the fact and just accept the fact, we're all operating from a set of beliefs.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_01: They don't don't don't apply truth to belief.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_01: And and the problem that we're having in suicide right now is we take the truth.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_01: Dr.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: Roberts is speaking to me.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_01: David, let's say, let's say, Chaplain Roberts is saying, Well, David, you're a son of God.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_01: Your mistakes don't define who you are.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_01: What doesn't kill you make you strong?
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_01: Those are truths.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_01: But we're taking those truths, they're like a hard brick, and we're trying to jam it down the throat of somebody that has a competing belief, like chaplain, chaps, come on, you don't know what you're talking about.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_01: This is this is the truth of who I am.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_01: So, what I'm asking us to do, what the TTPs are designed to create a new belief.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not trying to change anything.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what we're trying, we're trying to change people.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_01: How do they say you can't, we have no success at that.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_01: How about we create uh new beliefs?
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_01: And then once we do, it really goes back sort of what you were talking about.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's this you know, it and I I'm just I'm amazed at the simplicity of these small actions of connection and then what the universe does with it and runs with it.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'll give you an example about about names.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_01: So Josh Allen, quarterback of the Buffalo Bills, two years ago as an MVP.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_01: So in his MVP speech to the world, he thanks his uh teammates, his coaches, his parents, his beloved, and slick Rick.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_01: Just want to give a shout-out to Slick Rick.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_01: So afterwards, reporters come up and say, Who's Slick Rick?
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Slick Rick is the black gownman, 58 years old, who's worked in the basement mail room for 15 years of the Buffalo Bills.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_01: So then the reporter goes to the Slick Rick and says, Oh, how long have you and Josh been best friends?
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what are you talking about?
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I knew Mr.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_01: Allen, but I, you know, I couldn't believe because his phone is blowing up, like, oh my God, Josh Allen mentioned you.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_01: So the community gets involved with this, and then they find out that this beautiful man has been taking the bus for 25 years.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_01: And you know what the community did?
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_01: Bought him a car.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_01: But you know what?
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_01: Here's the important point Josh Allen did not say, let's buy Slickrick a car.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_01: All Josh Allen did was mention his name.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_01: That's it.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_01: So what I tell people when I'm working with soldiers, I'm like, look, when you go to the exchange and you see Sarah, who's got her name tag on, use it.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_01: Because you'll be the only person in that whole day that calls her by her name.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm not asking you to bring Sarah home.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_01: I'm asking you to initiate the flow of connection that is going to happen well past your gone.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_01: Because I can tell you, because I do this every single freaking day, the impact of these small acts, we know our way shower, what he did, these small little things.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_01: I just let it go.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'd be like astonished that because I say, how could it work this good?
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_01: There's no way.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like, come on.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_01: And and and what I like to look at is so to go back to the and I'm not a boater, by the way, so I'm not sure why the whole life preserver thing came into my life.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_01: Just like, whoa.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_01: So a life preserver's what a life preserver does is it keeps a person's head above water until help arrives.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't save their life, it's the person who comes.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_01: But the life hope does the same thing, help other people elevate these small little touch points.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_01: So then maybe Sarah, maybe Sarah, maybe Sarah had a gun at home.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_01: And she, and you know what?
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_01: Gosh, the chaplain came in and he did so nice.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, Oh, you spell Sarah the right way without an agent.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, whatever it was.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_01: And that, because you know what that is?
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's an experience.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_01: What does experience do to belief?
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_01: Either creates a new one, adds to an existing one, or blows up an old one.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_01: And then so the next part of the other TTP is like stop asking why questions.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_01: Why questions are terrible.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_01: Because if I ask Dr.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_01: Roberts, if I ask Chaplin a why question, I demand proof.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_01: Every why question demands proof.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_01: It does.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_01: Change it to what?
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's not why did you do this?
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, hey, man, what inspired you to do that?
