Resilient by Design: A Navy SEAL-Turned-Doctor’s Roadmap to Success | Shane Kronstedt MD

Summary

The Dr. Gabrielle Lyon Show Episode: Resilient by Design: A Navy SEAL-Turned-Doctor’s Roadmap to Success | Shane Kronstedt MD
Release Date: April 1, 2025

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Introduction and Background

In this compelling episode of The Dr. Gabrielle Lyon Show, host Dr. Gabrielle Lyon welcomes Dr. Shane Kronstedt, a multifaceted individual whose journey from a Navy SEAL to a distinguished urologist exemplifies resilience and dedication. Dr. Lyon introduces Shane with warmth, highlighting his impressive credentials, including his top-of-class graduation from medical school and over 50 authored publications in the field of men’s health and reproductive medicine.

Journey to the SEALs

Shane shares his unconventional path to becoming a Navy SEAL. Growing up in a single-parent household in Virginia, he developed a strong foundation in martial arts from the age of four, earning a black belt and competing in national championships. Despite struggling academically, Shane's passion for physical challenges led him to enlist in the Navy in 2008. He transitioned from a nuclear engineering role to the SEALs through a competitive pipeline, ultimately shipping out for training in 2009.

Shane Kronstedt (00:02:09): "I had to have a lot of self-discipline and comfortableness in your own skin because you tell your friends that no one believes in you. You have to break things up in your head. You can't think about how overwhelming everything is."

SEAL Training and Mental Toughness

Shane delves into the grueling SEAL training process, emphasizing the mental and physical challenges that test one's limits. From enduring Hell Week—six continuous days of training with minimal sleep—to overcoming failures during land navigation courses, Shane illustrates the relentless demand for resilience.

Shane Kronstedt (00:12:10): "You have to be very strategic about all these things. When you have the plan B, you're planning to fail. It’s plan A only."

He recounts moments where his determination was tested, such as being the last to drop out during Hell Week and facing potential failure despite hitting targets in land navigation. These experiences underscored his belief that overcoming adversity is crucial for success.

Transition to Medicine

Shane’s transition from a combat medic to pursuing a medical degree was sparked by his experiences in Afghanistan. Witnessing the dire need for medical expertise in combat zones inspired him to become a trauma surgeon. Balancing his military duties with night school, he endured a demanding schedule that included teaching combat trauma courses while preparing for medical school.

Shane Kronstedt (00:54:16): "I did head rotations in the OR and the ER. I knew it was something I wanted to do."

Handling Adversity and Building Resilience

A significant portion of the discussion focuses on strategies for handling adversity. Shane emphasizes the importance of breaking challenges into manageable moments, maintaining discipline, and seeking support from those who believe in you.

Shane Kronstedt (00:21:37): "You have to take it moment to moment, evolution to evolution. Just make it through that single evolution."

He advocates for techniques like box breathing to manage stress and anxiety, and highlights the need to confront fears head-on rather than succumbing to them.

Personal Life and Relationship Dynamics

Dr. Lyon and Shane share intimate insights into their relationship, portraying themselves as teammates who support each other’s goals while maintaining a strong family foundation. They discuss the importance of mutual support, especially during challenging times such as Shane’s residency and Dr. Lyon’s pregnancy.

Shane Kronstedt (00:63:58): "We have been able to position our relationship where it doesn't create a ton of strain. We have a great dynamic while going after meaningful things."

Their partnership exemplifies a balanced dynamic where both prioritize family, fitness, and professional growth without letting external pressures overwhelm their bond.

Family, Parenting, and Fitness Integration

The couple discusses their approach to parenting, emphasizing the integration of fitness and discipline into their children’s lives. Activities like rock climbing, Jiu Jitsu, and structured workout routines are cornerstones of their family life, promoting physical health and resilience in their children.

Shane Kronstedt (00:79:11): "We go rock climbing, go to the gym together. We do workouts with the kids, and we make it fun."

They also touch on the importance of nutrition, established routines, and creating non-negotiable family moments to foster gratitude and strength.

Research and Professional Insights

Shane and Dr. Lyon collaborate on significant research projects in the field of andrology and urology. They highlight their work on the impact of environmental exposures on bladder and prostate cancer, contributing to policy changes like the PACT Act, which grants service connection for related illnesses.

Shane Kronstedt (00:89:13): "We presented at their conference and gave them all our data. They went to Congress, and it got approved in January to cover burn pit-related illnesses."

This collaboration underscores their commitment to advancing medical knowledge and supporting veterans’ health.

Mental and Physical Wellness Strategies

Throughout the conversation, Shane shares practical wellness strategies that have guided his success. From rigorous workout schedules to mental toughness hacks like box breathing, he provides actionable advice for listeners seeking to enhance their resilience and health.

Shane Kronstedt (00:93:22): "Best mental toughness hack is 4x4 box breathing. Breathe in for four seconds, hold for four, breathe out for four."

He advocates for consistency in fitness routines, setting non-negotiable workout times, and incorporating physical activity into daily life to maintain balance and strength.

Conclusion: Key Takeaways

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon and Shane Kronstedt conclude the episode by reinforcing the importance of resilience, discipline, and mutual support in achieving personal and professional success. Their shared experiences as military professionals and medical experts provide a rich framework for listeners to navigate their own challenges.

Notable Quotes:

• Shane Kronstedt (00:12:10): "You have to be very strategic about all these things. When you have the plan B, you're planning to fail. It’s plan A only."
• Shane Kronstedt (00:21:37): "You have to take it moment to moment, evolution to evolution. Just make it through that single evolution."
• Shane Kronstedt (00:54:16): "I did head rotations in the OR and the ER. I knew it was something I wanted to do."
• Shane Kronstedt (00:93:22): "Best mental toughness hack is 4x4 box breathing. Breathe in for four seconds, hold for four, breathe out for four."

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This episode serves as an inspiring testament to the power of resilience and the impact of unwavering dedication, both in the battlefield and the medical field. Dr. Gabrielle Lyon and Dr. Shane Kronstedt provide listeners with invaluable insights into building a resilient mindset, fostering strong relationships, and maintaining balance amidst life's challenges.

Transcript

[A]

It's pretty dangerous. A lot of people were dying in the war. So, you know, it was no small feat to say, I'm gonna go join the most dangerous job and go into a, you know, profession where a lot of people are dying.

[B]

Dr. Shane Kronstadt, welcome to the show.

[A]

You really have to have a lot of self discipline and comfortableness in your own skin because you tell your friends and they say, oh, absolutely not. No one makes it. Don't do it. Your parents are saying, oh, gosh, that's so dangerous. No one believes in you. You're the only person that believes in yourself. You have to break things up in your head. You can't think about how overwhelming everything is. That's when you don't make it through those hard moments in life or in whatever you're trying to accomplish. You have to really just take it moment to moment.

[B]

I just wanted to jump on here with an exciting announcement. I am hosting the second ever Forever Strong Summit April 26, 27th, in Houston, Texas, 2025. There's going to be two days, the VIP day on April 26th. You will learn from former Navy SEALs, from former Secret Service, from individuals that you do not want to miss. Myself, my inner tribe will be there to support you to learn everything from muscle health to science to nutrition. You don't have to be an expert. You don't even have to have a background. All you have to have is a will to win and stay strong. I will put a link in the show notes below. Please go to my website, drgabrielleine.com we sold out last year and I would hate for you to miss this opportunity. So if you're waiting for a sign, if you're thinking you need to change something up and you need community friends, we've got you covered. Dr. Shane Kronstadt, welcome to the show.

[A]

Thanks for having me.

[B]

You had a beautiful tour of the podcast studio. You've never been here before. How did you like it?

[A]

I was a little let down. No one welcomed me at the door. I was expecting sparkling water. Greetings, full tour.

[B]

And instead you got a can of sardines and said, welcome. Here's lunch. Yeah, I wanted to have you on the podcast. You are my husband. I'm so lucky. The father of our two absolutely bananas children. And you are a physician, a former Navy SEAL and a urology, for those of you who don't know, that is all things related to.

[A]

Kidneys, bladder, testosterone, men's health, reproductive organs.

[B]

As a second year surgical resident, you graduated top of your medical School class and have authored over 40 publications. 50. 50 publications. You still can't find your socks. But I wanted to have you on the show because I talk about you all the time. And part of people forward facing, for example, myself, who's spent time and effort educating the world. I don't do it by myself. I have a teammate. And I mean, to be fair, I have many teammates, but none of them like you. So we want to hear about you. No pressure, but I want to start with. You've done a lot of extraordinary things, and I want to hear a little bit about your background and how you got to the SEAL teams.

[A]

Sure. Yeah. So I grew up in Virginia, near D.C. and single parent household for part of it. And when I was around 20, 21 years old, you know, after high school, I worked for a couple years to help out. I decided to join the SEALs.

[B]

Were you a good student?

[A]

I was not a good student. I was terrible.

[B]

When you say terrible, are you talking about D minus or what?

[A]

I mean, I did well. When I showed up, attendance was a problem.

[B]

You were somewhat of a delinquent. Is that tr.

[A]

Somewhat an understatement? Yeah. So I. I applied to enlist in the SEALs in 2008. And at the time, I think I was just a little tired of seeing death to America by Iran and North Korea mouthing off all the time. And I said, what can I do? That's the most high value thing that can deliver me to places like this to move the needle. I didn't want to just do something regular and not move the needle. So I said, seals are at. I actually originally joined the Navy and I had this nuclear engineering job. And then they told me I had to pick. So I picked the seals. And then in 2008, you could apply to go straight to the seals. Typically you would have to go in, get a job, and then try out later. But they had this new pipeline, so what you would do, they'd have this. You would test out academically, and then you do a physical fitness test and you compete nationally to try to get a contract. And so I trained for that, you know, took a little bit of adjustments, fine tuning, got a contract, and then 2009 is when I shipped out to go do it.

