0:00
LinkedIn's AI-powered job search can help you find the most relevant roles based on
0:04
your goals and experience. It cannot help you find something to talk about in the elevator.
0:08
So, uh, ride any dragons this weekend?
0:11
It can help you find your next job just by describing it in your own words.
0:15
It cannot stop your coworker from describing their dreams.
0:18
So I was flying, right?
0:20
And while we can't help you advance in the office-boosball tournament,
0:23
LinkedIn can help you advance in your career.
0:27
LinkedIn is the network that works for you.
0:30
Struggling with weight loss?
0:31
Prolon's five-day fasting mimicking diet is a clinically developed nutrition program
0:35
designed to promote fat loss while protecting lean body mass.
0:38
Developed at USC's Longevity Institute, it assists the body in entering a fasting-like state
0:43
that helps reset metabolism and target visceral fat.
0:47
In just five days, Prolon offers a science-backed approach to weight loss without extreme restriction
0:51
or guesswork. Get 15% off plus a $40 bonus gift when you subscribe at prolonlife.com/now.
0:58
This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast. I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
1:12
Let's get into it.
1:13
All right, guys. Before we hit the content that we're going to go into today,
1:16
I had a very cool thing that happened on Instagram.
1:18
So from time to time, I encourage you guys, hey,
1:20
if something I say that comes up that you have a question about or if you're angry about or
1:25
anything like that happens, just hit me up. You can hit me up on Instagram. You can hit us up
1:29
the email, just info@undaunted.life. And I do actually get quite a few messages from you guys,
1:34
but I do get some that are in the same vein. They end up in that same area, same type of question.
1:40
But this was a really cool thing because this was a message that I first got sent back in January
1:46
and just came to fruition. Enough with the setup. Let me just get into it.
1:49
So this guy who I won't tell you who he is, he sent me a private message on Instagram.
1:53
And this is what he said. And just so you know, it's kind of like jumbled up a little bit
1:56
because it's just kind of like common language. So if I don't read it super smooth, it's just
2:00
because it breaks up the message and it's kind of typed in sentence fragments, whatever. I'll do
2:04
my best here. So here we go. Hey, Kyle, I've really enjoyed your content on here and through podcast.
2:09
I line with so much of what you're saying. I'm also local and Edmund and still ironing out what
2:13
God wants for me as far as men's ministry. But it is something he won't let me shake.
2:18
My big question that you may or may not have an answer for is how do we get men to the point
2:23
to care or change? I feel like so many guys in my church are passive, not keen on growth or pushing.
2:29
And I can relate because four years ago, I was probably the same. But since then,
2:33
I've been on this path of manhood and masculinity in Christ, of being bold and called to action.
2:38
I could talk on it all day, but that doesn't mean they will listen or spark change.
2:42
I feel like most of my push for them falls on deaf ears or just too much work for what they
2:47
quote unquote think they have time for. It pains me as a man for men. I'm surrounded by a church
2:52
to not have the same drive and urgency about themselves. And obviously this extends beyond
2:58
my own church and just men in general of how of how do we get them to I don't know if that's what
3:03
he meant to say. Basically, how do we get them from a place of passivity and complacency to a stage
3:08
or drive and willingness to work on themselves for God, their wives, their kiddos, etc. Thanks for
3:13
any advice on this man. Oh, by the way, my name is I won't say the thing. So the thing about it was
3:18
is on Instagram, you can actually respond with voice messages, right? And so I sent him basically
3:24
four different voice messages to about four minutes worth of messages. And I'll keep a lot of the
3:28
content kind of, you know, between him and I, but the general gist of it was is man, your story is
3:33
not unique. Because I get this question a lot. And so that just proves to me that this is not a
3:39
unique occurrence with a lot of people. This is something that a lot of people run into.
3:43
And so it's kind of one of those things like think about whenever you found something that,
3:46
you know, is really awesome. Maybe it's a movie or a new restaurant or like new shoes that are
3:51
great for running in or something like that, you find it and then you become an evangelist for it,
3:54
right? You want to just tell everybody about this, this great thing that they've got to see or
3:57
experience or do or whatever. And then when people don't get nearly as excited as you do
4:02
about it, it's kind of like, man, you know, why are they as excited as I am? Well, the same thing
4:06
happens if you get really excited about Christianity or really excited about manhood or anything like
4:11
that. You just can't expect the guys around you to be on that same path. Now that isn't your excuse
4:16
to not reach out to them, isn't your excuse to not, you know, try and get them to be better and
4:20
things like that. It's certainly not what I'm saying. But at the same time, it's really, really hard
4:25
for them to kind of match that. And so basically what I told this guy to do is model it. If you
4:31
don't have a group of guys that meet on a regular basis that you look to and trust and all those
4:36
things, then be the, be the trailblazer, be the first person that starts it, start a thing, just
4:41
pick anything, pick anything and just dedicate yourself to it and try to get a couple of guys to
4:46
do it with you, right? Try to get a couple of guys ingrained in the process. And it might grow and
4:51
it might not. But that's the thing about male community is there are male communities that
4:55
are already set. You know, you've got military police academies, teams, fraternities, like these
4:59
things are already set. You can be a member or not be a member, you can earn your way onto that team
5:03
or you can lose your way off of that team, whatever the situation might be. But at the end of the day,
5:06
it just kind of is what it is. So I responded to him, you know, he immediately said, thank you. And
5:10
again, that was back like at the end of January of this year. And so all of a sudden in this past week,
5:15
