Transcriber: Eriko Tsukamoto
Reviewer: Hiroko Kawano 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." Well, 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 Redmond,
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're 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. And I know so many of you in the audience
are listening and thinking to yourself, "Oh, my God, I cannot relate to this. I can't relate to be
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. (Laughter) 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 - 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." [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 4 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 prognoses - 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. 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 into 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. (Laughter) And we signed it. (Applause) We signed it "the management" because we felt like, you know, it needed this level
of credibility or something. (Laughter) It is amazing - the power
of positivity over negativity. It is 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. 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. (Laughter) 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 is at this point that you
are starting the process to move forward. 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 "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 the 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. And that's when 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. Number four - choose a direction
and communicate it. And this is absolutely critical because when you have a life ambush
and you're on the X, you are never on the X alone. Your family and kids
get pulled onto the X with you. Your spouse is on the X with you. If it is a business ambush,
your employees, colleagues, 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 the process without 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 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. [Who gets off Fastest Thrives] 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. (Laughter) 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 happen. Instead, you have to figure out how to become the best version
of your new you - your new 100%. And I created something called
the Pentagon of Peak Performance, and I looked at it, and over the last 12 years, I focused physically, mentally,
emotionally, socially, and spiritually, and it brought me to this spot right here. 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. (Applause)
