Latest / Project Candor: Ordinary People. Unexpected Stories / War Ended. Real Fight Began with Lee Freeburg | Ship's Log #51

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War Ended. Real Fight Began with Lee Freeburg | Ship's Log #51 · Project Candor: Ordinary People. Unexpected Stories

0:03
Lee: When you're in crisis, pick up a broom and start sweeping.
0:08
Lee: When you're depressed, frustrated, clean your room, make your bed, put your stuff away, wash your clothes, bring order to your physical environment.
0:21
Lee: And watch how your mind turns on and things begin to look a little bit clearer.
0:31
Jeanne: Welcome to Project Candor, the show where ordinary people share the unexpected stories that shaped who they are.
0:36
Jeanne: I'm your host, Jeanne Andersen, and my guest today has rebuilt his life from the ground up more than once.
0:42
Jeanne: Let's get into it.
0:44
Jeanne: Lee Freeburg served eight years as a Navy corpsman, including a deployment to Iraq in support of EOD.
0:52
Jeanne: After the military, he faced the kind of drift that doesn't make the news and rebuilt his life from the ground up through discipline, faith, and structure.
1:01
Jeanne: Today, he is a product designer, author of two faith-based books, and the founder of The Ordered Life, a free course helping men find their footing when life feels like chaos.
1:12
Jeanne: Hey, Lee, welcome to the show.
1:14
Jeanne: Say hello to the shipmates on our journey today.
1:18
Lee: Hello, everybody.
1:18
Lee: It's glad to be here.
1:20
Jeanne: I gotta ask you.
1:21
Jeanne: So I'm reading the bio, and I know maybe people heard me say EOD.
1:26
Jeanne: What is EOD?
1:28
Lee: So EOD stands for explosive ordinance disposal.
1:31
Lee: Their basic job is to blow up IEDs.
1:35
Lee: They do range clearing.
1:36
Lee: So after like um impact range, they go down and make sure there's no dead or duds.
1:42
Lee: They find duds, they blow them up where they're at.
1:45
Lee: They do other training, things like uh breaching, things like that, like uh into buildings, motorblocks, things like that.
1:51
Lee: It's a pretty fun um career for sure.
1:54
Jeanne: Fun.
1:54
Jeanne: I'm not sure I would call it fun, because that's where accidents happen and they're explosive.
2:02
Lee: Yeah.
2:02
Lee: Yeah.
2:03
Jeanne: Well, that's me being silly.
2:04
Jeanne: I'm sorry.
2:04
Jeanne: But I wanted everybody to understand what EOD was, and it's that's the impact of a lot of your story here.
2:10
Jeanne: Let me ask some questions.
2:12
Jeanne: Let's get started.
2:13
Jeanne: Uh Lee, you grew up, uh, made the decision to join the Navy, and it ended up in one of the most unusual positions in the military, a corpsman embedded in the combat zone.
2:25
Jeanne: What drew you to that path in the first place?
2:28
Jeanne: And what did you think it was going to be before you actually lived it?
2:32
Lee: So uh my Navy story actually begins when I was three years old.
2:35
Lee: My uncle was in the Navy and he bought a toddler's sailor outfit and sent it home to my mom.
2:42
Lee: And then she took dozens of pictures of me and basically set me on a path for joining the Navy.
2:47
Lee: And about 16 years later, I stood on the footprints at Great Lakes, Illinois, and gave my life and my mind and my body to the Navy for the next, at the time it was just five years.
2:58
Lee: And I I chose to go to the Navy primarily because I had family history of it, but also because I have an innate sense of duty to the country.
3:07
Lee: I see military service as something I am doing in support of my country, not boosting my career, not trying to promote myself, but rather to serve my country.
3:22
Lee: And my country asked me to serve as a Navy corpsman, and I gladly took that position.
3:27
Lee: Of course, I had some time to look into it, knew kind of what a corpsman would do.
3:31
Lee: And as a corpsman, depending on where you're at, you can either be with the Marines, which they call greenside.
3:37
Lee: And so there's a long-standing tradition between the Marine Corps and the Navy, uh, where the Marine Corps they intentionally do not have their own medics, and the Navy transposes or lends corpsmen to the Marine Corps for their field operations and things like that.
3:53
Lee: And so I was one of the fortunate ones to be chosen for a duty like that, and I took it.
3:59
Jeanne: Nice.
4:00
Jeanne: So a corpsman is medical.
4:04
Jeanne: Is most people wouldn't get corpsmen as it'd be medical, but um, what were your kind of duties?
4:11
Jeanne: Were you like nursing duties, PA duties, like physician assistant duties?
4:16
Jeanne: What were you doing?
4:17
Lee: Well, if you you talk to certain sailors, they will refer to a corpsman as a pecker checker.
4:24
Jeanne: That's a name.
4:26
Lee: That is a name for sure.
4:28
Lee: I didn't get called that too much, but when referred to that, I know exactly what they're talking about.
4:33
Lee: Depending on where you're at, if you're with the Navy or like the blue side, they call it aboard ship or even in a clinic, you're kind of more of a vital science data entry technician.
4:45
Lee: When you get put over to the green side or on the Marine Corps side of the house, you go from vital science tech to physician's assistant.
4:54
Lee: And so when I was with the Marine Corps, I got to do pretty much anything a doctor would do.
4:59
Lee: And the reason being is because when you're out in the field, you don't have a clinic to run people to, you don't have an emergency room.
5:05
Lee: And so a quorum needs to be able to respond to any type of emergencies that might take place in the field.
5:12
Lee: And so we get trained on everything from giving an IV to suturing to stabilizing broken bones, gunshot wounds, of course, because the Marines get shot from a time to time.
5:23
Lee: Uh, and then just some general healthcare preventive medicine type things where you know where to put the latrine away from the food and everything else, and that's a little bit part of the corpsman's job as well.
5:36
Lee: And it's things you learn kind of like on the job as you as you grow with your unit.
5:41
Jeanne: Well, that's great to hear because I I know people don't really understand that term because military ranks or military disciplines just don't relate to civilian community.
5:52
Lee: Right.
5:53
Jeanne: I think we talked about that earlier uh on another call we've had together, but uh it is hard to translate from one thing to the next.
6:01
Jeanne: Like, for instance, yeoman.
6:03
Lee: Right, yeah.
6:04
Jeanne: What the heck is that?
6:05
Jeanne: Except if we watch Star Trek and Captain Kirk was like, Yeoman, come here, yeoman.
6:10
Jeanne: What was her name anyway, yeoman something or another?
6:13
Jeanne: That was what I did in the military.
6:15
Lee: That's awesome.
6:16
Lee: Every job in the Navy, we I believe is a needed job, and that's why that's there, right?
6:20
Lee: Like we need people, we need people in supply to help the guys on the front lines, and we need people on the flight line sending planes off for the guys out on the front lines, things like that.
