Read the full transcript of retired Navy SEAL Jason Redman’s inspiring talk titled “How To Get Through Hard Times” at TEDxBeaconStreet (Jan 6, 2020).
Listen to the audio version here:
The Ambush That Changed Everything
Jason Redman: As a Navy SEAL leader, I’ve always chosen light and fast over slow and heavy. As such, I rarely wore my side plates into battle. But on this one mission to neutralize a high-value Al Qaeda leader in 2007, I had a little voice in my head say, wear your side plates. I tell you what, thank God that I listened because that night we were ambushed and I was shot eight times by an enemy PKM machine gun to my body and face, leaving me for dead in the middle of one of the fiercest firefights of my war.
A little over 96 hours later, I found myself in a hospital bed in Bethesda, Maryland, struggling as the doctors filled me with overwhelming information. “Lieutenant Redman, you have no use of your left hand. We don’t know the extent of the nerve damage. Your elbow is destroyed. We’re thinking about amputating your arm. You are trached, you are wired shut, and we are feeding you through a stomach tube. Lieutenant Redman, it’s going to take years to put you back together.”
As this information began to sink in, I suddenly was hit with a stark realization. My military operational career is over. I’m going to be permanently disabled, and I will be forever disfigured. As I was trying to process this, I suddenly heard a conversation close by, and it sounded a little like this. “What a shame. What a pity. We send these young men and women off to war and they come home broken and battered, and they’re never going to be the same. They’re never going to find success. They’re never going to be able to get back out there and achieve the American dream.”
And as I digested all of this, I couldn’t help but think to myself, it is the end.
Everyone Has “The End” Moments
And I know there’s so many of you in the audience right now that are listening. You’re thinking to yourself, oh my God, I cannot relate to this. I can’t relate to being in the middle of a firefight and be shot by a machine gun with bullets the size of my thumb. I can’t imagine laying in a hospital bed and being told we may have to amputate your limbs. But the reality is you all can relate because everyone has the end moments. Everyone in this audience has encountered a the end moment before. And if you have not, I got bad news. They are coming. They’re coming for all of us.
And you see, they are relatable. Like the father who came home to find out his young wife was having an affair. And as he signed the divorce papers looking at his young children, he thought to himself, it is the end. Or the entrepreneur who’s sitting there going over his financials looking at his million dollar company is going down the drain. And he thinks to himself, it is the end. Or the business executive, she just made partner. And as she goes to her annual checkup, the doctor says, “You’ve got stage four metastatic breast cancer. We need to do an immediate double mastectomy.” She thinks to herself, it is the end.
You see, all of us in life encounter these the end moments, these hard, stress-filled, anxiety-filled moments that unexpectedly hit us no different from that ambush I encountered in Iraq. The difference is these are life ambushes. And you are not being hit by actual bullets or bombs that occur on the battlefield. You are being hit by the bombs and bullets of life.
And the thing is, that’s common for all of us. When these ambushes occur, we all get stuck on a central point. In special operations lingo, we call it the X. And the X is that central point of attack. It is the point of incident. It’s the point of the the end moments. And for most of us, we focus on the pain. We focus on the misery. We focus on that stress. We focus on the past and what we’ve lost instead of focusing on what really needs to happen, which is what I was taught in my special operations career. When these life ambushes come, we must get off the X as quickly as possible.
So how do we do that? As I lay in that hospital bed, digesting all these grim prognosis, the negativity, I realized in that moment I had a choice. I had a choice in how I would deal with this. I could lay there on the X and feel sorry for myself. I could listen to the negativity or I could figure out how to drive forward. And in that moment, I decided I would not be the victim that some wanted to put me into, into that box. Instead, I was going to step up. I was going to look at how to go forward.
The Power of Choosing Your Mindset
And when my wife came back into the room, I said, give me my pen. And I wrote out this sign:
“Attention to all who enter here. If you’re coming in this room with sadness or sorrow, don’t bother. The wounds I received, I got in a job that I love, doing it for people that I love, defending the freedom of a country I deeply love. I’ll make a full recovery. What is full? That is the absolute utmost. Physically, I have the ability to recover. And then I’m going to push that about 100% further through sheer mental tenacity. This room you’re about to enter is a room of fun, optimism, and intense rapid regrowth. If you are not prepared for that, go elsewhere.”
And we signed it. We signed it for management, you know, because we felt like it needed this level of credibility or something.
It is amazing the power of positivity over negativity.
It’s amazing what in the face of massive adversity, when we choose to drive forward, what it can do for us. Because most people are unwilling to do this. We’re so focused on the pain and the misery and on what we lost, we focus on the end. And we get stuck on the X. Failing to realize one of the greatest gifts you have when life ambushes come, that it can become a new beginning. Some of the hardest moments in your life will become some of the greatest opportunities. You will be reborn like a phoenix from the ashes.
The Two Key Principles: Overcome and REACT
And as I wrote that sign out and we hung it, I thought to myself, okay, you’ve set the benchmark, you’ve said where you’re going to go, how do we go? And it comes down to two key principles I’d learned in my special operations career. The first one is you have to be willing to overcome. You have to build this relentless overcome mindset because you see, life ambushes are coming for all of us. Life is unfair. It doesn’t go according to plan. But if you already have it in your mind that no matter what obstacles or adversity I come up against, I’m going to overcome, you’re already well on your way.
