Garret Biss | Dec 6, 2024

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Garrett, welcome aboard to the show. So happy to have you today, Ari. [00:00:04] Speaker B: I'm grateful to be here. Thanks for setting this up. [00:00:06] Speaker A: How did you get to do a TED Talk? What brought you to that? [00:00:11] Speaker B: That's a great question. It's something I had in mind for a number of years and kind of had it on my list of 101 goals that I'm working on. And then it was just being at the right place at the right time and realized that I finally had the message. One of the reasons I think the opportunity didn't present itself before, because I didn't have the message that I wanted to share. So when I really got clear on what that message was, then I reached out and, you know, I don't know what everybody's philosophical belief is. The best I'll say is that the universe or something out there put an opportunity in front of me right at the right time. And I started researching how to get onto a TEDx stage and decided a good strategy would be to reach out to curators that are hosting events locally, that I could go check out a TEDx event. So I reached out to one, had a conversation with her, and she said, you know what? Our slate's full right now, but there might be a spot opening up, so hit me back in about a month. And I did. And she said, yeah, sure enough, next month we have an open spot, so if you're ready for it. So I dropped everything else I was doing and worked on refining that message, and everything worked out the way it was supposed to. [00:01:14] Speaker A: And I love the fact that it was intentional. [00:01:17] Speaker B: Right. [00:01:17] Speaker A: You didn't just fall into it. You work to get it. That's amazing. And I love the hundred listed. And we got to get back to that in a bit. That's absolutely delightful. What about. Was it live or was it recorded and then edited? [00:01:29] Speaker B: It was recorded. I believe they're all. I mean, maybe there's some events that are. That are done live, but it was recorded and then released about four weeks later. [00:01:37] Speaker A: And did you freeze in the middle, or was it just perfect? [00:01:42] Speaker B: No, I didn't. You know, strangely enough, I'd rehearsed it so many times in different places that when I actually got out on the stage, I don't remember delivering the talk. I was back in the green room afterwards, and I was like, hey, did I go already? Did I? Did I already have my turn? And they're like, yes, you just came off the stage. I was like, okay, well, I hope it went well. [00:02:03] Speaker A: You know, I speak to a lot of authors, a lot of, you know, people who've done TED talks and the stories that happen behind the scene are always hysterical. Karen Eber, she just froze in the middle. She had this huge thing, and she was, like, looking and thinking. It's like, so one of the tactics is, oh, fall on the floor. To just get yourself out of that. She's like. And then. Then afterwards, the speakers kind of figure out, like, oh, this is heavily edited, so nobody will know. Right? [00:02:31] Speaker B: That's right. [00:02:32] Speaker A: Such a wonderful thing. So, okay, that's wonderful. Thank you for sharing that. What did you. When you kind of remembered that you actually went. It came out. How were the responses? [00:02:45] Speaker B: It was a lot of great responses. They said I was one of the best or the second one of the top two presenters that day. There were 12 of us that presented that day. But it's very unnerving, I guess, when you have this message that you want to share that's something so personal and so deep and you feel so called that it needs to be shared. I was also wondering, like, is this going to land right? Am I articulating this right? Is it going to relate to anybody? And everybody that I spoke to afterwards, they were just, you know, it really hit home with them. It really struck a nerve with them or shared, you know, shared something with them that they found was profound. So that was great. You know, it was the first little bit of feedback that, okay, I got the message, right? You talk about authors and about creative or speakers. One of the things that I think about creative productions that we do, and this is just my personal belief about it, is that when we're really engaged in something creative and we are sharing a message, I believe that message isn't coming from me. I believe that I'm a conduit for that message. So if I'm writing a book, if I'm delivering a talk, and for me, when I get positive feedback, then that's not. It doesn't fuel my ego as much as you might think or as much as I might have expected, but it helps me feel that I articulated the message or I was a good conduit for whatever that message was that needed to be shared. So when I get, you know, good feedback, and then on the other side, if I ever get bad feedback about something, it's like, hey, man, that was my message. I'm just trying to relay it to you. It came from somewhere else. [00:04:08] Speaker A: I appreciate that. You know, it's impossible to write a book or do a TED Talk without giving a piece of your heart it's, it's. I mean, maybe it's possible, but it's. You know what, that's what most people do. So. So we're going to keep the audience in suspense