My special forces journey and why I left the military after 10 years

what's going on military cash flow family and today we're gonna talk about something a little bit different i've been asked uh several several times very recently um more so than than often is why did i join special forces but at the end of it why did i end up leaving right why did i put so much time and effort and energy into building out that military career and then why i ultimately elected to to leave to leave it all behind not even go to the guard right but just to cut off all ties especially after the coveted 10-year mark right and so today we're going to be talking about just that so if you guys want some more of this content that you're looking for a little bit more insight uh maybe our thought process is for why we selected uh a certain path within our career let us know but without further ado let's get right to it [Music] all right so let's just get right into it guys so for for those who have listened to some of the other podcasts either where i've been on or where we talked about it the the whole reason i joined the military off rip was to get money for college all right so i had actually went to college on an academic scholarship and i ended up actually losing that scholarship right i was out there partying too much my grades dropped too low i lost it so uh i was working simultaneously through college as well right i had multiple jobs but i realized that that tuition was pretty high so i had to figure out a way to to pay for it so i looked around i did my thing i googled i researched you know people don't know how to do that anymore they don't know how to look things up but i've looked i called people i interviewed with people and then i finally found out that the military had something called tuition assistance uh to the national guard okay so i made my call over there yippee kaye uh went talked to the marines talked to all that good stuff and then i realized that all right we've got to do a couple different tests we got to take that asvab test and from that asvab what it'll produce is a gt score and then they're going to tell me what job i qualify for i'm like man whatever look i'm just trying to get money for college all right no there's no there's at this point in my life i'm not living to be a patriot or anything of that nature uh so yeah man whatever i can get is cool and then they laid out a few options in front of me and they showed the signing bonuses for some of these i'm like what hell give me that one give me the one with the highest signing bonus i don't care how dangerous it is or not guess what it was guys it was 88 mike it was a truck driver yeah i was a truck driver so i said yeah give me that give me that right there so boom signed up for that now this was the crazy part guys i was about 19 just just turning 19 when i signed up for the military okay and i got on a plane to ship off to boot camp to basic training but guys this was the first time in my life that i was ever on a plane period you feel me i didn't travel as a kid i didn't i didn't go to these places um and visit family out of state or go on vacation family vacation we didn't have that right came from a very impoverished background so uh this is the first time i was ever on a plane and i'm like all right this is kind of cool you know a little nervous on a plane we get there boom i'm starting to meet people from all over the place right they start teaching us how to shoot move communicate whatever it's all basic training right then we go to the job training which was uh in fort leonard wood missouri lost in the woods missouri and we get out there and i mean now i've traveled to two different states because i've never traveled outside of texas either right two different states two different plane trips right i'm playing with these big trucks these big machines i'm like man this is kind of cool so we get back to college campus and i'm like all right because i'm in the guard and i say okay well uh we're doing this thing what else is available oh i now i hear about something called rotc and i go interview them i'm like yo what's this about well hey look you can come work with us we're going to train you up send you out to all these training camps and then if you're doing well you know uh we'll give you a scholarship essentially to pay for everything and then we'll get you to commission as officer so i said man this is this sounds kind of cool to me let's give it a try lo and behold i played around with that for a little bit and my first year ever in the military in the guard at that as an 88 mike i not only traveled to two or three different states i was already airborne qualified because i was one of the top pt studs you know as a young guy airborne and aerosol in less than 12 months so at this point in time in my life i'm like man this is the coolest thing that i've done you know year they played sports in high school cool but i never really traveled had my friends you know acted a fool in college and in high school yeah yeah but this was like some really high-speed stuff right so i set back and i evaluated my options and i said okay i'm about to graduate um i can choose the commission right i can go that route and i have a degree i can become an officer i can pursue a career in the civilian world now studying business i mean god knows what i would have done there right i could have been a manager somewhere manager at target or maybe pursue something higher or i can find something that is extremely challenging that will welcome me with open arms right those are the three options that i was kind of sitting down and evaluating and i thought about it long and hard and i really resonated with the idea of using this next few years to build out on life experiences so knowing that i wanted to focus on life experiences i had to think about what what kind of options or what my three options would really represent in that in that regard so yeah like a commission as an officer period let's put it like this i looked at civilian versus army and i realized right away that the army the military was going to be able to provide me ample opportunities to learn new skill sets and travel to places and pay me the entire time to do it so as a young kid coming out making sure i didn't have any college debt things of that