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_01: So now what you've done is you've you've made it on your own equal playing field.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_01: Now you've asked the person instead of demanding proof, now you've said, sure, tell me your side of the story.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_01: Tell me what's going on.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_01: And then we got to let people know how we feel.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_01: So every day, so my beloved dad, he lives in Illinois with his partner of 50 years, by the way.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I pick up my phone because my guy will have texted me.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_01: And it's always in four parts.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_01: So when I teach officers, it's called the general's way.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's always in four.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_01: Tells me what he's doing that day.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_01: He gives me uh advice sometimes, like you, sir, you know, or encouragement.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh no, I mean it's mostly encouragement.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it's it is an always, it is a con op in and of itself.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, motivational quote and he never my 74 year old, two star, 42 and a half year in the army brother, never ended.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: Of text, even multiple in a day, without saying love you.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, like in the last three years, how many days he's missed?
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_01: Zero.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_01: I say, you know what?
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so I've got so now I have I have a list of 50 people that I text every morning.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_01: And it's mostly the same text.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it could be funny, it could be serious.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_01: It just and I'll bet like today.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_01: I think I've probably gotten out of those 50, I don't know, maybe fift fifteen replies, maybe 20.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_01: That's okay.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't matter.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's just it's just, but you know, we we if we do this, I mean it it is extraordinary to me.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_01: It becomes a it becomes an operative practice.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_01: And and you know, you just you don't know the hope, the power of hope is so amazing.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'd actually say without being totally disrespectful in the presence of a chaplain, maybe Corinthians, maybe they you know they they misunderstood you know the order of faith, hope, and love.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe it was actually I I can't say that.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so it's I I think what I one of the things I love that you just mentioned is that belief is fluid.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_00: And we we we have these um I read the several years ago, and I can't remember even what it was, so I can't accredit them, but it was a I think it was a book, but he's talking about personal commandments, and and we all have these personal commandments, um, and we we got them growing up, right?
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_00: And and through life experience, but a lot of our personal commandments are no longer serving us, right?
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_00: So they they served us at one point when we were younger, maybe our maybe a lot of them come from our parents, and personal commandments are like, hey, you gotta you know, you gotta eat all your meat, all everything on your plate before you leave.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so, or you've got to, you know, never never go to bed angry or whatever it is, right?
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_00: These personal beliefs, and then there are other things that we take to ourselves from now on.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm never doing that again because the last time I did that, you know, and for morally injured people, we have often I can't trust anyone anymore, right?
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_00: And these are these beliefs, these personal commandments that you mentioned, often they're cut, they just come from some authority figure or some experience, but they don't really they actually can be changed and we just don't realize it.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_00: One of the one of the most difficult things I have in doing with people is helping them change their self-image, their self-esteem.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_00: Because um, I remember one person that um not to brag, but I probably had a hand in saving her life, and um one of the things she was really struggling with was self-esteem, and she had an extremely traumatic childhood um experience, multiple childhood experiences, as well as some assaults and things, and so I was trying to help her understand you can change what you believe about yourself whenever you want, um, because it's not based on any objective data, there's nothing objective about what I believe about myself, it's just what I believe, exactly, and and it's like you can decide to be your best um cheerleader, you can decide to be your greatest fan.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, you must.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_00: If you really want to live uh a life of of the best life you can be, you have to become your greatest fan.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_00: And and so that that really had a hard she really had a hard time with that of like I can just choose to love myself or choose to believe I have value.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_00: How do you know based on what?
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_00: There's there's nothing to base it on, it's a matter of you choosing.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I tend I like to say, you know, God created us in his in his image, that in itself says that we have infinitesimal value, value, right?
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_00: Because the old thing he doesn't make garbage.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_00: So if I'm created in God's image, there's my value is immeasurable, but you don't have to be a Christian or a religious person to believe you have value, you can just decide there's only one of me, I get one life to live, I might as well appreciate who I am.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_00: And if other people don't appreciate me, well, F them because I need to love myself, that kind of thing.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_00: No, sorry, you know, but people uh you know, they need to they need to know, well, what evidence do I have?
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not I don't have I don't make a lot of money, I'm not famous, I have that.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_00: They have all these reasons why they're not as valuable as somebody else, and it's like that's garbage.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, because a lot of those people that you see that have all the money, they their life is a dumpster fire in other ways, you know.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so so we all have these struggles, and and in in the media, and and you know, people pay a lot of money to look good, to be made to look good, to be on the front cover of things and whatever, but none of that really matters to your value as a person.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_00: What makes you valuable as a person?
