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How Far Are You Willing to Push Yourself? · Commander's Intent

• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: Commander's Intent will inspire you how to lead with clarity, courage, and purpose.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: So here's your host, retired Air Force Colonel, fighter pilot, and your leadership mentor, Derek Oak.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Commander's Intent.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: You've got Derek Oakes, your host here, and unfortunately, you're stuck with just me and my stories.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: One of the great blessings of being a fighter pilot and being part of some of the historical units and organizations that I was with is that it gave me a chance to meet some amazing people who were in the unit before my time in previous generations.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: I loved hearing about them.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: I loved hearing their grit, their bravery, their leadership.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: I love the way they led those organizations.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: I often talk about a bias for action, and so many previous generations were not slow to act.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: They just did.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Some of the best examples to me are from the Flying Tigers.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now, before I talk about the Flying Tigers and one of my heroes for them, I just want to talk about the World War II generation in general, because I've met some amazing people from that generation.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I sometimes sit and think about what they went through.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Most of them were born during or shortly after World War I.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: They grew up most of them pretty poor before any real major industrial revolution in the United States, before any really good work conditions for laborers, for blue-collar workers.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: They survived World War I if they were alive.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: They survived the flu pandemic, and then they came of age during the Great Depression, where eating was never a given.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: A place to live was never a given.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: These are people who didn't come home from school and play games or listen to the radio all the time.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: They spent some time in school if they went to school.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Then they came home and they scraped for an existence, working on a farm or getting odd jobs.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then here comes World War II.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: By the time the United States entered World War II, it was already a bloody mess when they jumped in 1941.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: The training was brutal.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: The troop equipment and the provisions were ancient by today's standards, but to most of them, the pennies they made and the boots that they got were luxuries that they had never really seen at their own home.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: They accepted their fate with kind of a mix of pride to be an American and the morbidity of knowing how brutal a conflict was going to be.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: They were amazing people.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: What the World War II generation endured during World War II, it's unfathomable to us today.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: We talk about PTSD today from conflicts that we face.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: We talk about PTSD from abuse, from bullying at school, and I don't want to belittle that, but it doesn't hold account to the suffering.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: You think of spending days in a waterlogged foxhole with the remains of your buddy.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: I can't imagine what that was like.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then having to live with that, if you survived it, having to live with that for the rest of your life.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: There's a reason we call the World War II generation the greatest generation because of what they did.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: What they endured in the military, and then what they built after the military is truly remarkable.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: I want to share briefly a story of a friend of mine, JM Taylor.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: He flew with the 75th Fighter Squadron in China for only a brief period of time during the war.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: He arrived in China during the summer of 1944.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: He was qualified in the P-40 Warhawk.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: He flew, I don't know how many missions, but he flew probably very regularly, enough to be very comfortable in the P-40 for about a month, a little over a month.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Then he transitioned to the P-51, which was the premier fighter of World War II at the end of the war.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: So he's flying P-51s, and after about a month, they're straight in a Japanese airfield, and his aircraft gets hit by anti-aircraft fire, and the engine block is hit, and his engine seizes up on him.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: They hit an oil line, oil completely drains out, and the engine seizes up on him.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: So he's flying away from the field.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: He tries to climb up to get some altitude so that he can bail out.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then as he climbs up, they stitch his aircraft even more with their anti-aircraft guns.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: So he drops out at altitude to an altitude that was really too unsafe to bail out, but he didn't have a choice.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: So he flipped upside down and he dropped out of the aircraft, and he barely got enough swaves in the shoot before he hit the ground.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the Japanese, the ones he was just shooting, the ones he was just attacking, they picked him up, they beat him severely, they put him in isolation as a prisoner of war, and he spent a couple of months there in China, and then he was transported to the coast, put in a troop ship, and moved to Japan.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: And in moving to Japan, he said that was the scariest part of the war because he knew that there were U.S.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: subs all around that sea.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: He could hear the battle rhythm of the Japanese sailors as they're stuck in the hole and they were afraid of just going to the bottom of the ocean, sunk by American submarines.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, he gets to Japan and he endures the last couple months of the war as a prisoner of war.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: He's told by the guards that they're going to be killed, that if the U.S.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: invades Japan, they're going to be killed.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: If it looks at all bad for the Japanese, every single one of those prisoners is going to be killed.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: So he was very grateful for the atomic bombs that ended the war and allowed him to return home, marry, raise a family, and live the American dream.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: I met him when he was about 90 years old, one of the funniest people I've ever known.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: I consider that friendship one of the gems of my life.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: And at some point when we were sitting around talking, he told me a story about when he was in pilot training down the lake in Florida, flying the Boeing Steerman.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: For those of you who know what a steerman is, it's a cloth, you know, fabric aircraft, fabric and wood.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: It is a by-wing aircraft, a tandem seat.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: So you've got the instructor sitting in the front, and you've got the student pilot sitting in the back.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: Well, while he was going through training, he had gotten to a level of comfort.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: They always flew with a parachute because they would do aerobatics.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: They really take the aircraft through its rhythm.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: And while he's flying, while he's going through that training, one of his buddies said, Hey, damn, it's better.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's more fun to fly from the front seat than it is from the back seat.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they weren't allowed to take off in the front seat.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: Most of the controls were in the backseat.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know who here has seen the movie Mission Impossible, The Final Wrecking, where Tom Cruise grabs onto an aircraft and those are stearmans or like stearmans, and he climbs up and you see him move from the front seat to the backseat of the aircraft to get the controls.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's crazy.