Robert O’Neil Speech

nobody gets to leave the planet oh we have the perfect plan but what we learn is the only time the perfect plan exists is in the planning room what you leave to do your job a guy by the name of Murphy shows up and everything changes a prime example I just said I wasn't going to talk about it but the bin Laden raid we had three weeks to prepare for the mission to kill Osama bin Laden we had the best tactical minds in the world coming up with a perfect plan we came up with the perfect plan and then we reversed the perfect plan every single day with helicopters day and night on a site that look like his house we get done with that twelve hour a day go back to the hotel we're staying and if we had a to scale model of bin Laden's house if we would talk about the perfect plan of one night I got a Wednesday one of the very tired bosses said what's the worst thing that could happen and a meeting immediately the youngest guy in the room said the helicopter can crash in the front yard and roll it what the and he got all nervous he's kind of backpedaling he's like well I don't know well should we talk about that for 30 seconds and that's exactly what happened and we were able to take the potentially catastrophic event and turn it to something very positive not because of our perfect plan that never came close to fruition it was because of our preparation we were good because we learn how to take emotion out of the decision-making process you know too often your initial reaction is the wrong reaction and it's important to take a second even if a second Saul you have to make an informed decision the way that I can apply that is it's right that really mean text or that nasty email do not have sent for 24 hours if you're still mad about it that might be it might be worth it but not right now I would tell my guys women in combat don't react to respond and the fourth thing is no matter what we never quit no matter how bad it got we never quit I've seen people now in the private sector ninety five percent of the way to my long-term goal and have a bad day or a series of bad day and throw their hands in the air that's it I'm done with this project I quit you are not having a bad life you're having a bad day and are you really having a bad day or are you just having a bad moment then you're milking into a bad day it's truth so we need about this the hard way I need to get a slideshow out from here to school that everyday museum went through called basic underwater demolition SEAL training or buzzed and buzzed essentially the hardest training in the world very very difficult to get through but it's not difficult to understand it's not complex it's an outdoor slab of concrete where they torture you not to school you know a thousand push-ups a day a thousand sit-ups and an thousand flutter kicks a day we code this out to a concrete slab a grinder on each corner of the grinder we had these boats full of ice water just to let the students know no matter that we're in Southern California I can keep it as cold as I want for as long as I want we used to do stuff in seal training they would put us in this water and they would know how long they can keep us in there to get hypothermic and then to dry us off and pull us out and put us on the sand dunes and make we call the wind dummy and that means the wind is drying you off dummy you know spike Jo's they would take our temperature you know we found out the difference between a normal thermometer and a rectal thermometer the taste so that's a kind of ridiculous stuff they did here we would actually it was a mile from where we would do this to the chow hall so we get to run six miles a day just to eat on top of the additional 12 miles of david' running with boats on our hands carrying every long stuff like that now they're they're very very creative with the limited resources the only there's only one thing easy to do them that they had is saying you might have heard of it from Navy SEALs the only easy day was yesterday yesterday was hard the only easy thing to do there is quit they actually encourage quitting they make quitting easy I remember bus being so bad that um I had a past I'm definitely from somewhere I don't have a future I'm just going to be in hell that's what it felt like I thought I could make it all and if I quit if I couldn't right now I can make it all end I get a warm shower one of the dry bed asleep and doughnuts when I wake up after 12 hours now what's cool about this course though we learned that it doesn't matter what you look like it doesn't matter where you're from you can do anything you want if you keep a positive attitude and nor the negativity we also learned that this system works 85% of the Navy SEAL of the sailors who try out for this don't make it through the system works again because of the people skills because of the instructors every instructor there is a Navy SEAL and then through the training they know what it's like and there are traits that are common of people who've been through training like this one once right believe it or not is a sense of humor because it gets so bad and I'm sure you've experienced this in your life it gets so bad if you can't laugh at yourself like what horrible decision that I make in life to get to this position you're gonna lose your mind so uh don't be afraid to enjoy yourself every day that's good advice full of life wake up with a positive attitude give someone a hug and a kiss because thinking about this none of us are getting out of this alive I work on TV quite a bit I don't believe a lot of the scientific polls but I'm pretty sure 10 out of 10 people die so get a cocktail after the species have some fun right I know I'm going to should I might be drinking up here you don't know so seals are pretty funny we learn about this the first day because we had 227 sailors that wanted to become Navy SEALs we didn't know what we're supposed to do so they brought a Navy SEAL on a stage to explain it was what to expect for the next eight months of our miserable lives he came walking in on stage looking like a Navy SEAL camouflage pants blouse to the boots a tight blue t-shirt and Golda says unity seal instructor the guys ripped short sleeves so tattoos down to his knuckles he is the Navy SEALs course obviously ridiculously good-looking and he's got a ball cap pulled down over his eye so we can't even see his eyes and we're looking at him like you're looking at me except we were terrified no idea what he's about to say and we he do that - because you know he'd been there before he'd been scared so he just stood there in the silence then he broke the silence by saying looking good today gents not you mate I know you think I live a little tired it's because I am tired I was up all night I gotta get my wife out of jail she was arrested for shoplifting earlier that afternoon we were leaving the mall together and she had her arm around