From Backpack to Rucksack: Unpacking Service Members' Mental Health with Dan Joseph

Jerry Dean Lund: 0:14

All right, welcome to during the badge podcast. My very special guest today is Dan Joseph. Wow, that was really hard to spit out there for a second. How's it going, Dan?

Dan Joseph: 0:24

Hey, it's good. I'm stoked to be here, man, thank you for having me.

Jerry Dean Lund: 0:28

Yeah, I am super excited to have you on. I haven't had it so many from the military on for a little while. So this is going to be great. You know, a little different perspective than we've had the last few months we're talking about. There's just been a wave of law enforcement. I just you know guests just kind of come and waves, and from different areas and backgrounds. So, Dan, tell the audience a little bit about yourself and your background.

Dan Joseph: 0:52

Well, I'm a veteran. I just got out of the army less than a year ago and wrote a little book on leadership and I have it with me here. It's basically a word of advice to people. It's called Backpack to Rucksack it was. It's a sort of a catalog of advice, nuggets of advice that I received from good service members who coached me up before I joined and who substantially helped me build my mental health, my resilience to what I experienced. They taught me a lot from the officer and enlisted side, from all the different branches. And while I was in the military I had a soldier survive the suicide attempt my last week as platoon leader and I had to call his mom, talk to her, let her know that we were getting him help. He wrote the introduction to this book as a word of encouragement to those who are struggling alone and, you know, in uniform, who feel as if they cannot display vulnerability and they have to kind of be trapped in this image of being someone who's reliable, dependable and not having any weaknesses, right. So Cody wrote the forward I'm sorry he wrote the intro and then my other buddy, austin, who was in the Marine Corps now he's in the army, he wrote the forward to the book and 13 guys from his unit after Afghanistan committed suicide. 12 killed themselves before, like before. I wrote the book while I was writing it and then, after I published, the 13th guy killed himself and serious stuff. You know it's. We do the job in uniform, you know, in battle training scenarios and whatnot. I've not been combat deployed. I was in the non-deployable unit but I worked with a lot of combat vets and we train, we maintain our weapons, we maintain our vehicles, but I'd like to see more maintenance on our brains. You know, on our minds and you know all about that.

Jerry Dean Lund: 2:58

Yeah, it's, I think it's getting better. I just feel like we're in the time of like, really we know that something that needs to be done. It's just really slow on actually like acting upon it and then, especially if you're, like you know, even trying to like catch up on it, right, for all those that have served in the past, they're still struggling. A lot of times they're left out of the, out of the solution. Sometimes, right, they're just like they're forgotten about, unfortunately. You know they served our country. I mean that's pretty big deal to me. I mean I've never served my brother, served in the Air Force and stuff like that. But I mean I have huge amount of respect for, you know, any first responder, and especially the military. It's a little bit different than other kind of first responders but you know it's a lot of what everybody's facing. You know the struggle with mental health is is difficult to get ahead of right now. So I mean I appreciate you, you know being on here and writing the book. So I have to ask, you know, the question is like from backpack to rucksack, what's that? Where'd you get that title? What does it mean?

Dan Joseph: 4:06

So essentially and I know this may be lost in translation for some parts of the globe, but essentially because backpack and rucksack are synonyms. But to me what that represented was being a civilian with a backpack and then converting over to military side and converting that backpack into a rucksack which I lived out of for quite a while. You know, we were in the field a bunch, so you lived and died by what you packed, you know. So if you forgot something sucks for you. I mean, there were, there were some times I went out there and I packed everything except for underwear. So guess what? Oh, I was just, yeah, didn't have underwear. Other times, yeah, like you didn't want to be that guy that forgot batteries or forgot your red lens, because you know, in the middle of the night, when we're doing night ops, you cannot turn on a red, a white light. It cannot be a white light, because you can see that clear across the desert like 20 kilometers, right. So you don't want to be that guy who's like oh dude, I forgot my red lens because then somebody's got to grab his spare red lens and give it to you. So the rucksack is, it's near and dear to my heart because it helped me become a Nomad and just be a minimalist. And you know you're self sustaining, you bring everything you need and it keeps you dependable. It keeps you, you know operational on the team when we have to move, you know.

Jerry Dean Lund: 5:19

Yeah, I mean a rucksack is it's kind of small, I mean really to pack for a long period of time. So you have to be very strategic on how to, like you know, pack that and what to pack. Yeah Right. And when you're deployed, it's really probably really tough to are in different areas, Like it's really tough to get underwear, you know.