[B]

You trained with doctor, now doctor, actually PhD, Dr. Mark Devine, who is a former Commander Seal. But you skipped through the whole part about how you did martial arts and you really fine tuned your skills. You were always pretty tough. You skipped over that. And. And by the way, you saw that Be Someone special video this Is why it's so great to be interviewed by your wife. Because I technically have wife clearance and know all of these things. You can get away with nothing. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. That takes an unusual individual to be a really poor student, to be somewhat of a delinquent. But you were always very disciplined when it came to martial arts and things that were physical. You saw 9, 11 happen, and you decided that you need to go serve your country and do something about it.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, I actually told myself in high school I'd never joined the military. I said, I'm not going over there.

[B]

That's okay. I said I would never marry a seal either.

[A]

You said you never talked to me. Right. We'll get into that later. Yeah, I mean, when I grew up, I, you know, for part of my life, I didn't grow up with my dad, really know him. I grew up with who I consider my dad from when I was eight years old. So, you know, I was fortunate. I had a lot of good male role models in my life, and I grew up probably since the age of four doing martial arts. I did that up until the level of black belt. And I played football, went to the national championships, and then I dropped out of football sometime in high school after playing a couple years to pursue martial arts full time, to finish up. Then I switched from that to mixed martial arts, Muay Thai, started Brazilian jiu jitsu. That was around the time I went to the military. And I didn't want to take any risks to get injured, so I stopped doing that and kind of picked it up intermittently throughout my life. But, you know, I was pretty fortunate to have a lot of male role models, and I think that instilled a lot of values in me. I think martial arts instilled a lot of discipline and values at an early age, which I found very valuable. And I think I was really fortunate to spend my whole 20s in the seals, where I had a lot of great role models. I learned from a lot of great men who were leaders, who had a lot of years and lessons learned overseas and just very strong role models that I really got to spend those formidable years in my twenties with, which I think really gave me a lot of value in my life and made me help make me into who I am in some ways.

[B]

Were there things growing up that were hard? You know, you and I are raising two little children. We have a four year old and a five year old. But it's not as if those things are easy. And it's not when we think about parenting Discipline, integrity, respect are real things. When you were growing up without a dad for a long period of time and also not necessarily a clear direction other than martial arts, were there things or was there a moment where you really thought, okay, I am going to enlist?

[A]

I mean, the real Hollywood true story is I was probably, you know, 19, 20, wasn't really doing anything. I was motivated to do something and I couldn't really quite find it and I was looking for it and I kept looking, looking. I think eventually I saw a few guys on leave come home from the military and started to spark my interest. I was interested going to school, but I think it wasn't really the right time for me yet. And I think that I started to dig more into it. My grandfather was in the Navy. He passed away before I was alive, but kind of had always been in the back of my mind. And I think that, you know, I went to a recruiter one day to get more information and I kind of toyed around with it for a while and it seemed like a good fit. I was looking for something more physically active, something more hands on, something that would make a difference. And it seemed like it had all the moving parts. You know, back in 2008, you didn't really know much about it. You couldn't really get a lot of information.

[B]

The SEAL teams, you mean?

[A]

Yeah, I mean, you really kind of had to infer, make a lot of inferences about what it is, what you might be doing. It's pretty dangerous. A lot of people were dying in the war. So, you know, it was no small feat to say, I'm gonna go join the most dangerous job and go into a, you know, profession where a lot of people are dying.

[B]

Did you think about that a lot or were you?

[A]

Yeah, I mean, it was on my mind.

[B]

Young 20, and wanted to bang your chest and get a lot of girls and say, hoo ya a lot.

[A]

That came later.

[B]

Mark, we love you. Mark Devine. Yeah, these are big. I think that people do not recognize what the real job of a SEAL operator is or a tier one operator.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of glorification about the military. I think it's a great career. I loved all of it. I would do it all over again. I loved everyone I worked with mostly. And it could be a tough room to work in with a 20 alpha males in a room trying to be number one. But, you know, I think that, you know, it's a dangerous job, you love it, but, you know, at the same time you're signing up to do something that's really, you know, I mean, the truth is, you, you do. It's called sea, air and land, right? That's how you infill into a target. Through the sea, through the air, through the land, skydiving, diving on foot. But really, what's the ultimate goal? The ultimate goal is to capture or kill probably the baddest guys on the planet. So you really. It's a job surrounded by. Around killing people and taking out the garbage of, you know, the world's most dangerous, terrible people. And I mean, these guys are doing terrible things, killing innocent people, doing unspeakable things, you know, I really don't love to talk about. And so it's not that I think people kind of glorify things, but there's a lot of things that aren't glorious.

[B]

Would you allow your son, our son, Leonidas Michael, named after the king of the Spartans, join the SEAL teams?

[A]

I mean, I think so. I'm not sure. We'd have to talk about it.

[B]

Was there a moment that you. And what I'm trying to illuminate here for people is how you think about things. I am very fortunate to interface with some of the most extraordinary people in the world. And I think that out of all of them, you are one of the most extraordinary and uncommon among the uncommon individual.

[A]

Thanks.

[B]

No charge. When you were going through training, was there a moment that you felt that you were not gonna succeed?

[A]

Okay, so if you'll let me ramble on for a little while.

[B]

How long is that gonna be?

[A]

I know she warned me that I can't do this, but we're going to do it. So, you know, you show up, right? You go to boot camp. And we are in this specialized boot camp, okay? You work out twice a day. And there's probably about 500 people trying to go to SEAL training at the time. And so we get through that. Everyone thinks, you know, well, let me back up. You tell people you want to go to SEAL training, you really have to have a lot of self discipline and comfortableness in your own skin. Because you tell your friends that, they say, oh, absolutely not. No one makes it. Don't do it. There's no chance. No one makes it. Why would you do that? Your parents are saying, oh, gosh, that's so dangerous. No one believes in you. You're the only person that believes in yourself. And so you basically have to be very comfortable with believing in yourself against everyone not believing in you. And how does that work? You probably have a few people who might be willing to help you out, but they still probably deep down like, all right, well, with this guy's feelings to get hurt. I talked to people later and like, oh God. He said he wanted to be a seal. I was worried about that. Is he not going to make it? You know, things like that. I think some of my really close friends knew that if I wanted to do something, I would do it. And I guess that's how I was. Even from a long time ago, if I didn't recognize it, some of my friends did. But you show up to boot camp, right? We go there, you're doing your 2A days, everyone's in a special special operations performance part. Then they had this new push to get more SEALs during the war, but they didn't want to change standards. So they opened up this course called Pre Buds where you would work out twice a day. They'd have these Olympic coaches, they'd have you swim, you'd swim two miles a day. You go on running trips with Olympic running coaches, do all these workouts, weightlifting, calisthenics. And so they were probably around 500 people. And at the end of two months of boot camp, two months of this Pre Buds course, they said, we're going to take the top, I think 350 or 250 guys with performance. So they did. So then we went to SEAL training in Coronado in December and then when we got there, you know, they basically just beat us for free until Christmas and let people go home and come back because we couldn't really class up yet. And so then we started this course and they said, okay, we're going to take the top 100. And I think it's 6,878 performers. So you can't really just show up. So they took the top 168 performers of our run scores o course swims, whatever else they were judging us on, if they thought we were tough, I don't know. So then we started and you know, I think by the, you know, you meet these guys along the way and there's a lot of people that are jerks and, you know, they're rude to everybody, like, oh, we're not going to make friends with you because we don't know who's going to be here and it's probably not going to be you.

[B]

You mean the instructors?

[A]

No, just other guys in training. You know, a lot of guys with a lot of hubris. You see all these guys, they're amazing. You know, this one friend, I thought it Was phenomenal. Ran Boston in less than three hours. He was a stud. His friends were seals. He was jacked. He was ripped, mentally. Tough. This other guy I knew.

[B]

Did he make it?

[A]

I'll get there. This other guy I knew, he could do 100 dead hang pull ups, no problem. Tough, right? All these guys, you know, tough guys. And then, you know, you go through SEAL training, you meet some guys and we get through probably to week four after four weeks of indoc and four weeks, our first phase, and we start Hell Week with, you know, the 168 down to 110.

[B]

168 individuals out of the top 500. And now four weeks in. Four weeks in, you're 110. You're entering into Hell Week, which is what?

[A]

So it's six days of continuous training with an hour and a half nap on day three and day four.

[B]

No sleep, no sleep until day three or four. And that sleep is an hour and a half.

[A]

And I think it's worse to go to sleep because you have to wake up from it.

[B]

Sounds like having a newborn.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, kind of, right? You know these guys. And I remember talking to a friend of mine, very close. He was a corpsman. He was in the Navy already. He was a medic and he was trying out for seals. Everybody kind of says, well, what's your backup plan? You know, And I think you can't have a backup plan when you have goals or something you really want to do. It's the plan A only, right? I think when you have the plan B, you're planning to fail. You're. You're okay with plan A not working out. You've made contingency plans. You've kind of set yourself up for something else to happen. And I think that's a mistake people make all the time. I think you really have to. This is plan A, this is what I have to do. It's against all odds, but this is how I'm going to do it. And you really have to be really strategic about all these things. And I think that, you know, we started Hell Week. All these guys were the first guys to wash out. The guys who I thought were tough. And you get to the end of it, you know, and you see these guys six days in, you know, my friend and my boat team finished with a brook and hip, you know, I got in trouble, so I was getting beat all the time.

[B]

You don't say. Were you mouthing off?

[A]

You know, I try to wear one of those Nike white performance T shirts, you know, with These guys, they're 14 of us. Some officers, some guys got rolled back. And these guys who knew what was going on, they're like, oh yeah, you know, you keep your top button button up, no one will know. Let's all wear these, you know, Nike performance shirts so we don't get our nipples chafing and bleeding like everybody else. So we did it. They all got injured or rolled out or quit and I was the last one. I got caught. And so then instead, anytime there was a break, I just get beat all the time. And I may or may not have got waterboarded officially, no, for the record, and by some psychopath. Anyways. Yeah, it was great. So, yeah, I mean you have like guys like this, you know, you finished with a broken hip, right? I mean, these guys are ready to go. And how we would look at it, I think with a lot of goals, right, they can be overwhelming. You can look at something and say this is impossible, that looks impossible, right. And I think that probably a lot of people who are just doing it for their self, you know, for themselves for the wrong reasons, they probably are the first ones to leave.