a little bit here, and we're going to. Now go back to the beginning of your story. You joined Keep me honest, you're the Marines. [00:04:33] Speaker B: Yeah. Join the Marines in 1999. Had an opportunity to serve first over in Okinawa and then back in Washington, D.C. for a number of years before I was selected for a commissioning program and then went off to flight school. Spent a couple years flying the KC130 Juliet and then was offered an early retirement. [00:04:51] Speaker A: That's refueling, right? If I'm not mistaken. [00:04:54] Speaker B: That's correct. So in the Marine Corps, it's a little unique. We have C130s. The other branches of the Air Force has C130s as well, but we use ours for the Marine squadrons. They use the C130s for every possible mission that a C130 can do. So in the Air Force, you might have, you know, a refueler squadron or an air drop squadron or logistics squadron, but in the Marines, we use them for aerial refueling, for logistics, for dropping paratroopers, for, you know, long, like long haul cargo. And there's also an attack variant that we'd use for close air support. [00:05:24] Speaker A: Okay, I want to go a little bit to the beginning here. What on what made you join the Marines? Like, what was going through your head? And it's like, yeah, I'm going to be a Marine. [00:05:37] Speaker B: It's a good question. So when I was even in high school, a couple of things really kind of led me down this path. First and foremost, there was some indicators in my youth that I might not amount to much or might take some detours and get into some trouble and send me off on a bad direction. So with that in mind, not knowing what I wanted to do in the future, if I really ever would amount. [00:06:01] Speaker A: To much, my audience is going to be like, no, Ari, you're a bad interviewer. Indicators. Ask him about the indicators. Give us an indicator. [00:06:10] Speaker B: Well, I don't know. You know, some. I had some friendly people that wear blue uniforms that got to know me and, you know, just some, some. Some good, fun, adolescent youthful behaviors. Experimenting with some things that probably weren't going to lead me down a good path for long. I'll let the audience fill in the. Fill in the blanks with imagination. You're probably correct. But there was this one quote that I heard, and I'd heard it a Lot of times before. But I remember hearing it once, and this is the quote. It's often said that once a Marine, always a Marine. [00:06:38] Speaker A: Yes. [00:06:39] Speaker B: And what resonated with me was I was like, man, I don't know what I'm going to do for the rest of my life. I don't even know what I'm going to do professionally. But if I go off and I serve in the Marine Corps for four years, at least I can hang my hat on that. So if everything falls apart after that, at least I have something that I can be proud of and have an experience to look back on. Another thing that I noticed was whenever I was talking to an elderly person that had been in the military, I noticed even at a young age, that when they started talking about their military service, even if it was decades prior, something about them lit up. You know, they had these vivid memories of this very influential and paramount experience in their life. And though I didn't really understand what that was, I knew the only way I would really understand it was to have a similar experience. So with some curiosity, you know, kind of led me in that direction. [00:07:27] Speaker A: Yeah, there's. There's. You know, there's nothing that I have experienced to that level since I've left the military. [00:07:35] Speaker B: It's. [00:07:36] Speaker A: It's an incredibly unique experience. I would agree with that. I mean, you know the saying, right. You can take the man or the woman, whatever, out of service, but you can't take the service out of the. Out of the person. And, Garrett, to be honest, looking through your career, I think you're the epitome of that. You have dedicated your life to service in many different ways. What happened when you. I'm gonna skip over this, and I apologize to my audience in advance, but you left the Marine. You had your first day in civilian clothing. I just. By saying that, I feel the goosebumps. [00:08:11] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:08:11] Speaker A: What did you feel like? What was. What was going through your head? What were the emotions? [00:08:16] Speaker B: Well, I noticed that there was a lot of things that I was used to that started to fade away or disappear completely. There was a sense of identity. You know, I knew who I was when I. As a Marine. I knew who I was in uniform. [00:08:29] Speaker A: Yes. [00:08:29] Speaker B: Without that uniform, I didn't really know who I was, what my role was in the world, or how the world outside of the military really operated. And it was really strange because I was still living in the same house, still shopping in the same community, still going out to the same restaurants. But something about the whole experience really shifted. So that loss of identity and really the fear. So that the other thing that started to disappear was this confidence. I knew that I was. I knew what was expected of me as a Marine. I knew how to show up and how to perform my duties