Dan Joseph: 5:40

Yeah, that was a miserable few days. It was, yeah, 125 degrees out there, and anyway yeah times, but yeah, that was the cute, cute name of the book, but the subtitle is where I wanted to emphasize the people who've inspired me. So insight into leadership and resilience by military experts. I'm not the military expert in the book, I'm the coachable one who listened to them and picked up what they dropped. So I have friends who are Navy SEALs in the book Marsauk, marine, green Beret, some jet pilots, eods, just different folks, rescue swimmers, so all the different branches are represented. But these are the people that basically got me to understand what leadership means. When you love the guys that you lead, you care for them and treat them like human beings and you know you're willing to allow people to be vulnerable, to be vulnerable as a leader, but not play the victim. You know what I mean. Like, yeah, you're human, you're not a robot, you're not just rigid all the time you make room for because the big philosophical debate is is it the mission first or is it the men first? Well, without the men you don't have the mission. And women? Sorry to be exclusive, but when you have the men and women with you, then you can accomplish the mission right. But if you just focus on the men and women you're leading, then can you jeopardize the mission Because you're too soft and too weak and too focused on the feelings right, which I tend towards the feelings side of things. Mental health, you know, because I saw a lot of dude struggle with suicide. I had a soldier survive suicide. I don't to me. I don't want to roll the dice on that, you know. But some people would say, hey, you know, you got to be careful. If you give too many people a voice, guess what? They're just going to complain. They're just going to jerk you around because they know that you're willing to hear them, you know, complain about stuff and be negative. So it's like speak to me about what's going on. Like bring solutions right. Yeah, and let's not do this in a way where it's a negative echo chamber. Like don't just make it the same same stuff we're talking about over and over. Like let's actually find a way to make it better. And that's where I think a true leader will step up and say I'm willing to hear the bad stuff, the inconvenient truth, because I'll find a way out. I'll make a way out with you all, like this will be a group discussion, right, we're going to figure this out Versus a leader that says, no, this is a one way conversation. You will not speak up, you will not have an opinion, you will go march directly according to my order and I don't care what the situation looks like, you're not giving me feedback. Like I've seen both approaches and I know what I prefer.

Jerry Dean Lund: 8:13

Right, right. Do you think there is a time, though, to be like to take that direct approach you know to like? Sorry, this is kind of the way it's got to go down.

Dan Joseph: 8:23

Yeah, so there's, I'll give them credit for this. So Jocko Willink is, I tell them, I tell people he's my friend, so it makes me look cool. So I train at his gym and I had a conversation with him about this because I was told by somebody who, who is in the military for a while, that I'm wrong as a leader for allowing lower listed soldiers to come approach me about some stuff. And the soldiers, you know, they loved it, they loved the fact that their voice could be heard. I had to rapport with them. I could. I could see what was going on in their eyes. You know what I mean. I could see the weight and I wanted to address it. So so I asked them, I made myself approachable and somebody said, hey, you shouldn't do that. That's technically. You know, back in my day that never happened, never saw people with you know, with rank, go up to someone and let them talk in that way and be so casual. And I and I asked you, I'll go at the gym. I was like, hey, am I, how wrong am I? Like, how weak am I of a leader that I'm this touchy feely with people? And he, he shot it super straight, like he always does I mean? He thought about it for a second and told me. I said go ask this guy if, when it comes to war and You're gonna give an order for people to die and lose their life right, potentially on a mission, will they be more willing to follow you if they love you or if they hate you? And I was like it can't be that simple. He said it definitely is that simple, and the more, the more. I heard from people who've been to war. Right, my buddies, my close friends, have been to war. They told me that that was the purest feeling of love that they've had for their brothers and their life and that if they didn't have a wife and kids in the family, they'd live in a war zone. Because it never felt more pure than that. Because when you have the right leaders, all they care about is that you are living and breathing and alive and in one piece, like quite Literally in one piece. Yeah, they don't care about all the bureaucracy, all the red tape, all the checking, all these little boxes. It's not about that. Did the guys make it back from the patrol as everyone's safe, like spin up and let's do it again, or rest or whatever it is, but they told me that war is actually One of the purest times in their lives and, yes, they were devastated by it. I mean, it's not easy, it's not. Yeah, hollywood right, there's a lot of ugly stuff that they have to carry, but, man, it's really interesting what happens when a leader is willing to talk about love in a military setting.

Jerry Dean Lund: 10:48

Right, we're yeah tough guy approach, right, but yeah, yeah, and I do appreciate that one leaders, leaders do, and. But you can tell when it's like not genuine though, like when leaders funny thing.

Dan Joseph: 11:04

You know the funny thing about Authenticity and being genuine. So the crazy thing that blew my mind about being the military the soldiers see everything. I mean they, it's like I'm just like having kids, you know from I don't have kids before. I've heard they stay there's by, sponge up everything. They have this six sense about them. I mean they don't see these private meetings we have, but they know the tension, they know who's on whose side and who's against who. They pick up on stuff, right, and they certainly know when someone's patronizing them. They certainly know when somebody's briefing them in a way where they're condescending, where that tone in their voice it's like dog whistling, right, yeah, and that's that's why I choose to talk to a private who's 18, the same way I'd speak with a general. Like I'm not trying to be disrespectful to either one, I'm not trying to be condescending because these are intelligent people and they're and they sign a contract to die for our country. So how am I gonna treat them? Like they're the help? You know what I mean? Yeah, but man, it's like they have x-ray vision. They would just see stuff. They'd come up to me by ace or you know, we saw this or we saw that I read they just like would give me credit, you know, for stuff or tell me to work on something better. The good and bad, they saw everything, so they call it living in the fishbowl. When you're a leader, you don't know people are watching you, but they're watching you.

Jerry Dean Lund: 12:18

Yeah, yeah, that's there. There's always somebody watching you. I think you know you can always, always feel that when you're leading these men and you're being vulnerable with them, I mean that's contagious, isn't it, to all the other.