[B]

Enough about Shane. Let's talk about one of the sponsors of the show and that's Element. I've been using Element and all of us actually, Shane included, have been using it for years. It's really changed our game in terms of electrolytes. It has sodium, magnesium and potassium, all minerals the body requires. Sometimes we don't need more caffeine for energy even if we like it. But we need water and electrolytes. I use Element daily, often in iced tea or just straight water between workouts or sip it throughout the day. Shane uses it when he is training for marathons. Pretty sure we could all drink more. Not that kind of drink by the way. Element is a zero sugar electrolyte drink mix. They also have sparking spring sparkling electrolyte water. Each stick pack of Element delivers a meaningful dose of electrolytes free of again sugars, artificial colors or other just weird ingredients. Element is formulated for anyone on a mission to restore health through hydration. And it's perfectly suited for athletes, folks who are fasting, those following a keto, low carb, whole food, paleo diet, any kind of diet. Get your free Element sample pack with any purchase. Be sure to use my code drinklmnt.com drlion and try their new Element sparkling electrolyte water. It is a 16 ounce can of sparkling deliciousness.

[A]

First one's a dropout but I think you have to do things for the Right. Reasons. And I think a lot of us did it for reasons other than ourself. Because your motivation goes out the window quick. And people experience this in life and in business. And when times get tough, you know, your motivation's gone. I mean, you have to say, why are you doing this? You have to have a reason. You get up to do it every day. And I think that that probably carried us through a lot, Carried me through a lot when I was going through some really tough, dark moments in my head. And I think everybody thinks about it, you know, but not everybody pulls the trigger on just walking out because you want to do it. It's like residency, right? Hell week. You know, it's. It's not the job. It's training for the job.

[B]

Okay, so say that again.

[A]

It's not the job. It's training for the job. You know, residency is tough. There's lots of things that suck in residency. But, you know, there's a lot of things you're doing that you're learning, getting trained that are valuable, and it's to set yourself up to be successful in the job later.

[B]

And so someone listening to this, thinking about the thing that they're doing when it really sucks, one could recognize that it's a very fleeting moment, the suck. And the suck might last for a year, two years, but you're training and doing it for something bigger. If you could just hang in there and see it through and not let the internal voices or even better yet, and this is something that I've noticed about you. Very neutral. There's not a lot of drama with anything that's going right or going wrong. There's not a lot of deep emotion attached to those things.

[A]

Yeah. And I think that, you know, it's important to keep in mind a few things. I mean, you have to break things up in your head. You can't think about how overwhelming everything is. That's when you don't make it through those hard moments in life or in whatever you're trying to accomplish. You have to really just take it moment to moment, evolution to evolution. We would say to get through hell week, we would go meal to meal. We'd get four meals a day. We just try to make it to the next meal. We're just trying to make it through that single evolution. And you just make it through that moment to the next moment to the next moment. Eventually, you're done, you know, And I think I have a lot of friends who are phenomenal people, and they still are. But that one moment of weakness And I love the saying. It's true, and it's unfortunate, but it's one moment of weakness for a lifetime of regret. And I think that's people with cheating, people with quitting on themselves. People have that one moment of weakness, and they make their own decision. And I think that, you know, you really have to be careful with that. And I think you can prepare yourself for those moments. And some people, you know, they don't make it through those moments. But, you know, I think that people look back and have a lot of regret, and then they try to fill that void for years. I have a lot of friends who try to fill that void for years. And they don't really have to. They're wonderful, amazing people, but it really eats them up that that happened to them. And I think that one moment of weakness can change the whole trajectory of.

[B]

Your whole life in the moments where it's really dark. I just want you to share this because there's a lot of humans are complex, and we think a lot about a lot of things. And when things are really hard, I'll turn to you and I'll ask you for your advice. And I already know what your advice is going to be. I would love for you to share when things are getting really tough, or maybe someone shared it with you as to how to make it through those hard times.

[A]

Hmm. Well, I think so. I learned this better than anybody. I mean, I don't think SEAL training was easy for me. I think it was very hard. But I loved it. Right? And I think at the same time, you know, you can just feel sorry for yourself. I remember this guy walked up to me, said, stop feeling sorry for yourself. And it just. It flipped the switch in my head, and I realized I was feeling sorry for myself. I mean, this. You know, this might be not be the best answer, but I was gonna ship out to bootcamp and had my SEAL mentor, and I said, hey, do you have any advice for me? He said, yeah. I said, okay. He said, don't be a pussy. And I said, what? Bullshit advice? That's terrible. It's the most worthless advice I ever had. And then, you know, in moments of life, I've been SEAL training. I've been other things. I think to myself, I'm feeling sorry for myself. I'm like, am I being a pussy right now? Like, I am. Holy shit. I was. You know what? I'm not going to be a fucking pussy right now. I'm going to get my shit together. I'm going to fucking crush this evolution I'm going to kill this. But, you know, I think it was never easy for me. I failed a lot, right? And I made it through all the way through training. There were only 10 of us who. 10 to 12 of us who made it all the way through without getting held back for injury, for performance, because you'll often get a second chance to redo a test, then you're out. You know, I always found it very hard because, you know, there were a lot of tests I failed for the first time. And, you know, I joined the SEALs. I didn't shot a gun before. I didn't do land navigation. I didn't do all these things. You know, I swam. But, you know, I wasn't a pro swimmer or collegiate swimmer. And so I'd be up against the wall a lot of times, and I would say, all right. I mean, it draws a lot of anxiety, right? You fail something, you know, in medical school, we had our baby two weeks in, and then I failed the first test, and I decided to take it right away instead of pushing it back. That was stupid. And then I had to make up for it, right? And my back's up against the wall. Your whole life is hanging in this moment that you have to reform in, in a day or two weeks, and it can cause a lot of anxiety and stress. And I think everyone goes through that in some capacity in something they're doing. And I think that you really have to do different things. You have to be very resourceful. You have to put your ego aside and ask other people who are doing well and doing this better than you, even though you don't like to admit it and say, hey, give me some advice. What are you doing that I can implement now and let me do that. And it's hard to have these habits that you've had for a long time and just throw them out the window immediately. But you have to do it, and you have to say, what can I do between now and tomorrow to make a difference? And I think that I asked other people, I sat there and I practiced and I practiced, and I practiced hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times by the next day. And I went in and I performed. And I think I had this solid moment. I remember that really changed the way I look at things. And I remember I did this land navigation course. Very challenging. For some reason, the Green Berets think we only use GPSs.

[B]

And your wife, but actually we have.

[A]

A very hard compass course. And, you know, sidebar. They told me one time, they said, well, what are you going to do when your GPS fails? I said, well, I'll pull out my second gps, obviously, but we have this very challenging compass course and you would have to go through this brush in the mountains of California. You had to be able to read maps, you had to count your hundred meter pace foot by foot, steps using pacing beads, and every single turn had to be precise. And you had to carry all this water and weight and they had to hit all the points. I think you had to hit at least three out of five targets or five out of seven. I think it was three out of five. And then make this, this comms window. Okay, So I did it. I hit my three out of five targets and then I had to sprint about a mile and a half to get there on time. I was so exhausted and to sit down for a minute. Is that all this weight? I was sprinting for a mile and a half. I took a minute and I called, but I called late. Even though I had been on the target on time, I called late.

[B]

What is called late mean?

[A]

I made my comms to the people that were, I don't know, checking in with us to say, hey, I finished the course, I hit my targets. Boom. By 4:00, whatever the time was, I called it 4:05, something like that, because I was smoked and I need a second. Well, I had to go to this review board because they said, you failed the test. I said, well, no, I hit all my targets and I was there on time. You can ask my buddies. And they said, well, you didn't call on time. I said, okay. And they looked at me, they said, navy seals are the best combat divers in the world. They said, do you think we should change our standards for you or you should rise to the occasion? I think that hit me in that moment. And I said, you know what? You're fucking right. And so I went out there, I got my shit together, I course corrected. What can I do better by tomorrow? I went out there, I fine tuned myself, I made much more precise movements. I was really much more on top of it. I dialed everything in, didn't lollygag along the way, did everything I need to do. And the next day I hit five out of five targets and I called them an hour early. And that's a mindset you have to have. I think that, yeah, I'll leave it at that.

[B]

And to wrap that up, also, never break rule number one.

[A]

But, yes, but you know, I think that it's, it's the adversity and the challenges and failures in life that makes you better. And I think that failure is not always bad. It sucks in the moment. But I can't tell you how many times I've failed something. And because I failed it, it made me better because I had to improve in that area and I became better in that area than I would have previously. And I met a lot of guys, SEALs, who, you know, it's easy for them. You know, they get through the whole thing with no problem. They crush everything, they're studs. But the first time they hit adversity or a challenge, they didn't know how to react. And people in life, you know, when you hit adversity or challenge or failure for the first time, people can't respond to it. But because I feel like I've had so much adversity and I've had my back up against the wall, I've learned to adapt and how to overcome challenges, and I know how to handle them and I know how to attack them. And I think that when I meet challenges, I know how to deal with them. And so I'm much, well, more equipped, probably than the average person. And I think, you know, I hear this BS a lot where, you know, I have something that's hard and I do it. And people say, oh, well, you're a seal, of course, you know, that's easy for you. And I kind of call bullshit on that because I think that it's not because I'm a seal or because someone is whatever title they are. In my opinion, and we disagree on this, those are just a marker, right? That's a marker or a metric. I think that you're a seal, not because you're a stud or whatever you are. It's because I have these habits. I put in hard work, I'm disciplined, I'm willing to work hard, I'm not willing to quit. And I'm willing to do all these things. And all these things individually add up to become that person. And it's not the person that has all these skills all of a sudden. It's all these skills and attributes and discipline every single day, every morning at 3am, every moment in those hard moments that add up to make you that person. And that's what makes someone great. It's not just this nominal title. It's the person putting in the work. And I think that anyone can put in those efforts and work in their domain in life if they choose to. But they have to make that choice and they have to do it. And that is where the difference maker is underlying for a lot of people in success.

