you can either stand up and take that small step forward
you don't have to know where you're going you don't have to have the perfect
plan you don't have to know what tomorrow holds but you
can either get up and take that small step or
you're going to sit at that kitchen counter
for the rest of your life and now years later and one of my favorite lines
in the book i'm thankful that i
pushed through those hard times and i realized
and i truly believe in now that the smallest of steps eventually completes
the grandest of journeys and that is one of the parts of my
mission that i am trying to get out there and tell people and
educate people about and this is by no means ending it i
already i'm still excited and looking forward to
keep going but with that said i appreciate you having me in in this
time and helping me with your platform
with that mission of helping people through that struggle
and telling people that one small step at a time you work hard
try to stay positive try to be a good person do the right thing
and you know it'll not only bring you out of that but take you to great places
yeah i don't have anything to add to that
i mean that's uh that's such a poignant thing
to perspective to have and and it's you know i often talk about the fact
that the first step is the hardest one in
many situations like the first step is the hardest one and
and what i like about what you bring to that statement is like it doesn't matter
how big that step is or more important how small that step is
you gotta do something you gotta you you gotta move
in the right direction um
yeah and you detail that just there's a whole chapter in here
um where you where you go through that and
people gotta people gotta pick this up to really reinforce those
ideas so that we can push through it you know here's here's one of the things
you say kind of bringing this home at some point everyone will face a rock
bottom moment when the past looms too large to
overcome and a hopeful future seems too far out to imagine i mean just think
about that right there there's times that you're gonna face
where the past is too much and and the future seems too far away
too far out there you go on it's difficult to prepare
yourself for that moment because it's impossible to know what will trigger it
it may be a major setback that knocks you to the ground or could be something
so seemingly minor and innocuous like
trying to eat a bowl of cereal which is what you went through
the point is you can't really do much ahead of time to prevent that moment
from happening you might not even be able to brace yourself for the impact
all you can do is commit yourself to surviving for another day and
recognizing that you can't change what is behind you
only what lies ahead you may even wonder if it's possible to
move on and it might not be without professional guidance to help you
process everything that your past represents
it's not a process that can be rushed you have to be honest with yourself
as to whether or not it's time to let go of the past
past maybe the answer is not yet and that's okay but at some point you have
to be willing to say from this day forward i am choosing to
live too often we fall into the trap of
thinking we need to have everything figured out before we act
you don't have to have a roadmap before you set out
you don't even have to know what direction you're traveling you just have
to be willing to move and leave the past behind
so
this is just you know powerful stuff and you you
you go through and you talk about you know you went jumping with jay redman
who's been on the podcast and you know a seal that was wounded
very badly you did a bunch of mud runs with the marine corps like you're doing
stuff you're pushing and and this kind of you know this is what you say about
that about those things every obstacle i took on had a whole new
significance and every time i conquered one
i took on new significance too i gained significance as someone who fought to
live and was succeeding i gained significance
as a combat survivor who was doing more than just surviving
i gained significance as someone who attacked physical and occupational
therapy with every fiber of my being and was now
proving what my restored body could do i gained
significance as someone who refused to let fear make his choices for him
i gained significance as someone who reclaimed his life
unapologetically and even if that significance was only apparent to me
and no one else had changed who i was in my own eyes
and in my own mind my injuries will not define my life
i will and the greatest power i have that any of us has is the power to make
that choice
so once again it is about taking control over what choices you make deciding to
move forward
yeah and again it's one thing when somebody says that stuff
that you know their their big challenge was who knows what what big challenge
they had but to hear it coming from you who's literally been dead
and and and come back and suffered through
the the the recovery process you know it's just
if you can say that we can all say that and uh just to add on to that and thanks
for pointing that out but that's exactly why
along with having to realize how i wanted to approach and write it
that's why this book was written now nine years later because i didn't want
to write a book not only that only military service
members veterans or people that have been to combat could understand
i wanted a book that
that
i lived i i lived learned and and
proved and completed the lessons that i am teaching and the worst is
when you get whether a book or some motivator out there telling you
you know a whole spreadsheet of things you need to do
and they haven't done it themselves and so the last thing
i i wouldn't have wrote it if i wouldn't have have done these things but
i'm not going to tell people you know after you get knocked down you can go to
college earn your degree without doing that i'm
not going to tell people oh you work hard you know one foot in
front of the other and eventually one day you can run a
marathon without crossing the finish line of that marathon
without jumping out of the plane backpacking across
europe so uh thank you for recognizing that and i just wanted
to add that you know people ask me like oh you could
have wrote a book right after this happened i mean your
story was there after the medal you know pretty much
would have been the same book in a way yes but not really because
i uh
i wanted to i wanted to have substance behind the
things the lessons the the challenges and victories that i talk
about in this book