me security thought she was trying to steal an Anatomy charts so we're sitting there terrified like what is this obvious psychopath even talked about again he was just bored but then he got motivational senpai look I know you guys have read the books seen the movies regardless of what you've been told this course is not impossible so I would never ask you to do anything impossible but I will ask you to something very hard followed by something very hard follow my something even harder day after day after day for eight straight months and that sounds like a lot to get from now to eight months from now but don't think about it that way because that is not how you achieve a long term goal do it like this wake up in the morning on time make your bed the right way brush your teeth these are little victories make it to the final a.m. workout on time as we are beating you do not think about the pain concentrate on your next goal what's breakfast after breakfast make it to lunch after lunch your next role is dinner after dinner do everything you need to do to get back inside that perfectly made bed and because we took the time in the mornings and making her bed the right way regardless of how bad today was and it will be bad tomorrow's a clean slate tomorrow's a fresh start and when you feel like quitting which you will do not quit right now that's emotion quit tomorrow you keep doing that in that time all you need to do to get from not a graduation today is not do one thing no matter what never quit and you'll be fine so think of a way to just never quit we've seen your stories sorry test every single day I'm telling stories about pass or fail or for completion or time it they didn't a lot of times they didn't make a lot of sense they weren't hard to understand we had the 50-meter underwater swim here's a test you got to do it it's simple to understand come to the edge of the pool jump in the deep end feet first go underwater do a front-flip do not kick off the side that's gonna have the distance of a football field without breathing fast we had a test where they would tie her hands behind her back to her feet together and throw us in the deep end for now or whatever and - all you're doing is exhaling to sink or floating for ten minutes was a very difficult time swimming hundreds of meters they would throw stuff in the pool you need to go pick up with your teeth there wasn't really a point to the test but you start to realize all they're teaching you through negative reinforcement is that the panicking is not going to help so just stay calm you know you can stay calm here you can stay calm in a lot of situations I actually started to find that in relaxing because that was an hour of every day where no one get yell at me but I want to talk about a funny test we had that we have it's called the 5.5 nautical mile swim which is 7.1 normal-people miles and you know all you have to do is for completion so but they decided to tell us because they didn't like us and the instructors are very funny we didn't on a Friday they said you know the currents been going north to south like 25,000 years but today it shifted so we're gonna swim from Imperial Beach out to for naught so it's we swam to the point we just have to swim like the beaches concave so some of us turn through a straight line we're like four miles out in the Pacific Ocean like we rented to a great white out here she's gonna be big anyway we get to a point about 100 meters before the we're finishing and the commanding officer started yelling in the instructors because now they're putting their lives in jeopardy so they pull us all out on the water 100 meters from this thing and like thank God it's done we finished fried it we come back in Monday after two days of arrests for dive physics they're gonna teach us about physics for diving they came in to us and hey by the way because no one finished the swim we're doing it again right now drop your pencils put your rubber mat down this is the meanest thing anyone's ever said to me I don't want to do this again so we're standing in a swimmer lion I got my my swim buddy Monty who's right in front of me he's a Southern California dude and the way this river led works to be where you had your shorts you have a belt with a knife and on the knife as a flare that you've got a a small life vest and you weren't limited amount of wetsuit and I look across realize that Ponte is uh he doesn't have a knife taped to his flare he has a king size Snickers bar sassette money come on man we're gonna get nailed if they bust you for that he goes happen if they don't I'll split it with it so then it was delicious halfway and that's true but we end it with the sharks so this is seal trading it's one of those funny courses from there we when we graduated they assign this to a Navy SEAL Teams and the SEAL Teams are divided we have an afternoon I think we stole from the Army it's very good for life - it's called kiss keep it simple stupid so the SEAL Teams are groups of seals divided by numbers the odd numbers of San Diego SEAL team - one three five and seven even numbers in Virginia - for eight to ten I was assigned to SEAL team - so we drove out east not my Fort Benning Georgia Army Airborne that ton is gonna jump out of planes thirteen weeks of sealed tactical training which is finer points how to be a Navy SEAL stuff like that then they had a six-month probationary period full of tests and drills and an oral board if they like you that's when they assigned us the insignia for Naval Special Warfare which is the Trident so we became Navy SEALs they split us up into groups of 16 to 18 each group called a platoon that platoon works together every single day for a full year getting to know standard operating procedures each other's tendencies then they sent us overseas so my first appointment was two years after I listed as a Navy SEAL but it was pre 9/11 not a lot going on so we'd have jobs here and there some stuff for the Middle East Kosovo Liberia the first place I ever got shot that was Albania of all places but then we're training with their allies in case of a war for contingencies so a lot of time with a special boat service the SBS the Brits the UK Scotland Norwegian Yeager's German college swimmers and we're training five days a week but we have the weekends off now we're 23 years old we're all in really good shape we're single so we did the pubs Oktoberfest you know Stonehenge seeing the sights there working vacations and we had a lot of fun with them for a number of years but it all changed on Tuesday September 11 2001 and uh I felt like everybody I want to go fight I knew I would find out Qaeda in Afghanistan with CLT - but I also knew about another team there's one more team on a base by itself in Virginia better budgets better opportunities older more serious Navy SEALs worked there we would actually see those guys out of town and refer to them as