6:30
Lee: And so every job in the Navy, I believe, is very important to our mission.
6:34
Jeanne: Very true.
6:34
Jeanne: So I I have to go back to when you said your uh you said your who was it sent the sailor outfit to your mother?
6:42
Lee: Oh, uh, my uncle.
6:44
Lee: Uh so my dad's brother was in the Navy for uh four years back during the Lebanon conflict.
6:53
Lee: So we have been early 80s time frame.
6:56
Jeanne: Okay.
6:57
Jeanne: Well, I I just had the I want to relay my story of how I ended up in the Navy.
7:01
Jeanne: I got quite a few, but my childhood years, uh, which will tell my age.
7:06
Jeanne: But I lived in Virginia, uh in Petersburg, Virginia, and it's near Richmond, and they had a TV show called uh Sailor Bob, and he was on a tugboat.
7:16
Jeanne: And Sailor Bob would come in every day, and he would do draw, he would draw art and everything, and he would play Popeye cartoons and then like fog horn, leg horn, whoever made those cartoons.
7:27
Jeanne: You know, that's what I watched, and I just thought Sailor Bob was the greatest.
7:32
Jeanne: And so what did I do?
7:33
Jeanne: It's my first thing in the Navy.
7:35
Jeanne: I was on a tugboat.
7:37
Jeanne: So your mind gets set way back in your childhood.
7:41
Jeanne: I think it's funny.
7:43
Lee: Right, yep.
7:44
Jeanne: So in Iraq as a corpsman, you were one people are brought to when it's bad.
7:49
Jeanne: You're seeing, you know, what war actually does to a human body.
7:53
Jeanne: So did that change something in you while you were still over there, or did you not feel it until you came home?
7:59
Lee: Uh I would say that it didn't really affect me while I was in combat.
8:04
Lee: And even after getting home, I have a few things that kind of lingered with me over the years.
8:10
Lee: Uh, but for the most part, some things kind of just subsided.
8:14
Lee: Um, I got integrated back into society.
8:17
Lee: While there's still some major differences, I think, between civilians and and military life, I found a way to make it work for me.
8:25
Jeanne: Okay.
8:25
Jeanne: Most people come home and nobody asks uh what to be carried back with them.
8:30
Jeanne: So you've talked openly about experiencing real drift after the military, not just adjusting, but actually losing your footing.
8:37
Jeanne: What did that look like for you?
8:39
Jeanne: And what finally started to crack it open?
8:41
Lee: One thing the military is good at is instilling necessity of discipline and an identity.
8:49
Lee: And while you're on active duty, living up to that discipline and living that identity is very simple.
8:56
Lee: Just do what you're told and you get to go home at night.
8:59
Lee: When you leave the military, no longer do you have that parental guidance or correction over you.
9:08
Lee: That discipline, if it's not instilled in you, you leave without it.
9:12
Lee: And I think for a lot of people in the Navy, or even just in the military in general, I think we leave the military, and when we leave, we leave that identity and that discipline behind us.
9:23
Lee: And we go out, we say, okay, now it's my life.
9:26
Lee: I get to live how I want to live.
9:27
Lee: And without a plan or without a direction, many of us just slip into this drift.
9:34
Lee: We do what we think we're supposed to do, go get a job, buy a car, get married, have kids, all while living unfulfilled.
9:42
Lee: We've lost our purpose and our mission.
9:45
Lee: Uh nobody's there to tell us what to do next or what's important, what's not important.
9:50
Lee: Uh, we don't have a senior chief saying, Hey, did you study for the exam this month?
9:55
Lee: No, we don't have that anymore.
9:57
Lee: Your promotions are based on your behavior and your your life mission.
10:01
Lee: And so when I got out of the Navy, I left that identity and that discipline behind.
10:06
Lee: And I was very excited because it's my life again.
10:09
Lee: This is my life.
10:10
Lee: I get to do what I want with it.
10:12
Lee: And I didn't realize how much the discipline and structure of the military made my life easier.
10:20
Lee: And there's probably a little bit.
10:22
Lee: I was when I got out, I was mad at the Navy.
10:24
Lee: They took me off a deployability list and just gradually one thing after another.
10:29
Lee: And pretty soon I was honorably discharged and said, Have, you know, have a nice day.
10:34
Lee: When I in reality, I wanted to spend the next 12 years in the Navy doing what I could.
10:39
Lee: And so it took many years, probably it took at least seven years of drifting through life, just coasting one job to the next.
10:49
Lee: I went to college, studied something I wasn't even relatively interested in.
10:54
Lee: I just went to college because that's what you're supposed to do.
10:56
Lee: You're supposed to go to college.
10:58
Lee: And it took until about 2015.
11:02
Lee: So I got out in 08.
11:04
Lee: In 2015, I had a four-wheeler accident, which broke my collarbone.
11:08
Lee: Actually, it broke my collarbone and about three or four ribs down this whole side of my body.
11:12
Lee: This whole side of my body was scraped up, bat battered, and I was burnt up on my face.
11:17
Lee: Or not burnt, but like rug rash and all that good stuff, or road rash.
11:21
Lee: And it took that in incident for me to wake up and to realize that I had put on 30 pounds without thinking about it.
11:30
Lee: I had just drifted through life, taken whatever easy job I could get.
11:35
Lee: I wasn't going anywhere.
11:36
Lee: I wasn't making a difference.
11:38
Lee: And so over the next six months, because I was still healing, and you know, collarbones they don't heal quickly.
11:45
Lee: And so I actually began to work on myself and began to read books and I began to actually try to work out in some fashion.
11:52
Lee: And from pretty much from 2015 to about 2020, I worked on myself.
11:57
Lee: I studied books, I journaled, I watched my behavior and tracked it, and I checked who I hung out with and I was careful about what I said to people.
12:08
Lee: And I began to for lack of a better term, I began to tighten up, right?
12:13
Lee: Like military mindset tighten up, right?
12:15
Lee: And while my life wasn't perfect, I still was making big mistakes and doing stupid things.
12:22
Lee: When 2020 came and the world seemed to be like falling apart, I was in a good position to start something new.
12:29
Lee: And so I wrote a book, this book here, How to Live a Better Life.
12:34
Lee: And I wrote the book specifically for my daughter, in case I never got to teach her the things of life.
12:40
Lee: And then I decided to make it a book and actually publish it and whatever else.
12:44
Lee: Uh and went down that trail.
12:46
Lee: But then over the over the years, like I just took opportunities and I began to grow and learn.
12:53
Lee: A couple of years ago, I got I actually got a professional coach and started working with a professional coach.
12:58
Lee: And I've been working with him for about three years now, to the point where I've grown mentally, emotionally, to a point where now I want to start giving back to people that were in my same shoes.
13:13
Lee: Be people men, specifically men, who've lost their way in life, they've lost their mission, they don't have any direction, they're just coasting, just drifting, just trying to get by, thinking like I'm doing the things, right?