as a Marine. But without that role and without knowing that the things that translated to value in the Marine Corps, not knowing if any of that would translate to value outside of the Marine Corps or in the civilian world, this sense of confidence and direction that I had began to disappear. And then lastly, the sense of belonging. So, you know, and we talk about this a lot, and you know this from military experience, but when you're in that, when you're part of a unit, when you're serving with your brothers and sisters in arms, there's a real sense of belonging. And I didn't realize how fundamental that was for our life and how important that sense of belonging was. So losing all of those things, I lost so much of myself, and it really put me into a dark, you know, a dark downward spiral, which, unfortunately, too many veterans experience something similar to that. [00:09:48] Speaker A: Gareth, you did an amazing job in, I think, identifying, articulating, and explaining three incredibly important aspects of what it means to be, you know, you know, a person in service. The. I think it's incredibly difficult for anybody who hasn't served to understand what that disconnect creates, and it's a shit example. But, you know, a lot of people, you know, they're in a job, you know, professional job for six, seven, eight years. If you ask them, oh, please. You know, you're meeting them for the first time. Oh, how are you? Who are you? What do you do? You know, they introduced themselves as their job. Oh, I'm a consultant. Right. So. So, I mean, that's the best analogy that I can have. And that was me. I did consulting for Siemens for eight years, and I was. My job. I was. That was my personality, even to a certain degree. [00:10:40] Speaker B: Right. [00:10:41] Speaker A: When I left that role, I had my second mental breakdown, maybe, like. And I came to say, oh, I'm a consultant, but I wasn't anymore. I was like, well, who am I? What am I now? That is probably just 1%. A fraction. A small, small fraction of what happens when you leave service. It's. It's really a. A identity crisis. Would you agree with that? Is that a fair statement? [00:11:05] Speaker B: Absolutely. Yeah, I certainly agree. That's a good way to say it. And when you think about, you know, think about how profound or more profound this might be for a service member. [00:11:13] Speaker A: Yes. [00:11:14] Speaker B: Consider the time of their life that they're joining the military. Most service members, they join right after high school, right after college. And this is still a developmental stage of the human experience and of us. I mean, even our brain is still coming online really. Our prefrontal cortex is still being developed. Our identity, our sense of meaning, our sense of values, these are all being developed. So for an individual to develop all of those things in the context of their identity of military service and then have that stripped away from them, I believe that's why it is more profound and why more veterans struggle with that transition than other counterparts struggle with different transitions. A lot of similarities, but I, I think it cuts a lot deeper and has a more drastic effect because of that identity that's stripped away. [00:11:59] Speaker A: It's a hundredfold, if not a thousand fold. I completely agree, and that's why I said my example is stupid. But it's the best way I can think to convey to our audience what this actually means. This other aspect of confidence is also unclear. The. If you think about your military experience, it is completely non trivial that that translates into any kind of civilian job. Like, why would flying a helicopter help me? Like, you kind of need to think through that, right? So you, you kind of come into this, like, new chapter of your life and you're like, well, what can I provide? Is that fair? [00:12:39] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right. I mean, we, we understand the metrics, we understand the framework for the way that we show up and the value that we provide in the military when that's taken away. And that could be similar to any professional transition. If you go from into something drastically different, it's like, I've come to understand the metrics. I know how I'm being measured. I know what I need to do to provide value or to grow or to get that next promotion. And when all of that's taken away, it's like, okay, where am I now? And I'm out in an abyss. And one of the way I think about it is it's much like having a second adolescence. If our adolescence is that time when we transition from high school or academia or college into the real world, there's a big shift there and we got to find our way again. To have to do that again in your 30s or your 40s when you're not realizing that it's going to be so profound. That can be very jarring and unsettling for veterans as they transition. [00:13:28] Speaker A: Well, I would argue it's a thousand times worse because you don't have the hopefully, you know, supporting parents that you Know, many adolescents do have. You don't have the school system, which is kind of knows what, you know, the raging hormones that. I have three kids. So I'm right there right now. But I would argue it's way, way worse than adolescence. So, again, it's just a. It's a