I get this message from them as a follow up. Just wanted to follow up here. I took your advice
5:20
and challenged them. Did a book study in play the man each week and challenge for them to try and
5:26
complete by the next time we met following the book over the summer, I challenged them to form a
5:31
mental, physical and spiritual goal to complete by August. Surprisingly, I got 17 men to sign up
5:38
and at least form goals, which was a huge win. I was happy with three. Now, not all kept kept up
5:45
with them, but it was a start. Last thing as part of the challenge, I said for those willing slash
5:50
interested, we would hit a back backpacking trip in Colorado to scale a 14. So I got seven guys to
5:56
commit, including myself and completed that challenge two weeks ago. Just wanted to say thank you for
6:00
your encouragement in our last conversation and for your content. You provide weekly brother. And
6:05
then he sent me a picture of him and his group of dudes at the top of looks like it's mountain
6:10
massive. Yeah, that's mountain massive in Colorado. And so that's just kind of one of those things,
6:15
guys, is this guy just so happened to be in my community? But he found me through, you know,
6:19
Instagram and this podcast, he found this ministry through Instagram and that podcast. And the thing
6:22
is is there was nothing special about what I said. Like that's the one thing that I want to make
6:27
sure that you're hearing there was nothing special whatsoever about what I told him to do. It's pretty
6:31
basic. You know, what letter comes after a B like it was just kind of one of those things that was
6:35
just clearly the next step in the process. But he just he did it. And so that's my encouragement
6:40
to any guy out there listening. That's, you know, lamenting the fact that they don't have a group
6:44
of guys that gets together and goes and you know, tackles 14ers that they don't have a group of guys
6:48
that gets together on Sunday nights and trains Jiu Jitsu and and does all those different things
6:52
and reads books and pushes each other. And they just a lament that. And it's just like, you know,
6:56
what's what was stopping those guys from starting those groups to begin with themselves? That was
7:01
it. But those guys set out and did it. Whether someone gave them motivation or they just, you know,
7:06
kind of had gas one day and they're like, okay, I'm going to finally do this thing. It doesn't
7:09
matter. That's essentially what they need to do. They just need to strike out and do it. And so
7:14
again, guys, if you were in the Edmund, Oklahoma City area of Oklahoma, come hit me up at the forge
7:20
in Edmund at seven o'clock every Sunday. We've got a group of guys between 10 and 20 guys that
7:25
show up read books. We train Jiu Jitsu. We do workouts. It's a great community of people. But if
7:30
you don't live in this community, which is just about everybody that listens to this podcast,
7:35
if you don't have something like that already, just create it. Okay, guys, let's go and transition
7:41
into the content for today. I've actually been wanting to do this content for a very, very long
7:45
time because I found this video a while ago, but let me just before I get into it, let me just kind
7:49
of give you a little bit of the background. So again, like I've said, many times on this podcast,
7:53
I am not necessarily a gigantic fan of President Donald Trump. I had two opportunities for to vote
7:58
for the man as a registered Republican in Oklahoma. I chose not to vote for him in the primary. I
8:03
chose to vote for Rubio. And I chose to leave the top of my ballot blank for president of the United
8:09
States in 2016, because I didn't think either him or Hillary Clinton met my kind of basic standards
8:15
of human decency. And I don't think either one of them warranted my vote. Now, I can safely say
8:19
that I've been pleasantly surprised with how pro life he has been, with how conservative he has been
8:24
for how pro military he's been like all the things that that I really, really like and enjoy. He's been,
8:30
he's been on the right side of a lot of those things. I wish he would just turn his Twitter
8:33
off. I wish he would just stop saying so many petty stupid things. But hey, you know, it's just
8:38
kind of one of those things. He's the vessel that's getting some of these things done. It just kind
8:41
of is what it is. But today is not about the 2020 election and whether or not I feel like I can
8:45
vote for Donald Trump. This is about the person that was my favorite person so far in the Trump
8:51
administration. Now, if you've been following the Trump administration for any length of time,
8:55
you know this to be true. The guys kind of had a revolving door. He's had a revolving door of
8:59
people. He hasn't had a lot of people that have been with the tenure for very, very long that aren't
9:03
related to him. And so they just haven't been in the administration for a long time. But
9:07
my very, very favorite person that he has had under his employee was general James Mattis.
9:13
He was the secretary of defense for several years under his leadership and he left and you know,
9:18
there's some conflicting reviews or of his time there. But there were also some conflicting reasons
9:24
why he left. But I was just so excited about him being at the helm because after eight years under
9:30
the Obama administration, which Obama made sure that he weakened the military. He didn't want us
9:36
to have this, this might internationally that we had experienced for such a long length of time.
9:41
And he actively did things against that, which I was never really a fan of. And you could kind of
9:46
see that in some of the people that he, he promoted and I'm trying to say this as politically
9:52
positive as possible. But some of the people that he promoted just they weren't the war dogs,
9:55
they weren't the people that you would want to go in there to end a war or to, you know,
9:59
basically destroy the enemy. But general James Mattis is that guy. And so this is not a podcast
10:05
about his bio. He's got, you know, books out there, go to his Wikipedia page, all those different
10:09
things. This is specifically about a leadership, about his leadership lessons that he can come up
10:17
with. Because this is a type of guy that, you know, if you just take him in terms of sound bites,
10:22
it would be really, really easy to misunderstand how deep this guy is. And there's one sound bite,
10:28
which is basically my favorite sound bite, maybe from the entirety of the Trump administration.