13:26
Lee: Like I'm I've got the house, I've got the car, I've got the wife.
13:29
Lee: Why am I not have being successful?
13:31
Lee: And those guys, I want to reach out and I want to touch them, and I want to help them build a foundation, which which I had to go through, right?
13:39
Lee: Like I had to learn to build a strong foundation to build my life upon.
13:44
Lee: Uh some of that was through the church.
13:46
Lee: So I attend church every week.
13:48
Lee: Some of that was through study, exercise, challenging myself.
13:53
Lee: Some of it was quiet time, sitting alone in a dark place, contemplating, thinking, looking at the traumatic events and examining them and being like, you know, like obviously there's nothing more I could have done.
14:07
Lee: The event's over, but what can I learn from this event?
14:10
Lee: Am I a slave to these emotions that are attached to this event?
14:15
Lee: Or can I look at it with honesty and say, yes, this is actually what happened in my life?
14:23
Jeanne: You had said some really powerful things first before you started on the books, but we're going to talk about them in more detail too.
14:30
Jeanne: But I wanted to go back because you're very insightful about your military life and what happens when you get out.
14:37
Jeanne: Let's just deep dive into that a little bit.
14:40
Jeanne: Because most people who have never been in the military have no knowledge of what it's like to actually go in, be given a discipline which comes with a set of instructions, which comes with all of the rank and then your chain of command that's instructing you daily on what you need to do, even down to the letter of uniforms.
15:04
Jeanne: I mean, you are told what to wear.
15:07
Jeanne: And you get up, you put on what you're required to wear, and at times you get inspected and you can't even leave your uniforms dirty.
15:16
Jeanne: So you have to do your laundry.
15:18
Jeanne: And you can't smell bad because they're gonna tell you that too.
15:22
Jeanne: Yep.
15:23
Jeanne: I mean, that was very insightful the way you put it.
15:26
Jeanne: Can you talk a little bit more about that?
15:28
Jeanne: Because I think that's funny.
15:30
Lee: When I was with the Marine Corps side of the house, or Greenside, the Marines are their strictness is actually a lot higher than the Navy's.
15:39
Lee: Just point of fact.
15:41
Lee: It's just the way it is.
15:42
Lee: And so uh when I was with the Marine Corps side of the house, having a clean room, you know, maintaining a clean room, having uniforms ready for inspection at all times, this was a constant day-to-day.
15:54
Lee: You just knew it.
15:55
Lee: Uh, they would come, you do your uniform inspections, you do room inspections, Sergeant Major would show up when he wanted to, walk in, he could walk into your room at any time.
16:03
Lee: You know, that was just the military way of life.
16:07
Lee: A lot of that is integrated.
16:09
Lee: Like you do adapt, you do uh absorb quite a bit of that.
16:13
Lee: Some of that becomes innate, and like in the back of your mind, you start becoming very conscientious of cleanliness and how clean a room is or how tidy somebody keeps themselves.
16:23
Lee: Are their clothes raggedy and wrinkled, or are they like nice and pressed?
16:27
Lee: Like a lot of that stuff stays pretty present with you when you leave.
16:31
Lee: The why is what leaves.
16:35
Lee: You leave the military.
16:36
Lee: So I was Tuesday, I was active duty, and Thursday I was a civilian, right?
16:42
Lee: Like they're sure we have classes, the taps class, and these discharge weight, you know, here you go, we'll help you get integrated back into society.
16:51
Lee: But by the time my actual discharge date came, I was already living off base, you know, at a house and all this sort of jazz.
16:58
Lee: And the initial shock wasn't there.
17:03
Lee: I don't think I realized necessarily like the shock like really sunk in about six months later.
17:10
Lee: Because you can take a month leave, you know, in the military and like it's no big deal.
17:14
Lee: Matter of fact, I've taken when I was on active duty, I took at least two months, like independent, thir whole 30-day sections of just going home to do whatever.
17:24
Lee: You know what I mean?
17:24
Lee: But then when you get out of the military, your mind is still kind of like in that I'm on leave or I'm doing whatever.
17:31
Lee: It wasn't until I don't know, six, eight months later, I really kind of like realized like, oh, I I moved a job.
17:39
Lee: So I was in Wyoming uh doing a job and I moved out in South Carolina.
17:43
Jeanne: I have to say why. No,
17:45
Lee: I was that's a good question.
17:47
Lee: Um it's all part of this this drift.
17:50
Lee: When I got out, the best thing I knew was either medic, medical or military, like tactics, military tactics and operations.
18:00
Lee: And so I was drawn into the security industry.
18:05
Lee: It's what I knew best.
18:06
Lee: It was simplest for me.
18:08
Lee: Uh it seemed like a good way to integrate back into society.
18:11
Lee: So I went to uh a coal mine in Wyoming, and I was a security, I was a gate guard, is what I was.
18:19
Lee: And I did that for a while, but the company I was working for was is huge, was a huge company.
18:24
Lee: And they had positions all over the United States.
18:27
Lee: And they had this position down in South Carolina to be a nuclear security, uh, armed security officer.
18:34
Lee: Obviously, it came with a rays, whatever else.
18:37
Lee: And so that's what I knew best, right?
18:39
Lee: Carrying a gun, using firearms, that's what I knew best, and so that's what I went and did.
18:44
Lee: And I coasted, like I don't want to say I coasted through that job, but I didn't take it as seriously as I possibly could have.
18:51
Lee: Mostly just because I don't think I took the the military as serious as as I could have.
18:57
Lee: And so I just took the same mindset that I had in the military and I drew it over to security, and I worked security for a couple years and found that it wasn't for me.
19:08
Lee: It was not definitely not the path that I was supposed to be on.
19:11
Lee: You know, and and I think a lot of guys when they get out of the military, if they don't have a like a pre-plan, like, hey, I'm gonna get out and I'm gonna go work for Boeing, or I'm gonna get out and I'm gonna go work for Lockheed Martin, you know, or some some type of career.
19:27
Jeanne: Defense contractor, yes.
19:29
Lee: Right, contract, and that's why I see too is a lot of like a lot of SF guys will get out and they'll go on back on contracts, you know, with Triple Canopy or what used to be Blackwater Academy and all those guys, you know, and they'll go back over and do that kind of stuff because that's what they know.
19:45
Lee: Like the last eight years I lived as a Navy sailor, you know, and so what else do you do?
19:52
Lee: You go back to putting on some other type of uniform, you know.
19:55
Jeanne: Yeah, I think this is fascinating.
19:57
Jeanne: I know I have other questions for you, but it's fascinating to me because and to those people that I just insulted in Wyoming, it's only because my daughter is living there and she will not return to Florida, so I'm not happy uh with Wyoming.
20:10
Jeanne: She likes it there, but it just snowed like in summer.
20:14
Jeanne: I mean, I don't get it.