[B]

And you mentioned that you and I believe a little differently on this. And that's true. And where I think that we don't see eye to eye is I believe, from my experience. So people might not know this, But I've spent 10 years taking care of Tier 1 operators, and to this day, I sit on the seal Future Foundation Medical Board. And I take care of your brothers. Luckily, I don't take care of you. We have Dr. Lisa to do that. And here's what I've seen over time. A good physician recognizes patterns of disease, but an effective physician recognizes patterns of people. And I would say that there is a genetic component to allow someone to become a SEAL or a Tier one operator. And what do I mean by this? And again, I can be wrong. But I was interviewing Matt. What was her name? Who did we have on the Ranger? Yeah, not Lisa Jaster, who is also amazing, but we had another neuroscientist on, Allison Tapsoe. Yes, Allison Brager, actually. And what she said is, when they looked at the gene profile of Rangers, they all had a genetic mutation that allowed them to sleep four hours a night. And Jocko definitely has this mutation, and you do, too. That they could get up and perform, and that they were able to perform no matter what, and that their body required four hours of sleep. I do believe that there are certain genetic components that allow people to be able to navigate austere environments, whether at war or not, that allow them to then continue to chisel away at these attributes. Right. You could have all those attributes and then decide to be a serial killer, or you can have all these attributes and decide to pick something else at life. But there seems to be some, in my opinion, that no matter how disciplined you are, there are some people that are built differently. And I will also say that every Seal and Tier 1 operator agrees with you.

[A]

And how come that gene wears off at 35. But I think you're right to an extent.

[B]

I suppose that's true.

[A]

I think you're right to an extent. You know, I would say that everyone who makes it to SEAL training can become a SEAL.

[B]

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[A]

They all physically can do it, but mentally, some people don't. And probably that's true in a lot of aspects of life and business and things that people set themselves up for and residency. You see people switch out of surgical specialties, you know, multiple times a year. You see lots of residents switch out from urology to radiology or to peds or to something else. I think that all these people can do it. It's a choice, and maybe it's not worth it to them. You know, I, you know, I had this moment. I was in boot camp. You know, I think I went through life at some point thinking, why doesn't everybody do this or this or this? And I think, you know, it's okay. Everyone is happy doing what they want to do in life, right? And that's great. And I, you know, I think everyone should do what makes them happy. Not everyone wants to be a surgeon or a CO or a doctor or the best at CrossFit. I think that's not for everybody, but I think that everyone who shows up, I think they want to be there, they want to do it, but it's a choice. And I think that everyone can do it who are in those positions. The difference maker is in the head.

[B]

And when you go through challenging times and this is more tactical for the listener, is there something that you fall back on? For example, do you listen to something motivational? Do you have a strategy? And maybe you don't I have strategies?

[A]

Yeah, I do. Like David Goggins for motivational speaking. You know, gets me pumped up. He's great for that. But, you know, first time I jumped out of airplane, I didn't really want to jump out of an airplane. I could see people walking around 1,000ft doing a static line jumping. And I think they instilled a few skills in us. I think that there's something called box breathing, 4x4 breathing. I'm a big fan. You can use that in combat in life and stress, anxiety. You basically breathe in for four seconds, hold it for four seconds, and you breathe out for four seconds, and you do it four times. And you would be surprised how much you can regulate yourself with that. It helps. It helps in the short term. You can take a deep breath and you can brush it off. I think also the anxiety, the buildup in your head of so many things, this buildup of this op you're gonna go on, this buildup of this financial difficulty you're facing, this buildup of this social encounter you're gonna have, this buildup of this thing you're anxious about. I think that actually the event in and of itself is way less significant and way less dramatic and way less of an issue than it actually is in your head. And sometimes if I have something really terrible that I think is going to happen, I just play it out of my head. I say, all right, well, okay, let's play it out. If this worst case scenario happened, how would it play out? And then if that happened to me, say, I don't know, I lost all my money. Right. How would I respond to it? What would I do in response to that situation? And I would say, well, I would do this, and because I'm going to do this and respond this way, actually, I think everything would be okay. So it's not actually that bad. I think that I would be okay in that situation. And I think if you play it out, you would realize that it's not as bad as you are making it out to be. And when every time I've done something I've built up in my head, it's never as bad as it is in your head.

[B]

And that also segues into teammates. And when we think about building a strong family and building a strong foundation, you and I are teammates. I would love to share. Maybe you can tell the story about how we met. I mean, we're going to talk about fitness and balance and all of these things, but our journey together started in a way that proves I don't know if it proves mindset is everything or mindset is the foundation, but maybe it proves that when you come together with a teammate and you have inherent alignments as to what you think is important, then you can build something extraordinary.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, I had some interesting encounters as a combat medic. You know, as a seal, you know, it's a unique job because in some other units you attach people and your only job is to be the Ranger medic and you're fully in that role or whatever your job is. Right. The 18 Delta Green Beret medic. But in the seals it's slightly different in the fact that everyone's a SEAL first. Everyone goes to comm school, to breacher school, become a medic, a sniper, what have you. Right? And they have these additional skills. And so the job is to be a SEAL first, but you're completely self sufficient as a unit and so you don't have to attach all these other people. And you know, the caliber of the person next to you is of the same caliber as you, right? To an extent. You know, some guys are better than others. And, you know, so it was interesting. I went to this combat medic course, it was about a year, did a lot of surgical training, went to the hospitals, did a lot, went to some courses. And you know, my first encounter in real life was having to use those skills was on my last operation, Afghanistan. On the way home, you think everything's over. And of course that's always when something happens, right? So we're on our way out and you know, I hear over the radio that, you know, something happened, someone got hurt, you heard an explosion. And so then me and my buddy, they say, oh, well, there's mortars coming or whatever. No one really knew what was going on at the time. So me and my buddy get out and we're rushing over this guy who supposedly got his legs blown off. And we get over there, the EOD guy clears to him, goes with an Afghan soldier, I guess they throw a couple tourniquets on, they bring him and I meet him and meet him in this little hut and you know, we're not really in the clear. It's still kind of dangerous at the time. We don't really know the tactical situation at the moment. So in our minds, you know, still kind of a hot dangerous situation. So I see this guy, I mean, he's got a concussion, his arm is bent sideways, he's got two amputations, one above the knee, one's just tissue hanging everywhere, there's blood all over the place. He doesn't speak English. I don't know how to communicate to him. Fragmentation all over his body. Fragmentation meaning like metal pieces that penetrated into the skin underneath the tissue. And you know, man, I was like, holy shit, this is crazy. And I just thought I said, man, I don't even have time to mentally process this. I'll deal with this later. So I just go into autopilot and I start, you know, trying to work on this guy. And I'm, you know, working on this guy and I talk to my buddy and he has to communicate over comms, and I have to communicate over comms, you know, at some point. And, you know, I remember when I was in training and I maybe it was in training, it was at the team or something, but I think there's always. Why I have this calm nature about myself. I think it was really this one moment that really defined me to have that ability because I really don't get stressed out. There's bleeding in the operating room or whatever. Have you stress, stressful situations.

[B]

I would say that's true. You are not you. I can always count on you. You're not going to be stressed.

[A]

I remember that he said, all right, well, you're in a team. You're the combat medic, right? Someone on your team gets shot or hurt, you have to be the calmest guy in the room. You have to take a deep breath, you have to go over the radio. Regardless of how you feel inside, you have to be really calm. Because the moment you start freaking out when someone on your team is shot or someone's hurt, everyone's gonna start freaking out. And so it's your job to regulate yourself and regulate everybody else and make things seem very calm when you are talking to everyone. And so you have to be calm in a stressful situation. And so, you know, I remember we were treating this guy and, you know, had to be in that situation. And it was interesting. You know, I was very lucky and fortunate that I had a lot of training leading up to that moment that prepared me for it. And luckily this guy survived and against all odds and he did well. So, you know, I don't know where he is anymore, but he did well. And another crazy story was, you know, I was in Africa. Going to Africa really kind of changed my outlook on life. You know, I was very fortunate to go. You know, I met some of the greatest, most hard working people I've ever met on the planet. The nicest people, the best culture. And, you know, I think I was at A point in life where probably a lot of people are now, you know, you see a lot of people in the country are very conflicted, very angry, very dissatisfied. There's a lot of back and forth every four years about politics. People are at each other's necks all the time about politics, about different things. It wasn't like that, you know, back in 2015, 2013, but, you know, this is around 2015. But, you know, I got to a point where I was really kind of thinking, wow, just, you know, people suck, you know, everyone just kind of sucks, you know.

[B]

And why were you thinking that everyone.

[A]

Just cares about themselves, they're self absorbed, no one cares about each other. Just very disheartening to see all the time. And, you know, I remember when I went to Uganda and I was in different parts of Uganda, you know, had the opportunity to participate in some aid work because, yeah, I really, you know, I was there to do my seal job, but I got to also help medically a lot of people and do some aid work kind of on the side just because I wanted to. And I had supplies and equipment to do it. And met a PhD who was helping with some, you know, children who were, you know, orphaned from the AIDS epidemic. They lost a lot of their working force, you know, 30, 40 year old, you know, adults, males and females. It's a lot of orphan children, et cetera. And you would see, you know, they were, they really didn't have much. You know, probably the average income, I think was around $1,200 a year. Right? You could have a full, you know, fine five star meal for $8, $12 to eat out. And you would see, you could clothe and provide electricity and full support for a child for $10 a month. I mean, it's insane, right? And I remember I went to this, I used to go to this orphanage once a week and I'd go hang out with the kids. I'd spend time with them and play football and I'd mentor them and I'd, you know, hang out with all these people. And there's this guy, he set up this orphanage. And then I was in a hotel in Kampala in the capital, and I was in the lounge at whatever hotel I was at. And I met this one lady, she was telling me about what she was doing. She said, well, I teach in China for one third of the year. I teach in, I don't know where she's from, Australia maybe the other third of the year. And I take all my own money and I come here to Jinja and I put up these kids, and I help pay for them. I support them. And it was in that moment that I realized I think I had it wrong. And not only did I meet all these wonderful people in Uganda, but I met all these other people who are out there doing good things. And I said, maybe I got it wrong, and I'm not seeing all the good in people because they're out there doing it, because they're not at home in the US Doing this and that they're overseas helping make a difference. And I think that was in a moment that I realized I was wrong in that moment. And that was very refreshing and restorative for me. But there was another time, interestingly enough, it's just kind of a wild story. I was there. We were going to go to support this sniper range up near this whole area with some stuff we were doing anyways. So I had to pack this box of medical equipment to go up there. It's an hour, hour and a half away from our camp. We live in the villages. And so luckily, you know, I like to be prepared for lots of situations. I don't like to be kind of not prepared. So I showed up, brought what I felt like I needed, which was a lot, just in case. And then we get this phone call. Someone called my team leader, and they said, they need me to go to the Capitol. I said, why do you need me to go to the Capitol? They said, oh, well, there's this American soldier, and they think he's really sick. And you're the senior, most American medical provider in the country. And I said, me? I was like an E5 medic. How am I the most senior American medical. It's got to be a joke. So they're like, no, you're it. I said, oh, all right. Guess call the driver. And so we go to drive another hour, hour and a half to get to this place. And, you know, there's like, comms issues where you using these cell phones with cell phone cards, if anyone remembers what that is, with your minutes. Prepaid. It's a thing. And so I go to meet this guy. He's got acute appendicitis. I start him on IV ertapenem early, which is a very broad spectrum, strong antibiotic. In vans, we use that in a lot of combat wounds because they're dirty, very dangerous. And a lot of people survive their wounds of war and die from infections. And so we tend to go broad spectrum. So I had a lot of this stuff already. And so I go to meet this guy, they do an ultrasound. It seems like he probably had ruptured. Right. I mean, there's. I don't know if it was inflammation or the appendix was leaking, but there's fluid around the appendix, so we had to do something. So he turns out to be kind of sick. And the whole thing in Africa was you had to be able to hunker down for two or three days. So I had gone to this course at USC in LA to try to learn, you know, to further sustain myself and learn a little more longer term surgical care, surgical nursing, is that just.