10:32
And it's actually this one right here. What keeps you awake at night? Nothing. I keep other people
10:38
awake at night. If you missed it, I'll play it for you again. Here you go. What keeps you awake at
10:43
night? Nothing. I keep other people awake at night. Dude, I don't care if you like military
10:49
people. I don't care if you're impressed by stuff like that. That's some pretty gangster stuff right
10:52
there. I keep people awake at night, like any just it was deadpan, how he delivered it. I actually
10:57
included the link to that little six second clip there for you guys. That was on an interview for
11:01
Face The Nation. So this was an interview that was done on national television. And that was his
11:05
response. So that's just the type of guy that General Mattis is. He is basically a Marine in every
11:09
sense of the word. And so recently, you know, I follow a lot of the military folks that have YouTube
11:14
pages and channels and things like that. And so the Marine Corps actually released a video
11:19
here recently. And it was called Leadership Lessons from General James Mattis. I don't
11:23
guess it was that recently, but I found it semi recently. And the thing about General James
11:27
Mattis, again, if you just listen to him, say quotes like that, or if you've seen him deliver
11:32
quotes like that with his kind of dead face type of thing, you might get the wrong idea about this
11:36
guy that this guy is just kind of, you know, a knuckle dragging, you know, military guy, you know,
11:41
no nuance, like no understanding. But the thing about General Mattis that most people know is that
11:46
this is a guy that is incredibly incredibly deep in his thought. This is a guy that's never been
11:51
married. He's been a Marine since I think he was a teenager. This is just a guy who's been dedicated
11:56
to being a soldier, but he's not adult either. This is a guy who's personal library. It's kind of
12:01
famous. He has about 5000 volumes in his personal library. And these are not just collectibles,
12:05
right? There's a lot of guys out there that they've got a lot of books on their bookshelf,
12:09
and they've read like four of them. It's just kind of one of those things. This is not one of
12:11
those guys. He has read those books, he has studied those books, and has given him a lot of different
12:16
advantages. And so the cool thing about this video, this video is only like, you know, 16,
12:20
17 minutes long or something like that. But it is just absolutely chock full with a tremendous
12:25
amount of wisdom. And so for any of you guys out there that are current Marines or former Marines,
12:29
and yes, I know there's no such thing as a former Marine, but you get what I'm saying.
12:32
For those of you that are kind of in that area and in that world, you're going to understand a lot
12:37
of this and a lot of this is going to be kind of right up your alley, especially if you've been
12:41
in any of the other branches of military as well. But even for civilians, this is just going to be
12:45
a great thing for you to hear to hear from a guy like this that has been basically in every single
12:49
type of leadership scenario you could think of positive and negative. And so the cool thing
12:54
about this is he's asked maybe about half a dozen seven or eight questions or something like that
12:58
throughout this. And then he immediately gives his answers. So what we're going to do is we're
13:02
going to go into the audio from this video. Again, of course, I'll put the video here at the end.
13:06
And you can just kind of go through I'm going to go through them in order. And so sometimes
13:10
I try to give you the clips like, Oh, this clip starts at this, this number or whatever. But it's
13:14
a shorter video. If you want to find the exact thing later, you can go through and do that because
13:18
I keep them all in order. And so we'll listen to him and ask the question and answer the question
13:22
that will kind of come in and out with what we have here. And so the first question that he has,
13:27
I'll have him read it, but just kind of launch into it. It was basically talking about the toughest
13:30
decision that he ever had to make as a member of the Marine Corps. So here we go to General James
13:36
Mattis. Marianette Young asked me a question about the toughest decision that I've ever had to make
13:43
while I was in the Marine Corps. Do you regret the decision? And would I have done anything
13:49
differently? You know, Marianette, when we go into the Marine Corps, we swear to obey orders
13:54
and carry them out to the best of our ability and defend the Constitution. So I've not regretted
14:02
those decisions. And one of the toughest that I could mention to you was after being ordered to
14:10
attack into the city of Fallujah, I was ordered to halt the attack deep inside the city. And
14:18
during that first and ultimately a board attack ordered to withdraw our Marines and sailors out
14:24
of the city they had fought for and they had lost some of their buddies in that fight. So it was a
14:30
difficult decision. It was a decision taken for reasons that had nothing to do with the tactical
14:38
situation on the ground. I was concerned to a degree if the Marines would lose confidence
14:45
in their leadership because of it, but they didn't. I still recall a young saw gunner
14:52
being interviewed by a television crew talking about how terrible he must feel that he was being
14:58
ordered out of the city. And he was a slow-talking Marine from down south. He just calmly looked
15:04
into the camera and said, "It doesn't matter. We'll just hunt him down somewhere else and kill him."
15:09
And I bring this up because ultimately it's about the spirit of the Marine Corps
15:14
that nothing, nothing really can stop us. And we just don't take refuge in self-pity or
15:21
any of that kind of stuff. And so as a result the Marine Corps remains a very feared organization
15:28
in this world as it should be. So tough decisions, tough times, and sometimes things don't go our
15:35
way. It doesn't have anything to do with the decision we make about how we feel about it.
15:40
Every Marine makes their own decision about how they're going to react what happens to them.
15:44
And that's what sets the Marine Corps apart because when the times get tough the Marines get tougher.
15:51
A lot of good stuff there. But the big thing is not finding refuge in self-pity. I thought that
15:56
that was a really interesting thing because again that first answer might seem a little bit overtly
16:00
militaristic which duh. This is a general. This is a Marine. It just kind of is what it is. But Marines
16:05
are kind of known for having that indomitable spirit, right? The few, the proud, the Marines,
16:10
these are some of the toughest guys. And here's the other thing is I've got friends that are in
16:14
some of the special operations community. And so in a lot of the different branches and no one
16:20
really has anything bad to say about the Marines. Like the Marines never have the most when it
16:24
comes to budgeting. The Marines never have the most when it comes to just about anything. They
16:27
don't have some fancy academy that you can go and get your 40-year degree from before you come in
16:31
as an officer. Any of those types of things. Just a different branch, right? But they do have an
16:35
incredibly feared reputation there. I mean whenever they go in somewhere, I mean the locals or the
16:43
enemy essentially, they're not excited that they're there, right? Not to say that they're excited that
16:47
anyone that has to do with the United States military would be excited about the Marines being
16:51
there. But especially about the Marines just because of their spirit. Just because of what they
16:55
have to go through and training, what they have to go through individually. And so I think this
16:58
kind of sets him up. Again, if you weren't familiar with James Mattis, this kind of gives you a sense
17:02
of who this guy is. But again, he goes into a lot of different areas. So let's go ahead and get
17:07
into the next question here. Phil Clayborn wants to know, how did I continue to stay motivated
17:13
throughout my Marine Corps career? That's real easy. Phil, I'll tell you right up front, there were
17:19
some jobs in the Marine Corps I didn't care for. I learned to hate minefields at age 21 when the
17:26
Marine Corps trained me as a second lieutenant in the infantry to go through them. And I continued
17:31
to hate minefields as long as I had to encounter them throughout my career. So the reason I stuck
17:38
around the Marine Corps was the spirit of the Marines. I knew I could make a lot more money doing
17:44
something else. And I knew I could live a lot better quality of life and not be deployed all the
17:48
time. But it was the spirit of the Marines that kept me motivated. I never went to work feeling like
17:55
woe is me, that life is tough for anything else. I look forward to every day and it's simply because
18:01
I stuck around the Marine Corps for the right reason. And that was to serve alongside young Marines.