Dan Joseph: 12:35

Yeah, I mean it allowed me to. It allowed us to have some really deep conversations, for sure. And then one of my One, one really cool story, and I write about it in the book there's a service member. I Mean I gotta be careful though when I say some try not to speak about their names his look up, second stuff, I'm just not wanting to the voltage too much. But yeah, there's a situation where I was honest about what jiu-jitsu did for me. I I had some early childhood stuff that went down, some abuse that happened and went as an Adult rolling in jiu-jitsu. I started having flashbacks. So I started talking about that. You know the chest constriction, the weight that I felt, the shame, the Kind of like wards in my head just just feeling inadequate and just straight up a freeze response Like my motor synapses, just like I don't know what to do right. And it's because of stuff that happened when I was a kid and I was sharing this stuff and there was a combat vet that I was talking to and he totally just was like Started tearing up, you know, and I was tearing up after I saw him like dude, what's going on? He's like man. You just explained everything I feel about Iraq. He said all those feelings in your body. He said that's exactly what I feel when I think about the guys I saw dying and he talks about. Talked about Spring blood out of the Humvee, you know, from his buddy who just got hit and he had to get back in the Humvee right after. You know, the Humvee was still wet and he jumped in it. They they did another patrol. And he talked about hearing hearing some dudes yeah, just hearing some stuff over the radio and seeing some guys get shot and Some pretty gnarly stuff. And he, he disclosed a lot to me and he said it's because I talked about what I went through and he Was able to share stuff. He never told the therapist, never told his wife, and that's, that's a huge honor, you know. It's a huge weight. Yeah, it's not. It's not a little thing to hear that. And I look up to this guy. He's a hero in my eyes. He's a badass, like complete badass. He would never, never say that, of course, but he's a stud, you know. He's done so much for our nation in the first stages of the wars that went down, and it's just. You know, we're still in touch, I still look up to him and he'll forever be in my life. You know I'll forever be a brother of mine. But yeah yeah, that's just really really impacted me.

Jerry Dean Lund: 14:59

You know the Emotions and feelings and stuff like that there, I believe like they're stored in your body, right, you, you, it's not just in your head, these are not just think, like they're Physical too. They're not just emotional, like they're just physical things to him, like you know, you're saying, like you're rolling around on the mat and then it it triggers. You know every response. I couldn't imagine just how hard that would be to try to like overcome something like that. I like, how did you overcome and work through that? Well, first my coach was like what are you doing?

Dan Joseph: 15:31

Why are you, buddy me, so awkward? He's just like I just hogging the move, like choke the guy out, do the move. And I'm like I and you can't really for anybody who's ever been in a flashback you don't really speak, you can't have. It's not really hard to like pronounce, you know to speak. So I was just sitting there, I don't know. Yeah, it's like it's. It's it's experiential, you feel it, you're experiencing it in the moment, like it's real, right. So I'm stuck in this flashback and then I started going through like a deep depression, like it's some darkness set in and I Was feeling really a lot of bad things going on inside. And then I had a friend of mine who he's a badass, he's a, he's a DEA agent and I look up to him and he told me to go see his therapist. I'm like, wait, hold up, you're a badass brothers. No, you're a therapist like and don't go to therapist, what? And he said, no, dude, you definitely need to go see my guy. Like you're experiencing some some pretty heavy stuff. So I went and saw that that therapist, and he walked me through it. He said like look, this is telltale, like textbook signs of trauma from the past coming back up. He walked me through it, man, and I grieved a lot, like, yeah, my shirt was just soaked in tears. I'm just like what is happening? How am I crying right now? Like I haven't felt a feeling in ever. And then all of a sudden, man, just feelings came out and a lot. There's so much I could dig on. But, man, from Relationship, my relationship with my father, my insecurities, my fears, all this stuff that I kept, just kind of like my core was all knotted up, you know, and this started tugging at the thread, through therapy, through, you know, and then more jiu-jitsu. I got back on the mats. I, you know, had an option of Do you want to either like medicaid this or do you want to stop jiu-jitsu? Do you want to like? You have options, man, yeah, you want to do. And I was like, look, I don't want to stop.

Jerry Dean Lund: 17:17

I don't want to stop jiu-jitsu.

Dan Joseph: 17:18

I can't because I was like the only place I knew. Where I could connect with people, that in that place I knew where I could connect with people, that in that primal sense, there's like a family, so there's no way I'm stopping it. And so I was warned if you continue to go back, the flashbacks will happen you. These triggers will keep happening. You got to work through it, though. If you want to work through, you can, but it is work. You have to feel every feeling you have to go through. You can't just read a book about it, you can't just watch a video about it. You're gonna. You're gonna feel this stuff, and it was heavy, and it makes me understand why people self-medicate, like myself, why I was drinking so much when I was younger, doing drugs, being around that stuff just to numb out, and because feeling stuff is it sucks, it sucks so bad. Until that point on the other side, where you're like hey, the, the sky is bluer than it's ever been, the leaves are greener than they've ever been. Like how do I feel my body right now? I remember feeling that. I remember walking out of a therapy session and all of a sudden, I was like I can feel a breeze on my skin, like I don't think I ever felt a breeze on my skin and these weird sensations started happening where I was just coming back into my body after over a decade of dissociation.

Jerry Dean Lund: 18:29

Yeah, that's super interesting In a lot of ways, I mean because I wanted to go back to something you said. You said do you haven't really felt a feeling for a long time, I mean, and those, those feelings have gotten shut down for a decade or more? Like, did you? How'd you go through life? Just being, I guess, numb.

