Podcast 903: Walking in Mud: A Navy SEAL’s 10 Rules for Surviving the New Normal with Steve Giblin

My guest for this podcast is Steve Giblin and he recently released a new book entitled “Walking in Mud: A Navy SEAL’s 10 Rules for Surviving the New Normal“.   Steve is a Retired U.S. Navy Frogman ~ SEAL Master Chief.

In this interview with Steve, we speak about the new normal and Steve tips on  how to survive and thrive everyday challenges based on his own experiences as a Navy SEAL. His book, “Walking in Mud: A Navy SEAL’s 10 Rules for Surviving the New Normal“ serves as a guide map to get to the other side better and stronger than we were at the beginning of a journey none of us signed up for.

There’s a lot to be learned in this book about COVID 19, survival, sincerity and commitment. If you want to learn more about surviving in the new normal, I encourage to listen to this engaging interview with Steve Giblin.

If you want to know more about Steve, please click here to be directed to his website.

THE BOOK

Drawing on his more than two decades as a Navy SEAL, Steve Giblin uses his own experiences to offer wisdom and counsel on how to cope with the new normal imposed by COVID-19.

During his first few weeks as a Navy SEAL, Steve Giblin found a simple, typewritten document left behind in an old desk drawer by the Team commanding officer, entitled “THE TEN ESSENTIAL QUALITIES OF AN UNDERWATER DEMOLITION MAN.”

That single page, and the maxims it contained, followed Steve wherever he was based during his twenty-six-year career with the SEALs—fourteen of those as part of the legendary strike force that took down Osama bin Laden. Steve still lives by those tenets today, coming to realize how it laid out a regimen not just for elite warriors, but also for the rest of us in our day-to-day lives.

Steve’s book – Walking In Mud, is much more than a Navy SEAL book. It’s a metaphor for living life. Walking In Mud provides a prescription for both healing and thriving, a guide map to get to the other side better and stronger than we were at the beginning of a journey none of us signed up for.

THE AUTHOR

Steve left his hometown of Albuquerque, New Mexico enlisting in the Navy in 1981 at the age of seventeen for a four-year hitch that turned into a twenty-eight-year odyssey. Serving first in the Fleet, he attended and graduated BUD/S in 1983 and served in the SEAL Teams until he retired in 2009 as a Master Chief. His tenure included over two dozen overseas deployments as an operator for contingencies and named operations.

He served at SDV Team twice, DevGru for 14 years, NSWG-3, BUD/S & NSWCEN.  He rose to the level of troop chief, assault team chief, and command master chief within the teams and then went on to work for Naval Special Warfare Command for nine more years as a contractor and civil servant before retiring in 2018.

He now lives in upstate New York with his wife Barbara.



You may also refer to the transcripts below for the full transcription (not edited) of the interview.

Greg Voisen
Welcome back Inside Personal Growth, this is Greg Voisen in the host of Inside Personal Growth. And Steve. I say this every time that I'm on one of these shows, and I think the listeners, these listeners come from around the world. We have them from China, we have them from Russia. We've got them from Dubai, we've got them from everywhere. And we thank you, because without you guys and your support, we couldn't do this show. So thank you very much. And as we close this year out, because I'm going to take a little sabbatical for a couple of weeks. Actually, Steve is the last interview for the year. So for 2021, which was a crazy year, we're going to talk about that a little bit. And we're talking with Steve Gibson, and the book is walking in mud, and Navy SEALs 10 rules for surviving the new normal. So that's how to be a really good one, Steve, because we're all searching for the new normal. The question is whether or not there is one or not, you know, so I think people are looking for that. Good day to you. How you doing in New York? What's the weather like? Oh, good.

Steve Giblin
So it's supposed to be almost 50 degrees here. Just just a little bit below. We've had unseasonably warm temperatures yesterday was 62. But everything's great. It's sunny and beautiful out. Oh, good. Tomorrow, we're supposed to get four to six inches of snow.