[B]

To keep someone alive until.

[A]

Yeah, until you can get out of there.

[B]

Okay. And so, interestingly enough, you still can't find your socks.

[A]

Yeah, Yeah.

[B]

I mean, that's what I have.

[A]

You believe at least.

[B]

Yeah. Or change our son's diaper.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. So we. We pay cash. I don't know, 100 bucks cash. We rent ambulances. We're flying down with the ambulances on, you know, with their lights, putting IVs in this bumpy road. We get to this hospital that's not been totally sanctioned by the, you know, whoever site surveys these hospitals. But so it's a little, you know, whatever. We might not have been supposed to do that, but it was referred by this British doctor expat who said, I know this Western trained provider. He does, you know, five appies a week. He's good to go. Go to him. So we go with the information on the ground. We go to this guy and we get there and there's a little bit of tension. I think there are still some racial issues happening. I don't know the full backstory, probably similar to South Africa in some ways, but he wouldn't let us in the or. So we're like, all right, well, you gotta let us know what your OR looks like. This is safe for this guy to get surgery with you. You know, I can't just throw him off to some surgeon that we don't know in the middle of Uganda. And so he meets us in the middle.

[B]

And that was because he was under American care.

[A]

Well, basically, we determined that he was too sick to get medevaced. And it was an eight hour flight to the American base. We were pretty far out there. Africa's huge. So it take eight hours to get him there. And we felt like if he was ruptured or pending rupture or sick enough to the point we couldn't fly him out, that we would have a real big problem.

[B]

But why not just let this guy do it?

[A]

Well, that's what we did. So we kind of met in the middle. He showed us a video on our cell phone of his or like, okay, I guess this is fine. And then you know, the PA eventually who was supposed to be covering was in another country because he was covering multiple countries. He kind of met me there at some point. We met at the hospital and him and his assistant or whoever was working with him, you know, we went in together. It's interesting because you had to go with metal detectors through the hospital. You got to have a lot of metal detectors. At the time there was Al Shabaas, this Al Qaeda associated terrorist organist organization. And there's a bombing up the street, the courthouse. There was at the same time Ashrabab went to Kenya, right up the street and murdered a whole university, a Christian university because of, you know, differing beliefs, which is obviously a radical thing to do, but that's what happened. And so there was a lot of violence, terrorism at the time, it wasn't super safe. And so basically I had to go in there unarmed because there was metal detectors and everything. I couldn't have a gun. And so we, we paid for the surgery on our government credit cards. And he got the surgery and he came out. You know, the PA went to go spin up the medevac and try to work on resources, you know, couldn't do a lot remote, right. We don't have. Wasn't really like that. Right. So he had to go drive a couple hours, start working on things. I said I volunteer to stay behind. And so I stayed behind. I think I saw, you know, three guys walk in and two walk out, right. Kind of thing.

[B]

Three guys walk in and to walk out.

[A]

Okay. Yeah. And so I'm there into this hospital, right? So they know there's still one guy in there. And so then I'm dealing with this guy, he's post op, this appendectomy and it's really sketchy, you know. And then I, I look on his person, he's got like $30,000 cash, average house, like 1200 bucks. I definitely get murdered for that money. Like, holy shit, this guy's got 30,000 US dollars in his pocket. Alright? So I took that. You know, it's like in a horror movie. I walked out of the hall, I looked at the lights flickering at night. I was on the other end of the planet, completely alone, unarmed in this right up the street from where all these bombings and like different things happen. And yeah, it definitely felt like I was hanging out there a little bit. And this guy starts Crashing, like, turns gray. His O2 sats are in the mid-80s. Psychology. This is getting a fever. Skinning, post op sepsis. It was a disaster. So, you know, it was definitely above my pay grade at the time. I did the best I could. He ended up doing fine. You know, I just kind of tried to keep him going for a couple days. It was like two days. You know, you couldn't get labs, you couldn't like, do anything, couldn't make anything happen, you know. So it's just really trying to do the best you can with what you had. Basically what I had in my box, right? Because I couldn't get any of the residents from the Uganda residents to come up and did you feel stressed?

[B]

Did you feel stressed?

[A]

I felt nervous, that's for sure.

[B]

Nervous for your life or nervous?

[A]

Yeah, yeah. I just like pin my box up against the door, keep, you know, a couple white Americans in this area by ourselves, you know, unarmed, with $30,000 cash. This guy's super sick.

[B]

Was that when you decided that you're going to go to medical school? Because what people don't know is that you did your pre med, some of your courses while you were in Afghanistan and overseas, you were studying and teaching yourself physics and calculus at night.

[A]

Yeah, that's true.

[B]

Was that why you decided to become a doctor?

[A]

I think, you know why I decided. I think I really enjoyed being in the hospital. I liked medicine. I got to get some, you know, month rotation here and there in the or, different, you know, the er, different places. And I knew it was something I wanted to do at some point. But, you know, it was Operation Red Wings. I was in Afghanistan. I said, I just got accepted to Columbia for, you know, a pre med degree course. And I decided, I'm not going to do that. I really like being a CEO. I'm going to reenlist. So I reenlisted. I put it on the back burner. I said, I would like to do it, but I'll do it later. And we were going to the most dangerous part of Afghanistan, southeast, and we live in the villages, you know, seven months at a time or so. And I had the most unusual, you know, first deployment cycle. I would say I had kind of a couple deployments built into this cycle. And I went to South America for a while, came to Afghanistan. I went to this headquarters, I went somewhere else. And this guy in Europe was on this contingency response force where any seaborne operations in Europe, you know, like pirates, anything like that, or Israel. We're kind of the Response team. Right. So he was having a baby so like all right, we're send him on paternity leave. You haven't quite made it to your village yet so we're just going to pull you. So I got pulled to Europe to cover that for and it'd be in two months instead of one like they promised me. And we did a couple of these exercises out with piracy in the Med and North Sea. And then I got to go back and I'm waiting and I basically just by myself all over the world with a roller bag and a gun case. It was really, it was pretty cool. Interesting. Catching helicopters by myself, trying to get all over the place and I get finally to where I'm about to push out to my village, you know and it's been just such a process to get there.

[B]

Thank you to Oneskin for sponsoring this episode. I bring sponsors of products that I love and use on my own skin. I first became obsessed with one skin because on IG I saw a girlfriend whose skin had completely transformed and when I was like hey girl, what are you doing? She she said it was one skin. Now I've always had issues with this texture under my eyes and my skin. I've tried a million different products and I've landed on one skin. It's really helped me personally which is why I want to bring it to you now. I've been using their broad spectrum sunscreen. In fact, Shane also uses this, the eye cream and the topical body supplement which by the way I love the way it feels. It's unique clinically tested peptide that helps with DNA repair. You all can get 15% off one skin with the code DRLION. Go to OneSkin, that's O N E S K I N and use the code drlion to get 15% off.

[A]

And I had to catch a ride at the infantry by myself and the road got blown up by this 300 pound bomb that sent this up armored vehicle probably flying hundreds of feet. I mean and you can only go on this place called Route 1. It was only rode in and trying to go to southeast Afghanistan in the summer. Really I think it was the hottest area at the time. And so I had to sit there and we had to wait until I don't know it was safe to go. So there was a surgical team on the base and because I was a highly trained medic at the time, you know, I said hey, you know, I'd be interested in scrubbing in and helping out if you need me or if I can.

[B]

We have pictures of that, yeah, it.

[A]

Was the only time I had a gun in the OR and this.

[B]

And it was at this point, I just want to kind of tie this all together because I want to talk about relationships too. And it was at that point that you decided you're going to be a doctor?

[A]

Yeah, I mean, I had always kind of wanted to, but I think when I was in there, it was where people who would get shot or hurt in the war would come in to get stabilized and get surgery. Or local populations, the Afghans who got in car accidents or got hurt or injured, they would get helped and stabilized. So I got to go in the OR for about two weeks straight and go help out a lot. And it was very inspiring. I want to be a military surgeon, trauma surgeon. You know, I thought, what better can I do than help guys who are going out there who are getting wounded defending our country? I couldn't think of anything more I'd want to do just than that, you know. And, you know, I'd see guys get hurt, like guys we were with an infantry and who were on our base. And yeah, it was very sad. It was disheartening to see. And I just, I felt like it was something I really wanted to do. And so I decided I'd probably pursue that. And I started kind of making moves towards that. And I do distance courses. I would self teach and test out when I got back. And then eventually when I was a combat medic instructor, I'd go to night school.