20:16
Jeanne: But uh, you reminded me of a song.
20:18
Jeanne: I couldn't help it because I'm a music lover.
20:21
Jeanne: So there's this old song, I think 70s maybe called Bluer Than Blue.
20:25
Jeanne: Have you ever heard that song?
20:27
Lee: Um, I may have.
20:29
Jeanne: You have to go and look it up.
20:30
Jeanne: I'm gonna read you some of the lyrics because I was looking it up too.
20:33
Jeanne: But it's talking about somebody leaving, you know, a girl leaving their boyfriend or whatever.
20:39
Jeanne: But this is kind of what you're talking about.
20:41
Jeanne: It's like after you go, I can catch up on my reading.
20:44
Jeanne: After you go, I have a lot of time for sleeping.
20:49
Jeanne: And when you're gone, it looks like things are gonna be easier.
20:53
Jeanne: Life will be a breeze, you know.
20:55
Jeanne: I really should be glad.
20:56
Jeanne: And it just keeps going on about I can go and have more room in my closet, I can stay up all night.
21:04
Jeanne: I mean, that's the kind of thing when you get out of the military, you're like, okay, now I don't know what to do.
21:10
Jeanne: I can do anything I want.
21:12
Jeanne: So you're picking all these things and you don't have any direction.
21:15
Jeanne: You're just kind of picking, I'll sleep all day, I'll I'll find a job one day, I'll find a job here or there.
21:22
Jeanne: I mean, you're kind of enlightening me on that, but because that's the way I felt like I'm like, what am I gonna do?
21:28
Jeanne: I can wear whatever I want, I can't wear my uniform now, so now I gotta bike cloth.
21:32
Jeanne: It just is a whole like shift.
21:37
Jeanne: And yes, it can make you drift.
21:39
Jeanne: So I I really think you're you're talking about something that happens to a lot of people for sure.
21:45
Lee: Yeah, and so after a few events in my life had gone by and a couple things like this four wheeler accident I had, it kind of really started to wake me up.
21:54
Lee: I've lived the last seven years just doing whatever I wanted.
21:58
Lee: Literally, I just quit a job.
21:59
Lee: I would quit a job because the boss told me something I didn't want to do.
22:05
Lee: Like that was my mindset.
22:07
Lee: Because in the military, it doesn't matter what anybody's like if if the senior person above you says to do this, you do it.
22:14
Lee: Right.
22:14
Lee: And when you get out, those people so what?
22:18
Lee: So you're the boss.
22:19
Lee: So you own a company.
22:20
Lee: I don't care.
22:20
Lee: I'll go get another job.
22:21
Lee: Like there's no like there's no UCMJ to keep you doing what the boss says to do, right?
22:27
Jeanne: Right.
22:28
Lee: You have like the civilian rules now, and civilian rules are like it's free will work.
22:34
Lee: You go where you want, you do what you want.
22:36
Lee: You got 50 states you can live in and make it.
22:39
Lee: You know, like you can go anywhere in this country and make it, but you have to choose what you're gonna do.
22:43
Jeanne: Yeah, you don't have captain's mass over your head, like exactly.
22:47
Jeanne: Which is kind of send you to jail for not doing what you're supposed to do for those of people that don't experience.
22:54
Jeanne: Oh my gosh.
22:56
Jeanne: Yeah, it's really hard.
22:57
Jeanne: But you talked about writing two books.
23:00
Jeanne: So you wrote How to Live a Better Life.
23:02
Jeanne: You said you did that for your daughter, and you wrote The Code of a man.
23:06
Jeanne: Most people have ideas rattling around in their head for years before they'll ever put them down on paper.
23:12
Jeanne: So, what finally made you put that down on paper?
23:15
Jeanne: And who were you writing it for, but besides the one for your daughter?
23:18
Lee: Well, of course, so yes, the the one for my daughter, How to Live a Better Life.
23:22
Lee: When I wrote that, I had a thought or a drive, the driver for that book specifically is my biological granddad and his brother both passed away at 45 years old.
23:36
Lee: So at the time I was about 40, 30, I think I was 39, about to be 40.
23:42
Lee: And I figured I had about five years of life left.
23:45
Lee: Maybe.
23:46
Lee: Now, obviously, we don't know when the clock is supposed to end, but if I only had five years to live, what would I do with those five years?
23:54
Lee: And so in 2020, I wrote a book on all the different topics I felt like my parents and other parents and the school systems and whoever else you want to blame forget to teach kids.
24:07
Lee: And so I sat down and I wrote wrote this book, six chapters.
24:12
Lee: The first chapter is called Know Thyself.
24:15
Lee: So becoming self-aware or becoming know who you are as a person.
24:19
Lee: I wrote about money because I feel like we don't talk to our kids enough about money.
24:24
Lee: They just know that it gets things, right?
24:27
Lee: And when I left high school, I didn't know what a money market account was.
24:32
Lee: Like I barely knew what a checking account was.
24:35
Lee: You know what I mean?
24:35
Lee: Like, and so I was like, nope, I'm gonna teach them about money.
24:38
Lee: And so then I was like, the other thing too we don't talk about is love.
24:43
Lee: We don't talk about love enough.
24:44
Lee: We talk, we say love, I love you, we say the words, we pretend to express it in some way, but what are we trying to express and what are we trying to relay?
24:54
Lee: What is this thing we call love and why is it important?
24:57
Lee: And so I wrote a whole chapter on that.
24:59
Lee: I wrote a chapter on religion.
25:01
Lee: I don't think we talk about religion enough.
25:03
Lee: Not necessarily religion.
25:05
Lee: Like I I talked about the different kinds of religions, and I covered about six different religions generally.
25:12
Lee: I know some people take and say Christian, and then like they list Catholics, Protestants, Christians, all underneath that.
25:18
Lee: In my personal opinion, I I think those are all different.
25:21
Lee: I think Catholics, Lutherans, Presbyterians, they're all their own religion.
25:25
Lee: They can be compared to Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Catholics, Lutherans, and so on.
25:31
Lee: Each one has their own way of pleasing God, their God, or whatever God they talk about.
25:37
Lee: And then I talked about like who is God.
25:40
Lee: In this world that we live in today, I believe people have chosen new gods.
25:45
Lee: And I don't think it's a new thing.
25:47
Lee: I think this is like human behavior.
25:49
Lee: Humans choose a God, they serve that God, they think that God is pleased with them or angry with them, and that's how they live their life.
25:57
Lee: Then, of course, there is a God.
26:00
Lee: I believe in this God.
26:01
Lee: This God has proven himself to me, and so I believe in him, and I believe he's the one true God.
26:07
Lee: And so then I talked about like who is God, what is you know, things like that.
26:12
Lee: And then I I closed the book out on a topic that I really think we don't talk about enough, really don't talk about enough, and that is moderation.
26:20
Lee: Living a life of moderation.
26:23
Lee: In America, we are extremely blessed.