the boys across the street but they become known today as SEAL Team 6 does anyone want to know why they call it team six I will tell you when it first started out we have SEAL team one on the west coast SEAL team - on the East Coast and then in 1980 they commissioned SEAL Team six because we knew that the Russians would say we know about SEAL team one two and six where the hell of three four and five not just a hat rack so so to get into SEAL Team 6 it's not well-known it's not the movies you need to get approved by your conventional team to represent them at first in a three-week screening process which starts off the first day with a really hard physical test like it's right at Milan then you shower up put your uniform on you get new evaluations peer evaluations top-down evaluations oral boards which are like really bad job interviews with like 14 people rapid-fire questions about your tactics yes but not your finances credit card that how much you drink your home life what your family doing then if you get past that board they send you to the psychiatrist for the psychological evaluation which I haven't blasted the the first evolution in the psych eval took me a day and a half to finish because it was a 5,000 question multiple choices like with a number two pencil on the books and like the bubbles are one through five it's all based on behavior so like one doesn't never I never feel like this there's two and three is seldom and then four then five us I always feel like that the questions make no sense and they're in no order they're not even questions all the time but some PhD came up with an algorithm to I'll give you an example I sat down it's like number one you love roses I'm like five yes - you wanted to capitate hippies I'm like that escalated quickly [Laughter] reaction to the test and I asked my psychiatrist what was the point of the test and she said oh we're not trying to figure out if you're crazy we're trying to figure out what your flavor of crazy you are she actually told me I had the same psychiatrist SEAL Team six or eight years when I got done she said you're getting out now what are your hobbies I said I don't have any I don't need to shoot I'm not gonna scuba diver skydiver said well you'd be something to relieve stress so she had me take up golf great stress reliever doc anyway so you finished that another really hard physical test after that three weeks and if they like you that's really invite you to a nine-month selection course so SEAL training was eight months long this one is nine months long so it's longer than SEAL training I thought it was harder but it's different because now it's not that group of sailors would want to become Navy SEALs these are experienced Navy SEALs trying to get to the next level everyone there has to never quit you know they're gonna die before they can't do something so in order to select that we're trying to find people who can not just think but who is willing to make decisions now rapidly in a high-stress environment so as best we could we tried to take the stress of combat but put it into a training environment so because it's not actual war where bullets are flying and bombs are going off and it's a controlled training environment it's all self induced stress but we're looking for the person who can realize that in life all stress is self induced stress it's in your mind stress is a choice stress is a bag of bricks that sits by your bed in the morning and when you want to you can get out of bed and pick up stress and throw it over your shoulder and let him wait you down start your day off with a negative attitude ruining everyone else's day around you or at any time and you should try this you can put stress down and forget about it and you should because it's not helping you and it's in your mind it's like guilt that plays over it's like in combat bravery doesn't mean you're not afraid it's not the absence of fear it's the ability to recognize fear acknowledge fear for what it is and then push it aside and then do it anyway actively participate in saving your own life don't be the person who runs to the corner and lays down in the fetal position frozen dying of shame when the active shooter comes in praying for someone better to come get me what are you gonna do about it do something do something the analogy that I've come up with to put stress in perspective is whether you're taking effective fire on a mountaintop in Afghanistan or you're the woman landing a jet on an aircraft carrier at night in high seas or you're the person making latte in a coffee shop at 7:00 a.m. on a Monday and there's a line of very angry customers around the corner what those three have in common is they've only feel the amount of stress they allow themselves to feel and then no one has ever accomplished anything positive simply by panicking I get asked all the time some of these missions you were on what's it like not to be afraid you weren't afraid no fear I'm like yeah I was afraid it's okay if anyone has ever told you they've been to combat and said they weren't afraid they are lying about their service or they're a sociopath but it's okay it's okay to be afraid because fear is natural fear is healthy fear makes you think more clearly you know think about the last time you watched a scary movie by yourself and you can hear everything in your house that is fair working for you I'm 43 years old I'll be on my New York apartment watching a scary movie at night and the ice machine will clock off and I'm like Satan Jesus Christ you know it wasn't safe it was the ice because fear is healthy without fear there would not be courage there's a very very fine line because panic is contagious it's not okay to panic if one person panics we all tend to panic and I'm gonna give you an example I'm not bragging but I get to fly every day so I'm in airports observing people in their natural environments here is proof that panic is contagious think about the last time you were flying somewhere and someone from zone 3 had the nerve to try to board with so one what do we all start doing Oh get your ship carry because we're not going to put up with this - I wish there was more in court recruiting stations in the airport because they're also tough and isn't ready to find each other prime I got another example and and you've all done this every one of us says what's the deal with the baggage claim why don't we all crowd the baggage claim why don't you stand back wait for a bag you go get it we all say that that goddamn bell goes off and we're just can't help anybody so on the first group the first group of testimon came up with a role based on skydiving so we have students doing drills in the air after they lead from an aircraft from plummeting towards the earth which for some weird reason can add stress but this is not a take time jump when you can see everything that's happening if you could picture a cargo aircraft