18:07
The spirit of the Marine Corps. I mean, I don't know about you guys, but when I was listening to
18:11
his answer to that question there, I'm like, this guy's a romantic. Like in addition to being a
18:16
complete gangster, this dude is a romantic because it was his romantic attachment, not in a weird
18:22
sexual way, but it was his romantic attachment to the ideal of what it means to be a Marine.
18:27
Again, you heard him there again. This isn't about self pity. This isn't about, oh, no, not another
18:31
minefield. Like, you're not going to get that from a Marine. That's a real Marine, right? And so I
18:35
thought that that was very interesting because those are back to back questions. And I'm not sure
18:40
that this video is edited to kind of move questions around or anything, anything like that. But again,
18:44
this gives you a kind of sense of the fact that this guy was so drawn to the camaraderie that he
18:48
was willing to go through the crap. And that's what you hear. That's what you hear from guys that
18:52
are forming military, still in the military, you know, athletes, former athletes, you know,
18:56
fighters, former fighters, whatever the situation might be, it's that camaraderie. And again, just
19:00
from the top of the episode, this wasn't, you know, planned, but I mean, that guy that sent me that
19:04
message, he so desperately wanted a community to be a part of, he just happened to go out there
19:08
and start it. You know what I mean? So let's go ahead and get into the next question for
19:11
General James Mattis here. Joel Delf wants to know, how do you keep improving as a leader
19:18
to meet the demand of each role in your career? We all get promoted. You have different roles to
19:26
play. How do you stay teachable as a leader? I think the most important thing here,
19:34
Joel, is that you have to assume you must keep improving. If you make that your decision,
19:40
that you must improve, if you look at every week in the Marine Corps as your last week of peace,
19:46
and you must be better at the end of this week as a war fighter, then you'll push yourself on
19:52
your three mile run down to 18 minutes, and you'll accept no excuses. You'll push yourself in 21
19:58
pullups, and you'll accept no excuses. You'll push yourself to read the Commandant's reading list.
20:05
You'll push yourself that when the things are going tough in the field, you keep your spirit up,
20:10
and you're the man everyone can turn to, knowing that you don't give up. And you just keep improving
20:16
every day with the assumption that if you're going to lead more Marines in the future as you get
20:22
promoted, they expect you to be the physically toughest, the mentally sharpest, and spiritually,
20:28
just the most undiminished person that nothing, not cold, not rain, not enemy situation,
20:36
not frustrating rules can get you down. And you just maintain this body, mind, and spirit improvement
20:43
at all times. You stay teachable most by reading books, by reading what other people went through.
20:50
I can't tell you the number of times I looked down at what was going on in the ground, or I was
20:56
engaged in a fight somewhere, and I knew within a couple of minutes how I was going to screw up
21:03
the enemy. And I knew it because I'd done so much reading, I knew what I was going to do,
21:08
because I'd seen other similar situations in the reading. I knew how they'd been dealt with
21:13
successfully or unsuccessfully. And so long as you continue along this line, so long as you remember
21:19
somebody on the other side is watching, hoping that you're not at the top of your game, that you're
21:25
not reading, that you're not working out, you're not strong spiritually, and they're going to think
21:30
they've got you. You want to always be the toughest, the sharpest out there. Man, so much good stuff
21:37
there. And he gets into some more things more specifically later. But to address a few things,
21:42
from the top of that answer, he was basically saying like when you're in the Marine Corps,
21:46
if the idea is that you need to be a better Marine tomorrow, you're going to kind of mold
21:51
your life to basically filter into that singular goal, right? And you mentioned, you know, getting
21:56
your three, three miles time down to 18 minutes, right? So that's, you know, three six minute miles,
22:01
that's scooting, getting those 21 pullups in, like getting those standards done. Because those
22:05
aren't things you just wake up one day, and you can just do those things, right? But then he also,
22:09
he kind of starts to introduce some elements of spiritual mental and physical resilience
22:13
inside of there. He actually kind of mentioned it there without saying it. But he even talked
22:17
about reading, he explicitly wanted to, wouldn't have to talk about reading, which is not something
22:21
that most people would expect from a Marine, if you're ignorant about the Marines. But what most
22:25
people don't realize is there is a common dance professional reading list. And so I've included
22:30
that here in the show notes, but this is an unbelievable reading list. And this is coming
22:34
from a guy that's got a reading list, right? So if you haven't, if you're not familiar with ours,
22:37
just go to undaunted.life/booklist, you're going to get kind of our top 100 books that every modern
22:43
Christian man should read list. But the Marine Corps has this down literally to a science, right?
22:48
So I'm on the website right now, and there are some books that we have on our list that are on
22:53
their list as well. But they've got a list for entry level enlisted, primary primary level enlisted,
22:59
career level enlisted, intermediate level enlisted, senior level enlisted, entry level
23:03
officer, primary level officer, career level officer, intermediate level officer, senior level
23:08
officer, Marine unit, library program. Well, I guess that's kind of the entirety of the program,
23:13
then you can nominate a book, how to use the guide that you've got an entire PDF on here.