Dan Joseph: 20:36

Disconnected, dissociated is a fantastic word. I would pretend I was an extrovert. You know I would drink and be around people and be the life of the party and genuinely I'm like, I think I'm relatively semi-happy person. You know, it depends, depends on what I'm processing, but I like, I do like people. You know what I like when there's, when there's a deeper connection with people. You know, my friend called a DNM, is deep in meaningfuls. He's like you love having those Like. That's how I know I'm going to save place with somebody you know. Or like in Jiu Jitsu, when there's something cool about when you fight someone, you get to trust them. You know, after you get choked out by a dude, you're just like all right, bro, we can be friends. You know it's because before I used to bond over drinks and alcohol, right yeah, now I can't. Now I'm like if you can't fight me and pummel me, I don't care. If you win or lose, it's not about that, it's about are you willing to fight me? If you're not willing to fight me, then there's only a certain level of depth. We'll have, you know. But anyway, like I try to act, I'm not trying to act like I'm super tough, like I'm very sensitive. I still cry in movies, but Jiu Jitsu is just a very special place in my heart. But I lived life very disconnected and fearful of getting close to people, fearful of experiences, fearful of being my true self man. I put up the facade of whatever people around me wanted me to be or what I thought they wanted me to be. And there were some folks I was authentic with and connected with, but I guess what I thought was authenticity wasn't. I just didn't know. This is where there's like layers to it, just like Shrek says, man, those onions of layers. Right, so I had a layer of reality. But if I were to meet that version of myself and look at me in the eyes and be like this reality that you think is real, there's actually 20 layers, 30 layers, 100 layers beneath it. That's more real than this. That's what I needed to start peeling away at, and only through grief, man and processing it was I able to reach back and understand my life. And I think it's a human experience. I don't think it's just unique to me. I think everybody could go through versions of this.

Jerry Dean Lund: 22:38

Yeah. Yeah, I think one thing that we're lacking in education in the world is just emotional intelligence. It's just not taught by a lot of people and even parents, right, they try to teach them emotional intelligence, but I feel like maybe there was less of that being taught, maybe in different generations, maybe more than these younger generations. There's a little more talk about it because there's a little more talk about mental health. But yeah, I think that's just self discovery is amazing, right, it's just like you said, pulling back those things and being willing to do it when most people don't want to do it because they don't want to experience those difficult things like you did.

Dan Joseph: 23:24

It's heavy. It's heavy because there's aftershocks to it. You go through the initial like oh shoot, I experienced that, that sucked. And then you'll be watching a movie or walking down the street or hear somebody, or somebody call it, whatever it is, and all of a sudden it brings you back to that same thing. You're like dude again. I got experiences again. I thought I processed it right, but I heard this brilliant analogy. Think of it as like you're scaling a mountain, but you're not scaling it on one side, on one face. You're scaling it in a circular fashion. So while you revisit the same trigger or trauma or whatever you're technically, yeah, you're revisiting the same thing, but you're just that much more elevated in awareness than last time. It could be a foot, it could be 10 feet, it could be 100 feet, I don't know. It depends on how the mountains cut up in your life, right? But every time you circle around that face, you're getting a higher and higher advantage. Point on that. The point is don't stop, keep one foot after the next. And it's also not linear, it's cyclical. And that's a brilliant way to look at it. It helped me chill out, so I stopped being all type A about it, about recovery and growth.

Jerry Dean Lund: 24:30

Yeah, I always find it interesting because there's a lot of talk about first responders being type A and I don't know that to be really true. I mean, I know there is a win, there are situations to be a type A personality, but I don't think that's. Some people live in that right. That's their identity is a type A personality. But I think there's a lot of different personalities. There's lots of layers to our personality, not just we're type A and so we act like this type of thing.

Dan Joseph: 25:02

Yeah, I think there's a lot of variability. For sure I think it's, and so when I worked on my masters in psych while I was in the army, I pursued it so I could better understand leadership and optimal leadership and actually like science based approaches, right, not just what feels good, but what's actually in a peer review journal, like what are people researching? But what I learned is that there are. We have very simplistic perspectives on things, because that's how the human brain works. We have to. They call like chunking data. Like you chunk data, just like when you, if you ask a black belt like, how did you choke that dude out so quickly? Well, I mean, I did the move, I did the sequence, like I didn't. Because when a black belt studies a move, they break it down into like 30 or 40 pieces, what I know to be a three or four piece movement. They can honestly break it down to like 30 or 40 little baby steps, from where your thumb is to how your wrist is turned, to what part you're grabbing onto. It's brilliant, right? Yeah, but they chunk the data, meaning they just execute the move, streamline it and then the guys tapping out, right. So what we do in the world of psychology, like at a civilian level, if you will, for just the main populace is, we have like type A, type E personalities, or the word trauma, or you know the word trigger, but then when you delve into the science of it, man, it just branches out into all these different variations, right, and that's the brilliant part about giving people language to discuss their specific recipe of crazy, because we all have our recipe of crazy. We each have our own variations. So it's like going to the gym, you know, if somebody says like you want a six pack, do this workout. It's like, first of all, six packs are designed by diet or you know it's not. Anyway, it's made in the kitchen. Abs are made in the kitchen, not in the gym. But what I'm saying is you go to a gym and guys will have you know, maybe, what worked for them and they'll preach it to you, right, but what you got to understand is there are specific variables in your brain. If your brain is like an algorithm, right, there's all these different variables that are very particular to you and oftentimes we're not aware of them until you give someone the language. And again, that's why I wrote the book, because I was struggling to have language for myself, like was I a good leader or was I a bad leader? What did I do right and what did I do wrong for the Joes, you know? So I started writing a book and piecing it out like, okay, this is where I got it right, these are parts where I got it wrong. And then, by creating that language for myself, or understanding the language that's science-driven it helped me normalize that for myself. And then giving that gift to others, especially combat bets is huge, because they deserve it. You know, of all people, it would be sad for me to think that they walk around carrying these invisible weights in their rucksack of life, right, not understanding what they're carrying. That's hell, bro. That's like the definition of hell.