flying this way so the planes going that way and there's a ramp down at the back and there's 37 guys facing this way that's so dark you can't see anything but you can feel it because it's cold the air is very thin you know even though you can't see anything you know you're up in altitude and then one after another we follow each other into that abyss 1000-2000 look does a full thousand as you pull your ripcord your canopy comes off your back with two sets of risers what you want to do is grab the rear set of risers assistant with the opening and turn yourself to the right everything that we did is Navy SEALs we have rules always have rules it's okay to change your rules of something super efficient but always follow your rules one of our rules is on a combat jump when you depart the aircraft the target is that way the reason the targets that way is because these parishes are not round they don't fall straight down their elliptical like a wing on a play they go forward at 20 miles an hour in no wind so the reason the targets that way is because we know if and when we bump each other which happens and talk about fear that is terrifying but we know going the same direction it's safe if we bump each other going the opposite directions we use a word called catastrophic because you've hit body to body you're gonna get ripped in half and if you hit the line to connect your friend to his canopy you're gonna wrap up in a big nasty ball of rope itself plummeting towards the earth together thinking about how painful that was to get most of my hand cut off and then we both get to die in 32 seconds when we smack it to the mountain so this is all simulated stress now the first thing you do when you get a headache is pull down your night vision if you are dying to know the sensation of night vision I'm gonna help you out after I'm done talking go hit the bar I want you to get six really strong drinks knock them back really quickly then find to pull the paper rolls and just pretend that they're green just like my periphery goes to ship in three minutes I don't care so anyway so we did get on heading matters now we get to the staff it's a line ten feet back 10 feet up jumper jumper jumper jumper jumper that's that stack is going to a spot 11 miles away that none of us has seen before except on a map and the low guy who's furthest out and down has the hard job with a fun job depending on your attitude he's the lead job for his job is to get everybody in line Nightmares him down get a positive vegetable identification on the drop zone then with his limited instruments do a quick calculation that we call it glide ratio which is simply altitude distance speed heading bearing course can we make it he needs decide for everyone if we could make it there and if we can't make it he needs to find what we like to call an alternate drop zone the funny thing about skydiving no matter how bad it goes up there you're gonna land look for something without obstacles houses or fences guns have been power lines being a nice safe pattern into it because you don't want to hit each other on the bottom end we went off the directions it's just a banner you're gonna be just as dead from 300 feet of 25,000 feet and he also needs to find out what the wind is doing on the ground you know when we depart the aircraft going that way the wind is that her batch but as the descent it could shift so he's also looking for her indicators smoke or trees birds I used to use when I would feed how am I being pushed because you want to find the maximum one on the ground so you could man into it slow down that stop because like I said we're going 20 miles an hour forward in no wind if he screws that up and there's a 15 mile an hour wind in our back we could have saved the Air Force a lot of money a lot of time if instead of borrowing their c-130 we just went to enterprise and got a minivan and drove through the desert at 3 in the morning at 35 miles an hour then open the door close your eyes say a prayer and just jump into a cactus so that's three weeks in that time we'll do 65 to 75 of those jumps I did get a picture for everyone just now thank you for that I will tag all of you on Instagram we move on from this part of the course and the rest of the course that next week eight months eight and a half months is all based on one set of tactics both close quarters battle or CQB and CQB is the SWAT team style entrance you'll see in action movies where the good guys come into a room trying to clear and get the bad guys save the hostage the risk that will you CQB in so many different environments is because for us anyway combat seemed to come down to an entry point like a door on a house to happen a ship at cave entrance so what an operator comes through that door there are definite steps distances movements and angles for each guys they enter and it differs for each shooter coming in based on protecting each other's backs and fields of fire so we'll start off with four students at a time entering into what we call it shoe house or a kill house and a kill house is simply a training area that looks like a hotel so it's laid out like the hotel but unlike a hotel that walls are ballistic because we're shooting live ammunition blowing up real bombs and in the catwalks on 20 SEAL Team six instructors so a minimum of five sets of eyes on each guy as they're entering a room and what they're doing is when that student comes through the door and makes a mistake which you will you're going to make mistakes they don't correct they don't stop the training to correct the mistake they do the opposite and they speed it up and they start shining a light I do this right yelling and you're calling your stupid you know what are you doing here because they want to see what kind of a person you are are you the person who comes into a situation makes a mistake knowledge that mistake but realizes worrying about this mistake right now is not going to help me I have a job to do we'll talk about it later and correcting or are you the person who comes into a situation makes a mistake and you can't stop thinking about that mistake and because you're dwelling on this mistake you're thinking about this mistake over here you make a bigger and that's what they get even if you don't make a mistake they are gonna start calling you stupid and shining a flashlight and speeding it up yelling you about a mistake you both know you didn't make to see how you handle making a mistake that you didn't make self induced stress I've been talking about CQB for weeks at a time but to give you an idea of what's going on in this situation I will walk you through what the number one man is thinking as he enters a room keep in mind this will be one guy through one door on one wall in one room think about how many rooms are in this hotel think about all the stairwells and hallways and angles and it would be going ten times faster that I'm