23:17
And I'm just going to click on one. So like, if you went to senior level officer, I mean,
23:21
there's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, I mean, there's,
23:26
there's a couple of dozen books here. There's a lot of books here. And you know, again,
23:30
when you get into some of the basic ones, like if you go into entry level and listed, there's only,
23:34
you know, five books there, but all these books are unbelievably important. And some of them are
23:39
militaristic in terms of tactics and moving your people here, moving your people there.
23:44
But the big thing from this answer is just imagine how better you would be at whatever it is if
23:51
you felt like this innate need to be better at that thing tomorrow. I mean, you could use that
23:57
any way you want being a better husband, being a better father, being a better businessman,
24:02
being a better servant at church, being a better this, being a better that being a better athlete,
24:06
whatever the situation might be, how would your life look different if you had to do that?
24:10
And so that's what I have this conversation with a lot of people a lot of times, because you know,
24:15
I train so I can be in really good shape for a lot of different types of scenarios. So I'm not
24:19
just strong, but I'm also fast. I'm not just fast, but I also have good cardio. And I don't
24:23
just have good cardio, you know, I can think while I'm, you know, tired, you know, all those different
24:27
things are the reason why I train. But a question I do get a lot is Kyle, what exactly are you training
24:30
for? Because if you see someone running a lot and biking a lot and swimming a lot, and then you
24:35
ask them, what are you training for? And they're like, Oh, a triathlon, you're like, yeah, that makes
24:38
sense. I'm training for an Ironman. Yep. Yep. I can, I can totally see that. But when you do so
24:42
many different things, people are like, you know, what exactly are you, are you working towards?
24:46
And they're not exactly blown away by my answer. And I'm like, man, I'm just training for life.
24:51
Like, you know, in the extreme scenario that I need to run 100 yards at full
24:56
clip in order to save my life, I can do that. If I need to run 10 miles at a good pace to save
25:01
my life or someone else's life, I can do that. Like, if I need to get somebody off of me or
25:06
something off of somebody else, I've trained to where that's a higher likelihood. You know what I
25:10
mean? Because I'm always looking at who I was yesterday, today, and I'm like, okay, am I better
25:16
than he was? And the thing is, is I realize father time's undefeated. I realize that they're
25:20
going to be certain there's a certain age where I'm not going to be able to jump as high as I could
25:24
when I was younger or run as fast or do things as long or recover as well. And I know some of you
25:29
guys are in the thick of that right now where you're mentally there, but your body's not, right?
25:33
But just imagine if you kept that same mindset, imagine what you could do to father time. You can
25:39
push father time off of it and be like, look, bro, I know you're coming, but I'm going to put you
25:44
off in the distance, right? You come for some people and then you get them by the time they're 22
25:48
or 23. You're not getting me for a long time. I just thought that that was a really, really
25:52
awesome way to frame his answer to that question. But let's go ahead and get into the next question
25:56
here. I've got a question here from Raoul J.R. from Camp Rhino in 2001. It was in Southern
26:03
Afghanistan right after 9/11. Raoul when you and I were out there, and you asked about a cold night
26:12
in Afghanistan when I was walking the perimeter by myself, greeting a bunch of young Marines and
26:18
what was I thinking about? Well, I think I remember the night in question. If you'll recall, the
26:25
mortars were firing in one direction and we had a lot of shooting going on at one side of the perimeter.
26:30
And the reason they keep some of us gray-haired guys around is because it's not our first war,
26:36
not our second war. And what I was doing was walking to the opposite side of the perimeter.
26:41
Just suspicious if the enemy was perhaps fainting on one side and they were actually going to attack
26:48
over on your side of the perimeter. So I was over there knowing full well that the Marines at the
26:54
position that we were being attacked would handle the enemy. I wanted to make certain we were ready
26:58
for any surprises. So I was over there just checking on the Marines, seeing how they're doing,
27:03
and all of them wanted to get over the other side of the perimeter and get in the fight and I said,
27:08
oh, you boys, just stay right here. There'll be plenty of fighting before this is done.
27:12
So that's what I was thinking about that night, Joel. And thanks for being out there. It was a cold
27:16
night. So not only is this guy a bad day and not only is this guy a gangster, the guy is a sage as
27:24
well. I mean, this is an answer, a very short answer that kind of gives you an idea of the wisdom of
27:28
this man. Again, he said it there at the beginning, which is basically like, hey, there's a reason why
27:32
we have so many gray hairs in camp because these are gray hairs that certainly can't run the miles
27:37
as fast as the 20 year olds or, you know, do as many pullups as the 18 year olds. But at the same
27:42
time, they have the depth of knowledge and understanding that can keep those 18, 20, 25, 30 year old
27:48
Marines, not only keep them in line, but keep them alive. But the thing about it is is, and you've
27:54
kind of get this idea with a lot of people in the military, but if you speak with anybody in the
27:57
military, you get this sense at certain points, like they are rabid dogs on the chain and they are
28:02
just waiting for their CO to release the chains and let them get after the enemy. And to a certain
28:07
degree, you want that you want that for the for the men that are basically standing there between
28:12
the front lines and your front door, right? Like you want that out of those people. But at the same
28:18
time, there are different ways to hold those men back. And this was a very calm way that he did
28:23
that basically assuring these Marines. Hey, hey, don't you worry. There's fighting going on right
28:29
now. There's bad guys that we could go get right now. But don't you worry, we're going to go get
28:33
them. And I think you see some of that, you know, if you remember his answer, I think it was the
28:37
first question you had that guy, you know, the southern guy, you know, just kind of spoke really
28:40
slowly and was like, basically, yeah, you know what, no big deal. We'll just find them and kill
28:44
them somewhere else. We'll find the enemy and we'll snuff them out somewhere else. That's again,
28:48
that's kind of a very calm, cool, collected way for someone that you would just think that they
28:52
would be hyper aggressive and default aggressive all the time. But that was a great answer there.
28:57
Next question here. Jonathan Herrera wants to know, what is the one leadership lesson
29:05
you learned as a general grade officer that you would wish you have known your whole career.