Greg Voisen
Well, let's see what happens is gonna have to actually change quite a bit between 50 and get to 32. So it can snow. Well, this is a fast. Yeah, well, this is a fascinating book, and I'm gonna let my listeners know a little bit about you. Born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico Navy SEAL. Steve joined the Navy in 1981 at the age of 17, for a four year hitch that turned into a 28 year odyssey. His tenure included over two dozen overseas deployments as an operator for contingencies and named operations within the US special forces, Special Operations Forces, namely Navy Special Warfare and Navy Special Warfare development groups, he rose to the level of Chief assault team chief, and Command Master Chief within the teams and went on to work with Navy Special Warfare Command for nine more years as a contractor and civil servant, before retiring in 2018. And as we said, he lives in upstate New York with his wife, Barbara. So Simon and Schuster book for all those who are going to have a link to this book on our blog to Amazon, where you can go and get the book. Steve, do you have a special website for the book? Or is it just the one Simon and Schuster has up there?

Steve Giblin
So I've got my I've got a website at my own frogman leadership calm. And it's the same same hyperlink that goes right to Simon and Schuster. Okay,

Greg Voisen
so we'll put a link to frogman leadership calm as well for all of you who are out there and are listening, and want to learn more about Steve and the book, and actually maybe make a connection. Now, Steve, let's kind of start this off. You know, in the introduction, his book was targets these 10 essential qualities. That is the core essence of the book of an Underwater Demolition Man, you speak about that, which you used as a basis for the book and was also used as the subtitle on the book. Can you briefly speak with the listeners about and if you were to just name them the 10 essential qualities because we're going to get into some specifics on those qualities as we go through. A lot of people do their books that way. They say here's the 10 qualities, and then every chapter is a quality. So we would love to have you just maybe name them off and talk about it briefly and tell the people why you believe these qualities are so important, and especially during this time of COVID

Steve Giblin
Yeah, so the 10 essential qualities of an Underwater Demolition Man basically a frogman, the precursor to the Navy SEALs, the man that wrote it. It's just a one page document that he hung around the team area, and it was his expectations of the officers and enlisted men within the underwater demolition Team 21. This was during the Korean War era, Lieutenant Commander Francis or Kane. He was the commanding officer. He was a well known World War Two frogman one of the first. So the 10 essential qualities that he listed are loyalty, sincerity, responsibility. Exactly. forethought, fairness, seamanship, and common sense. Um, you know, some of them I mean, you know, the common sense that when it seems to be pretty simple,

Greg Voisen
but not always not It sounds simple but not a home base.

Steve Giblin
That's right. Well, it's yeah, you know, and what would seem to be on that old adage of common sense isn't so common anymore. Right? Right. Um, and, you know, and this is one of the reasons why I felt that I needed to say something, I wanted to say something. And I had discussed this with John land, he had written a chapter about me in another book. And so that was kind of the birth of this book was the discussion of this and what was going on, in, you know, 2020, with the pandemic, we were starting to jump hip deep into this. And, you know, and he just, you know, he was like, hey, you know what, I think this is a great idea. Let's do it.

Greg Voisen
There's a lot of lessons to be learned by what the list that you just gave off. And, and as we go through this interview, we're going to be talking a little more specifically about some of those qualities. And you state that as a seal, you traveled all over the world to train with allies and fight American enemies, never imagining that the greatest enemy and the greatest challenge our country ever faced, would end up being something you couldn't see. And and you say this as a microbe, a virus that's COVID-19, which is affected the world. Now we're right in the middle of Omni kromm, as most of my listeners know, I just talked to a gentleman and yesterday in England, and it's spreading pretty quickly. Fortunately, our CDC is now saying, not as severe as the Delta variant, and possibly, not as many people will pass away from it. What advice can you give our listeners, specifically, on the front liners, because there's so many front liners in these hospitals? I don't know what it's like in New York. I know in California, as of yesterday, we went back to full masks. So everywhere you go, now we're back to masking when you go in a store, you're going to a restaurant or you go in anyway. But there's a lot of pissed off people, especially the people that are going going in. And so this has caused a tremendous amount of divisiveness amongst the people, and so on. What advice would you give the frontline workers and even those people that are pissed off about it?

