https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=5AF7LjmZVf4
It’s gonna be okay and and and I think that especially when people go through traumatic situations obviously, I deal with veterans a lot law enforcement and the whole PTSD that people have been going through and talking about for the last well I guess since the wars have been on last 20 years and a lot of times Someone would go through traumatic experience and they’d have bad feelings about her. They’d have regrets about it They’d have things that they wish they would have done differently and One of the main themes I was telling people during this tour was That’s totally normal and it’s okay. It’s okay to think oh I lost some friends and sometimes I feel sad about it. Well, yeah, of course. Mm-hmm. Like that’s that’s that’s normal That’s fine. In fact, if you weren’t sad about it, there may be something wrong Because I think that people have been told for a while that oh If you’re feeling sad, there’s something wrong with you when I actually don’t think there’s anything wrong with when you feel sad You feel sad? Yeah, you lost friends. You’re gonna feel sad. Oh you were in combat You had to do some horrible things you did some things that you regret There’s nothing wrong with that People make mistakes people things don’t turn out the way that they wanted them to we made decisions and There was a bad result at the end of that decision and instead of thinking oh, I’m a terrible person No, it’s like you made a mistake and that’s okay and you got to move on Yeah, well that that’s a That’s the tricky part. I think with regards to say post-traumatic stress disorder or regret You know because it’s it’s one thing if you’re sad because you’ve lost people it’s another thing if you’re blaming yourself because you believe and maybe with some cause that you’ve made a mistake and Often people don’t know what to do About the fact that they’ve made a mistake So maybe we could talk about that a little bit because some of the people who are watching and listening will have made Mistakes and some of them are hanging themselves out to dry because of it Right. I mean, especially if you make mistakes that have had fairly dramatic consequences so and this ties in I would say also to the motif of forgiveness because There’s not much difference between forgiving other people and forgiving yourself and you can’t just do that by saying that you’re going to do it So what I’ve observed clinically and I think this works philosophically as well is that what you want to do To set things right which is to atone is to lay out what you’ve done that you think was wrong Provide yourself with the best possible defense So, you know, there’s a reason in our legal system that we start with the presumption of innocence Which is a miracle because like tyranny start with the presumption of guilt and the reason they do that is because everyone’s done something wrong And if you dig around enough in anyone’s life You’ll find a reason that they’re culpable a reason to put them away And so the fact that we presume innocence is a complete bloody miracle and I can’t figure out how we ever managed to get that Right, but you’ve got to do that with yourself So imagine you’re taking yourself to task because you did some things wrong It’s like okay list them out in your imagination or write it down. But then you go to Defend yourself as thoroughly as you possibly can Which doesn’t mean you’re trying to get yourself off the hook It means that you’re trying not to take yourself apart more than is necessary And then you might ask well if I’ve done something terrible, maybe What’s necessary is that I commit suicide is that like I pay the ultimate price for my sins and people will do that when they’re Depressed and that’s not right because actually what you want to do to atone is to set yourself back on the right track So the precondition for forgiving yourself is first of all to sort out whether or not you’re accusing yourself too Viciously like a tyrant, but then let’s assume that there’s some leftover Evidence compelling evidence that you did do something wrong. Okay. Now you have to figure out what you did wrong and You have to figure out what you would have done differently and what you will do differently in the future And then my sense is and I think this works out psychologically is that if you can set yourself up so that You’ve learned from the mistake you made so you wouldn’t repeat it Then you get to go on with your life and I think that’s the that’s also what you do with people around you You know, I mean you might want to forgive someone Maybe who hurt you when you were young for example, because you don’t want to carry that burden around, you know It’s like it’s been 20 years. You’re still mad about it’s like Well, you got tortured plus you’re still angry about it. So you’re that’s not good for you, but To forgive someone so that you can heal a relationship means that they have to confess what they did They have to assess why it was wrong They have to come up with an alternative way of behaving and then they have to swear You know by all that’s holy so to speak that they’re not going to do that again in the future and then I think and you know, we might say That the devil in your mind that’s still accusing you might say well What you did is so terrible that you should never be let off the hook and I would say that is that if if that’s the criteria That you use for judgment and everyone’s doomed because everyone makes mistakes in their lives And I would say Probably everybody makes unforgivable mistakes and So if if we’re gonna take ourselves apart about that permanently then we’re all ruined Yeah, I I was pretty lucky growing up in the military that I would get to see guys and I was probably 26 years old and I moved into like an instructor role in the SEAL teams And so you’d see these young leaders and they go out on some training mission and they would They were gonna mess things up. They’re gonna make mistakes and You know, you always get this talk about well You made the best decision you could with the information that you had at the time and it kind of sounds like a cop-out In a way, but yeah It’s actually not a cop-out at all You make the best decision that you can with the information that you have at the time Like what more can a human being do the best decision they can with the information that they had at the time and when you get more information or When the results come as they may yeah that decision that you made might not have been a good decision It might have been a bad decision But there’s number number one There’s nothing you can do to change it like it already happened You made the decision and then I would always look at the guys and say what was their intent behind this decision that they made Look, why did they do? Yeah Because if we can decipher that and their intent was they wanted to make a good move to get their guys out of a bad situation What what more could I want from a leader? Than to make a decision that’s doing their best with the information that they had at the time You can maneuver out of a bad scenario to take care of their guys. There’s nothing more I could hope for So as long as I think you peel back the onion and you kind of review what happened you say, oh, yeah I made the decision at this time. Of course if I had this other information, I change it, but I did what I did The result was not what I wanted. It’s not what I intended here we are and now you can either beat yourself up or You can say here’s some lessons I’ve learned from it and you know this the first book that I wrote was called extreme ownership the opening chapter that was a Fratricide that took place where I was the guy in charge where one of my Friendly one of my seals killed a friendly Iraqi soldier in a terrible situation And of course, you know we could go back and The hindsight is 20 20 and I could have done this and I should have done this and I should have done something else and I didn’t and that’s on me and So I think you know that initial part if we’re gonna talk about forgiveness The first part of that is taking ownership say, yep. This was my call. This was my decision This is the this is the move that I made That’s me. It’s not anybody else. It’s me because the minute you start saying well this person did that and this person’s You know that the enemy did this we didn’t expect that the many start casting blame on other people Now you’re I think you’re I think you’re lying to yourself and I think that’s gonna cause more problems So saying yes, this was a decision I made this is the information I had at the time It ended up being a bad decision. Here was my intent behind it and I’ve got to move forward If you want to you know, I always talk about You want to learn but you don’t want to dwell Yeah, if you dwell on the past if you dwell on the mistakes you made like you said Everybody is just doomed