26:26
Lee: We have more than we will ever need.
26:28
Lee: We have more in our country than the world needs.
26:32
Lee: We have so much.
26:33
Lee: We throw food away.
26:35
Lee: That's how blessed we are.
26:37
Lee: And yet, if we could live a life of moderation, we knew when to one plate of food was enough.
26:43
Lee: We knew that one drink of alcohol was enough, or this is enough, enough house, enough car, enough money.
26:53
Lee: What is enough?
26:54
Lee: And living a life of moderation, you learn what enough is.
26:58
Lee: Too much spoils the pot, not enough makes people jealous and envious.
27:03
Lee: So we have to find what is enough and live in that circle of enough, in a life of moderation.
27:10
Lee: And I wanted her to learn these things because if I'm gone, who's gonna teach them to her?
27:15
Lee: Well, now I am 45.
27:18
Lee: This is my 45th year of life.
27:20
Lee: I'm in great shape, great health, but the timer could still expire sometime this year.
27:25
Lee: And I thought to myself, I said, if I if there's one thing like one more thing I can do with my life before I'm gone, can I change men's lives?
27:33
Lee: Can I help men stop drifting?
27:37
Lee: And they're not specifically like I'm not targeting veterans specifically, but I know veterans, and veterans know me.
27:44
Lee: We've lived the same life, we've done the same things, we may have even stood on the same footprint at Great Lakes, and they face the same problems I face.
27:54
Lee: They face a drift, they face a loss of purpose, a loss of direction.
27:59
Lee: And so I want to help them.
28:01
Lee: It took me about seven years to get to a point where I knew I needed to start doing something different.
28:08
Lee: And it took me nearly 10 more years before I was to the point where I could say, I've learned, I've grown, I've become capable of helping others.
28:20
Lee: And that's what I want to do next.
28:22
Lee: Yes, I am a product designer.
28:24
Lee: Uh matter of fact, if you see like this little thing right here, I actually made this, machined it up myself, and I've made other products that people never even know it was me.
28:33
Lee: And that's not the one I'm after.
28:35
Lee: I'm after helping others begin not just to live like a better life, but also to prosper and to grow and to help others around them.
28:45
Lee: We've lost that.
28:46
Lee: We've lost community and tribe.
28:48
Lee: And I think that's had a major effect, even on our re-acclimation into society.
28:53
Jeanne: Well, you talk a lot about like this is you're talking right now about The Code of a Man.
28:58
Jeanne: That's the book that you wrote, and how to live with purpose and accountability.
29:03
Jeanne: So that is a really bold thing in this environment to put your name on.
29:07
Jeanne: So what does a code actually mean in daily life?
29:10
Jeanne: Not the theory, but what does it look like when a man is actually living it?
29:14
Lee: The Code of a Man is ten behavioral type topics or uh subjects.
29:22
Lee: And there are there are different ways in which a man implements things into his life and considers their outcome.
29:30
Lee: It's about being wise, not just smart or intelligent, but being wise, being able to hear a story or a scenario or a situation and be able to have discernment whether to even be involved in that situation or to be withdraw to be able to know what kind of friends that you hang out with and what kind of people not to hang out with.
29:53
Lee: A wise man has wise friends.
29:56
Lee: He doesn't hang out with fools, he doesn't hang out with people who think his thinking is negative or derogatory, or he doesn't align himself with people who don't have a purpose and a direction.
30:09
Lee: A man that has a code withdraws from evil.
30:14
Lee: He sees the darkness of the world and says, I don't want to be a part of that.
30:19
Lee: Is he capable?
30:20
Lee: Yes.
30:21
Lee: Could he be violent if necessary?
30:24
Lee: Yes.
30:25
Lee: But his wisdom and his discernment helps him choose meekness over violence.
30:33
Lee: And I think that's a huge part of The Code of a Man is knowing when to act and when to withdraw, to when to engage with people and when to just sit back and listen.
30:46
Lee: I think some of the smartest men in the world don't talk very much.
30:50
Lee: I think they sit back and they listen to what other people have to say, and without judgment, they make a discernment about their that answer or that topic.
31:01
Lee: I'm sure somebody could make a great argument for transgenderism, but a wise man would look at the whole picture and determine that that's gross, that's disgusting, that's not what is naturally supposed to happen.
31:16
Lee: If we've lived 10,000 years and now on our 10,000th year, men think that they're women, and vice versa, no, that's a sickness, that's a disease.
31:28
Lee: And a wise man knows how to look at that and say with confidence, no, that's not for us.
31:35
Lee: That's not for me.
31:37
Lee: He should have the ability to determine what is right and wrong for his own life.
31:42
Lee: I can't make the decision for that person.
31:45
Lee: I can give them instruction, I can teach them what I've learned and why I believe the way I believe.
31:50
Lee: But in the end, we all make our own decisions, and it is our own choice, and that's the beauty of being alive, is that freedom to make a choice to a decision and live with consequences.
32:03
Lee: That's what The Code of a Man is.
32:05
Jeanne: Right.
32:05
Jeanne: I like like you saying the freedom, because it is bold to put out a book like that.
32:10
Jeanne: And I did I agree with a lot of what you're saying.
32:12
Jeanne: I just know that there is also acceptance that you you'll say to yourself, that's not for me, and I don't agree with it, but you're not gonna turn it into any hatred or any kind of actionable hatred.
32:26
Jeanne: And I think that is the scary part.
32:28
Jeanne: So that's where you come in with the man and his wisdom.
32:31
Jeanne: They know better.
32:33
Lee: Yep.
32:33
Jeanne: Yeah, the world is gonna be what the world is gonna be, and we live in it.
32:38
Lee: And the the man makes the choice how he reacts to that.
32:44
Lee: He can say, This is not for me, and withdraw himself from it, or he can be somebody who might be unstable, self-appoint to be the rectifier of all situations and go out and wave signs against those people.
32:57
Lee: And a wise man would say, What is is this profitable?
33:01
Lee: Will this do any good?
33:02
Lee: Will will my hate for them change their hearts?
33:06
Lee: And it's no.
33:08
Lee: Hate never changes people's minds.
33:11
Lee: Loving them, being kind to them, being accepting to a point of like that's you, and this is me.
33:22
Lee: If I choose not that for my life, you can go ahead and choose that, but your choices are your choices, and not not be upset or angry or hateful about it.
33:32
Jeanne: Absolutely.
33:33
Jeanne: Yeah, that's where we're running into problems today, anyway.
33:36
Jeanne: The people judge and they think, well, this is the way I feel, so therefore you must feel that way.
33:41
Jeanne: Right.
33:43
Jeanne: And that's not wisdom.
33:44
Lee: Right.
33:45
Jeanne: Your book sounds like something that uh should go into areas where there's gang violence and areas where you could help train men and that and those groups.
33:56
Jeanne: I don't know how you would do it, but it's a lot of good information for that.