Steve Giblin
No, I would say take a step back and look at the bigger picture. What do we really have going on here? We've got over 800,000 people have died from Coronavirus in the United States alone in 2022. From that one virus, we're going to surpass 1 million. More than likely, that'll be February timeframe. This is something that's seriously out there. And we want to not only protect ourselves, but protect other people, we don't want to bring it home. You know, if somebody's you know, asymptomatic, you know, they might bring it home because they didn't mask someplace, or they didn't, you know, disinfect their hands or something. And then they bring it home and they get a spouse or one of their children sick. And especially if they are unvaccinated because maybe that household just doesn't believe in getting vaccinated for this. And now somebody passes away, or gets really seriously ill and then becomes a long hauler. You know, and I think maybe the maybe the government hasn't really, you know, kind of put it out there as to Hey, these are really the reasons these, this is what we want to avoid. And it is a matter of national security. It's self preservation for the nation. My wife and I, we have absolutely no problem with putting on a mask before we go inside any place. And we've eaten out maybe half a dozen times in the last year and a half. And we felt like we're really being risky, you know, by doing that. So you know, but we're also were vaccinated and we've had our booster here in New York, the mask mandate has gone out. And somehow you know, they're also relying on people to be honest about their, you know, being vaccinated or not.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, well, we we understand that the pandemic and the requirements around the pandemic that that most of the governmental agencies are attempting to administrate and get compliance on is a challenging thing at best, challenging for our leaders and challenging for the end. individuals that are trying to comply with it as well. We get that, you know, in your section about leadership, you state that the hard times call for leaders, in fact hard times can help create leaders. And we've seen some leaders that have fallen by the wayside even in New York recently. Not Chris Cuomo, but his brother. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, former governor, and now his brother has been kicked off and CNN as a result of supporting his brother. But finally, former anchor, former anchor. That's right. And I liked him a lot. You know, I liked him as a as a newscaster. But finding the right leader or becoming one yourself makes for a king strategy you get out of the mud, you say? Because this book is like, you know, walking in the mud? How do you advise leaders to become more courageous and demonstrating their and enhancing their role in the new normal? I think one of the leaders that came out a glowing example, was the governor of Kentucky the other day with the tornado, you know, hear you saw a guy that stepped up, the President went down there, surveyed the site, saw the damage, know how long that's going to take, but really seem to be a very effective communicator. And I think that's one of the qualities of a good leader. Comment,

Steve Giblin
sir. You know, sincerity. That's one of the you know, that's one of the 10 essential qualities and being sincere in what you do not just, you know, not just putting on a front for what you think that people want to hear the people that you're leading, it is no kidding, being sincere in what you do every day. Always trying to be the best version of yourself. Sometimes, hey, sometimes all of us, you know, we all have our days, and we all fall short. But getting caught up in the situations that, that just remove that entirely. I mean, everything that Governor Cuomo did up until this current situation that he is in where he had to step down from office. You know, that really, it diminished, it not only diminish it removed everything that he did up until that point, and not everybody agreed with what he did. But I believe that he was sincere in, you know, in the leadership that he was providing to the state of trying to be, you know, on that on that front line, and supporting frontline workers for this pandemic.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, I think he was to, unfortunately, fell the wayside of many leaders, it's, you know, it's a test of power. We always say it's a test of power and money. I think that we we had a former president, where it was a test of power and money. And, and, and not a very good example, in my humble opinion, and my listeners know, my thoughts on this, as a strong leader. As a matter of fact, in many cases, a bit cowardly, you know, to call out a former pow of which we all know, who spent years and as a POW, and say that he was really wasn't, I mean, you know, What world are you living in? Wow, how can you, you know, you know, what, where are you coming from, in your section about fairness? You say that if we're learning anything from the Coronavirus, it's that life is anything about fair, and that is brought a whole new meaning to the word injustice. Can you share the bigger picture with the listeners about what you're referring to as injustice?