great analogy, but it doesn't do justice. I think, I think. I think the third one that you mentioned, and that's belonging. It sounds like what's belonging? So. So we need to convey to the audience the deep, deep, deep feeling of what it means to entrust your life basically to somebody as opposed to, like, oh, you know, corporate culture in America. Oh, we're a family in this company. That makes me throw up in my mouth, by the way. What is that deep sense of belonging? What does that mean? And what is the feeling to lose that? [00:14:24] Speaker B: Yeah, so there is, I think that the bonds that we forged in the military just through the experiences, you know, through this voluntary, for one, in our serve in our country, it's always been a voluntary service. So to stand forward with other individuals that also volunteered to do difficult things, to go into harm's way, to make sacrifices for something greater than themselves, and then to go through training evolutions, to go through pre deployments, deployments in very austere environments, very difficult situations. But that joint suffering creates a depth, you know, a greater depth of bond. And then also understanding that individuals to your left and right have also volunteered to sacrifice either their comfort or in some cases, their life for you and for those people that are also a part of your unit. And that, yeah, that really develops a deeper sense of connection. And, you know, even to this day, I've been out of the marine Corps almost 10 years now. I still feel a different sense of comfort and familiarity when I'm around other veterans. There's. There's certainly something there. [00:15:27] Speaker A: So the biggest compliment I ever got was I would go to war with you. What that means is it's the level of trust and that I would put my life in your hands. That's what it means. Right. It's a level of trust that is just not comparable to anything else that I think I've ever experienced. [00:15:51] Speaker B: And not only is it something that's expressed, but it's also followed through on. It's one thing to have a buddy saying, hey, man, if you're ever in a tough spot, give me a call. But in the military or through service, you actually have to follow up on that. It's like, hey, look, here you are in this pre deployment with me and we're going off together. So it's not just a gesture, it's not just an offering or a platitude. It's actually something that's followed through on, which makes it sink in a lot deeper. [00:16:14] Speaker A: So I deeply, deeply appreciate you kind of, you know, simplifying or explaining these things that I think are non trivial because it's important for this next part. Once you started your civilian life, what. [00:16:30] Speaker B: Happened so that I noticed a void right away and I didn't really understand what that was. And there were a couple things that I was aware of or that were. That I was thinking about. One was I became more. It became more and more apparent that loss of sense of belonging. Also, as I tried to integrate into or assimilate into a new. A new environment and a new community, I quickly realized that, you know, let's be honest, there's certain things about veterans. You know, we're cut from a different cloth. There's some things about us or things that are brought out of us through military service that aren't really appreciated or seen the same way or valued in the civilian world. Whether it's that the level of intensity that we're. That we're used to bringing to everything that we do. Because in the Marine Corps, everything is seen through the lens of life or death. [00:17:15] Speaker A: That's right. [00:17:15] Speaker B: Every decision that we make or everything that we engage in, it's looked at. I know. Is this going to save lives on the battlefield? Is this going to make us more lethal? And every decision is made in that context. Well, that's not a context that translates very well to a retail establishment or working in an office building, or it's the, you know, or it's the dark sense of humor that we have and the things that we laugh about and can joke about that help us deal with some of that discomfort while we're in that. But when you bring these parts of your character and parts of who you've become to the civilian world and you realize this isn't as acceptable in a new environment, well, the challenge with that is it invites us to begin to hide parts of ourselves. It invites us to wear a mask so that we can fit in, so that we can feel accepted. The challenge with that is as we establish these new connections, people aren't connecting with us, they're connecting with this mask that we're wearing. So not only does that prevent us from experiencing that bond or that sense of belonging, but it also really promotes a sense of shame or a defectiveness in us because here we are, like, okay, I've got to show up as a version of myself in order to be good enough. What does that say about who I am? So all of these things continue to erode that sense of confidence, that sense of self worth and, you know, and kind of going on that slide. The big. The other big thing that we lose is that sense of meaning. So that meaning that we have with the work that we're engaged in or with that sacrifice that we're willing to make. I always used to