Jerry Dean Lund: 27:58

Yeah, yeah. I often think the definition of hell is what we create here on on earth, like what we crave for ourselves, right Like we can put ourselves through immense times of hell right In in our lives. So I think the first responder world often feels like we have to suffer. There's a certain point, like part of this job, that we have to like suffer through and I'm like, why, why, why do we have to fill that Like, why is that a?

Dan Joseph: 28:27

thing. Yeah, it sounds so sexy on the surface, like we're the tough guys. We're the tough people you know and I've talked to like a lot of NCOs who you know we're in the first waves in Iraq and stuff right. So back in their day their op tempo was insane. I mean they're deploying like crazy so they couldn't talk about their busted knee or their impending divorce or whatever it was. It's like dude, everyone has an issue, grab your weapon, like let's go right. So they had this, this and it's. It's honorable for them to just keep going after it like that and not I mean. But then you talk to them now and they have permanent, you know, range of mobility issues, permanent things just damage in their life, right, and they it's not necessarily they regret doing anything differently because they couldn't have done it. They're like how could they? Right, the culture was was that way. But their advice is be as preventative as you can. You know, make yourself robust before those issues come up so you can buffer it, you can take that brunt impact a lot better and that's why, because of the military population, so much research and resources have been poured into mental health for us to have these, this understanding right. But I feel for those who didn't have it back in the day because they were basically flying blind, and I love the ones that that want to make the next generation stronger and better, not not weaker, not more averse to warfare and combat. But have it to me, it's like you know, if you want to be an elite athlete, like I tell my soldiers, think of yourself as a Lamborghini. Like all the vaping, all the drinking of alcohol, all the stuff you're doing, you're pouring like really low grade fuel and really crappy oil in a Ferrari and I'm like I'll sort of like what you know. Stop tripping like whatever. I'm like. No, do you think? Think of your body like you know. You deserve an elite level of rest and elite level of decompression. Right, it's not a shame if you have a professional athlete. Go get a massage or take a salt bath. Why should a soldier feel ashamed of that? Right, it's not soft. You're investing in government property to make it more robust and more you know. But this is I don't know. I guess this would really bother people who think like now, back in my day we'd never do that, but then how many back in my day? People are permanently busted up and broken. Now, you know, and I don't mean that as a sign of disrespect, but one black belt told me, he, you know I, he has a permanent neck injury. This guy's brilliant man, he's an encyclopedia of moves and he's a psychologist as well brilliant guy, but he can't compete. He can't compete because his neck's permanently damaged from overdoing it on his way to getting a black belt. And he sat me down and said listen, your generation of black belts. He said when you become a black belt, do not be like me. Do not push yourself on these mats and roll with people who want to hurt you. Do not be around. People who want to, you know, basically assault you on the mat to get their ego rocks off right and to prove they're the dominant alpha, whatever. And then I'm out of the fight and then I have to stop jujitsu when I'm in my 40s or 50s, you know, he said be smarter than us. Because he said our generation did not have black belts. That taught us how to slow down. He told us more, more, more, all the time, more. And he said so many of my peers no longer can roll. They're brilliant in jujitsu. Their bodies literally can't do it because they don't have the mobility in their fingers and their wrists and their neck. Everything aches. And there's a beautiful saying in jujitsu everything that we learn on the mats applies to life. It's philosophical. So that same idea of avoid burnout, avoid those who will burn you out. I mean, of course, if you got to go into a fight and you're going to risk your life, you may not come out of it alive. I understand that. But there are but where you can rest and recover. You're worth. It is what I want soldiers and service members to understand.

Jerry Dean Lund: 32:25

Yeah, you have to invest in yourself. Right, you have to take that time to invest in yourself or like those type of injuries happen. I'm just sitting here right now. I'm like I worked out yesterday. I'm like back is killing me. I should have rolled it out this morning, Because it's right. The little things of the mobility take away from your life and add to, I feel like the right, your stressors of mental health.

Dan Joseph: 32:54

And if you talk to anyone like in the the seal pipeline right in Buds, or if you talk to guys in the Green Beret pipeline go to SFAS one of the biggest things they'll preach to you is mobility. You know so many guys can show up like big and tough and strong but then they snap and pop because they're rocking and they roll their ankle slightly and boom, it's gone right. They're, yeah, a lot of a lot of people will enter into like a special force pipeline, thinking they have to be a certain type of strength. But it's about agility. You know mobility, stability and flexibility are huge. Strength is also a huge part of it, but it's but again, it's a holistic approach, it's an intelligent approach and it's based on your anatomy. It's based on how you're built. You got to know your weaknesses and where to reinforce right. It's not a one size fits all. You just you take little pieces of wisdom from from different people and you apply what's relevant to you and you do it intelligently. And the only way to do that is to not be dissociated, like I was for majority of my life. You got to reintegrate into your body, be aware of how you feel, where you're tired, where you're stressed and you got to recover and rest because you're strengthening yourself as an asset. You're not making yourself soft. That's the big fear is, am I making myself soft? You can. You can stay hard and have these times where you rest and recover in order to keep performing at that level. Peak performance is a brilliant book on the subject matter. It really changed my perspective.