[B]

And this was at Fort Bragg. Now we're moving into. You're now back home. And this is actually when we met. So you had come back home and you were full on getting ready to go to apply to medical school. And you still had to do your night courses. You were at the schoolhouse for those people. Military. You all know what that is. Non military. Fort Bragg is. So there's Special Operations Command. Do you want to just explain like in two sentences what Fort Bragg is in terms of what it teaches? And it's the focal point for the army, right, for their Special Operations Command.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So just really, really quickly. I don't want to spend too much time on that.

[A]

Yeah, sure. So it's where a lot of the Green Beret headquarters are. There's a U.S. army Special Operations Command is there and there's a primarily Army Corps Special Operations combat medic or 18 delta long course, short course. And that's where the training happens. So the seals attend it. The PJs used to attend it, the Civil Affairs Flight medics, Rangers Basically all the Special operations, med school, that course. And that's changed a little bit. The seals have their own course, but I was basically working at Army Command there. Kind of one of the only seals in the building. And it was good. I taught a lot. I got to have some good experiences, some bad.

[B]

You woke up at what time? In the morning and you did this for two. How long were you doing night school? Three years. For night school or two years?

[A]

Yeah, it was tough. So I did all my prereqs. You know, one of the benefits of going there was I could do all my prereqs in the building I was teaching in at night. And so they condensed courses just as hard, but just less time to learn it. And so I would get up, you know, four or five in the morning, go teach, lead guys in pt, do what I have to do. I'd go teach out on the elements in the cold and the heat, whatever. I'd be exhausted.

[B]

And then at 6pm and to share without sharing too much, you were teaching how to respond to gunshot wounds, stab wounds, amputations, anything really serious that someone would see in a war zone.

[A]

Yeah, all combat trauma, chest tubes, surgical airways, suturing, IVs.

[B]

And what time would you finish?

[A]

I probably finished teaching the course out in the field around 6. And then I have to go to school at 6, from 6 to 10pm drive home about 30 minutes, stay up till 1 or 2 studying, and then go to sleep and do it again. And it was just a brutal cycle for three years. It was in those. One of those moments where, you know, I think people get stuck, right? So people. I mean, that's a tough situation, right, to overcome. But I think, you know, that's how people get stuck. You know, you either have to do it and just suck it up or you're just gonna be in the same situation you are in every single day. And so it's either. Sometimes progress takes a lot of sacrifice.

[B]

Progress always takes sacrifice. And one of the things that I turned to you and I said, you know, when I was pregnant with our second child, I had already had our first child. And by the way, we were apart. You were still active duty and I was pregnant and alone, living in a studio in New York City.

[A]

That's the first child.

[B]

The first child, yeah. And I was commuting from downtown to uptown, pregnant on the subway while you were still.

[A]

Poor choice.

[B]

Poor choice. Active duty. And that was hard. I spent the majority of my pregnancy, I mean, all of the pregnancy, most of it up until you transitioned out by myself, which I would say was very challenging. But I don't know if we spent too much time thinking about that. And I think for all a military wife, there are certain things that you sign on for if you're going to be a military wife, whether that individual, that individual is deployed or non deployed, especially if the skill set is unique, like yours was the demand or yours is the demand for your skills. And to give back and to teach was rigorous. You were getting three or four hours of sleep a night while you were prepping to get into med school, which, by the way, you had to have 4.0. I was pregnant and alone in New York City and we had had our baby and I was working on my book at some point in time and I had turned to you. So this, I guess when we were together now, because after you had gotten out, we were together, you moved to New York. But I turned to you and I said, listen, I recognize that I have to do all these things. I have to say fit. I have to do what I'm saying if I'm going to talk about fitness and nutrition, I have no idea how to get it done. And while also we had a toddler. Not a toddler, a baby. And do you remember what you said to me?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. And you will see him on. Try not to remember. And I would say that you still say this to this day. If I really cared about it, I would just wake up a little bit earlier.

[A]

It's true.

[B]

And you will see Shane occasionally on the side of a milk carton for a missing person. But it was really good advice.

[A]

I went missing for a while.

[B]

Yeah. Missing for. Yeah, for that comment and many others.

[A]

Lots of others.

[B]

It kind of connects us now as a team. And for those people listening or watching this, what is it mean? And how does one create a very strong relationship where you do things in a way that, you know, I. We weren't micromanaging each other. There were just ways where you had to execute on your behalf and I had to execute on my behalf. Because even now you're a surgical resident, which the duty hours are 80. He may or may not be doing.

[A]

I'm within duty hours.

[B]

Yeah, right. Which are 80, which is not really the amount of hours questionably that you're working. But of course you would never say that and I wouldn't be noticing, but there's a lot of challenges with that. And I will say that I think that we have been able to position our relationship where it doesn't create a ton of strain. We are able to no matter what have a great dynamic while going after the things that are meaningful while knowing that our family still at the root is the foundation of it all. And I will say very quickly we were introduced by Commander retired Commander Mark Devine who I don't know exactly when this is going to come out but he will be speaking at our event, the forever strong event. And when he introduced us he said hey can you help this seal? He's really interested in going to medical school. And I thought to myself sure, I guess be happy to talk to him. Anyone who's serving our country in that way. And by the way, I'd also been taking care of military operators tier one operators at this time. So I knew then any intelligent woman would never date a tier one operator. Tell me where I'm wrong. Especially a guy that grew up in the teams because it's a cultural thing. And what do I mean by that? Let's just say they are a. What is it? A ladies man. Should they say, you know I had some of the guys come in.

[A]

Am I getting in trouble without saying anything?

[B]

No, no, no. What's happening?

[A]

Gaslighting me.

[B]

I just will continue on this road. But I thought you were amazing and many of your brothers, whether you knew them or not would come in and say hey Doc, what do you think about this girl? And she's in Kansas. What about her? No, in California and this one is in Hawaii. And they would just scroll through fake news. Never heard that. And so anyway, a woman who wanted a real relationship was not going to be dating a tier one operator. No offense because there's many guys that are great but just from a cultural perspective, just from this is my opinion and I we spent a lot of time talking through some of the medical things and we really liked each other as people and I wasn't thinking anything romantic. I had just come off the tail end of a relationship. I was certainly ready. Not ready to be involved with anyone is the last thing from. You know how it is after you are in a long term relationship you don't not ready to date. I mean you need to at least give someone at least a year even think about it. And you met me in person and that was it. That was it.

[A]

Yep. I knew right away.

[B]

You said you knew right away.

[A]

Took you a little bit longer.

[B]

Took me months longer. What I think is interesting about it is you said that you knew right away and you said that the same thing that kept you in a alive overseas during war times. There's a bit of an intuition about that, that you said that you'd had the same feeling when you met me.

[A]

I don't know. You have these feelings that. I don't know if it happens often in life, but something feels real, something feels powerful, strong, subconscious. And I think I felt that before. I remember when I was running one night in Africa. So at this decision point in life, I could feel it. And then I remember I felt that again when we first met and you.

[B]

Decided that that was it. I was gonna. I was the one. And as soon as you told me, there was a moment where you told me after months of just being friends, that you thought that we should date. And what happened after that?

[A]

Well, she loves to tell everyone. She stopped picking up my phone calls.

[B]

True or false?

[A]

True. Right. She said, absolutely not.

[B]

And also, don't ever.

[A]

I would never go out with you. And maybe that's why I. You know, maybe that's what did it for me.

[B]

Do you remember what you just had to go out. You said, there's a chance. So you're telling me there's a chance? And I said, listen, listen.

[A]

Dumb and dumber.

[B]

Yeah, dumb and dumber. Tweedled Tweedledon. There's absolutely zero chances. And so for at least a month, maybe longer, I refused to pick up your phone calls.

[A]

It was two weeks.

[B]

It was not two weeks. And it was definitely not two weeks. It was at least a month. And I remember talking to my friends about it, and they said if you. Because I liked you as a human, I really like. I mean, who wouldn't like you? Pause. Awkward pause. Here you were, this stud, super capable and total ladies man. Not interested. But I really liked you. And I found you, while you looked like a knuckle dragger.

[A]

I was £15 more jacked. For the record.

[B]

No, you got into running marathons. Somehow you decided that in residency you were gonna run marathons. And I will say this is unique to. I think your type of human is that when you decide something, that is it. There's really not a lot of thought that goes into it. It's. You are gonna do it, and you go all in and you convince yourself that this is the way. And I think that that's actually what happened with our relationship meeting me is you decided that that's it, I was going to be your woman. And.

[A]

Well, look, I think anyone who studied physics and has really kind of dived in, you know, dove into it. Time is not linear, Right? And I feel that. I felt like it always was and it always has been. It was just Kind of this feeling where I knew and. And so I really couldn't allow myself or the situation to be any other way. And I have those moments in life where I really feel something like it's already happened because I think a lot of times it already has. And maybe not everyone agrees with that but I think, I mean, hey, time's not linear. We look back, you know, 10, 15 years ago, it happened then. But you know, I think depends on how you want to frame it.

[B]

And that's a really fascinating thought process. And finally after talking my friends, they said don't you ever pick up that phone call. If you pick up that phone call you are going to ruin your life.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Ganna said that I know loves me is my. That's right. Every. It is true. Everyone has now come to love you. Ganna is one of my best friends and he is a four board certified physician at Madigan Army Base. And I picked up the phone call just four. Yeah, four total underachievers. I scored number one in pain in his boards. But it was probably the best decision of my life. And it has been, honestly. People might be vomiting right now. Vomiting probably for sure they're vomiting. But also would say, you know, oh great, that's amazing. You have a great relationship. But it has been largely, knock on wood, easy. And why do I say it's easy? It's not that our lives are easy. Our lives are complicated. There's a lot of moving parts because we care about doing things well. We care about our kids. We don't outsource them. We don't do a lot of things that I think would make our lives easier. And we also have an understanding of what we believe and how we function as a unit and to share some of those things that I think are really valuable when one is building a dynamic that and I don't use the word balances family health and work. It's not true, it doesn't happen. There is no such thing. But we do have non negotiables. They are both physiologic non negotiables. And what do I mean by that? Biologic? I mean in terms of training and fitness and nutrition. And then I think that there are also dynamic relationship non negotiables to start with, the fitness non negotiables. I am very specific about the times I train. I know that I'm going to train no matter what, three days a week. I'm not going to miss those days. And Saturday is going to be a day that I also train. I Train full body three days a week. And I add in one or two days of typically. Yeah, one or two days of some kind of max effort at the end of those workouts, typically on a Friday or Saturday. And you oftentimes don't get the opportunity to work out. But when you do, just what does that look like?