Steve Giblin
Well, you know, what we think, you know, somebody that's people that have gone out, you know, so we've had people that have had the breakthroughs with, you know, they're vaccinated, and they still got COVID. And they, you know, they did everything that they were supposed to do. Right, then they end up in the ICU, and very few, but there are still that percentage that, you know, that small percentage that had died from it. They had underlying conditions or maybe they were just more susceptible to a virus that took their life. That is very unfair. It's very unfortunate. It's just like that, you know, the person that gets involved in a traffic accident and dies, they observed all the rules, all the traffic rules and everything else, but it was somebody else that had run into them and killed them. You know, that is unfair. That is you know, those are one of those things one of those scenarios in life that happened, that that is that's unfair. And it's unfortunate. You know, but we need to be resilient and be able to push through that and survive it.

Greg Voisen
Yeah. And And on that note, because you and I can't answer this question. It's unanswerable. It's worth thought and dialogue. But we don't know people's karmic experience. We don't know what was actually supposed stop. And, you know, we know the Buddha said, there's pain. And then there's the end of pain because a lot of the pain we bring on ourselves, and he wasn't referring to death. He was I we know about finitude, we're all going to have our final day. And finitude is something that every one of us that's listening is at some point gonna have to face. And whether it's a religious viewpoint or spiritual viewpoint, and I want to distinguish between the two, you have to have a faith in something greater than yourself. If you're ever, in my humble opinion, again, estimation, to be able to look at something like injustice. Because it helps you explain it away. Whether it's right or it's wrong, it helps you to explain it, it helps you to understand it, it helps you to understand why maybe something like that occurred. But we do realize that it is going to happen. And you you basically call, you mentioned that the word grit is defined as perseverance and passion for long term goals, or resilience in the face of failure, but also having deep commitments that you remain loyal to over many years. What advice do you have for the listeners, and given aspiring seamen about deep commitments and loyalty, because this is one where I, like you. I sit here and I say, Well, do I get attached to it or not. And what I mean by that is, people have made commitments to me and broken them. And that's the worst thing that anyone can do to me. Because I have a hard time forgiving when somebody gives me their word. Now, I understand that I'm the one that's attached and getting hurt by the fact that somebody did that to me, and not the other person, because the other person could care less. And so what would you talk about commitments and loyalty,

Steve Giblin
minutes and loyalty. And, you know, we've all I think nobody is perfect, we've all dropped the ball on, you know, on those things in the past, you know, my first my first perspective on this is, make peace with your past, you know, making peace with your past is forgiving people, without ever getting an apology from them, you know, you've got to, you know, be able to make peace with that. And in all honesty, we're all only in control of what is in our sphere, how we behave, how we project ourselves, our own personal actions, and we know what right looks like. So you know, loyalty and sincerity, you know, all these things. They, you know, that's that's what makes that commitment, and go in that loyalty. And the loyalty begins with your family, those interpersonal skills that you have within the family unit. And I think it's imperative upon, you know, whether it's a single parent or you know, dual parent household, you know, creating that loyalty within a family unit, and imprinting on on our kids. I speak about imprinting all the time to people that it's, believe it or not, we've got we've got this huge impact on the children that we are raising, and to include teachers, and you know, that spend a vast majority of their day with these kids. And that's, that's where it begins. That's where that loyalty begins. And your word is your bond. So you tell somebody, you're going to do something or you know, whether it be being someplace at noon, you know, or, you know, you're going to do something for them. You do it, don't over commit it to something that you say, Yes, I'm going to do it, but you know, that you can't, right, right, you know, say no, I can't.

Greg Voisen
And that's important. And I think as a leader, whether it's a leader in a company, its leader in the military It's a leader at home, it's a leader in the school. All of these various areas where there are leaders, whether you're a principal, a teacher, a mother, a father, an employer, the most important thing is your word. So what Steve just said is important. Watch before you commit. And if you're going to commit something, follow through with it, or at least explain why you can't. So that there's an understanding of what actually maybe occurred as a result of it. Because the worst thing you can do is elevate one's inspiration or whatever, as a result of some commitment you made. It's like, in the child's case, hey, we're going to Disneyland. Right? And then you never make it to Disneyland. So that became a dream forgotten, right? And a disappointment. And kids remember that, you know, adults remember that, not just kids, either. So you tell an interesting story about Pete, and how he made it to buds. Can you share the story with the listeners, I think it was an interesting one. It was in the book. And I think it sets in a different place for us to go.