nature i'm like hey yes this is going to be a life experience for me but understand it's a great financial decision as well because i'm going to be in a place where i got guaranteed income and i'm doing all of these things all of these experiences for free right or being paid to do it which is even better than free right so i said okay i'm definitely going to go to the military route i made that decision there now i laid out the option of going uh officer or trying something difficult now when i looked into the military's difficult roles as enlisted versus officer i realized a couple of different things changed one as an officer your career path is a little bit more defined for you you have to do a certain amount of years before you can apply for certain positions um you have to travel through certain positions before you can qualify for the next rank and things of that nature now with that being said it's very similar in the enlisted side but that wasn't exposed to me in the beginning so as i was looking on the enlisted side i realized that the enlisted soldier is a little bit more of the grunt for a lack of better words right we're the ones actually doing a lot of the work while the officer side of the house is making a lot of the executive decisions now again this is loosely translated all my listed folks y'all probably feel me officers don't do i work for a living yet got it gotta gotta calm it down right but nonetheless i had to make that decision i said yeah i can be this executive decision maker or i can be the person actually doing it and i said which one is going to be a little bit more uh experience filled if you will right now hindsight being 20 20. it's two different they're very experience filled uh career paths just a little bit different sides of the spectrum so lo and behold i started looking at it and i wanted to be a ranger at first cool i was going to do that thing and then i realized that because of the way that my bank account was set up no no because of the way that i had already joined and already served uh in the guard for a year whatever the case is i wasn't going to be able to transfer right into the rasp program as easily as i would have been able to go straight to uh selection right the selection and assessment program with uh uh becoming a green beret or special forces now at the time i didn't know what the hell green berets were i'm not gonna lie to you it's not like i grew up knowing what one what the military was or what each mos in each field was i just knew at that point in time i want to do something that was very challenging and rangers was my first choice just because that's what i knew and then i found and discovered special forces so as i dug in and did more research what i found out was that uh the the green beret feel the us army special forces field was really training somebody to be a diplomat and what do i mean by that they actually gave you cultural training language training they taught you how to handle yourself in different situations in different environments how to survive in different environments and when i looked at the two opportunities i said i mean this is a hands-down decision for me yes i can you know wreck it with the best of them out there and rangers are no joke don't get it twisted mad respect uh for the ranger regiment but i could have went over there and been a ranger right and did some high-speed stuff or i can be trained by the military to be a stand-alone independent diplomatic war fighter right this is this is me at 19 years old going through these thoughts right that's not me as as me as today right this was a decade over a decade ago that i was thinking in my head man i could do all of this stuff and be paid to do it boom easy easy decision for me at that point in time so i joined simple as that i joined i went to selection i knew that the worst case scenario for me was if i didn't make it uh through selection that i could still pursue uh the officer route right because i still had my degree i could go to ocs i could do a whole bunch of other stuff so i had a couple backup plans already kind of lined up but uh you know i said hey i'm gonna give it everything i got because this is what i really want to do in life go to selection lo and behold thankfully i was selected my first round in i don't know what they saw on me but hey they took it um and then i started the q course for those of you who aren't familiar with the special forces qualification course it is a at the time that i went through it it was a two-year pipeline they drastically reduced it now because of the need of personnel but it took me two years right um luckily i didn't fail any portions of the course i was able to get through it knocked it out yippee kaye and then i got to the teams all right and this is where the dynamic for me really started to shift so as a young naive man boy right i was a man but nonetheless young and naive i had what what i envisioned was going to be my military career right i was always physically capable uh the 300 plus bt stud all that good stuff uh shot expert all that good stuff you know fine and dandy um i always felt that i was always going to be ahead of the curve when it comes to my military progression because that's what i saw that's what i knew mind you being an ada mic in the national guard is significantly different than being a green beret right the quality of personnel that you're around and again no disrespect to eddie mike's i was there there are some great people there but understand that the selection process the qualification course that entire proving ground of over two years is required before you even dawn the green beret so the quality of individuals that are in the green beret pool they're all physically fit they're all slightly you know more intelligent they're all have these skill sets that uh are are unique right that are above norm so my whole thought process of me being able to stand out as an individual uh was quickly taken away and not taken away but quickly humbled and i realized that okay i have a long way to go to prove my worth in this community all right and so that's where that's the journey that's where it started from there so i began pursuing more training right i went to ranger school i actually went to ranger school after i was uh uh special forces because