about to explain it but if you could imagine the door right here I'd be the number one minute twenty minute the door there's a two men a three men in a format of meetings behind me and we call it stack or a train in order every time based on what the door looks like because they're all watching you is I see a door I don't see you just throw up as if there's a fire check the door doors unlock wait for the signal and the signal is a squeeze in the leg or the shoulder from the number two man letting the one man hell through effective communication we have enough guys it is time to go in the room the one man does need to waste time by turning around and Counting for himself plus if he did that he just dropped security on the door and that's a safety violation you're fired so once against the squeeze it's open that our outside foot comes in come Ernest record and says look looking for us off the wall to start with mr. sleeper to six feet after the risky it's hard to threaten gage engage Guinness my primary sweep a foot it was very low secondary to the corner middle set clear now the reason that that can be stressful is if imagine you're not the one living in the to man and you have your hand at your buddy's shoulder you're gonna give the squeeze your counting but you're having a bad day and you don't want to screw up what we're about to do so we try to choreograph what should happen in the road even though you should never do that don't assume a situation is gonna go a certain way get in the situation analyze it adapt overcome let your tactical train take it but I'm having a bad day I'm the - man okay he's the one man of the two men he's gonna go this way for sure I'm definitely going that way - covers back so this is definitely my house that foot going through the door we have enough guys go and all of a sudden he goes this way now you just up with the wrong foot but you got to cover his back so you're tripping on yourself to feel like an ass what you're mad at him for doing that to me they're yelling - you shoot the wrong target you're fired you're out you're never coming back even if you don't make a mistake like I was talking I was the one man once I did the whole thing over here you know senator go good stand clear they stopped the train of the LME they actually stopped it O'Neill happy to do that you're supposed to be six feet from the door you're way too far in the room you over penetrated why now that's a trick question and the answer is always because I'm an idiot just deflate the arguments don't get an argument you can't win it's like when your wife comes home honey we need to talk start a fire in the kitchen it's way [Laughter] six feet from couture take a step half an inch to the right that's what we want you get outside so they go outside and they have this monster truck tire set up on a side with a harness and you put the harness on and you're it's very simple you're doing we call it tire drag you're gonna drag this tire so you're driving this Navy tire 100 meters this way turn around a hundred meters that way you're wearing your body armor your helmet your gun you do this for about 20 minutes you put the harness down they have a kV ladder setup you start climbing the caving ladder up and down up and down you're dehydrated you're exhausted you're frustrated you're mad at yourself as soon as you're done get beat up then put you right back in the front of that trains lever one man you're doing it again why they want to see how you handle it we know you didn't screw up but boy we punish you for screwing you up can you get over it they're testing your ability great advice for life write this down get over it so this course is nine months own 50% of the Navy SEALs are trying to not make it so that's very humbling to think half of the guys who invented the world's most difficult military training failed this but the ones who get through become part of what's called a tier 1 unit now you're part of the team that will get the most daring and secretive missions this is actually where you go from being a Navy SEAL to be non-existent and you take your family with you and you stay as long as you like and there's no social media I don't know how I lived without Twitter now you're the point where you can no longer be taught tactics you need to invent them what is my opponent doing how do I stay in fluid either way just the adjustments they're making on me how do I want to make sure the guys that are coming up behind me were prepared because as soon as you get to work I think in a war I'm not trying to micromanage you micromanage me this counterproductive it of waste time I always ask people are you teaching your people how to do their jobs or are you trying to do their jobs for them our guys didn't need to be told what to do because they were prepared I know guys four days after this graduation their first mission at SEAL Team six was to jump into Somalia and rescue Jessica Buchanan from al-shabaab which is al-qaeda 17 guys jumped in wins so high that we wouldn't have done in training killed 22 terrorists got both hostages not one of our guys was hurt because they were prepared and preparation comes from training communication repetition training communication repetition now we trained hour after hour day after day fine-tuning our tactics adjusting our rules but most importantly learning the best ways to effectively communicate with our people because we really believe and a lot of people don't believe this but we believe if our people knew what they were doing and why they were doing it they would be more efficient and what we learned about effective communication also is the less we talk to the better we work because we got rid of the noise the nonsense the email that you got today with 20 people on the CC line and all it says is fYI fYI see below that jackass always puts the letter K we know you're there just because you're talking does not mean you're communicating we have seen the learnin if we were silent we were faster more efficient and communicating at the highest levels and we actually did this on target to Madrid private we went up which is a prime example helicopter crash crash lands in the first yard the pilots everyone's lives but he crash-lands they dropped us off of the wrong spot huge explosion of media gunfight people being killed with at eight and a half seconds of complete chaos on the most important mission in modern history was over now I've had years to think about this I'm gonna go off on a tangent because I'm having fun up here that must have been really scary for al-qaeda you know some sort of give me an I can't hear it I can't see it then she made before major motion pictures of us stuff my team and I did I need to share this with you I am horrible to watch action movies with it's always the same thing the helicopter the lands the Americans get out something blows up and then that white guy with the crew-cut comes