Steve Giblin
He is one of the strongest personalities I've ever met in my life. I was very fortunate to have been a part of his life and have him in my life. He was my team leader when I first met him when I was a development group. And right off the bat, I was impressed with this guy. He was older than most. But when you get the development group, you're pretty much you've got older, seasoned, salty, your seals. Pete brought a different element with him. He was the son of a Navy chief, he was applied for and was accepted to Virginia Military Institute in the 1960s. He spent all four years you know, just grinding it out. And it's one of the one of the tougher universities that are in the country as far as a military institute. And all all of his summers he did, you know, more training and stayed there at VMI did their the things that they go and do during the summers, he spent very little time at home. When he graduated VMI. He was commissioned as a Marine Corps officer deployed to Vietnam, and was actually one of all over North platoon commanders. For him over and over in Vietnam. Pete came home, finished out his time in the Marine Corps, separated from the Marine Corps decided to give civilian life and not to give it a shot. And he missed the military. He missed the structure he missed. You know that, you know, that group of people that that social circle of military people that really only military people can truly understand. He decided to come back in but instead of going into the Marine Corps, he joined the Navy. And he went into being a salvage diving officer, which is no easy task in itself. He then decided, You know what, I want to do something harder, I want to do something, this really isn't my purpose. He wanted to be a seal. He kept on applying for buds and was pestering his his officer detailer who was a captain, several pay grades above him. You know, just to you know, he was physically fit. He was submitting all of his all of his proper paperwork and everything else, his appraisals, his, you know, evaluation marks were well above his peers. So any command that Pete was at, they did not want to let him go. This guy was he was a sailor sailor, you know, an officers officer, if you will. Finally, on a bet. This captain was talking to his Admiral, the head personnel detailer. Complaining about this, this Navy Lieutenant, this Lieutenant they kept on bugging him to go to buds. And the animal said, Well, what's the problem? Why won't you let him go? Well, I think he's too old. I don't think you'll I don't think you'll make it. And he says, Well, is he old enough to get in? He said, Yeah, by a year. Well, why don't we let him in? Why don't we let him go? Well, I just don't think he's gonna make it. He's too old. Well, who says, right, right. The admiral made the captain $100 bet. If you know, let Pete go. Let them go to buds and I'll make $100 bet that he makes it. Well, the captain lost 100 bucks. Pete made it through training.

So he got into the teams and he thrived. This was his place. This was his purpose. When he showed up to my assault team, he had to go through green team and other six month selection course, basically getting up to the tier one level. And basically, there's all that is just to learn the standard operating procedures of the command, but it's also very physically demanding. And at the time, Pete was older than you know, he was over 40 years old. So if you could imagine 40 years old going through an Assessment and Selection program, that's as demanding, as you know, any other higher level. You know, it's like trying out for the SWAT team or trying to be a hot shot firefighter at 40 years old. Yeah, it's hard and not, you know, very, probably less than 1% Make It Right, made it got into my assault team, and was just an incredible leader. After one year as an element leader, troop troop commander, he was elevated to team leader, and he just thrived. This was it. This was, you know, his Nirvana, if you will. We're out west in Arizona on a jump trip, parachuting, military freefall, for lack of anything better or skydiving military version. We were all under canopy coming into the drop zone and a dust devil just pretty much single they looked like it looked as though this dust devil singled out Pete and it collapses parachute. He fell to the ground with his combat equipment. Everybody kind of you know, we everybody landed around and people rushed out because it was it was a pretty high drop onto the ground. And he was struggling to get up. He thought he was struggling to get up just because of all of his equipment and being entangled in his parachute. He had a compound fracture and the bone was sticking out of the top of his boot. Long story longer, he's trying to recover, they send him back home from the hospital in Tucson. And when that was the nearest level one hospital, they send him home, he tries to heal and recover his leg ends up getting gangrene, he's trying to fight off the infection. And it's just not working. Doctors make the decision to amputate his leg below the knee. So at that point, he's at another crossroads in his career. There are no amputees within the SEAL teams, let alone probably the Navy, right. And he's just kind of beside himself. He wants to stay in this is his purpose. And a friend of his fellow VMI rat who's working for the Commandant of the Marine Corps. He hears the story through what they call the they refer to as the ratline. And he tells the Commodore the Marine Corps, four star general, and the general goes and talks to the four star admiral in charge of the Navy and says Hey, I hear you're gonna let this seal officer go. I want him back in the Marine Corps. He's a former Marine, I can use him. Well, that makes the the Navy admiral take a second guess what's happening. And they tell Pete that he's allowed to stay under certain conditions. And that is he has to pass the physical fitness training. Assessment, you know, the annual assessment that we do every year. So that's now it's game on. This is Pete's challenge with a prosthetic he has to pass this the annual seal fitness test. And that's swim, run, push ups, sit ups pull ups, you know, the like, he does it. He does it with flying colors. And you know that he went on to have a great career as a leader, and anybody that Pete has ever been in touch with as a leader. They just I don't I've never met anybody that's had a bad word against them. Really phenomenal leader. He retired as a captain retired at the top of his game. Unfortunately, he was commanding officer of extortion. 17 You know, at that command when extortion 17 went down, and that was the greatest loss of life within the Naval Special Warfare community. Not really a great capstone for a man's career.