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: And you see how precarious it is, and that's a movie where Jam gets it in his mind that he wants to do that, that he wants to fly the aircraft from the front seat to really see if it's better.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so he takes off, he gets up to about 5,000 feet, and he kind of trims up the aircraft as you can trim those aircraft.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: That really wasn't much of a thing back then.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: That means to stabilize the flight controls.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: Then he stands up and knocks him back down.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: He's probably going, my guess is probably about 90 miles an hour or so, but he stands up and knocks him back down.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so he tries it again.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: He's able to stabilize himself because he's set on bound and turn on climbing into that front seat.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: So he stands up and then he stands on the seat.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: Keep in mind he's got a parachute on.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: But if he had crashed this airplane, they would have washed him out and he would have been an infantryman.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: He would have been storing the beaches of Normandy instead of what he wanted to do, which was fly fighter aircraft.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: So he stands on the seat and he puts one leg out and he steps on the bottom wing and he puts the other leg out.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: And here he is standing on the left hand side of the aircraft.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: He's holding the stick with his right hand and holding on for dear life with his left hand.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: And now he's not sure how he's going to get to the front without the aircraft kind of tipping over and going out of control.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: So he slowly slides his way forward and then he grabs the front stick and then he slides himself into the front cockpit and he flies around.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: And sure enough, he loved it.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: He said that the flying in the front seat was better.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: And he wished he got to fly in the front seat all the time.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: But then he came up with a problem where he realized that he had a problem, that he's about to land the aircraft.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: He's running out of gas and he needs to land the aircraft, but he can't be seen landing it sitting in the front seat.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: And like I said, all the controls aren't in the front seat.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: So he then stands up and does the exact same thing in reverse, goes back to the back seat, and then he safely lands the aircraft and lands.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: Now, why do I share that story?
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: One, not to pat him on the back for doing something crazy and saying way to go, Jim, for being a daredevil.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: He was pushing his limits.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: That whole generation wasn't crazy.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: They weren't stupid.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: They were not ignorant of the risk.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: They may not have understood all the risks, but I think he pretty much knew that if he fell from 5,000 feet, it was not going to end well.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: If he crashed a plane, it was not going to end well.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I guarantee you that in every flight class, they had people who killed themselves crashing an airplane.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: But their hazard tolerance was probably much different than what we accept today.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: Today I watch a single-track mountain biker ride down the spine of a steep desert slope where crashing would be broken bones at best.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I think, why would anyone do that?
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: I see other extreme sportsmen and women put their lives at risk all for the thrill.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: And you're not ever going to see me taking those kind of risks.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: I take other kinds of risks, but you're not going to see me take those kind of risks.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: But I do appreciate their willingness and the willingness of so many people to search for their limits, to find out what they're made of, and to see how really good they are.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: When I fly, I don't take crazy risks, but I do seek to expand my limits and expand my abilities, slowly turning crazy or what many people think is crazy into routine.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: I try and expand my comfort zone to really see what I'm made of and really see what I'm capable of doing.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: I've flown with people before and they say, you fly not out of control, but you do, you know, tricks with the plane, or however you want to say it.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, no, I don't.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: I know what the limits of the plane are.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: I never cross those limits, but I try and push my limits to see what my limits are in relation to those.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: I think that if you don't press yourself to find your limits, you never really learn how great you are.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't mean extreme sports or flying, but whatever it is that fills your day, you do yourself a disservice if you don't find ways to push yourself.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: In JM's case, he wanted to be a better pilot.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: He wanted to see what it felt like to fly in the front seat and fully experience the steerman, which meant he he had to climb that front seat and he had to stand out on the wing to do it.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: I think of how easy it would have been for him to lose control of the plane and my hat's off to him.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I do think that was a little bit crazy, JM.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: And you won't ever see me doing something like that.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: But like the extreme mountain bikers or all the other extreme sports participants, he wanted to know his limits.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: So let me ask you, how are you pushing yourself?
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: How are you expanding your own limits?
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: Do you ever really want to just retire to quit pushing your limits completely?
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: I don't.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean that I'm always going to be seeking a paycheck.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean that I haven't slowed down in some ways as my body ages and my physical limits are become very, very noticeable to me.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't ever intend to quit pushing myself.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: Doing things that make me a better person, doing things that give me confidence in who I am and make me a better decision maker and make me more willing to try things that I wouldn't try yesterday.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: So think about that for yourself.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: What is it?
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: How are you pushing yourself?
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: How are you making yourself better today for tomorrow?
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: And when you get to tomorrow, what are you gonna do to continue to expand your capabilities?
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: Are you ever going to retire and sit on the couch and play bingo or whatever it is that you play in retirement?
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: I hope not.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing wrong with retiring, nothing wrong with slowing down a lot of ways, but always find ways to push yourself and always find ways to be better at what you're doing right now.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining us today for another episode of Commander's Intent.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: If you want a direct conversation with me, reach out to Ask with Derek now, and we'll have a direct conversation.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: If there's a story or a point that you want me to elaborate on between the two of us or on another show, we'll talk about that and see what that would look like.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like, comment, subscribe, and share, as that really helps out the show.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: We appreciate you being part of the show as we all strive to be better decision makers for better results.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: So that's it for today's episode of Commander's Intend Podcast.
• 11:25
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• 11:31
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• 11:36
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• 11:45
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