out of nowhere wow thanks bro cos we're gonna go you're scared we had a house in Afghanistan one time so I'm assuming most of you have not been in Afghanistan so I need it's very fitting I need to explain the real estate they're just people think I'm lying they think that it's if I go through a time war but they didn't people think I'm lying here's a house in Afghanistan picture park crossword puzzle from the New York Times and mix it with II walk village from The Return of the Jedi so it's these mud walls and sometimes the rooms inside our room limited furniture but there's no ceiling so it's open air at starlight and then next to that is the two-story structure made out of mud with no windows and the only way to get to the seconds to worry and that is an exterior stairwell and when you get into that thing you're trying to go in the second floor the door to get is like this big you're wearing all your so get the room and now you're terrified because you're face to face with a full-grown male counter and then it real start spinning wolf he didn't fit through the damn Cheney door why would they build a ruler on a camel the second floor now I'm in Afghanistan sucks over here I'm on this side of this one thing over here and my guy is off on this side and he starts getting shot at newer guy I can't say whether then he got afraid but he definitely got adrenaline because he's a newer guy and you get a rental in the first few times someone she was in 1847 so that's a really loud so he came over again keep it simple with his push-to-talk which you can and he started talking Hanny got a you did this troops of contents answered I got he's shooting at me blah blah blah other guys start hearing this and that's contagious so they start talking gang you know probably you say foot right there we're gonna put a muscle trucks with six o'clock blah blah blah everyone's talking but no one's communicated I happen to be on a rooftop I hit my purse to talk and said everyone listen to me I need you to calm down take a deep breath it's a push-to-talk not a push to think okay I need you to think that push thought so the point I'm getting at is not don't talk to each other it's just important to effectively communicate with your team and the first rule of effective communication is this when you're done saying what you're saying stop saying it I love quotes I don't know where to give credit for this but someone smarter than I instead never pass up the opportunity to shut up so we claim to be prepared for anything at any time if we had a chance to prove it in April of 2009 that's what piracy became popular off the coast of East Africa Somali pirates were gathered in these shifts taking the crew that crate they were hurting anybody and these weren't even terrorists they're just criminals but they're saving it till someone pays the ransom which they always did so services are being rendered money is changing hands lucrative business I was aware of that the thinking what does it have to do with me I'm in Virginia it was Good Friday April 10th which is my birthday when that was my daughter's Easter Tea Party in her preschool and what we were doing is we thought it would be cute to put the kids in the middle of the classroom their desks facing us and the parents would go through we had these 2 buffets set up and we're all military you know maybe Marine Corps parents and so we're gonna be a very efficient through the chow line I remember having a pink plate in my hand I'm walking through the stay and I'm quickly but efficiently covering it with cookies and smiley face cupcakes shifted for Rosie it's my Easter and I'm loving it back to my kid and I got a message what happened is a guy by the name of Captain Richard Phillips and just be taken by Somali pirates I'm calling my team go get him now so put the plate down look my daughter in the eyes give her a kiss and then turn around and go to war from a preschool classroom in Virginia Beach on my birthday which is really weird you think about it and that's by the way is the hardest part of combat right there the hardest part of combat is not getting shot at or having stuff blow up next to you that is very easy the hardest part is kissing your kid goodbye looking her in the eyes the realization of this could be it this could be the last time we see each other and there's a huge difference between kissing your kid goodnight and kissing your kid goodbye she's 15 just get a job at chick-fil-a I love that intro 5 5 I've kissed her goodbye 11 times we don't do it anymore but the hardest one this one daughter was always it seemed like but she was one year old that's when we went after it recipe of marcus luttrell the lone survivor she was before we would have to get filled she was seven we went after Osama bin Laden and that was the hardest one because that was a one-way mission we are not coming back from this and we know that we're gonna get shot down the way in we don't know this technology works there's gonna be a gunfight when we get there if anyone's gonna blow himself up and kill the entire family but we're in the building with him it's Osama bin Laden we're gonna run out of fuel and in our short lives in a Pakistani prison dying in a non fun way we were so convinced before coming home the guy that led me up the stairs to bin longe room and it was never drawn up that way it's just sometimes life works out a certain way but he came up to me before the mission and said look don't take this the wrong way because I'm going 100% I'm going I just need to say this out loud so I can hear if we know we're gonna die why are we going which I think it's a fair question we talked about it and we decided we're not going after bin Laden for the reward and we're not going for the fame we are going after Osama bin Laden for the single mom who dropped her kids off at elementary school on a Tuesday at 45 minutes later she jumped to her death out of a skyscraper because for some reason that was a better alternative than whatever hell was going on inside of 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit and her last gesture of human decency was to hold her skirt down as she murdered herself she was not supposed to do that she didn't want to do either one of those things she's not supposed to be in the fight we're supposed to be in the fight and that's why we're going [Applause] to write letters to everyone we did them a few days so I wrote letters now my seven-year-old daughter I heard letter was not forward to read at seven her daughter was written for her to read at 27 I'm really sorry I missed your wedding I know you're beautiful thanks for taking care of your sisters what we did was a noble explaining tear City the page I don't even like talking about him now then they went to the mall and I don't know what you buy young girls for daddy's never coming home but I bought some stuff and I'm walking on we accept it at this