29:10
You know, you learn all the way through Jonathan at each rank, you're learning more. And if there was
29:17
one lesson that came more and more into focus over the years, it was one I learned by watching
29:25
similar side units. For example, I watched dozens of platoons go through certain ranges or I saw
29:33
companies, dozens of companies and fights. I always wondered what made one unit better than
29:39
another. They were all well trained. They all came through the boot camp. All of them,
29:44
all of them had been recruited from America and they were quality young men. So what made them
29:53
different? It was the junior leadership, the junior NCOs, the junior officers who's coaching,
30:00
who's animating spirits, brought out the best in their troops, who had admired leadership.
30:06
We all know that earning the trust and respect of your subordinates is critical. You simply have
30:14
to earn that trust. You have to earn that respect. You have to earn that every day.
30:21
Because when it's all over and done with, you're not going to win any fights as a leader. Your
30:26
troops are going to win those fights. But there was another word I learned to prioritize as I
30:32
evaluated units. And that word was affection. It's not popularity with all the favoritism that
30:40
comes with trying to be a popular person as a leader. That's a road to failure. But affection
30:47
that you create in a unit, an affection so strong that the troops will stick by one another. They'll
30:53
carry out the mission even in peril. And I bring this one up because I believe that
31:01
that kind of affection brings out self-discipline where people don't want to let down the unit.
31:08
And I think that if there is one lesson I learned along the way that the more you can build that
31:15
kind of affection in a unit when the going gets tough, when people are getting shot down around
31:21
you, it'll pull together, it'll pull through. And it'll be a lot smoother organization.
31:27
It'll move more rapidly against the enemy, more fluidly against the enemy. And it will generally
31:33
speaking have fewer disciplinary problems in garrison, whether it be DUI, sexual harassment,
31:39
or all that stuff that you see some jerks do. And on the other hand, when you're in combat,
31:46
you'll find that they really play hell with the enemy because what they sense about each other
31:52
and the conviction they have to supporting one another, their commitment to one another.
31:56
The big things I took out of that was junior leadership and affection. So with the junior
32:01
leadership part, I don't know if it's different for you. But for me, I wasn't really expecting
32:05
that to be the answer from the general, right? To say that, oh, yeah, it's just up to the junior
32:10
leadership. But those are the people that did kind of make the personality of those different units,
32:16
right? And so, and again, it's kind of interesting to see a guy that's risen to the top and see that
32:20
at different points during his career, he wasn't always in the best group because he
32:24
even caught himself looking around going, man, what's what's better about them? How are they
32:28
better than us and those types of things? But then it shows you his ability to discern
32:32
the reasons why. And it's like, man, the junior leadership is so awesome. But then he brought up
32:37
the word affection, again, a word that you probably weren't expecting out of the mouth of a guy like
32:40
that. But again, these people were affectionate towards one another, again, not in a sexual way,
32:46
but they're affectionate towards one another because they're affectionate towards the mission
32:49
towards the things that they're able to accomplish. And they understand the utility of doing those
32:53
things in a group to doing those things as a team, as a unit, like they understand how those things
32:59
are important. And just think about it for yourself. For any of you guys that are athletes out there,
33:03
or former athletes, think about the teams that were the best teams that you played on. I would
33:08
take a wild guess here, wild stab in the dark, that there weren't a whole lot of divas on that team
33:13
that were also poisonous to the culture inside the locker room. Just a guess, there are some teams
33:18
that you're on where if you have two or three really good diva players on a basketball team,
33:22
everyone can hate them, but you might win state. I understand those types of things happen.
33:25
But it's typically whenever everybody was for everybody else. The coach was for you. The player
33:31
was for you like the guy to your left and to your right. You knew that they were for you, right? It
33:35
was more of a failings, right, as opposed to one guy being out in the front and taking on the entire
33:40
army. It was kind of one of those, one of those things that's very, very important. And I can only
33:44
imagine again, having never served in the military, how much more that must be important when to the
33:48
left or right of you might be guys that are going to pass away or guys that might have to leave the
33:53
fight and never be able to reenter the fight for whatever reason, right? And you might be that
33:57
guy to somebody else. And so that affection, being able to have that affection towards the
34:02
people that are around you, I can only imagine that what that would look like when you're actually
34:05
in it, when you're actually in the fight. All right, next question here.
34:09
Philly best 36. Where do you guys get these names?
34:15
Once to know what leadership books do you recommend? It's a great question because the Commandant's
34:23
reading list is designed specifically to identify the very best reading there is on leadership.
34:31
If you go to that reading list, you'll find gates of fire. And when you read gates of fire,
34:38
you find you as a young leader will never face anything worse than what fighters have faced in
34:44
the past. If you read Eugene Sledge's book about with the old breed at Pella Lu and Okinawa,
34:52
you'll find the spirit of the Marine Corps overcoming the most difficult combat conditions.
34:57
And again, you'll find that you will face nothing new under the sun. You will be able to overcome it
35:04
if you keep your Marine Corps training and your Marine Corps spirit foremost.
35:08
It requires you to do a lot of reading because there are many different styles of leadership.
35:14
You must stay authentic to who you are. But at the same time, we expect you to leave in no
35:20
uncertain terms. In the Marine Corps, you're not paid to have a midlife crisis or ask people to help
35:26
you through your midlife crisis. You're there to give the enemy a midlife crisis. And that means
35:32
you put your Marines together into a good, tough team. And by reading from the Commandant's reading
35:38
list, you cannot go wrong in getting different leadership ideas that will serve you very, very
35:44
well. You don't get paid to have a midlife crisis. You get paid to give the enemy a midlife crisis.