think of meaning as something that was positive and provided context and direction for the things that we're doing. But what I've learned more recently is that this is from the work of Dr. Viktor Frankl, who talks about man's search for meaning. He says that meaning also provides our capacity to endure suffering. If we don't have a strong sense of meaning, then even the normal things that might come up in our life are much more challenging, if not impossible to endure because we've lost that sense of meaning that can pull us through it. [00:19:10] Speaker A: It's incredibly difficult going from what I do saves lives to what I do profits the shareholders. [00:19:17] Speaker B: Right. [00:19:17] Speaker A: It's. It's a. It's a crazy transition. [00:19:22] Speaker B: Right. [00:19:22] Speaker A: It kind of puts your whole existence into a question mark, like, why, what. What's happening here? What was your. What was your personal low point once you kind of were in the midst of all this crisis? [00:19:40] Speaker B: Yeah. So I got to a place, and fortunately I had an awareness that some of the behaviors that I was doing in order to cope or deal with this, with the challenges I was facing, probably weren't going to set me up for much success in the long term. So I'd returned to, you know, using alcohol, using behaviors to deal with this discomfort that I was feeling. And then really what the. What the tipping point was, was coming to this realization that when I thought about the 22 veterans a day that were committing suicide, I couldn't tell you with certainty that I wasn't going to become one of them. And when the thoughts of committing suicide or harming myself no longer shocked me, that really, that fortunately, that part, that it didn't scare me or it didn't seem out of the realm of possibility. That's what shocked me. And I said, all right, something's going wrong here, and I don't know how bad this is going to get, but something needs to change. [00:20:34] Speaker A: And you took a different approach. Tell us about that. And also, why didn't you go kind of down the regular path? [00:20:43] Speaker B: Yeah. So what I, you know, a lot of individuals that, you know, if they're questioning whether they have a bad relationship with a substance or behavior, more of a traditional path would be to seek clinical treatment or go. Go away to seek a solution to helping you, you know, remove a substance or behavior from your life. Well, even at this point, I didn't see any of the behaviors. I didn't see the alcohol or anything else I was doing. I didn't think of that as the problem. I knew that the problem was something deeper. So I didn't want to just go address this, you know, arbitrary substance that I was using because I knew that removing that substance alone or in, you know, by itself, that wasn't going to help deal with whatever I was struggling with. So fortunately, around that time, I became connected with a great mentor and went through some, some coaching and had some support that kind of took a different approach. Instead of removing a substance or behavior, it helped me start doing some of the repair work on the loss of confidence, the loss of positive identity, that loss of meaning and purpose in my life. And what I found was, as I made that, those repairs and as I regained some of that confidence and found a new purpose and found new meaning in life, that this desire to escape or numb was going away, I no longer had this craving or this call for things. I now saw that those things I might want to indulge in would take too great a cost and take me off this path, this new path that I was creating, that I wanted to really invest myself in. [00:22:07] Speaker A: There is something absolutely brilliant in my perception of what you just said, because if I have to dumb it down, you're saying there were the symptoms, right? Alcohol, drugs, bad behaviors. But then there was the root cause. And the root cause was this. I don't know if trauma is the best word, but it's this trauma that caused all these symptoms. And we kind of talked about identity, confidence, belonging, meaning. Right. And what you decided to do is instead of going, you know, addressing the symptoms, you decided to face head on, which is incredibly brave, the root causes. So there's something brilliant in the way that you've structured this, in how you're explaining it and how you attacked it. What was the result? What did the journey look like? [00:22:56] Speaker B: Well, a little bit more on that. So one thing, it's a little controversial, maybe in the. In the treatment world or in the addiction world, but I don't think that any substance or behavior out there is good or bad. I think that a person's relationship to that substance or behavior Is what can be. Is what can be bad or what can be challenging? [00:23:12] Speaker A: Okay, hold on. You need to explain that. What do you mean by the relationship to. [00:23:18] Speaker B: So if somebody. So if somebody is relying on something external to them in order to create or synthesize an internal response, that's where the challenge comes in. I love the definition of addiction that's given by Dr. Gabor Mate. He says that addiction manifests in any behavior that a person craves, finds temporary relief or pleasure in, has a