Jerry Dean Lund: 34:23

Yeah, I know I don't know much about this in the military. It seems like there'd be a really good opportunity for the military to invest in like performance you know psychology like invest in that and training soldiers so they they know about their, their mind, their body and their spirituality and how that all connects and works together for them.

Dan Joseph: 34:45

We do it nominally, we do it like here and there, but do we put into practice? Is the question right? Because you can go to a cute PowerPoint death by PowerPoint is very famous, very popular military, but how much of it is actually not only being applied but reinforced by leadership? That's the thing about bureaucracies, right? If you, and if you incentivize the leaders to push it out, then the chain of command will push it out. But if they're not incentivized and they have so many other things, so many other fires to put out, and so mental health and things like that can fall by the wayside because, you know, we're again, we're so mission oriented. What about the people? Right? So that's that's where you need to balance out your relationship with the men and women that you're leading and working with, and then the mission set. So, yes, to your point. Yeah, we need to do that. I just yeah. I mean this is, this is going to help. These discussions are going to help. I like to say that I don't have the answers, even though I completely come off as a know it all. I'm sure I don't know, but, but I want to have discussions about this. You know, because the more we talk about it. Maybe some leaders will put their heads together and come up with a brilliant solution that nobody saw coming. Like how cool would that be?

Jerry Dean Lund: 35:55

Yeah, I like to think in terms of that, like innovative, you know yeah, yeah, I, when you're talking about this and I'm like you know I do a cool plunge almost every day type of thing, you know, and I look for a number of different reasons I love to do it, but it's like God, that probably be great in the military to do that. But then I'm like, okay, but would it make you soft in combat, like when you don't punch? I mean, you know what I mean like with those taking care of yourself, like hey, that's in yourself, yeah, would they? You know? Would the fear be that, since you're in combat for extended period of time, you don't have the opportunity to do some of these rest of the relaxation things? Would that make you soft?

Dan Joseph: 36:35

So again, I haven't been to combat, but my friends who have told me that when they were so they do their patrols, because I asked them this, I was like how, how'd you decompress in a war zone? And some of them I guess one thing is maybe slowed down. I don't know what year this was, but they said that between patrols they would get downtime, sometimes several days of downtime. They weren't always patrolling every single moment and they were able to de-stress. And some of them had told me that, based on certain leadership dynamics, that they had more time, more ability in a war zone to decompress than not in a combat zone, based on their treatment, how they're being talked to, how they're being managed right and led. So that speaks volumes about what a leader can do. If a leader in a war zone is able to create an environment where the service members feel as if they're able to decompress and again, this is extremely complex because there's so many variables what kind of enemy is it? What kind of ordinance do they have? What's their strategy, what's the target they're trying to get? That's where I have to be very careful about seeming like I know the answers right. But again, going from the conversations I've had with people in combat. They did tell me that there was the ability to decompress and that meant a lot to them and they knew that certain leaders allowed for that and wanted that for them. And there is no perfect answer because every mission set, every deployment, every training scenario is different depending on is it counterinsurgency operations that we're training for? Is it near peer warfare that we're training for? There's so many variables. But what I like to think super simplistically is that if you care as a leader, you'll find a way. I know that sounds super canned, but I just believe it to be true, man. I believe that even if you can't fix the situation because the situation has to suck, just the way you speak to people will maybe open their mind to being a little less hard on themselves privately in their inner dialogue and that'll benefit the mission because they'll come to work that much more recharged. It's little nuances like that I think are important to emphasize.

Jerry Dean Lund: 38:49

Yeah, I mean self-talk definitely is a draw on your energy, and not just your mental energy but your physical energy too. It's hand in hand. So I think that's really good point. The leaders find a way. That's right. When, the first day you become a leader, it's about the men and women that follow you. It's not about you anymore, it's all about them.

Dan Joseph: 39:16

There's a definition that I learned in psychology class about transformational leadership versus transactional, and there's a time and place for both. But I think transformational is way better because you get people motivated intrinsically, you bring out their inner desire to be a better person, to be better at the job, you give them a vision of what could be and they achieve that. Transactional leaders are more tit for tat. If you do this, you're going to get this. That's how you, anyway, it makes sense. But transformational leadership in a bad situation, a transformational leadership can create value out of thin air. Things suck, we're all miserable, we're depressed, it's super hot, nothing's working. Why do that? Sign this contract? And then you have that transformational leadership that just shares that little bit of love where all of a sudden you're looking at the people next to you and you're like you know what? Yeah, we got each other, we're in this together and that's so cool, that's the coolest part about being in the military. Life can suck, man, you could absolutely hate yourself for signing that contract. And then you look at the people next to you and somebody busts out that joke or just makes that comment and you're like I freaking love you because you just made life suck so much less. And those are those moments that stay with you forever.

Jerry Dean Lund: 40:36

Yeah, in your book, what were like to like stand out, maybe pieces of advice that you were given.