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_00: There's only one of you, and something, and you know, you can talk about the trillions of cells in your body, and all the there's a million ways to get after it, but but it is challenging, I think, for somebody who believes that they are they don't have value, um, to give them value.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_00: And what I love about what you're saying is when I connect with you, even if I don't say you're valuable, but just the fact of me connecting with you, listening to you, um, giving you respect says that you're valuable, even if I don't say you're valuable.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's not exactly yeah, yeah.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I so sorry, agree with you a thousand percent.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I think, you know, it's interesting.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm working with a young man who is um I he had I he had heard me speak in a middle school, and we've stayed in close touch over the last couple of years.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so he had called me, he said, Hey, could we talk?
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_01: I said, sure, no problem.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so he was just in a in a in a place of depression.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Okay.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_01: I said, when does the depression hit you most?
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_01: He said, right before I go to bed.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_01: I said, okay, this is what I want you to do.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_01: So I want you to text five people.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_01: Whatever you want to text them is fine, but just something positive.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I know it's hard because believe me, I I I I have been in a similar space.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_01: I don't I don't know exactly how you feel.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's the worst part thing we could say to each other.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I know exactly how you feel.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_01: No, you don't.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_01: I don't care.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_02: That's true.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_01: I can relate, I can empathize.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I I want you to do this.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_01: This his name is Creek, C-R-E-E-E.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Creek, you know, I want you to do this.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_01: And and so we talked the next day.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_01: I said, he said, Oh my God, sir.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, he was like, like it was a Dr.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_01: Robinson was a totally different human being.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Was it hard?
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_01: He said, Oh my gosh, yes, yeah, I was cussing you.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_01: I said, I know it is, it's this crazy thing.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_01: And and you go back to the what you said was so brilliant, sir, when you said this the Simone, Simone Wilde said, attention is the purest form of generosity.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_01: When we give of our time, which of course is the component of connection.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_01: You you have to invest time if you want to create the space where somebody feels seen, heard, and valued.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I got to tell you this last this last story is I know we're running out of time because I always say this for last.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I was working with this great battalion commander.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_01: I just texted him, I think, yesterday, Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Trauss.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_01: So we'd finished up a week and we've been great, you know, everything was together.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, okay, let's do an AAR and an outbrief.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, we're all done.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_01: And then he like gets up.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_01: He's sitting down and he jumps up and I'm like, sir, what's wrong?
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, I just I'm just really pissed.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, so I'm thinking I've overshared or I've done something wrong.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_01: And he and sir, he's pacing back and forth.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, David, what happened to you and the Boy Scouts?
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_01: I I I can't accept that.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's it makes me want to vomit.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_01: He said, David, David, I was a Boy Scout.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_01: David, I was an Eagle Scout.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_01: He said, Do you know what that is?
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Well, sir, I know what it is.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_01: I've never met one.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_01: He said, now you have.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_01: So my first thought, sir, is like, oh my God.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_01: I've I've I mean I've like overstepped and and I mean he's just he said, David, becoming an Eagle Scout, like he just did an incredibly hard process.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, and and who I thought I was, now I'm questioning, was I just a front for pedophilia?
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, he's just I mean, this man is so upset.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_01: And he's pacing back and forth, and all of a sudden he stops and he pulls out his wallet.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm facing away like this.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, what is going on?
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_01: And he pulls out, it looks like a credit card.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, so Dave, when you become an Eagle Scout, they give you one of these.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_01: And he turns the card around and says, It's an Eagle Scout card.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_01: He said, I got my card on 3 November 1998.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_01: He said, You talk to any Eagle Scout, doesn't matter how long they go, they have their card.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's sacred.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_01: He said, Hold it.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_01: Not will you, do you want to hold it, hold it.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_01: So right, sir, when he gave me that card, I realized, like, oh my God, he's not mad at me.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_01: He's mad that he wasn't there to take care of me.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_01: Because that had been my experience of him.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_01: And it was just this like emotion is swirling around.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, oh my gosh.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I go to give the card back.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't have it with me right here.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_01: And then I take it out of my pocket in a brief and the card that he gave me five years ago.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, I go to give the card back, and he said, no.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, try to understand.