point so I wasn't scared anymore I just focused not too focused because as I'm walking with a monthly bumped into one of those kiosks that you've seen it this sunglasses huh and I look down and there's a pair of prada sunglasses on sale for $240 and I'm like I'm a chief in the Navy man I I can't afford these but I am gonna be dead next week in American Express key [Laughter] sunglasses I think you know what if we do live through the night bin Laden's house and like need to steal a car I can do that and when we can drive four hours to Islamabad where there's embassies but if it comes with that the sun's gonna be up and I'm gonna need sunglasses I carried prada sunglasses in my pocket tonight I wouldn't have been lods bedroom I wasn't thinking about them at the time because when I turn the corner a lot of going on over here we got a mission where we're supposed to live that we're getting ready to shower with lopsided you know we get to see our kids again and I reach in my pocket like you got it kitty then I start thinking I'm not gonna be in the Navy forever but I did sign a 30-year mortgage I'm gonna need a job so maybe I'll get to marketing like picture a Navy SEAL on a billboard with like tattoos a gun at sunglasses and it says if you only have one day left to live you might as well wear Prada so that's the four-year-old after captain Phillips so okay so my give her a kiss turn around I go to work down I'm going into work I have a set amount of time to get there but I'm ahead of schedule and there's a 7-eleven in front of the base where I'm living so I stop at seven love with a plan I'm gonna get as much cash as I can on the ATM a lot of Copenhagen micarta cigarettes the reason I'm doing this we are definitely jumping on the east coast of Africa today never a perfect lamb you might not end up where we want if I land in a semi permissive environment I might be able to buy my way to safety with the cash I might be able to barter with the locals with the tobacco I might end up like on a kick-ass Kenyan page on my birthday in cash the back of his casinos there so I didn't Atlanta to get my stuff this one dude in front of me who's in no hurry whatsoever I'm in a hurry he's not just finished the night shift or something I'm looking over her shoulder and one of the things he's buying I can see as a USA Today and the headline is about the mission we're trying to go do very patriotic Lee he slammed it down and announced the entire store man I sure wish someone would do something about this so I'm recognizing the irony and tap on the shoulder chose rather nobody pay for your we're gonna do something about it right now I'm not even kidding with the national security time line is squarely under a very broad shoulder work on time all my guys got to work on time and then 15 hours 46 minutes after I got the message of my daughter's preschool classroom [Applause] [Applause] there were four pirates so we kind of stacked attack my favorite boards have an opportunity attack I was reaching people can answer together $1 CW next I said the guy in front this is the first guy time in his life [Applause] [Applause] the reason that was his first time I was because he was not a Navy SEAL he was a communicator his job is a set of radios on the airplane she had a new administration Washington wants to talk to us on the flight over but a few hours for the flight like never perfect flam you might need better communication when we get down there I'll have all this wake up brother huge changing plans skydive he got nervous too it was adorable he destroyed the top his way out but he was like nah man I didn't join the Navy to be a ceiling I don't want to skydive I'm like yeah you're half-right having this jump I was actually connecting him to Mike the tandem master I'm also an investor so I'm hooking him up and I can order him to go because we're in the military but I'm trying to talk him into it because I'm in such a good mood I'm like dude people pay to do this on the weekend and that water's like 90 degrees it's gorgeous [Laughter] so I was the lead jumper for the captain Phillips rescue so I'm standing on the ground my feet over there is looking at the Indian Ocean I turned around one last time to give that poor kid a ax and I'm getting nothing and then Mike's head comes from behind Haven goes this tick grabbed his own head and turned it around and now he and Mike are in this awkwardly incident and I heard before I jumped the last thing I heard Mike said him was well don't look at me bro I don't know what happened does anyone hear the entire mission which didn't last long because a day and a half later on Easter Sunday we rescued Richard Phillips it shots from our amazing snipers and we were able to do that because we were prepared to believe we didn't jump in there to kill those guys if you're not familiar with this the story there's a Navy ship pulling a lifeboat we just put snipers down to make well to make sure nothing on same happens as we prepare for the rescue as we were preparing for the rescue some very unsafe happened and they took the shots now keep in mind those three snipers with their own beds four days prior in Virginia their guns than that need to be cited in for the most difficult shots of their lives it was a long weekend we hadn't done it over 25 years but their guns were sited in for the most difficult shots they'd ever taken otherwise because they were prepared here's a good thing that I like to say one of my favorite rules is complacency kills you know a constant replacing safe success if you're too successful people have a tendency to say the worst thing you can say when you're running a team well this is the way we've always done it that's resting on your laurels don't do that we're winning by 20 let's won by 30 you wouldn't think complacency and success with adversities related here's another good one a great learning tool believe it or not just failure because believe me we all fail some of us even get seen TMZ for it thank you oh you're gonna fall down you're gonna fall down you're gonna fail get up dust off look yourself in the mirror to own it why did I fail what can I learn what can I teach my team how do we avoid this again fine here's another friends - Marie I'm not sure if I told this last year but again it just makes the point I'm having fun this is a fun story to tell we learned especially in Iraq that there's no point landing right next to the house and there's not really a point immediately putting a bomb on the door because both are very loud and you wake people up and believe it or not in a combat zone very few people are combatants they're just trying to live their lives so we don't want any collateral damage so we figured we're going to land over here sneak in hop the fence pick the lock catch them when they're sleeping that's the new plan it worked out great one night I happen to be the first bear over the fences in Iraq