Dan Joseph: 40:45

So one of them I love. I love talking about what my Green Beret buddy said. He he's an officer on the teams and talked about humility being so huge. Humility and calm, basically. So he said you know, if somebody comes at you and is toxic or wants to fight or is disrespectful, please treat them with respect and courtesy, because they'll burn their own bridges. You'll keep all of yours and it's just not conducive to being to proving anything. You prove stuff through your work ethic. You don't prove stuff through trying to play the tough act. You know, just be humble and your genuine desire to be a good dude, a good gal, is going to come out in how you conduct yourself right, and then you'll surround yourself, without even knowing it, with, you know, a brotherhood of people that are like minded, and that was such a cool approach. You know, I'd expect Green Beret is going to be like you, freaking, smashed skulls, you know, but no, it wasn't like that at all. He's such a humble dude. And then my other friend, will, is, and again I'm like because some of the names I changed in the book because they still are, still operators, and then others, yeah, anyway, but Will gave me permission to say his name. He told me that command climate makes or breaks everything. So you can walk into an organization and the leader that's in charge, depending on their personality, their soft skills or lack thereof, emotional intelligence If it's a great leadership situation, it's going to be a great time, the job is going to be awesome. If the leader sucks and they're toxic and it's a negative situation, the situation will suck. There's no way around it. It's going to suck because you can't force them to change who they are. You just have to endure. So the question is how do you thrive, not just survive, in a situation where you wake up every single day, you don't want to go to work, you don't want to see that person, you don't want to hear their voice, because everything they say is just meant to break people down, and I'm sure we all know people like that.

Jerry Dean Lund: 42:56

It's going through everybody's head right now Outside the military.

Dan Joseph: 42:58

Yeah, the question is, can you just more than survive where you're barely trying to get by? Because there are people they're on fumes, man, they're running on fumes and those are the ones we have to check in on, because when they go quiet, there's the chances we're going to wake up to a text that they're no longer with us. It almost happened to me with my soldier. So it's super important to understand what command culture does to people. And yeah, there's anyway. I can ramble off for days about this. Those are two pieces of advice that are cool.

Jerry Dean Lund: 43:35

Yeah, I mean this episode is going to come out during September, which is Suicide Prevention Month. Was there anything that you learned that stood out? I mean through writing your book and your different trainings? That would be a great piece of advice for those out there that maybe, as leaders no people that are beneath them that are struggling with this.

Dan Joseph: 43:57

So somebody who's struggling with like suicidality or depression or whatnot?

Jerry Dean Lund: 44:01

Yeah, and you're their leader in like what you know. How would you handle that? What's your advice?

Dan Joseph: 44:07

Well, give them a voice, let them know that you love them, let them know that you care. You don't have to have the answer, you don't have to be able to fix the situation, but, man, give them a chance to share their heart to you. Don't dismiss them. People say it's a cry for help and I've talked to somebody who was told that and that the guy that they were talking about killed himself. And this individual I was speaking with I didn't serve with him, he's in another branch, but he told me that he wonders to this day if he didn't listen to that advice on hey, it's just a cry for help, right, because he held back, he didn't reach out to that guy because he was like, yeah, okay, it's a cry for help. And that dude killed himself and he regrets it because, you know, begs the question of not to say we have to have a savior complex right, because you can't stop somebody from making that decision, right, right, but you certainly don't want to have to carry that question with yourself, like I did with my soldier, right, if I? when he told me he's like hey, you know, I survived a suicide attempt. I got to tell you about what happened because he approached me after the fact and I was just like man, like I could have gone to your funeral. This sucks Like you're alive and you're breathing right now and that's awesome. But, holy smokes, dude, like you're a great person, why would you take yourself out of the world, you know? And there's a moment where, yeah, he didn't, he didn't feel heard necessarily, or he felt like he shouldn't be heard, and there's a lot to it. It was a complex situation but at the same time, the end result could be so simple. It's so black and white. You know, either they're here with us or they're not. So I'm lucky he's alive and he still is. We're still in touch to this day.

Jerry Dean Lund: 46:04

He's out of the military now, but as a leader, it's just so important to be willing to hear them, you know yeah, thanks, and to be willing to take the time to check in on them, right, like, be willing to put the effort out there to check in and see how they're doing, because oftentimes, right, we don't know what's happening in other people's lives. I mean, they keep maybe very private about it and just maybe looking for someone to ask them so they can, you know, talk about it. Instead of you know, they maybe have it all built up inside of them and then they just don't know how to release it, right, they don't know who will listen to them.

Dan Joseph: 46:44

Yeah, I mean, and even if it is a cry for help, just that phrase is like okay, well then they need help. Like, let them cry for help if there's a need for help, right? I mean we shouldn't. We would never make fun of somebody who calls in for, you know, additional support in an emissions center or whatever. You know you wouldn't fault them. You'd want to. My buddy was saying hi, real quick, what's up? Man, you'd want to help them out, send them the resources. So why is it, when it comes to mental health, we think, well, you shouldn't need those resources, you shouldn't need that. Like it's shameful, you know, because then you shame people into a place of isolation, right, and that's when they make that final decision. So it's super important to proactively give them that. Have that dialogue. You know, and I think fear does a lot to stop people from wanting to talk because they're afraid of lighting their. It's like therapy, man, you can't force someone to go to therapy, right? So if you have a leader who doesn't want to talk about depression and suicide because they deal with it, I mean, I've seen this where somebody deals with their own depression and suicide, somebody goes up to them. Hey, I'm dealing with with this weight. Right, I've seen it where that leader tells them you don't have any issues. Like you don't even know what issues are. If you knew what I saw in combat, if you knew what I experienced, you have nothing to complain about, get out. And then you find out later that individual had a mental breakdown. They got carted off to the hospital because they had a breakdown. And I'm sitting here like if I had hair I'd pull it out. Like you're suicidal. So you're going to let this guy suffer with his suicidality. Like just the fact that you struggle with it should make you that much more desirable. Tiring that this person doesn't have that struggle, right. But it's the opposite. Like, if this sucks for me, it's going to suck for you too. So, like, welcome to the party. Man, misery loves company and that. That hurts me to see that, because I don't want either of them to kill themselves, right, right. When I see this soldier walk away, bummed out that he doesn't have a voice because now that taught him that the culture doesn't want to hear him, and then you have another leader that himself may wake up tomorrow dead if we're not careful, right, yeah. So why not get both of them help. You know they both deserve it. They're both serving the country. They both have seen things that most people wouldn't ask to see, and that's where I feel they deserve better. Whether they know it or not, you know a lot of them. They don't self disclose, they're not self aware. It's not their fault. It's just how many of us have sat down in a class where they taught us emotional intelligence, right? Yeah, like you said, that's not really taught. So we can't fault these people. Like I can't fault myself for self-medicating. When I was dealing with my childhood trauma, right, I had a therapist who told me told me, like you need to thank your addictions because they saved your life. It's heavy, it's a weird thing to be told, you know. So I can't fault anybody who's dissociated. But, man, if it comes down to like one of my guys wanted to hurt themselves, I'm going to get bulldog-ish real quick about making sure he's not cornered like that, you know. Yeah, I'm going to make sure my brothers man I get close to them.