[A]

Yeah, so for starters, you know, I think it's important to sign up for events. That's probably why I initially signed up for a marathon. I was moving out of New York City and I said, oh, be cool to see all the burrows. But I signed for these things originally because, you know, it forces you to work out when you don't want to. Can't just not work out for a marathon. It's going to be very painful. I've kind of tried that before. It didn't really work out very well. I finished, but it's painful.

[B]

You mean the time where you decided to run the New York Marathon and not train for it?

[A]

Off the couch marathon, not a good plan.

[B]

And then you said, I've done harder things.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, I was hurting.

[B]

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[A]

So, yeah, so anyways, I think those things are great. Except for a jiu jitsu competition, a marathon, whatever you want to do, right? It keeps you honest to an extent. It'll help push you to work out on the days you don't want to. But after that, you know, it's really kind of become something. I enjoy a habit and part of my lifestyle now. And I find it very challenging a lot of the times to work out during the week because I work a lot, and so I would love to work out when things are going well. I can get one to three workouts in a week, maybe 30 minutes if I'm lucky.

[B]

One to three workouts, 30 minutes. How often happen during the week?

[A]

It's happened zero days the past couple months.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Which sucks. Cause I'm doing Boston next month. But it's not a big deal because I get most of my volume on the weekends. And it's good, you know, Saturday, Sunday mornings, I take two or three hours to myself, which I need. You know, I'm inside all day. And so the last thing I want to do is go sit inside again at the gym. And so I do like to run and be outdoors and get my sunlight, be in nature, kind of a little meditation, take some stress off and I'll run, you know, do some speed work Saturday and some distance on Sunday. And because I do so much of my volume on the weekends, it's not a big deal that I don't get three to nine miles during the week. So I think that, you know, for people that are really busy, you can still do it. I think that you have to compensate for it on the weekend, but you can make it. You know, it's not ideal, but you have to kind of deal with the situation you're in. I think that that's what I do is I try to really kind of just make it work for the lifestyle I have. And that's the best I can do. And so luckily, I've got your support, you know, all the time with that. So it's been.

[B]

And I think it's important to support your spouse because if you decompensate physically, then I'm yelling at you all the time when you get sick. How sick are you? Scale of 1 to 10? Is that cough real? Do you really have pneumonia? Stop faking it with a man flu. Right?

[A]

But you say it all the time. You know, it's a lot harder to be sick later than to put in the few hours now or I see it on the Internet. They say working out for yourself isn't selfish. Because when you're old and sick and you can't take care of your family, then it's really gonna suck. And I think you Talk about that all the time. And.

[B]

So get it done regardless. It doesn't have to be perfect. And for those of you who are starting out, I don't necessarily just working out for long periods of time on the weekend, but if you have to and you have to be in the situation, then you do that.

[A]

But what are my options? Right? You know, I know this other successful surgeon and he's very busy, right? He's got, doing trials, you know, he's operating, busy clinic. He gets up at 3am to run an hour or two hours every day, whatever. He, you know, however long he's running because he's going to get it done. We talked about, you know, what else am I going to do, you know, am I going to get to the residency, end of residency and be like that guy who's, who's fat and out of shape and it's embarrassing, right? I mean, if I'm in this job, I'm going to be in. Am I just going to not work out for eight years, 10 years? I mean, what is the alternative? The alternative is there's no alternative. It's either you're going to do it or you're just going to not. And I don't think not doing it is the. Is an option.

[B]

It's. And it also sets a terrible example for our children. And that's the other thing is while I have more time than Shane does, I have my routine, Shane has his routine. And then we incorporate fitness with the kids. So the kids will come with me to the gym. Not always in the morning. They kind of are in a slump with that. They're in the workout slump. They used to love it, but for whatever I'm hoping they'll pick back up in the summer. We don't really make it a big deal because we want them to enjoy physical activity, but we make it fun. We make it fun.

[A]

We go rock climbing, go to the gym together.

[B]

Let's talk about what we do as a unified family rather than doing things indoors or on electronics, Right? My recommendation, and I would say our recommendation is sign up for a rock climbing gym. Bouldering. The little kids can do it. Our son is 4. He does it in a Batman outfit. He doesn't get very far. And there's lots of bouncy mats for them to fall. And then we do it with them. And my daughter does it. We love it. I guess technically that's indoors, but it's not indoors on an electronic. Being sedentary.

[A]

Also, the weather is wherever you live. There's a Few months every year where you really can't be outside very much.

[B]

But there are the. The point is, is if there is a solution, which. There is always a solution. You have to find it and you set the standard. Our kids are strong. Our kids are physically capable. They're not very well behaved, but they're strong.

[A]

Definitely not well behaved.

[B]

So rock climbing, gym, indoor outdoor pool. We're still working on swimming, Jiu Jitsu, and we do Jiu Jitsu three days a week. I train Jiu Jitsu one day a week with the kids. The kids do two other days for a total of three days of Jiu Jitsu. We don't over schedule them. We're very tight on routine bedtime, low level lights, and we try to keep everything together. I will also say supplementation. Let's talk about our kids. Supplementation. I'm just going to mention this. A lot of controversy around melatonin. I don't see why there is controversy. The data that I have seen, the data that I have looked at, I have no trouble giving an extremely low dose melatonin and keeping the overhead lights low to get my kids and keep them in a great rhythm. Fish oil and multivitamin. My son, our son still likes to carry around a bottle with his mini toy gun, cowboy boots and tank top, and he rocks a mullet.

[A]

Lots of lettuce.

[B]

Yeah, we got lettuce, right? Lots of lettuce. And those are the ways that we structure things. And one of the things that you had said is that sign up for something that you cannot quit. Sign up for. For example, my husband runs things for charity. He can't not show up to the Boston Marathon. He is running it for charity. The other thing is, I do think that we should talk about some of our biggest challenges in a relationship. As what?

[A]

Children.

[B]

Children. I mean, are they. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely one of.

[A]

The biggest challenges in relationships. Yeah, we don't fight about anything else.

[B]

Dude, you cannot. Are you kidding? Your side of the closet's okay.

[A]

She's fighting me right now.

[B]

And also take that back. Also. Food, nutrition. You're much more flexible on nutrition. Will never forget. Listen, friends, when you come home, if your wife literally is a nutritionist who has trained professionally in nutritional sciences, and you come home with a box of Cheerios, nature's like, what did you come home with these, like, five boxes of something that you picked up at the VA or something?

[A]

Chin ramen.

[B]

Whatever it was, you better believe that that's all getting thrown out instantaneously in the Garbage or donated immediately.

[A]

It's part of my running training.

[B]

Yeah, running training is called in the garbage.

[A]

Keep up the carbs.

[B]

Yeah. Really trying to do nutrition. And I will tell you that there's definitely friction for us when I said, listen, you cannot eat that in front of the kids.

[A]

Or when the kids run 20 miles on Sunday, you can eat it, too.

[B]

Okay, well, so we will clearly disagree on this, but really being a good example when it comes to not eating a bunch of junk food in front of them. And if you're going to do it, don't do it in front of your wife either. I think that the other thing. Our big.

[A]

Have a truck.

[B]

We do have a truck. And by the way, your truck is messy.

[A]

There may or may not be snacks in the back.

[B]

Yeah, I know. I saw them. Don't worry about that. But I also think that our biggest challenge is to turn off of work and not have our phones or computers or anything.

[A]

I don't think we have that challenge anymore. But we have had that challenge. We had to learn to disrupt and.

[B]

Because right now everything is on 247 and there's always work to be done. But I would say if you can spend a quality time, and maybe that quality time is an hour of fully focused effort with the kids, then you're winning. What else with the kids, I think are hacks or tips or tricks that we do to keep them on the up and up.

[A]

Well, they don't get to watch movies during the week. It's weekends only. So pretty disciplined about the electronics because they act terrible when they use them. We definitely have a routine with exercise with the kids on the weekends. We. What else? We do the workouts with them. So that's good.

[B]

Yeah, I think that those are the things that are really important. Working on manners and respect. And also we pray before meals. We also pray before meals.

[A]

Yep. Every meal negotiable.

[B]

And that is. Why do we do that? Because it's important to be grateful. It's important to take a pause and a moment to recognize that we're all just very lucky humans. And to instill that kind of gratitude is really important.

[A]

And do you force them to sit down for dinner?

[B]

But that's right.

[A]

You absolutely do try to create time around that with the family. And even at the hotels, you know, we sit down at the table, Same routine.

[B]

Yeah. And interpersonally, you and I, my job is interesting. I travel a lot, I interview, I interface with a lot of people. And you also do the same. Maybe not travel as much, but you're always. I'm not necessarily part of your world. Exactly. In the hospital, in the or. Although I do collaborate with your colleague. Said Peeler.

[A]

She wasn't putting my name. Why are you doing all these papers without me? In my department? It's my residency program. That's pretty funny.

[B]

That was pretty funny.

[A]

Bring me in. What are you doing?

[B]

People don't understand that.

[A]

Solo operations with my attendings. Get out of here.

[B]

That is pretty funny because we are both physicians. I don't know if you want to say anything more about that. It is funny. I am friends with your attendings, which is awkward. Is awkward. But amazing because we're doing research in hormones, andrology.

[A]

That's pretty cool.

[B]

Sexual medicine.

[A]

We do a lot of cool research together.

[B]

We do.

[A]

We both have some common interests. We go to this research meeting once a month about men's health, sexual health, hormones, a lot about testosterone, andrology, infertility, and it's great. We definitely both. You know, I have other interests in urology as well, but that's definitely one of the interests we share. And so it's good. We can kind of have that together.

[B]

And we'll link and we'll. You know, he did publish a paper on. Well, we published a paper on exposures, environmental exposures and bladder cancer in military, which I think is more of the things that you're interested in in cancer.