Greg Voisen
Well, the interesting thing is, is that what you learned from Pete, perseverance, persistence, determination, sincere, high caliber person just all over all over the place, shining example for everybody else in your group, your battalion, whatever you want to refer to it as to to learn from somebody who had that much determination. I know I'm gonna have an upcoming interview with a guy by the name of NIMS, who's climbed the highest 14 peaks in the world in six months in six days and He says, Death is not an option. He said, The only way the mountain wins is if you give up. And that's the same thing with Pete. The only way anybody wins is if you give up. The minute you give up, that's what happens. I think that's a great analogy is perseverance. Continue on, you fall down, you get up, you start over, you go again, you go again, you go again. Now, it's insincerity, you state that the character is what defines most of us, all of us in life. What advice do you have for helping people build their character and get out of bad reputation.

Steve Giblin
Mindfulness and gratitude are the two words that first come to mind for me when it comes to sincerity. Gratitude, in being grateful for the circumstances that you're in, and the things that you're learning on a day to day basis, the circumstances you're in may not be the best. But you know, you're figuring it out, you're, you're doing your best to get through it. And the mindfulness part is, you know, being mindful, being mindful of what it is you're doing, and knowing what right looks like, and being able to navigate through the chaos that's in your life. You know, we control 50% of what happens in our life, if not a little bit more, our sphere that we can control is all we can control. Everything else is up to the other people on the outside of that sphere. If you're sincere and everything you do, you'll find that that bubble actually increases, and other people step into it. And they support you. So with, you know, and again, as you know, being being grateful for those people in your life, that are now helping you out and controlling what's in that sphere.

Greg Voisen
I agree. And I used to teach a course on purpose. And I remember telling people is your life by accident? Or is it on purpose, really define your purpose in your life? You know, when you talk about sincerity, and you talk about mindfulness and gratitude, yes, you know, we have freewill. And as you said, maybe that freewill is 50%, maybe it's more, I don't know what the number is, what I do know for certain is, certain things are in your control, but more is out of your control than is in your control. So it's how you deal with the things that are out of your control, that really define the character of the individual.

Steve Giblin
How do you react to those things that

Greg Voisen
come across? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Um,

Steve Giblin
I was talking to somebody the other day about, you know, they asked me, Do you think that the world has gotten more chaotic, and people have gotten more careless? And you know, about each other? And, you know, like, we talked about people in traffic, you know, that person that cut you off? How are you going to react to that person that cut you off? Take a step back, and think, gee, Was that directed at me? Did I do something to make them mad? Or are they just being mindless and careless? And the you know, it has nothing against me? So am I gonna stick my arm out the window and flip them off and lay on the horn? Or am I just going to go ahead and back off, create that distance between us and just go about my day? Yeah, and