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_01: He said, it's your card.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_01: He said, not anymore.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_01: David, you keep it you've earned it.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_01: And sir, so I said, you know, you know what this is?
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_01: This is an experience.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know what this experience fit to my belief about myself and the Boy Scouts and everything else.
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I have two other, so I have a total of three scout Eagle Scout cards that soldiers have given me over the years.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I've had hundreds of Eagle Scouts come up to me after a brief and either hug me or show me their card or say they were sorry.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_01: Or and I what I say, it's just like what what Josh Allen did, Colonel Trause had no idea.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_01: He had no idea what that small experience would do in my life.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it just it is astonishing.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_01: And every time I text him like I did just the other day, because I hadn't in a while, I said, sir, I can never thank you enough.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_01: And he always says, David, you're doing the hard work.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_01: Well, sorry.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_01: So it's you know, I I I think the the same sorts of thing for for the amazing women who are who have suffered, I can't even fathom what it's like.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_01: And it's difficult to create connection when you're in a place of of depletion.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_01: Well, what I can say is from my own experience that that's probably the time, it is the time I need to do it most.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_01: And then when we're when we're not depleted, do it with everybody.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I don't one of the things I say in suicide, there are no signs.
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_01: Quit looking for things that are not there.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like I knew exactly what you were going to look for.
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not gonna show you that.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_01: No one and no one answers the question.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_01: Are you thinking about killing yourself?
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_01: We don't ever answer that question truthfully, but I'll tell you, like the first line in the great book, all warfare is based on what?
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_01: Deception.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_01: You come to somebody and say, hey, I was just wondering.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_01: It might seem like an unusual question.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_01: What's your most dominant belief?
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_01: So people are gonna start answering the question before they even realize what you're doing because you have come through.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_01: You are it's you are being deceptive, not like because you're a bad person, because I want to help you.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_01: I want to help you create a new set of beliefs.
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_00: Bypassing the defenses, their defenses to get and that you know what, yeah, I had this other thing, sir.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_01: I love that you said that because I'm always taking notes.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I'm like in in the in the in the moments of connection in like a grocery store, dry cleaner, or wherever, people I think are more receptive to to creating that connection only because they don't expect it.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_01: So that like you said, they're they're you know, I mean, if I have time, I'll tell this one last story, which is just phenomenal.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm out to dinner with my other two brothers, Jim and Tom, and my sister-in-law Stacy, who could make connection with a door.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like yeah, I know the type.
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, she's yeah, she's amazing.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_01: So we have this great way, Tris.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things that I say to people when you go out to dinner, your your server, every time they come to the table, use their phone, use their name.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_01: Not every other, every single time.
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_01: So we have Trista, she's spunky, and you know, she's like 40 years old, and just you know, and but she had this necklace and it was a small pendant, and it said dad.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, I know it.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_01: I know at one point sis is gonna say something.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_01: And sure enough, about three quarters of the way through, my sister-in-call goes, Hey, Trista.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_01: Trista immediately got teary.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_01: This was her dad, Philip, who had died a year earlier, and it was incredibly difficult.
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_01: She had to take time off work, and so my sister-in-law, being amazing as she is, gave her the space to, well, tell us about Philip.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_01: And what did you just, you know, she's just sharing in this whole thing.
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, then she's a hugger, I'm a hugger, we're all hugging and everything.
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's California, for God's sake.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right.
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know, then you know, we finish off dinner a little bit later and we pay the bill and we're getting ready to leave.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_01: And Trista says, Hey, I I I really need to say something to y'all.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_01: Sure, that's okay.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_01: And she she looks at the four of us and says, I've been doing this a while.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_01: You're the best table I've ever had in my life.
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and my sister-in-law said, Sweetheart, what would have you say this?
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I always have soldiers, I say, listen to what she said.
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_01: No one ever asks about me.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no one ever asks about me.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I say, look how easy.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_01: Not that that would what's that not that that's what we were looking for, but look how easy it was for us to we ascended to the greatest table in this person's life, and all my sister-in-law did was create the space of being seen, heard, and valued.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_01: That was it, that was it, and you become that memorable.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, uh, I think it's exactly right.