35:49
Again, there is again. Now again, I kind of got the car before the horse a little bit by talking
35:53
about the Commandant's reading list a little bit earlier. But again, he mentioned Gates of Fire,
35:56
which is a book that is on our reading list as well. And when you read that book, yes, it is a
36:01
novel. But when you read that, you're like, Oh my gosh, like that is what people were going through
36:05
at that time. Again, at some of our bases, like I've read about Bagram, like some of these bases,
36:10
they've got movie theaters and bowling alleys and Starbucks. And they've got all these,
36:13
these niceties. And I mean, you're at war. You're definitely at war. You would much rather be at home.
36:18
But it's a far cry from what people were experiencing in past days. But again, it just kind of gives
36:23
you that idea like, Hey, you're put here to be resilient and take it to the enemy. You're not
36:27
here to be on vacation. So I really liked that he did that. And again, he's driving the point home.
36:31
You got to read. I know there are guys listening to this podcast right now, they're like, Oh, need
36:35
to read man. I'm just going to do this or do this man. And look, I get it. And technically,
36:40
audio books is reading. But if you're listening to this podcast, you're taking in content that
36:44
someone else created, right? I'm creating this specifically for you. But if you listen to other
36:50
podcasts, that is content that people created. What do you think books are? So take in that
36:54
content in any way possible. So if you want to listen to it, fine. If you want to read it,
36:58
probably better. Like who knows exactly? Just get the content in. All right. Next question.
37:03
Sepia, all the things wants to know, what did you look for in your NCOs? And how should the
37:11
relationship between an NCO and an officer compliment one another? You know, Sepia,
37:16
for all NCOs and petty officers in the fleet marine forest, I look for two qualities.
37:23
I knew I can trust Marines. I made that assumption. I can trust Marines. So what I was looking for
37:30
was initiative and aggressiveness. I wanted them to have the initiative to take charge,
37:36
the aggressiveness to carry out whatever the order was. I wasn't interested in them saying
37:41
that something was difficult. I wasn't interested in the difficulty. Difficulty is an excuse that
37:49
the Marine Corps will never accept from its sailors and Marines, its petty officers and NCOs.
37:54
So I look for the initiative and aggressiveness and the ability to bond with their troops,
38:00
so that their troops looked at them as the admired leader, the toughest leader, the most
38:05
capable leader that they could hope for. As far as the relationship between an NCO and an officer,
38:13
there are some things that rightly belong to NCO leaders. These are things that have to do
38:20
with the daily functioning of the unit, while the officer should be more concerned with being
38:26
the sentinel, looking further out, making certain his ready unit is ready for whatever is coming
38:32
down the pike, whatever missions are coming. So he's always on the lookout for an enemy, for
38:37
an ambush, this sort of thing, and creates that kind of combat hunter mentality in the Marines.
38:44
But the NCO has got to make certain, the petty officer got to make certain
38:50
that the sailors and Marines look and act like Marines and they're ready for whatever is coming,
38:55
whatever the officer brings down is the mission. They are ready to embrace it and carry it out.
39:01
Initiative and aggressiveness. Now this is something that I don't think he exactly spelled out,
39:06
but it's something that as I've been thinking through his answer, I kind of got this dichotomy
39:09
there that you have to have somebody that has the physical readiness to be aggressive, right?
39:15
Because you could be hyper aggressive in your mind and be a couch potato and you're not going to be
39:20
really, really hard for the enemy to overtake, right? So you've got to be able to be in shape
39:25
and be physically ready. Again, you have the mental side, but you got to be physically ready.
39:28
But then having the initiative, I feel like that's a little bit more of the mental side.
39:34
So again, when you think about Marines, you think Marines are just these robots that, hey,
39:37
go over there and kill those people. Okay, like that's not exactly what it is, right?
39:41
There's kind of this misnomer with a lot of people in the military. And you hear Jocko Willing talk
39:46
about this a lot if you listen to his podcast, read his books. But it's not just these are mindless,
39:50
you know, automatons that are just being sent off in different places. Like you can question,
39:54
you can strategize, you can, you know, go above your boss's head to try and help,
39:59
not necessarily like that. But you can like go to your boss, you can go to the person that's above
40:02
you and kind of express your disappointment or your disdain with a plan or something like that.
40:07
But again, the thing that he was talking about with his NCOs, which is non-commissioned officers,
40:11
but those are basically individuals that he wants to have initiative and aggressiveness.
40:15
And just think about that, that you're looking down on the people that are underneath you
40:20
and that are serving the military in a different way than you are. And those are the two things
40:23
that you wanted to have. And I think for us, for us as men that are just, you know, going to work
40:27
in an office building or going, you know, to create businesses or just going and hanging out with
40:31
our families or whatever the situation might be, can you imagine what your life would look like
40:35
if you focus on initiative and aggressiveness. And I don't mean being hyper aggressive, you know,
40:40
going up to a bar and sticking your finger in someone's chest just to see who the biggest man is or
40:43
whatever the situation might be. But it's just like there are certain situations where you should
40:47
be default aggressive. Like you should be absolutely aggressive about protecting your wife and children.
40:51
Absolutely. You should, you should be aggressive about protecting yourself and people that are
40:55
around you. And I think those are situations that that God would certainly be okay with as well.
41:00
If you're being aggressive for the sake of being aggressive, if you're being a bully,
41:03
no, there's no substantiation for that whatsoever. But I thought it was interesting he brought it up.
41:07
All right. Next question here. Hey, Del Bono wants to know, again, where do you guys get these names?
41:14
You know, I'm going to come up with a few Goodman for myself after this.
41:18
Hey, Del Bono asks, what in your opinion is the most important leadership trait and why?
41:29
There is no way to separate out the leadership traits because if you prioritize one over the
41:36
others, then you actually become a weaker leader. You've got to look at all of them and how they come
41:42
together that make you into the kind of leader that your troops want to follow and are willing
41:49
to follow, knowing you have the skill and the enthusiasm. You have the passion. You have the
41:57
compassion that makes you the full package. Remember, what we want to do is make Marines and win
42:07
battles. And you do this by creating a Marine Corps that is no better friend and no worse enemy.
42:14
You can't be strong in one leadership trait and lack luster in another and be a good leader.