34:00
Jeanne: But you're running a free course and leading a weekly men's group, building a whole community around this work.
34:07
Jeanne: So when a man shows up completely lost and starts to find his footing, what does that moment feel like for you?
34:15
Lee: When men come to me, they're generally at a position in their life where they've determined that whatever they're doing isn't working and they need somebody or some help along the way.
34:26
Lee: And for the most part, when they come, it's not like some would imagine a weeping, broken man crying, bawling his eyes out, telling me how terrible his life is.
34:37
Lee: It usually starts off with just a general conversation.
34:41
Lee: God has blessed me with this ability to kind of like hear, actually hear people.
34:48
Lee: Not just like the words, but like hear what they're saying in between the words.
34:52
Lee: And then I'm able to like guide them, talk to them, work some things out.
34:57
Lee: We look at kind of like where they are in life, what they were trying to achieve, because most of the times by the time they come to me, they were trying to achieve a goal in their younger years, but they lost sight of the goal and they just put their head down and just start working, making money, paying bills.
35:13
Lee: Because what are we supposed to do?
35:15
Lee: Well, that's what you're supposed to do, right?
35:16
Lee: You're supposed to buy a house, buy cars, get a boat, get married, have kids, pay your debt.
35:22
Jeanne: I missed the one about getting a boat.
35:24
Jeanne: I don't know.
35:24
Jeanne: I didn't get that one.
35:25
Lee: I didn't get a boat either.
35:26
Lee: But I did get a four-wheeler.
35:29
Jeanne: So out of Project Candor, we're on a little ship here.
35:31
Lee: There you go.
35:32
Lee: There we go.
35:33
Lee: So then we talk.
35:35
Lee: We'll talk.
35:35
Lee: Most of the time it's about 60 to 90 minutes, the first call.
35:38
Lee: We talk about a few things.
35:40
Lee: And and um actually, if they go to my website, theleeburg.org, I have on the website an ability to just to book a 90-minute call.
35:48
Lee: And the 90-minute call is actually just a it's not a podcast, it's just a conversation.
35:53
Lee: You know, we just sit down, we talk about, I let him do most of the talking.
35:57
Lee: He tells me about his life, where he's at.
35:59
Lee: I take notes because again, like I I hear in between like the words of what's being said, then I put out some points and I say, hey, you know, like what about this situation or or where are you going or what it's gonna take?
36:11
Lee: You know, like where are you going like?
36:13
Lee: And are you going to commit to the work that's required to get there?
36:18
Lee: And then obviously I'm trying to funnel them into my eight-week, I have an eight-week coaching course in which uh once a week I have a 60-minute call with uh the individual, the man, a man, and we work through my ordered life course, and I help them bring order to their life.
36:37
Lee: And the first pillar, ordered space.
36:41
Lee: That's the first pillar.
36:42
Lee: When a man brings order to his environment, it lights up his brain.
36:48
Lee: His brain looks at everything as if it's new, like there's something here, I'm and it begins to pay attention and it actually opens up to receiving more information.
37:00
Lee: And in that state of mind, a man is able to learn and to grow actually rapidly because he's actively bringing order into his life, and his brain is actually paying attention to that.
37:15
Lee: Uh, the masculine brain is a brain of order, and why it is, I obviously I don't know.
37:20
Lee: God created us that way.
37:22
Lee: Uh, but a man likes order, he likes to know where the thing is, where it is, and how to get to it, and so on and so forth.
37:29
Lee: And so bringing order to a man's life helps him not only be productive, but regain control, like just a sense of control in his own mind of his life.
37:40
Lee: And with that sense of control, then he begins to aim his own himself.
37:45
Lee: And I am just the guy who's like, hey, you said you were gonna do this.
37:49
Lee: How are we doing on it?
37:50
Lee: And keeping him accountable on his journey.
37:53
Lee: And generally, for the most part, we work for about eight weeks through my course.
37:57
Lee: Uh, and by at the end of the eight weeks, I offer them an opportunity like for uh like once a month or once you know to continue calls, things like that, if they'd like.
38:05
Lee: I do have a buddy uh that I work with, so I actually promote my own coach too.
38:10
Lee: Uh, my my coach works on identity and helps people, men and women, lock in their identity of who they are as a person and the direction they're headed.
38:20
Lee: And so my course, the ordered life course, kind of builds this foundation for people.
38:25
Lee: And then I recommend them over to my buddy Chris Lee, and he works with them on their identity, building their identity, strengthening their identity of who they are.
38:35
Lee: And with my course as their foundation and his identity, they can very much easily have a successful life.
38:42
Jeanne: That sounds wonderful.
38:43
Jeanne: Well, this has been a fantastic conversation.
38:46
Jeanne: I forgot to ask you your nickname.
38:48
Jeanne: You did say that, you know, and on you know, your information that you provided to me, but I forgot what it was.
38:55
Lee: Yeah, so my friends call me the Lee Burg.
38:57
Lee: Obviously, they just took free off and just smashed Lee and Burg together.
39:02
Lee: Uh, and they've been calling me that for I guess it's been 20 years now, since 2005.
39:07
Lee: And so I just took and I rolled with that.
39:11
Lee: That's my we'll call it speaker identity, whatever else.
39:15
Lee: You can look me up on Facebook, Instagram, just look for the Leeburg, and I'm out there.
39:20
Lee: Of course, on my website, theleeburg.org, there's a bunch of information on there.
39:24
Lee: It's not a hundred percent yet, but it's to the point where if you want to contact me, you want to you want to work with me, there's enough information on there for you to click the links and sign up.
39:35
Jeanne: Oh, nice.
39:35
Jeanne: So uh the reason why I'm when I heard that nickname, I kept thinking, well, why didn't they call you Freeburg?
39:42
Jeanne: But that's my music mind.
39:44
Lee: Yes.
39:45
Lee: So while I was on active duty, I did get the free bird a lot.
39:48
Lee: People would walk by me and then back up, pull their lighter out of their pocket and go, Leeburg, Freeburg.
39:56
Jeanne: Yeah, that does sound like it.
39:58
Jeanne: That would happen.
39:59
Lee: It happened quite a bit while I was on active duty.
40:01
Jeanne: I love it.
40:02
Jeanne: Well, hey, now it's time of the show where we transition into our two truths and a lie.
40:08
Jeanne: And are you ready to play?
40:10
Lee: Yeah, let's play.
40:11
Jeanne: Okay, for those listening in, here's how it works.
40:14
Jeanne: So Lee Burg, our Free burg, has uh given us three headlines from his life that we're gonna go over.
40:23
Jeanne: Two of them are true, one is a lie or a twisted truth.
40:28
Jeanne: And he's gonna go through each of those stories, but he won't reveal which one is the twisted truth or lie until the end.
40:35
Jeanne: And I get to ask some questions, but I also get to guess.
40:39
Jeanne: So let me read off his headlines.