Jerry Dean Lund: 49:54

That just yeah. I think those who shame others about maybe their mental health or getting mental health, I think you're very correct when you like they too are suffering, like when they're pushing that, like they don't they don't want to talk to that person because they're suffering them themselves, so like. So the misery loves company instead of just being like maybe this is my opportunity to to help someone and help myself, right? So you go through those difficult times and when you come out of those, you know you have that growth, you have that resiliency that comes with that.

Dan Joseph: 50:27

Yeah, I mean, I get it. It's so hard to to prescribe yourself self-care. You know I'm going to go to sauna today and get him a whatever it is Like. It's weird. You know, to an extent it's weird to treat yourself like that when you're used to getting kicked around and used to being the guy that needs to. You know, be the tough one getting it done and all of that. But burnout is a thing. It's a science that tells us about burnout. The brain can only sustain so much before it needs to recharge, you know. And again, we maintain our vehicles. We maintain our weapons. It's not surprising to us when a vehicle breaks down. We need to repair it, right, yeah. So why should it be surprising when service members experience the same? Like you know, we need to continually invest in and proactively maintaining ourselves.

Jerry Dean Lund: 51:12

Yeah, yeah, definitely, dan. Like can you tell the audience a little bit about like, where they can find out social media and your website?

Dan Joseph: 51:20

Yeah, my website's combatsykecom. I'm sure you'll put a link to it, which is you know. I'm grateful for that for anyone who takes a look at it. My books on Amazon, backpack to Rucksack Dan Joseph if you just throw that on Amazon you'll find it. It's linked on my website. And, yeah, I mean I do have Instagram. I don't really check it. I think the handle is combat psychology and, yeah, and I have a YouTube channel just kind of posting some videos here and there on like what it was like joining the military at 32, because I joined pretty old and I just try to give people advice and encouragement who are joining, like myself, at an older age, and I'm actually right now debating which contract to sign for an additional stint in the reserves. But, yeah, feel free to contact me through my website and let me know what you think about the book. I did it. I'd really appreciate it. Like an honest Amazon review, not asking for five stars, just put an Amazon review of what you thought, whether it sucked, whether it's good. That'd be really helpful.

Jerry Dean Lund: 52:24

Yeah, Before I let you go, Dan, I'm gonna ask you like so what do you want people to get out of the book?

Dan Joseph: 52:30

Like when they read it that your self enrichment, your self progress in life as you grow privately through your own issues. Your men and the women that you lead will benefit from that. Your organization will benefit from that. So think of it as like it's okay to be selfish and pursue growth, because it's not really selfish. Everyone around you will see a better version of yourself, and the vice the flip side to that is, whatever struggles you have personally and privately, that is infecting people around you. So be your optimal self, be your idealized self, and you'll see people around you come to life in a cool way.

Jerry Dean Lund: 53:10

Yeah, yeah, I love that and for me it's like I try every day to be like the optimal self, try to just get a little bit better, work on some things you know, just a little bit more and just keep at it right, cause it's just incrementally just a little bit, little bit pays off in the end.

Dan Joseph: 53:26

It ends up being a lot better man. That's it. Yeah, it's a 1% advancement and you'll see what happens in your life.

Jerry Dean Lund: 53:32

Totally agree. Well, dan, thank you so much for being on and appreciate you writing the book. It's gonna be exciting to. I personally haven't read it yet, but I'm after talking with you, but it's definitely a must read for me.

Dan Joseph: 53:45

Appreciate it, man. It was a pleasure being here. I'm working on the audio book, so hopefully in a few months that'll be done so if you're not a book reader, you can listen to it. I'm a huge audiophile. I love books on my ears, so, yeah, really, really cool being here. Thank you for what you do. Thank you for putting this message out to the world. Appreciate it. Yeah, thanks, dan. My Joes appreciate it.

Jerry Dean Lund: 54:06

I appreciate your service and appreciate anybody that's ever served in that. It's a special person.

Dan Joseph: 54:10

I tell people I don't do anything, man, it's the guys that do all the stuff. I just sit there, I just stay out of their way. That's right. I try not to slow them down, you know. Let them be autonomous as much as possible. There you go. Thanks again.

Jerry Dean Lund: 54:21

Yeah, thank you.