negative consequence because of, and yet has difficulty giving it up. This can be alcohol. It can be Netflix binging. It can be social media. It can be workaholism. It can be any behavior that a person craves because they're trying to get away from or relieve some pain that's inside of them. So I don't think that a substance or behavior out there is good or bad. I think that when somebody develops this relationship that they need something external to their body in order to create an internal healing or an internal numbing of pain. That's where the problem comes in. [00:24:15] Speaker A: So this is incredibly important and I think incredibly insightful. So I want to give another layer here to kind of dumb it down even more. And I apologize. But I think this is really important. What you're basically saying, keep me honest here, because I'm putting words in your mouth, is that the relationship to a substance or a behavior is fulfilling a need. [00:24:40] Speaker B: Absolutely. [00:24:41] Speaker A: You can fulfill that need in many ways. Right. And if instead of kind of taking away the fulfillment of the need, which is the substance abuse, for example, what you can do is you can push out the substance abuse by fulfilling the need in a different way. So if we kind of think about it as, you know, a bottle full of, you know, dirty water, we can empty the dirty water, or we can fill the bottle with clean water. Either way, it kind of solves the problem. [00:25:10] Speaker B: That's right. Yeah. It's two kind of different approaches. And sometimes both of these approaches combined is the best path for somebody to move forward. Another way I like to explain it is if you had. If you had a smoke detector in your room right now and it started going off, you could go over and push the silence button on the smoke detector. If it started going off again, you could remove the batteries from it. That's a lot like what happens when we reach out for a substance. You know, if we're feeling something inside, that's something that it's trying to be expressed or wants to be addressed. If we have a need that's not being met. If we have some pain, if we have some lingering effects of a traumatic experience, that's something that's trying to be expressed. And if we don't deal with that, but we just go grab a substance or we take a drink, because we know that thing will shut up for a time, right? That's not going to lead us to a better place. Now some. You know, and. And really where people get wrapped up in and caught in the chains of addiction is when they've relied on something like that. They've relied on drinking that drink or smoking that thing, or you are taking that pill for so long that their own ability to overcome that or to face some of those challenges has atrophied to the point where they can no longer do it without that substance. And that's really when people are in the worst places in the chains of addiction. [00:26:24] Speaker A: You went through your own journey and struggle with addiction. What was the next step Once you kind of filled that void with something else, what was that something else for you? And what did it lead to? [00:26:39] Speaker B: What I got really excited about was starting to learn more about some of the traditional tools and processes and resources that people were using for dealing with addictive behaviors. And what excited me, I mean, it sounds weird to say it excited me, but excited me to see how much I had learned and how much had benefited me. The tools and everything that had benefited me that were absent in a lot of what my friends and colleagues were being introduced to in a traditional treatment route. It excited me because I thought, man, what. What would happen if we could introduce some of these things to complement the work that other individuals are doing with their clinicians, their therapist, or through treatment. How much better could that help people's lives become? One of the saddest things I see is somebody who struggles with the substance or behavior, and they go and they get treatment and they make some changes, and they remove that substance or behavior from their life. But they never deal with that root cause. They never deal with the pain inside. So now what their life looks like is I've removed my number one coping mechanism, and now I'm just white knuckling it, Trying my hardest not to fall prey to temptations or to cravings. And to me, that's not the way that somebody should live their life. That's consuming so much energy and so much intention, Just trying to avoid something that's harmful for you. Let's get to a place where you can invest that energy and attention into creating the life that you want or making the impact that you want? [00:28:04] Speaker A: Absolutely. And what. What did that look like for you? [00:28:07] Speaker B: So I started. I took a lot of the things that were most helpful to me that I'd picked up through studying applied positive psychology and working with my mentor, and started to put some programming together to offer it to individuals again to either. You know, for some people, maybe they weren't at that place where they thought they were diagnosable or really had a challenge, but they knew that they wanted to make some change in their life. They knew that there was