i understood the impact of that on my military career uh you know made sure i attended all the training events all the additional education requirements all everything i could to stand out from the crowd i made sure my pt was top notch and ultimately for me that is the the point where the decision started to shift was that i had a series of deployments that didn't work out again the way that i imagined so to be completely candid when we look at war when we look at combat let's we hollywood has done a great job of romanticizing it and making it seem very sexy but to be quite honest it's not it's not that sexy right and it's not a matter of fear and a matter of pride it's a matter of the sacrifice that you put up with the people that you're around it's a matter of the people that you begin to lose in your life that you've created close relationships with it's a matter of being able to absorb everything that you experience and not necessarily having an outlet or a way to explain it um to individuals that's the big stuff there um that we have to be aware of okay so as all of these things started to to kind of affect me a little bit differently i started realizing that okay i want to be in control of my career if understanding that these external influences are going to impact me in many different ways i want to make sure that i can make the best out of this experience still moving forward so what does that look like it looks like me getting the assignments that i want it looks like me getting um the positions that i want the opportunities the schools the training the so forth well lo and behold although the grass may be greener the grass is still grass it's still the army so with it still being the same ol same old it meant that i still had to be in a certain position uh about as being a certain rank right for a certain time period before i ever qualified for the next step right it still meant that there was people that had seniority because they were simply there longer it still meant that you know somebody can be placed into a position of leadership because they outlasted right because they stayed longer than their competitors it could be still a fact that just because somebody had a personal relationship with somebody who was above them then they could have had higher marks on their evaluations therefore putting them into the position right it's still the military now i'm not here to to bash any portion of the military or anything of that nature but what it really opened up my eyes to is that it is still a political system where you are to be quite transparent you're a pawn right you're a pawn in the big scheme of things now you can attempt to uh move your your career and whatever trajectory you want but let's just say hypothetically in a situation where leadership does not want you to move forward there's not much you can do because typically they're the ones that have to sign off on your approval to go to the training to get that new assignment to go over here and so forth and so on so once i kind of understood that as a holistic picture i realized that you know i originally joined for the experience not for the money not for the clout not for anything else for the experience at this point in time in my life my experience requirements or desires have been met now let's not get it twisted there are several things that i wish i still could have accomplished in the military but i understood in the grand scheme of thing time is the most valuable thing i wasn't worried about retirement you know spending an additional 10 years for retirement because after educating myself on finances i realized that i can create that in far less time than 10 years i could do that in two years three years four years and in the meantime i can also experience many other things in life without having that confinement of the military so ultimately i i love the time that i was in i loved the people that i served with i would not trade any of that experience for the world it allowed me to see the world in a whole new light it taught me skills like different languages different cultural uh experiences and exposures it positions very highly coveted positions in in some really outstanding places across the world so i wouldn't trade it for the world i really wouldn't but it was my time to hang the hat up it was my time to move on to the next portion of my life the next experience and now it's it's a beautiful opportunity we're now a part of the military castle family and you know i'm able to share this type of insight with you guys so what i will say is for everybody out there looking for their mos is to not only think in the short term but think a little bit further in life what do you want those experiences that you go through the skill sets that you learn how do you want it to impact your life in the future how do you want it to uh what skill sets is it that you want to be able to transfer over what lessons do you want to learn all that kind of stuff as you're deciding which mos may be the best one for you but that's a little bit of insight of why i originally joined and then why i ultimately left and hopefully you guys uh got a little bit more of the inside of the inner workings of mike g all right mike what am i thinking and hopefully though by me verbalizing that for some of you guys who may feel like you're you're ready to make that transition out but you haven't thought is it the right decision or not hopefully something that i said there can just give you a little bit more food for thought and for those who are looking to join same thing there so if you guys enjoy the content go ahead let me know leave some comments below if you guys want to hear some more stories whatever hey i'm an open book let me know in the comments below go ahead like share subscribe all that good stuff and until next time this is mike glaspe signing off

Channel: Military Cashflow

Views: 72,141

Keywords: special forces, Green berets, Special forces, Military, Special forces journey, My special forces story, My time with the green berets, My special forces journey, Ten years in special forces, Journey in the military, Green berets in the military, My time in the army, marine corps, elite special forces

Id: 9XA9Mo79OF0

Length: 19min 24sec (1164 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 01 2022