[A]

But, well, segue. I mean, that was actually a very important topic because some of the research I'm doing now are in burn pits and burn pit exposures in cancer. Look at the PACT act, which was this act that was passed to give benefits and service connection and treatment, which is ultimately important for that. For patients who had burn pit exposures who register for the burn pit registry and get treatment, service connection. So they had all these cancer exposures, everything in urology, too, except for bladder. So we started publishing about these exposures and prostate cancer risk, which were thought to be a thing. And then we confirmed it with our meta analysis. So that was new. And then we did a paper on bladder cancer exposures with Agent Orange, depleted uranium, water and clamp Lejeune, et cetera. And we're now recently working on this burn pit project. And what I wanted to tell people was what was interesting was Bladder Cancer Advocacy Network. BCAN Network is an advocacy group that actually advocates for patients and, you know, moving the research forward. There was opportunity for me to help out with this research because she knew we just did this paper on exposures, and so she was involved with bcan and they had, they were working on getting it covered for the PACT act. And, and so we kind of shared the research. A lot of people were involved. It's not, you know, I was just a small part of helping out, but I just thought it was exciting because we got to help share some of that research and some other research. I was able to partner with some of the people I knew in the military and some of the nonprofits and people were able to piece together a lot of documents from the bases.

[B]

Is this open access paper?

[A]

It's not published yet, but we have the paper ready. And so we presented at their conference and we gave them all our data. They had a lot of their own data before this too. And between, I think the time frame of August and January 1, they had gone to Congress with everything. And actually it got approved in January to be covered illness and service connection for patients. So if you didn't know this, now, if you have urothelial or bladder or upper tract cancer and burn pit exposure, you can actually get covered in service connection. That's probably one of the fastest times I've ever seen something where research went from the bench to bedside. Wasn't much bench, but went to the bedside, you know, pretty quick in like six months. Policy change. That is so that was huge. And you know, that's something BKN Network does all the time. So shout out to them.

[B]

Okay, well, that is really extraordinary. And that was just kind of sidebar for. Are we keeping that in? No, I'm just kidding. We'll definitely keep that in. But let's circle back because I wanted to spend a little bit of the remainder of the show about our relationship and how you build a strong dynamic as a forward facing unit.

[A]

We're done with bladder cancer.

[B]

Yeah, we're way down with. I was like, is he gonna stop talking about this or what? Do I kick him under the table? But I can't really reach him. One of the things that really determines the trajectory of an individual is their partner, because it is the most important decision that one makes. They're either going to make or break you. If you care about your relationship, they're either going to be your teammate and help move your life forward, or they are going to completely, utterly dismantle you at the seams. Fair to say. Let's talk about a few things. He's like, where are we going with this? Is she going to bring up the socks again? Number one, how we have relationships externally. So this is unsolicited relationship advice to have a bulletproof marriage. And that is you are introduced and involved in all of my friends. I don't have sidebar friends. Male friends that you do not know of, that you are not either introduced to. Text introduced. We really keep it together. And you become friends with them. Because if I'm friends with them, I don't know, assuming they're amazing, because I have amazing friends and you also become friends with them. And this might be a little controversial, but my phone is totally unlocked and you have access to it at any point in time. In fact, I will hand you the phone and say, can you read me what this person said? There is no hiding for messages or any of those things. And also, if you're one of my best friends and you're a female and you're listening to this and you say, don't tell Shane if it's a female thing, I definitely won't tell you all the photos. No. Unless I get approval, I won't share those things. Right. Because there is, you know, if someone tells me something in confidence, I don't look well. But. No, no, no. But in terms of how we create a dynamic, there's no question, there's no friction there of questioning. Is it. Is this person doing something unscrupulous or outside of the realm of what should be done? So I think that that's important. The other. Is there anything else that I think is really important or that you think is important that we do well? Oh, how we fight. When we used to fight, I would say that probably one of my least desirable traits is I'm a bit aggressive. And I don't know if extreme is.

[A]

The word, it may be underselling it.

[B]

And when I used to fight, I would threaten you a lot early on in our relationship and that made you feel really uncomfortable about the stability of the marriage. And I'm not even going to share because I can't say I was very, very nice in the beginning of our relationships in relationship when we fought, but I now no longer because you taught me. I don't. There's no threatening. We're stuck together. So we either can figure this out or I'm just gonna be yelling for a really long time.

[A]

Five foot one, crazy person.

[B]

One and a fourth and five foot one and a fourth.

[A]

Okay, sorry.

[B]

And I think that that's really valuable, right. If you have made a commitment to stay together, you guys are together and you are the team and you are the unit. Do you have anything that you'd like to add to that?

[A]

No, you said it all. It's Perfect.

[B]

So I want to do a lightning round. This is rapid fire. Okay. And there's no overthinking. This is. So let's do a rapid fire speed round. Which I guess a rapid fire and speed round would be the same thing. And there's no overthinking it. It's just gut reaction.

[A]

Thank you for the lesson in synonyms.

[B]

Okay? You are so welcome. Okay, let's do it. Number one, are you nervous? Are your armpits sweating?

[A]

No. And if they were, I'm not allowed to wear a deodorant because of paraffins.

[B]

Oh, my God. Let's come back to that. Because that is very funny.

[A]

Because all the surgeons say I stink.

[B]

Okay? So before we get into the rapid fire real talk here, I'm not a fan of traditional deodorants. I am not a fan of traditional makeup. Hair care.

[A]

Sidebarring deodorant in hair care right now.

[B]

Yeah, actually. Yeah, dude.

[A]

And so Navy SEALs are bust.

[B]

Anyway, so I replaced. I threw out all his Old Spice and Gillette and I didn't.

[A]

Spice. It's what? Frankincense, essential oils.

[B]

Yeah, I did. Yeah, yeah. It's true. And it doesn't. It didn't work for him or doesn't work for me. Body chemistry. So he decided to stop wearing it. And finally at your job, what happened?

[A]

Yeah, because she keeps promising me this illustrious deodorant that never actually. That doesn't exist.

[B]

No, we haven't.

[A]

Yeah. See, I use. It doesn't happen. It's not here.

[B]

I use clean hair products.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. They said I stink. I smell. They said. What is that? Hey, dude. Just to let you know, I got a whiff what's happening here?

[B]

Anyway, so his department told me put some deodorant. He now has to wear deodorant.

[A]

Yeah. It's been physically, you know, it's been directly told to me.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

All right. Number one, what do you say to yourself when you're feeling negative or down?

[A]

Don't be a pussy.

[B]

Yeah. And that's rule number one.

[A]

Rule number one.

[B]

That's right. And if you break rule number and then rule number two is refer back.

[A]

To rule number one.

[B]

Exactly. And this is our family motto. So he said it. And when you see me say, never break rule number one. This is rule number one. Number two. Best mental toughness hack.

[A]

Best mental toughness hack.

[B]

You have 30 seconds.

[A]

And I like 4x4 box breathing.

[B]

Okay, Moving on.

[A]

I don't know.

[B]

Okay, great. Everything I said, refer back to number one.

[A]

We're back to this podcast.

[B]

One workout or physical thing? Because obviously you can't work out every day. Everyone should do daily.

[A]

I think you should start the day, if you can, with a nice easy 30 minute cardio, something like that. Just to get the blood flowing, juices going, kind of get your heartbeat up. I think if you can do that, it's great. Well, this is doing it to start my day. I think you start your day with the workout. It's great.

[B]

This is not my section, but I would say you should do push ups every day. I do push ups every day, multiple times a day.

[A]

There's no reason you can't do push ups because it takes less.

[B]

That was my answer, not yours.

[A]

I used to do it when I put my scrubs on. Every time I change is a good time to do the pull ups every time you walk.

[B]

Number four. Moving on to number four. It's called rapid fire. Not long answer fire.

[A]

And a lot more rapid fire than you, let me tell you.

[B]

This is true. This is true. I could never be deployed. Can you imagine me? Honey, where's my gun? Is this gluten free green bean coffee?

[A]

This is not Starbucks.

[B]

Okay, last book you read or paper? We'll say book and then you can say that you didn't read a book. And here's your paper.

[A]

Campbell's Handbook in urology.

[B]

Okay, moving on. Last podcast you listened to Dr. Gabrielle Lyonshaw.

[A]

Abe Morgan Teller. Phenomenal, by the way. Phenomenal. I couldn't. I couldn't put it down. You guys went to bed late then.

[B]

Oh, man, you got. You have to listen.

[A]

It's so good.

[B]

Morgan Toller's podcast. This is the guy who thought I was messing around.

[A]

But I'm serious.

[B]

I mean, again, I am nothing special. The guests that come on this podcast are extraordinary. And Abe Morgenthaler, if you guys did not.

[A]

That's one of the best podcast episodes I've ever heard.

[B]

Brought testosterone replacement therapy to the modern era. Whoa.

[A]

All about prostate cancer, testosterone controversy.

[B]

Not in the rapid fire round.

[A]

Oh, you can keep going.

[B]

No, number six. I really push back on adding this one. Yes or no? Seed oils. Yes or no? I don't know exactly. Don't care exactly.

[A]

I don't know.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Are they bad? I eat a lot of things I'm not supposed to.

[B]

Okay, there.

[A]

We've been. We've talked about this. I know.

[B]

I don't know why. Listen.

[A]

Is it in shinrame?

[B]

Listen, they wanted to put this in. Haley and Julia said we're doing this. Okay? Seed oils and Zinn Nicotine yes or no?

[A]

Yes. Although it does make your gums recede, which is a no, but yes.

[B]

Cholesterol ldl Friend or foe?

[A]

HDL is my friend.

[B]

I don't know. Essentially, don't ask a surgeon a cholesterol question. Number eight meat. Overrated or essential?

[A]

Definitely essential. I got a meat in every meal or I don't feel good. I eat lots of protein.

[B]

You do eat a lot of protein.

[A]

Ton of meat.

[B]

You do. Dr. Shane Kronstadt oh gosh. Thank you for coming on the podcast. I just, I love you so much and I feel just so honored to be your wife and everything that I do, I could not do without you saying love you. Thank you so much for listening to this very special episode. If this video helped you drop a comment with your biggest takeaway and if you want to see more on mindset, fitness or life balance, let us know in the comments. Till next time, stay strong.