John Ballen
speaker
344 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Dec 2024
John Ballen’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
You work seven days a week. You are in training until you're done. And the only choice was like, Own the fact that you did that. Don't make excuses for it. Like let this show people my actual strength, which seems funny because I did the thing I'm not supposed to do. But instead of like running from it, literally, own it.
Take responsibility for what you did and show people that, you know what, I'm prepared to show up for work every day wearing these fucking trunks and be looked at as a lesser than to demonstrate that I'm not.
Yeah, I mean, I think that there definitely were some people that did carry that sort of like stigma into the teams, because right after we finished this, we kind of went into the SEAL teams.
But I do think that there was definitely some people that and I'm not even tooting my own horn, I really think this happened, that as a result of that moment knew they could like trust that I was prepared to sort of like, I'm going to take responsibility for me, I'm going to do what I'm supposed to do and be the best team that I can be.
even at my lowest, you're still going to get the best version of me. And that doesn't mean I think I'm better than anybody else. It just means I'm an adult. And I think that's a big part of being an adult is responsibility is ultimately owning those mistakes. And sometimes your mistakes are painful and public and awful. Yeah. And that's the most important time to own them.
And like you said, that's your opportunity in some ways, not just to rectify the mistake, but to become a stronger, better version of yourself. And I think that my mistake in college was a series of mistakes. My first semester of screwing it up and getting sent back home
But it was only when I recognized that it was my fault and I had to own that, that I was able to graduate college and try to become a Navy SEAL. And then in the process, like have the CS grenade happen. But in some ways that made me a better SEAL, you know? So I think that like in failure comes the best opportunity for success, which is something that I certainly didn't coin, but it's the truth.
Yeah, so every branch of, I think, basically every military in the world, this is a broad generalization, but it's usually the case that virtually every branch of every military has some form of specialized unit that carries out special operations. It's the stuff that, you know, the Call of Duty video games and Modern Warfare, those are based on like the idea of specialized combat units that...
That go out and do these kind of difficult and high stakes missions. And so in the US, you have the Army, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the Coast Guard and the Air Force, and each of them have like their like respective special operations divisions, like you have Marine special operations Marines, you have the PJs, the pararescue jumpers in the Air Force, there's multiple divisions.
But of all these special operations units in America, of all the different branches, you could make the case that the most – and again, some flack from people that disagree with me – the most, let's just say, well-known and potentially most skilled – and I say that carefully because, of course, there are other groups like the Green Berets who are incredible at certain things –
But the most skilled at multiple disciplines is very likely the Navy SEAL teams. And it's because the acronym SEAL stands for Sea, Air, Land, so S-E-A-L. The idea is even though it's under the Navy, which is sort of like maritime and water, the reality is that the SEAL teams are a special operations group that can insert into virtually any area. Any environment, sea, air, or land.
They can also use multiple insertion platforms, whether it's diving, jumping, going in on land. It's like a highly versatile special operations group, whereas a lot of the other special operations groups, not just in the United States, but internationally, are kind of specialized in certain areas.
geographies like you have mountain warfare specialists you have like the dutch have this incredible uh diving unit uh but the seals are like we do everything and they also sort of came into prominence they started in the 60s under jfk they really came into prominence post 9 11 because they were being sent out into the middle east which is you know it's a landlocked place but this navy special operations unit was being very successful carrying out you know kinetic operations all across the middle east
So it's like a very famous jack of all trades special operations group that, especially after the bin Laden raid as well, that sort of made them celebrities. But even before that, they were very well known as like the jack of all trades special operations group.
Broadly speaking, I would say it takes about two years. But realistically, it takes a little bit longer. So you have... There's two ways to become a SEAL. You either go in as an enlisted person. So there's the enlisted component of the military, which is somebody basically without a college degree who just raises their hand and just serves. That's the grunts of the world.
Those are the enlisted community. And then you have the officer side, just somebody who at a minimum needs to have a college degree to apply. You go to officer school. And in the SEAL teams, there's a tiny, tiny number of officer SEALs and a massive number of enlisted SEALs. But there are two very different pathways into training.
If you go the officer route, it's practically like a political appointment just to get an opportunity. Like it's so, so difficult to even get a chance to try out that what you get. And it's because there's just like a handful of spots available. That's really all it was.
So you have all these people on the enlisted side who actually have college degrees and could easily like become an officer in the military who, let's say, have other opportunities that they could pursue with their college degree, but they want to be a SEAL.
and so you have this big number of people that are electing to go be enlisted to try out to be seals and that's important because it makes the enlisted side super competitive you have like these professional athletes and you have like olympians and you have like the best college athletes and you have mma fighters and wrestlers and then like the random people like me who have no resume and you all just show up for the class in san diego that technically is six months long but there's like
Before you've been joined the Navy, you need to basically compete for a spot to even have a chance to try out. And there's a whole application process before you've joined the Navy that can take years. And then let's say you get your chance as an enlisted person. They're like, okay, you're going to get a chance to go. Well, first you got to go to boot camp. That's two months in Chicago.
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