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, as we wrap up, you know, as you're talking about that, I can think of a couple of things come to mind.
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_00: One, great commanders always have the capability to hold so much information in their mind at once.
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, like all the great commanders I've ever had.
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_00: I've never been able to tell them something somehow they didn't already know.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's just like and it's like you're the brigade commander, I'm a peon hot.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, but I saw your email, I got it.
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_00: You good sermon, whatever.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, and then the other thing is too.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um sometimes when we're at our lowest, uh, the simplest connections have the most power, power you can point.
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_00: I I remember this.
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_00: I was in New Jersey.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, my family was here in North Carolina, so I was a geo-bachelor in in New Jersey.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_00: I was having a really hard time of it.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_00: That particular day was really was really rough.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_00: I somehow managed to get through the work day, and I was on my way home to my little apartment, and I stopped at the grocery store uh for something, a couple things, probably some milk and eggs or something like that.
• 59:37
  SPEAKER_00: And this woman, I don't remember what she looked like.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_00: I I I remember I was just feeling very bad internally, and I tend to like I I don't hide very well, I don't think how I'm feeling.
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_00: So this woman who didn't know me from Adam, I mean, nowhere, wasn't on the installation, it wasn't anything, just in a grocery store, was wearing my uniform, but she just said she just gave me a smile and said, How are you?
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_00: Are you okay?
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, You know what?
• 1:00:11
  SPEAKER_00: I I I will be.
• 1:00:13
  SPEAKER_00: And it was just very sincere, it was very simple.
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_00: She didn't, you know, get into my whole thing.
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_00: She just said, Are you okay?
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, I will be now.
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_00: Because somebody bothered to say, I don't know who you are, but I value you enough as a person that I'm gonna ask about you.
• 1:00:33
  SPEAKER_00: And it was very sincere.
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't like, hey, how you doing, which is a flippant kind of thing.
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_00: It was like, Are you okay?
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_01: Right, exactly.
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and and it was amazing, and I I think of you know, that's just one of many connections that I can instantly recall from decades ago.
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_00: Oh a battalion commander who was uh an amazing person.
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_00: He was uh 101st Airborne, ran a hundred miles, literally a hundred miles a week.
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_00: He knew everybody in the battalion.
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_00: He, you know, he could he would go out to the range.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_00: It was a base, a basic training unit, Fort Jackson, that he was in charge of, and uh he could go out to the range, some soldier have a hard time shooting, you know, can't hit anything.
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_00: He would just say, Well, let me see it, and they'd say, Sir, there's something wrong with this weapon, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:01:21
  SPEAKER_00: He would just pick it up, and nothing wrong with this thing, a handbag.
• 1:01:27
  SPEAKER_00: He could do anything and everything.
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_00: That was amazing.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_00: And one time I was sitting in the chow hall, my wife was pregnant with her first child, and uh, you know, she was having a hard time.
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think I had told him, but he remembered somehow he found out she was pregnant.
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_00: He just was walking by, stopped dead in the middle of the chow hall, and said to me, How's your wife?
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_00: Is she doing okay?
• 1:01:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, wow, right?
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, You know, she's gonna be okay.
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, she said, I'm praying for her.
• 1:02:04
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, it's just like those kind of things um make a huge difference in people's lives.
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yep, but but you don't know if I'm the one making the connection, I don't know that, right?
• 1:02:17
  SPEAKER_00: Right, and and you can't you can't like okay, I'm gonna go save somebody's life today.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna go make somebody's day.
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you know, you can just say, I'm gonna go connect with people, and just making small, it doesn't it, it's like you you it doesn't have to be I'm gonna sit down and have an hour and a half long conversation with somebody, it can be just, hey, I'm just gonna take up it can be 30 seconds, it can be like the woman in the grocery store, it can be just seconds of attention.
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_00: And when you're really hurting, those few seconds can often be more valuable than 10 other things you did before when you weren't hurting as much because you were thinking about I got to do this, da da da.