And number two, when we get on the X, we’ve got to think about how we move quickly off of it. And I had learned the same thing that my teammates and I managed to do that night to come home from Iraq. I learned to get off the X, you have to react. And you see, REACT is an acronym for what we do with massively hard situations, these life ambushes, these the end moments.
And the first step is you’ve got to recognize your reality. And you see, this is really one of the hardest things because when life ambushes come, when the end moments come, for many of us, the very first step is we’re in denial. We don’t want to admit it. We want to push it away like an ostrich sticking our heads in the sand. We just hope and pray it’ll go away on its own. Yeah, I got bad news. That doesn’t work. Like when I was laying there in that firefight, at one point I was thinking to myself, I’d really like to call a timeout right now. Life does not work this way. And I’ve got to tell you, you will never get off the X until you come to grips with the reality, until you acknowledge and articulate there is a problem. Houston, we’ve got a problem. And it’s at this point that you are starting the process to move forward.
Step Two: Evaluate Your Assets
Number two, now that we know it, we’ve got to evaluate our assets. We’ve got to take an inventory of all the things we need to get out of this crisis. As I lay there, pinned down by enemy fire, in my mind I started to think about, this is a bad situation. How do we get out of it? Well, I’ve got my teammates. I’ve got a Marine Corps quick reaction force. I’ve got an Army medevac helicopter crew. I’ve got drones. I’ve got an Air Force AC-130 gunship. These were all the assets we had to utilize to bring this problem. No different than we all have in life. You see, when these hard moments come, we need to think about it. I have my family. I have my friends. I have some money in an account. Or maybe I need to borrow some money to deal with a problem. Maybe I need an accountant. Maybe I need an attorney. Maybe I need a priest, counselor, chaplain. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is we evaluate these assets and take stock of our inventory.
Assessing Options and Outcomes
The next one, we’ve got to assess the possible options and outcomes. And when we look at this, oftentimes when people make it to this step, there’s this sudden sense of urgency. Like, oh my god, I’m in a crisis and I need to move right now. And so often we tend to put ourselves in a worse situation because we did not think through the steps. So this is where it’s critical to take inventory, to look at our options, and look at the outcome. And one of the hardest parts of this step is oftentimes when we’re in a crisis, there is no good option and outcome. It is choosing the best of the bad decisions. And so often, so many of us don’t want to do what needs to be done, which is the short-term pain for the long-term gain. It took me 12 years to get to where I am now, and I followed this process.
Choose Direction and Communicate
Number four, you’ve got to choose a direction and communicate. And this is absolutely critical because one of the things is when you have a life ambush and you’re on the X, you are never on the X alone. Your family gets pulled onto the X with you. Your kids get pulled onto the X with you. Your spouse is on the X with you. If it is a business ambush, your employees, your colleagues, your partners, they’re all on the X with you. And guess what? In that misery, agonizing, stress-filled, the end moment, they feel it too. And this is where you have to step up and provide something that is one of the quintessential pieces of the overcome mindset. When you say, “this is where we’re going and this is how we’re going to do it,” you give people hope. Hope is a powerful ally.
And the last one, most important, you have to take action. You have to execute. I’ve watched so many businesses, individuals that have gone through trauma, that go through this process and they get into this infinite loop where they continue to go back and forth through this process without ever taking action because they are waiting for the perfect moment. They’re waiting for the lull in gunfire. They’re waiting for their next paycheck. They’re waiting to close this deal because it’s going to be the tipping point to allow us to get out of this crisis. I hate to tell you, the perfect moment will never come. The time to move is now. The time to get off the X is now.
And here’s an interesting fact. Out of all the thousands of wounded warriors I’ve worked with, individuals that have been through trauma, companies that have suffered through failure, crisis, massive change, the ones who got off the X the fastest didn’t just survive. They thrived. They launched from their ambush and they were able to drive out of it faster because there’s an interesting fact about the X. The longer you sit on the X, it’s like quicksand. It gets harder and harder to get up and move. This is why this process is so critical.
You Have a Choice
Life ambushes are out there. The reality is, right now, for all of you out there, you were either in a life ambush, you’re coming out of a life ambush, or somewhere out there on the horizon, one is waiting for you. But here’s the good news. You have a choice. You have a choice in how you’re going to deal with it.
That day in that hospital, I chose to drive forward. I chose to overcome. I chose to not be limited by what the doctors said my prognosis would be. I chose to ignore the negativity around me. I chose to figure out not how I would be the past version of who I was because the reality is that’s never going to happen. Instead, you have to figure out how to become the best version of your new you, your new 100%. I created something called the Pentagon of Peak Performance, and I looked at, and over the last 12 years, I focused physically, mentally, emotionally, socially, and spiritually, and it brought me to this spot right here.
Conclusion
So the good news is, when these life ambushes come for you, you have a choice. Choose to be positive. Choose to put your own sign on the door and choose to get off the X and overcome. Thank you.