Greg Voisen
again, that's about someone being attached to an outcome. And that outcome is the anger the frustration they wanted, or you can say, I'm not attached to that, or maybe that person is having a bad day. But if you're shifting your perspective, about what it is, and I get that we all get angry in traffic, it it's just part of it, it's it's life. One of the frustrating things, especially if you're running behind, you know, and those kind of things happen. You know, in your section, about example, you speak about the spouses and the children of veterans as the Forgotten lawyer of all the words and state that you see much the same thing in the new normal. What makes spouses of a war clan exceptional during war, and in the new normal

Steve Giblin
houses or that special breed that they they're the CO signers, on this blank check that the servicemen has signed? You know, their their name is right underneath his because they are allowing or his or hers. It doesn't, you know, I don't mean to attach a gender to that. The, you know, the service member that's going overseas. They don't know if if or when they're going to come back Right, they could be assigned to the most benign unit that is, you know, far back behind the front lines. And yet, they're okay. You know, he's a, you know, supply person or she's a, she's an admin person, and then a mortar or a suicide bomber takes them out, you know, those those things have happened, they do happen. And the spouse and the children that are left behind, it's very much, you know, they, they now have to pick up those broken pieces. And they have to put a life back together without that loved one coming home. And it's not easy, not by any chance, no, not by any stretch of the imagination, it's the very same thing with what's going on with this COVID. You know, we're saying goodbye to people at the front door of the emergency room, we're not able to go in, right, you know, you watch them go walking in to, you know, get handed over to, you know, a nurse or an attendant, that then tells you, you can't go any further. And that's it some, for some people, that's the last day ever saw their loved one, that's like dropping off your service member spouse, at the airfield, or saying goodbye to them on the pier is the ship yo sails away. So it's, you know, those those things are kind of intertwined. You know, as far as the emotions go, and the, you know, that how that person now has to live, if that if the other person never comes home?

Greg Voisen
You know, I mean, so that's a really good analogy, Steve, I mean, it is definitely a thought. I think some of the hospitals now are a little bit more lenient with that. But at the peak of the Delta thing, it was, you know, leave them off, you're not coming back in. And even the exception that the hospital that my brother was in used, but it made for us, well, I thought was exceptional. I mean, they let us in for like, a couple of hours, to be with him. You know, obviously, mask checked everything. And this was pre vaccination. So it was really quite unusual. But that, but the reality is, most people aren't getting that luxury. And I and I recognize that. And I, I love that analogy you make now you end that the chapter of the book, the last chapter with prescriptions for healing. And if you were to give the listeners three prescriptions, they could apply to their everyday life. What would they be, if you were to just pick three out of the book? What what are the ones that you think might help them the most as they forge forward on their journey, as you say?

Steve Giblin
So it's, um, it's, I'm not going to take from the list of the 10 essential qualities, because these all they all play into this, what I'm going to give you is, the first one I already talked about was making peace with your past. It so it doesn't disturb your future. And, you know, some of these some of these pearls that I've got, were given to me by my parents, who thankfully, my my father and my stepmother are still alive. When people think of you, that's none of your business. You know, you can't worry about what other people think of you. But if you're going out and doing the right thing every day, you know, and setting that example. And thinking about even those 10 essential qualities, you know, the sincerity, the fairness and forethought and things like that, you are going to be a better person. And if you go out every day to try to be a better version of yourself, every day, fewer people are going to think ill of you. Don't compare your life to others. A Comparison is the thief of joy. You know, you may not have what the person across the road, or people on the other side of town have. What you do have is what your circumstances are, and it's up to you to make them better. Mm hmm. And time heals almost everything. You just have to give it time.

Greg Voisen
Well, those are great bits of advice from the book, and great bits of advice from you, Steve, to the listeners. And what I want to tell my listeners is go pick up a copy of this book. We'll have a link walking in mud. Steve Gibson, and John land, a Navy SEALs 10 rules for surviving the new normal. We've been speaking with Steve about some of it this morning. But there's absolutely more in here that you can take away. Steve, it's been a pleasure having you on insight personal growth and talking to my listeners. about your new book about your personal journeys about Pete, and what you learned from Pete obviously made a huge impact in your life. And I just want to say no mistake, thank you have a happy holiday and enjoy. You know the rest of your journey, whatever it may bring for you.

Steve Giblin
Thank you, Greg, and thank you for having me on your show.

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