40:42
Jeanne: This episode is sponsored by Rebel 180, the home of brave pivots and fresh starts.
40:50
Jeanne: Rebel 180 is all about helping you rediscover what's possible when you stop settling and start listening to that little tug inside that says, Life can be different.
41:00
Jeanne: Whether you're navigating a career shift, dreaming about a new direction, or standing at the crossroads wondering if it's time for your own 180-degree turn, Rebel 180 is a reminder, you don't need permission to change your story.
41:14
Jeanne: And now, as we open the door to our second sponsor, we're stepping into the world of tech.
41:18
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41:26
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41:44
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41:49
Jeanne: Thank you to our sponsors.
41:51
Jeanne: So first one, Lee saved Jocko's life in Iraq.
42:00
Jeanne: Jocko is a Navy SEAL, so I'm just gonna add that in there.
42:05
Jeanne: Number two is Lee went from squid to devil dolphin.
42:09
Jeanne: And number three is Lee believes in choose your rate, choose your fate.
42:14
Jeanne: So I'm going to say that I think number two is a lie.
42:22
Jeanne: I don't know how you would do that.
42:24
Jeanne: You might have said that, but anyway, I'm gonna choose two.
42:28
Jeanne: So you want to walk us through each of those stories?
42:30
Jeanne: Did you actually save Jocko's life?
42:32
Jeanne: And who is he anyway to tell everybody?
42:35
Lee: So Jocko, yes, you're right.
42:36
Lee: Jocko is a Navy sailor.
42:38
Lee: He's a former Navy SEAL uh officer, very big in the podcasting world, does a lot of different things.
42:45
Lee: When I was on Iraq in 2007, I was with the EOD unit.
42:50
Lee: And my team was kind of special in that we weren't attached to like road clearings and other things like that uh in the explosive realm of like range clearings or anything like that.
43:05
Lee: Our team was specifically stood up to be a quick response force to IEDs found on the road and things like that in the area that we were operating in.
43:16
Lee: And so uh one day we get a call, hey, we found some stuff.
43:20
Lee: We found like a bunker, they called it a cachet.
43:22
Lee: We found a cachet of weapons near this FOB.
43:25
Lee: Would you come take care of it?
43:27
Lee: And we're like, uh yeah, yeah, sure, no problem.
43:29
Lee: So we get uh we mount up in our vehicles, we had a four-vehicle convoy, went out to this FOB, and we get out to this FOB and we start talking to the
43:38
Jeanne: What's a FOB?
43:39
Lee: Oh, a foreign operating base.
43:41
Jeanne: Okay.
43:42
Lee: Some Marines had taken, like taken over an abandoned home that had like eight, nine, ten foot walls.
43:49
Lee: It was actually a pretty nice uh compound looking thing.
43:52
Lee: And so we show as we're getting closer, we're talking to the FOB over the radio, and they tell us that they're pinned down.
43:59
Lee: By a sniper, and they like literally, like, nobody can like they peek up over the wall and rounds are coming at them.
44:06
Lee: And we're like, oh, okay.
44:07
Lee: Like, we're so everybody kind of gets ready for combat, whatever, get all weapons.
44:11
Lee: Pull into this little like subdivision, and we're talking to this FOB, and the FOB coordinates says, Hey, listen, there's a SEAL team in this little village down here that's pinned down, and they've been stuck there all night because this sniper's doing the same thing to them that he's doing to the FOB.
44:29
Lee: He's just like, if they peek, I mean he's putting rounds, right?
44:33
Lee: And it was like an all-night couple day thing.
44:36
Lee: So my team leader told our lead driver, he said, Listen, I want you to roll down into this town and everybody keep your eyes open for where you know the shots start coming from.
44:47
Lee: We're gonna we're gonna take this dude out.
44:49
Lee: And we're like, okay, cool.
44:50
Lee: So we look mount up, I don't know, we just, I mean, we're rolling smoke right down into this, or we're driving really fast, into this subdivision, drive through the subdivision, rounds start coming out, whatever.
45:02
Lee: We pinpoint the location where he's at, and uh we turned uh Mark our Mark 49 or whatever, I think it's 49, our automatic grenade launcher.
45:12
Lee: We turned that gunner on the building that the sniper was in, and this guy leveled the whole top floor.
45:19
Lee: Well, while we're doing this, the SEALs contacted us and said, Hey, we're over here.
45:26
Lee: One of our guys is shot.
45:28
Lee: We need a Medevac.
45:29
Lee: Can you call in a Medevac?
45:30
Lee: So we call in a Medevac.
45:32
Lee: The shooting stopped.
45:33
Lee: We obviously got the sniper.
45:34
Lee: We roll over to where these SEALs were pinned down behind this little wall, mounted them up, got them in our vehicles, called a Medevac in, and uh took Jocko and his team over to the helicopter, and they flew away.
45:47
Lee: And one of the one of their guys had got like sniped through the eye, like corner and whatever.
45:52
Lee: So it didn't like hit his brain, it just took his eye out.
45:55
Jeanne: Just took his eye out.
45:56
Jeanne: Wow.
45:58
Lee: Just took his eye out.
45:58
Lee: Barely.
46:00
Jeanne: Oh, that's scary.
46:01
Jeanne: Uh so yeah, that's a good story.
46:03
Jeanne: Wow.
46:04
Jeanne: All right, how about number two?
46:08
Jeanne: Squid, I know, is a term for a sailor.
46:11
Lee: Yes.
46:12
Lee: So I kind of talked about this already.
46:14
Lee: Like I talked about referring like to the green side, blue side.
46:17
Lee: When I went to I went to the Navy in May of 2000, I went to core school in like June of 2000, graduated core school in November of 2000, and immediately got orders to go to Okinawa, Japan.
46:34
Lee: And to get there, I had to go through another school called Field Medical Service School, which I'm not sure that's what they call it anymore, but it used to be called FMSS.
46:43
Lee: Uh, and so I went to that school, and it it's at that school that you uh corpsman learns to do all the things the Marines do.
46:52
Lee: So it's kind of like a Marine Rifle School, which is their second school when they get out of boot.
46:57
Lee: For me, it was like my third, second or third school, whatever else.
47:01
Lee: But it's at that school you learn field medicine, you actually march, like you go on all the long marches the Marines do.
47:08
Lee: Um, you go to rifle range, pistol range, uh, you go out into the field, you actually have to set up like a camp, uh, like an actual like forward deployed type camp to include like water, latrines, eating, birthing, all that stuff.
47:23
Lee: And then we had like guards, roving patrols, things like that.
47:27
Lee: Like we literally, as corpsman, did everything like the Marines did.
47:31
Lee: So we know exactly what they did.
47:33
Lee: And basically, in that uh like at that school, you transition from a squid, which like you said is a a Navy, a sailor, to a devil dolphin.