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_00: When you're really hurting bad, you're just consumed with I am miserable, I don't want to be here, or I, whatever it is, and somebody's just momentary genuine love for you and genuine value for you, genuine connection can save your life.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's really true.
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you're exactly uh right about that.
• 1:03:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I I uh I really appreciate you coming on the show because this isn't one of the things I love about doing this podcast is it changes me every time.
• 1:03:28
  SPEAKER_00: I've never had a guest where I walked away and went, Oh, that was a waste of time.
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's never happened.
• 1:03:33
  SPEAKER_00: So, well, sir, all these guests make they change me.
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_00: I learned something, I grow from it, and you've been a great guest on the show.
• 1:03:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I know you've helped tons and tons of people, and I really respect you and appreciate you for that.
• 1:03:47
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and I'll shoot you an email um that'll have all my contact information, sir.
• 1:03:51
  SPEAKER_01: Please feel free to pass out my give you my phone number.
• 1:03:54
  SPEAKER_01: If there's anybody that ever wants to talk, I'm not a therapist, but in as my friend Michael says, we've seen some road, you know.
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's or if they want to be on the daily um text list.
• 1:04:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it's just, you know, I just send out the text and I I I love it.
• 1:04:09
  SPEAKER_01: It takes me, you know, 50 people.
• 1:04:11
  SPEAKER_01: I I'm hoping it builds.
• 1:04:12
  SPEAKER_01: There's it's it doesn't cost anything.
• 1:04:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's just I follow, it's just what my brother taught me to do.
• 1:04:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so, but if you if you run into someone that says, hey, I'm really struggling with this, and the other thing I'll just put out super quick.
• 1:04:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I've also done two years and 45 sessions of electroconvulsive therapy, which has been phenomenal.
• 1:04:34
  SPEAKER_01: So if anybody sort of has a question about that, I mean, I I went through a lot and it was amazing.
• 1:04:39
  SPEAKER_01: And now I've done just I'm right at about 40 sessions of what they call TMS.
• 1:04:43
  SPEAKER_01: So TMS is the transcranial magnetic stimulation.
• 1:04:47
  SPEAKER_01: Different, but the two combo, unbelievable.
• 1:04:50
  SPEAKER_01: So if I if anybody has questions about that, I'd be happy to talk to them, what my experience is.
• 1:04:56
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, yeah, that'd be great.
• 1:04:58
  SPEAKER_00: So, as a final note, what is the best way people can reach out to you?
• 1:05:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I think if you go, if you if you google my name, David Woods, which is my great grandmother's middle name, David Woods Bartley.
• 1:05:10
  SPEAKER_01: You can also you can send me an email if you like, david at davidwoodsbartley.com.
• 1:05:17
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:05:17
  SPEAKER_01: Why in the world didn't I just do david at dwb.com?
• 1:05:21
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know I have no idea.
• 1:05:23
  SPEAKER_01: So and then or call me 916-247-6389.
• 1:05:31
  SPEAKER_01: There there is no one else is gonna answer the phone, it's gonna be me.
• 1:05:35
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, yeah, and you know, if you if there's any organizations would like me to come and speak, I mean, I I just I love soldiers.
• 1:05:42
  SPEAKER_01: I just I love soldiers, I do well or really any veteran would be fine, but uh especially and love chaplains in particular, so I think it's okay.
• 1:05:51
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we'll put all that information on the show notes.
• 1:05:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'll put it on the screen when I I put this on YouTube and stuff.
• 1:05:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but some some people be listening to it in their car on the podcast, whatever.
• 1:06:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I appreciate you providing that information.
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 1:06:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it's been great having you.
• 1:06:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I look forward to staying in touch with you.
• 1:06:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, but absolutely um um, just you know, proud of the work you're doing, and uh you're saving lives, so I appreciate that.
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, sir.
• 1:06:18
  SPEAKER_01: Anything I can do for you personally or professionally, you please don't hesitate to to reach out, sir.
• 1:06:22
  SPEAKER_00: I will do.
• 1:06:23
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, much love.
• 1:06:24
  SPEAKER_01: God bless.
• 1:06:25
  SPEAKER_01: God bless.
• 1:06:26
  SPEAKER_01: Bye bye.