42:22
So the answer to the question about which is the most important leadership trait,
42:27
I think it's how you put it together in your own authentic way so you stay yourself. But at the
42:33
same time, you recognize your responsibility to put all the leadership traits together in one
42:39
complete package. No better friend, no better enemy. Again, those are some words to live by,
42:44
but I absolutely love this answer because guys, if you've done as much reading as I have in the
42:48
world of kind of like business and leadership, certainly when you get into more militaristic
42:52
reading, you're going to have a lot of carryover, but you don't hear things explained in the same
42:56
way. But I thought that this is kind of a typical question that you're going to get,
42:59
especially for a guy like General Mattis, which is basically like everybody wants that shortcut,
43:03
right? They want the magic bullet. Okay, what's the one thing that I can do? Like,
43:07
what's the one exercise that I can do to make me faster? What's the one thing that I can do to
43:12
make me smarter? What's the one thing to make me better at work or whatever the situation might
43:16
be? And that's just not how life works. There's not a magic bullet, right? Now, in the previous
43:20
answer, you just got through talking about initiative and aggressiveness as kind of the two things
43:23
that he looks for, but he didn't say that those things are paramount, that those things should
43:27
be set above everything else into the detriment of everything else that you shouldn't even look at
43:31
those things. But again, if you're going to be a big time leader, if you're going to be a leader
43:34
of men, if you're going to be a leader of women or whatever the situation might be, just a leader
43:37
of people, like you've got to make sure that you have a good idea of the types of traits that coalesce
43:43
into making a strong team. So I'm helping an organization right now. That's in the very early
43:47
stages of their organization and they're trying to figure some things out. I'm trying to tell them
43:50
like, guys, you get to set the tone for the entirety of the company, but you're higher number three,
43:56
four, five, 10, 20, those are going to be the people that are kind of the cornerstone personalities for
44:00
what you want to do. So it's not that you can't make a mistake. It's that you shouldn't. You should
44:04
do everything that you can to make sure that you do things well. And again, it's about how do they
44:10
compliment you? Do they do things really, really well that you don't and vice versa? And those are
44:14
things that are incredibly, incredibly important. So great stuff there. Guys, last question here,
44:19
let's go ahead and get into it. Roy McVeigh asks, what is the kill casualty radius of my knife hand?
44:25
Well, right, I would tell you that be when you get to be a high ranking officer,
44:36
the kill casualty radius is whatever your Marines make it. And by the time I got up to a senior
44:42
ranks, it was hundreds of miles. But I would just tell you that I remain humbled that I was able to
44:49
stay in the Marine Corps so long when young Marines like you would make that kill casualty radius
44:55
very deep in enemy territory and carry out the Marines mission in a way that by the time you're
45:03
a high ranking officer, basically your reputation is carried made by you young Marines who went into
45:12
the fights with the enemy. So the kill casualty radius, as far as you can throw it. They're a young
45:19
man. Thank you. Again, that's, I mean, that's a very interesting question to get from a guy. But,
45:23
you know, it's a very militaristic type of thing. But I love the way that he answered it. And you
45:28
could just tell, like, if you watch the video of him answering the last question, he gets about as
45:31
close as you can get for General Mattis to a smile, it seems like. But you can tell that this guy just
45:36
he loves being a military man. He absolutely loves being a Marine. And he loves the guys that
45:41
he's around. And that is just something that you can see to where, you know, if he was frustrated,
45:46
serving under one administration versus another or having, you know, a problem go on in this area
45:51
versus that area. This is just a guy that is through and through an incredible, incredible man,
45:56
an incredible thinker, an incredible leader. And it's guys like this that we should continue to take
46:02
in. We should take in his thoughts and his actions and not worship at the altar of him and pretend
46:07
as if he's some sort of a perfect man, we have a perfect man already that we can worship and
46:11
should worship and follow. But at the same time, we can learn an unbelievable amount of things
46:16
from a guy like General James Mattis. Guys, before we let you out of here, we'll do a quick resilience
46:20
boost. As you know, by now, we are a men's ministry and our mission is cultivating manly resilience.
46:25
And specifically, we do that by providing content that for just spiritual, mental and physical
46:29
toughness. So for today, the content that I have for you, I've already talked about. So I've got
46:32
the video leadership lessons from General James Mattis, the YouTube link there. I've got that
46:37
little one where basically talks about the nothing I keep other people awake at night. I've got that
46:41
little clip for you. And then I've got the Marine Corps University Research Library,
46:44
Commandant's professional reading list. And guys, I would say spend a lot of time with that list.
46:49
There's a lot of books on there. There's a lot of ways that you can use the resources on there,
46:53
but I would highly, highly encourage you to do so. Guys, thanks so much for listening to the
46:56
podcast. We really do appreciate it. If you would, please subscribe on iTunes, SoundCloud, Spotify,
47:01
or Google Play and refer your friends to listen and share this on social media. Guys,
47:05
if we deserve a five star review, please leave us a five star review. This is how the podcast
47:08
will continue to grow. I'm currently booking speaking engagements for the remainder of 2019
47:13
and all of 2020. So if you want me to come speak at your conference, on your podcast, to your team,
47:18
to your whatever, hit me up, email info at undaunted.life. Again, that's i-n-f-o at undaunted.life.
47:24
The website is www.undaunted.life. And you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter at undauntedlife
47:29
or facebook.com/undauntedlife. Check out our free devotionals on the U-version Bible app. Just search
47:34
undaunted life under plans. And as always, we want to thank the band August Burns Red for
47:39
allowing us to use their entire music library for our content. The inter-altrow track on this
47:43
podcast is their song, King of Sorrow, which is off their latest record entitled Phantom Anthem.
47:47
Links are in the description. I'm your host Kyle Thompson. Remember, keep cultivating
47:52
manly resilience. Keep forging spiritual, mental, and physical toughness. Keep seeking the Lion of Judah.