47:43
Lee: And you become like a the Marines in World War II earn the title devil dogs by the Germans because they were so scared they make like a barking noise and whatever else.
47:54
Lee: And so we have a this long-standing devil dog is what you call a marine, or a devil dolphin is what you call a navy corpsman who's with the marine side of the house.
48:05
Jeanne: Oh that's really cool.
48:07
Jeanne: I like that story.
48:09
Jeanne: Well, I guess that wasn't true, but let's see.
48:11
Jeanne: All right, what about number three?
48:14
Lee: So in the in the Navy, when I was in, this was a pretty common term that you you'd hear.
48:18
Lee: Choose your rate, choose your fate.
48:21
Lee: Because corpsman, I don't know, the Navy like loves to hire, like, loves corpsman.
48:29
Lee: And so they're constantly producing more and more and more corpsman all the time.
48:33
Lee: Well, the rating, it's called HM Hospital corpsman, is the rating that's your job title.
48:40
Lee: This rating is full of people, and I mean there's more E3s and E4s in the corpsman rating than there is in any other rating in the Navy.
48:51
Lee: And because of that, it's very hard to get promoted up.
48:55
Lee: To get a hundred people promoted, you needed like 70 people up to leave.
49:01
Lee: And that was like Master Chiefs, 10 senior chiefs, and down like down and went.
49:07
Lee: And so the term choose your rate, choose your fate means if I would have gone to be in a gunner's mate, which would have what I actually wanted to do, I would have made E5 in four years.
49:19
Lee: But because I chose a corpsman, it took me almost six years to make E4 because the rank above me was so full they couldn't promote enough people or promote people up.
49:30
Lee: And so I got stuck at E4 all the way up to my eighth year, and in the Navy we have higher tenure.
49:37
Lee: So at eight years at E4, the Navy involuntarily separates you on a good conduct discharge, and then they actually give you like a separations check, send you on your way, all that good jazz.
49:51
Lee: But choose your rate, choose your fate.
49:53
Lee: And I chose corpsman, and I got stuck at E4 before I couldn't get promoted.
49:58
Jeanne: So you did tell me when we talked something about never being on a ship.
50:03
Lee: Yes.
50:03
Lee: So as a corpsman, I immediately went to the green side to serve with the Marines.
50:12
Lee: And I so I spent a year in in Okinawa, Japan.
50:15
Lee: I spent two years in Cherry Point, North Carolina, and then the Navy said, well, now you need shore duty because they consider being with the Marines sea duty for a corpsman.
50:26
Lee: And so then I went to a naval hospital for two years, and then as soon as I got done in naval hospital, I went right back to the Marine Corps.
50:33
Lee: And so out of my eight years in the Navy, I never one time was stationed aboard a ship.
50:40
Lee: That's unusual.
50:41
Lee: Yeah.
50:43
Jeanne: All right.
50:44
Jeanne: So tell us which one is uh the live.
50:47
Lee: Number one's a lie.
50:49
Jeanne: Ah.
50:50
Lee: So, yes, the story is true.
50:52
Lee: Uh, we did save a bunch of Marines' lives, or a bunch, uh, my EOD team saved uh SEAL's team, a SEAL team.
51:00
Lee: We like saved their lives.
51:01
Lee: Because if we'd never shown up, they would basically have been stuck there until that sniper grew tired or whatever, until they killed him off.
51:08
Lee: And so, because of our of my team, there's a whole SEAL team still alive.
51:12
Lee: Jocko was not on that team.
51:15
Lee: I'm actually not a big fan of Jocko, which I'm I mean, not there's nothing personal, just business, I guess.
51:21
Lee: But yes, and then one just a small side of the story.
51:27
Lee: Ten years ago, me and one of our one of our security unit guys, we went to some training in California.
51:35
Lee: And at this training, we met one of the team members of the team that we saved that day in Iraq.
51:44
Lee: He tried to tell a different story from our story, which was pretty funny.
51:49
Lee: And we almost had him like confessing that the story wasn't real until my buddy opened his mouth and told him that we are the guys who picked him up.
51:59
Lee: And then he immediately shut up.
52:00
Lee: Never said a single word after that.
52:02
Lee: But it was pretty funny.
52:04
Lee: But yeah, we saved a uh Navy SEAL, like a whole SEAL team's life while we were in Iraq.
52:09
Lee: That was pretty awesome.
52:10
Jeanne: That is absolutely admirable.
52:12
Jeanne: So good for you.
52:14
Jeanne: All right.
52:16
Jeanne: Well, now I know people are gonna want to get in touch with you, and you've given them some information, but I'm just gonna give um some links here.
52:23
Jeanne: You also had a great quote called The Cheat Code of Life is finding order and chaos.
52:29
Jeanne: Did you want to say anything about that?
52:31
Lee: When you're in in crisis, pick up a broom and start sweeping.
52:37
Lee: When you're depressed and frustrated, clean your room, make your bed, put your stuff away, wash your clothes, bring order to your physical environment and watch how your mind turns on and things begin to look a little bit clearer.
52:58
Jeanne: Wow, that is really um good advice because as you're saying it, I'm thinking about it.
53:05
Jeanne: I still make up my bed to this day because of the Navy.
53:09
Jeanne: I still get up at 5:30 and my bathrooms are like squeaky clean.
53:15
Jeanne: So I know when I get stressed or frustrated, that's what I go to clean.
53:21
Jeanne: Go do the things that put things back in perspective.
53:24
Lee: Yep.
53:24
Lee: Works every time.
53:26
Jeanne: Yeah, and and I say the bathrooms because the navy.
53:29
Jeanne: Oh my gosh, did they make you clean the toilets?
53:32
Jeanne: That is something that you have to do constantly.
53:38
Jeanne: So there's also uh links to your Facebook, your Instagram, your website, and you also uh show, you know, what you talked about earlier about your course on school and how to get to that.
53:51
Jeanne: Uh, anything else you wanted to say to the audience?
53:54
Lee: Life is meant to be enjoyed, not struggle or hassle.
54:00
Lee: Struggle is part of life.
54:02
Lee: It will come and go, but yet this too shall pass.
54:08
Jeanne: Excellent.
54:09
Jeanne: Thanks for being on the show today.
54:11
Jeanne: I really appreciate it, and I love your insight.
54:14
Jeanne: For those listening, I hope you join us next week for another guest who's coming on board.
54:21
Jeanne: And for now, this is your Admiral of the Unexpected, Jeanne Andersen, your host, and I wish everyone smooth sailing.
54:29
Jeanne: Thanks for joining me on Project Candor, where the doors are open, the stories are unexpected, and the treasure is always real.
54:37
Jeanne: If today's episode made you laugh or think, follow the show and share it with your crew.
54:42
Jeanne: Otherwise, I might just make you swab the deck.
54:45
Jeanne: I'm Jeanne Andersen, your Admiral of the Unexpected.
54:49
Jeanne: See you on the next voyage.