some substance or behavior that was maybe holding them back from what they wanted to experience. And. And I started offering that. And then about 18 months ago, I came to this realization that some of the work that I was doing that was very, you know, it felt great to do it. I realized that there was this audience that I had set aside and had been ignoring for a period of time. And I think it was necessary. I had to go out there and experience some things and pick up some things and learn things. But what I decided to do is, hey, it's the veteran community. It's the veteran population that I understand the most, that I care about the most and really want to help, empower and support. [00:29:06] Speaker A: And what does that look like? So who do you meet? What is. If you can anonymously share one of these stories? [00:29:14] Speaker B: Yeah. So, I mean, for this journey, I mean, really what it came to me was creating this context and helping veterans that might need help or want help realize that it's okay to reach out for it. And one of the things that this is really what sparked the TEDx talk was I wanted veterans to understand some of the things that were happening in their life to create that pain that was inside. And what, what the. The conclusion that I've come to, when I really believe, and this is the message I try to deliver in my TEDx, is that regardless of what a veteran experiences while they're in the service, that transition from military service itself can be traumatic. [00:29:52] Speaker A: Absolutely. [00:29:53] Speaker B: And this is, you know, and I think it's so important for us to share because for me, when I was in that dark place, when I was really struggling and suffering, I was thinking back to my military service, and I was like, yes, I was in combat. I'd been deployed, I'd done a lot of things, but I couldn't think of one thing that was necessarily traumatic. However, I was experiencing a lot of these symptoms of PTSD and post traumatic stress. I almost wish that there was one explosion or one event that had happened so I could know what to Take to a therapist and know what I could work through and it would kind of provide hope, but not knowing something that I could pinpoint or not really understanding why was in pain. And while I was struggling, it really took away a lot of hope that things could change or they could get better. One of the analogies I often share is if you and I went out for a long run today or we went to the gym and really worked hard at the gym and we were sore for a couple of days, we wouldn't worry about that because it would make sense. We'd know why we were sore. We'd like, all right, our muscles are just repairing and we'd know that in a couple days it's going to go away. Well, if you find yourself in pain and you have no idea what got you there, it can be really hard to understand or even have hope that things are going to get better. So that's a big thing. And you know, just one thing that really reinforced the value of this message for me. I was sharing this with a group of mental health professionals, one of whom was a Vietnam veteran, and he said, man, I've been struggling with something inside for decades since I got back from Vietnam, and I never really could put a face or a name to what was creating that void or creating that suffering until he heard me express it through that message of the TEDx talk. So that's just one example. You know, if you don't have hope that things can get better, if you don't understand the situation that you're in, then it can be really hard to understand that there's a pathway out of it. [00:31:33] Speaker A: I'll mention that the Vietnam warriors, they weren't even welcomed home, right? In fact, what they got was they were spat in their faces, they were protested against. There was no thank you for your service. It just, it wasn't that time. And, you know, that's a part of our history I think that we need to remember. And if you ever see a Vietnam warrior vet, tell them welcome home. Because that's what they did not hear when they came home. [00:32:04] Speaker B: Right. [00:32:06] Speaker A: Garrett, I appreciate you so much. Thank you for your service. There's one scripted, and not just your military service, but really what you're doing today in helping vets. There's one scripted question that we have in this show and it's a difficult one. If you had to go back to 20 something year old Garrett, what would you advise him? [00:32:34] Speaker B: I'd say just keep faith that the challenges and the obstacles and the hard times that you're experiencing or that you're going to go through, there's a reason for it. And just look for the meaning that you can derive from any of the struggles that you'll face so that you can do something with it. One of the worst things is when somebody suffers a horrific experience or just any dark times in their life, and they can't grow from it. And I think if we can look for ways to grow from some of the challenges, then that helps us continue to evolve, and it will help us maintain or keep that momentum through the life and, you know, onto those goals and onto those things that we want to achieve. [00:33:13] Speaker A: Gareth, thank you so much. I appreciate you coming on the show today. [00:33:17] Speaker B: Thank you.