in 2007 I pointed my gun at the door then I say people inside the house moving around which because they know something's in the yard but we're going after a high-value individual an hvi we can't just leave we have to escalate force now we need to put a bomb on the door we need to get in there we're gonna go in hot the way I explained it earlier so I called my preacher and he came and a preacher is a methods of entry guy he will get you in this breacher decided he wanted to use a seven foot charge of c6 I'm assuming you've heard of c4 and I don't want to get all technical of but c6 is too more awesomer now that looks like a fruit roll-up same color and everything in one side of its sticky what you do is you put the sticky side on the door you roll it down you should be captain in some configuration minimum safe distance you've gotten them before hit the magic button boom it blows off right so he's gonna do this with both sets of hands so he needs security because his weapon is slum that's me because on the appointment so I took my gun up here the door for some reason opened this way which mean the hinges are on the inside over here this is a pushing charge and what's to put it on the inside we're going through this here's the lesson in failure as we're doing that my boss came up and this guy is one of the best seals with whom I've ever served I've never seen him screw up everything is immaculate he came up not to micromanage he's not going to say a word to us he just wants to get what we call situational awareness what's happening right so he's looking around and that is where he put his elbow right on the door bill [Music] and then he didn't want to move his elbow cuz breeches right about here and he can't yell at him because that's his Gloucester so he just give us and then his wheels start to spin and he's fiscally conservative doesn't want to waste the taxpayers money right so he just starts rolling it back up and then you kind of hear it butter I guess we don't need this book in there so that I'm right here next to him and I no longer want to be here this just became a very very dangerous place there but I don't like to shoot through doors and I'm like Hollywood bullets go through a lot of stuff I don't want to be part of this equation so my mind spinning I'm thinking faster than at top and I talk pretty head with the door opens it's a goddamn terrace we're looking for he and I share a very awkward breacher hot sauna we get him in cuffs that Mindy is back I look at my possible let's just do that every day so the luster than failure is we've been working in Afghanistan for so long that we didn't they didn't have doorbells apparently they do in Iraq so a new rule everyone stay foot off the wall keep it simple so these are something I'm gonna get a little bit into the end of the bin Laden raid just because it's kind of fun to get them having a blast wall in Vegas you're gonna take my advice about the goggles at the end of it I want to talk about the end of it because we were supposed to die on that mission but we went in there we got it like I said if you want to know what happened by the operator it's available my websites I Amazon but the end of it was the cool part because we realized that now all we got to do is get the helicopter and fly for 90 minutes because we had another helicopter come rescue us and if we can fly from 90 minutes out of inlines house across the border of Afghanistan they can't shoot us down anymore and we have protection there oh if we come in for 90 minutes we get 50 years I get to see my kids so we get the helicopter I've got a pilot there may be pilots in the audience but here's my best the pilots up there doing whatever our version of this is so weird is flying and again some very important alive dope if you're worried about something won't affect it stop worrying about it you're wasting your energy the most the stuff don't worry about anybody doesn't happen so we're not worrying about it and we keep what I'm talking about us so we just start or watch it we're all set there bunch of Navy SEALs sorrow watches and we're just looking under watches we need to make it 90 minutes it's been 10 minutes you've been 20 minutes 30 minutes 40 minutes right and you kind of look at me each other like watching that no-hitter at the top of the seventh of Fenway like I'm not gonna say anything 40 minutes 50 minutes 60 it's been 70 minutes 80 minutes and now it's that I love sports analogies now it's like watching the Americans meets a Russian hockey team in Lake Placid in 1980 Miracle on Ice you can still free watch it you can hear yeah right and you can hear the Americans counting down nervous ten nine we can still screw this up seven six and pilots are awesome I love pilots and they're almost cool they always said that monotone voice so we made fun of one-run airplanes this is for a reason to keep you calm and over 85 minutes in the pilot came over and said alright gentlemen for the first time in your lives are gonna be happy to hear this welcome to Afghanistan right so we're all excited we got bin Laden we get back both helicopters made it we have been on there if you see the movie zero dark thirty it's good and if it's on I'm gonna watch it because it's about a woman who was real she's real a woman found in lot the only reason I said it's good not greatest because the ending I'm to share the real ending in zero dark thirty they walked her over to bin Laden's body and she looked down and cried and got all emotional and the movie in informally that's not what happened because this is this woman is probably the toughest person I've ever met in my life here's what happened we got back we're all upside of the pointman and I went to a corner to talk about what the world just happened can't believe it then he looked over said there she is you got to give her something man I know I pulled the magazine out jack the round out the one below the three as I shouted bin Laden and I walked over to her and I said you have moved from this in your own and your back package and then I said cool we have to finish for you so we walked her over to Devon and this is when it starts to sink in like this is historic this is history this is gonna be in the books it's like Iwo Jima this is like George Washington crossed the Delaware to fight the Hessians and then be the arrogant Navy Seal and like I gotta say something cool because she found him she gave up her life for this no husband no kids she found him so we walked over I thought it would have ended nicely with this lion that I was very proud of and walked over and I said is that your guy she would tell for a second and went well I guess I'm out of a job Oh on that colorful notes thank you very much for having about it [Applause]

Channel: ElizRoseLaVallee

Views: 45,926

Keywords:

Id: d4HVg3Q53cU

Length: 59min 24sec (3564 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 19 2019