MrBallen (Former Navy SEAL): I Wasn't Sleeping, I Became A Raging Alcoholic! I Was Disowned By The SEALS! This Will Turn Your Life Around In 2025!

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The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett 2h 4m 3 speakers transcribed
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John Ballen 0:00
I was in Afghanistan in 2014 as a Navy SEAL. We're in the middle of this gunfight, and a grenade came over the wall, and it detonated. And I'm waiting to either be shot by the enemy or I'm going to bleed to death. And all that was running through my head was, and that's the way I think people should look at their lives.
Steven 0:17
It's so interesting because I've never actually heard someone give that kind of advice before.
Narrator 0:21
Mr. Bullen is a former Navy SEAL turned master storyteller and content creator who uses his battlefield experiences and personal failures to inspire, educate, and help people overcome challenges to achieve their goals.
John Ballen 0:31
My family were very successful people with Pulitzer Prizes, PhD. And then there's me getting into street fights and about to get expelled. But it took becoming a colossal failure to realize that if you want to fix this, you have to start with saying it's my fault and then do something about it. But then fear becomes the thing keeping people from doing it. And it's the very select number of people in this life say, I'm going to still do that thing that scares the out of me and have the best and most fulfilling life. And so I decided to become a Navy SEAL because it was only a really small percent that make it through the grueling, mentally torturing training And what's the similarities that you noticed between the people that made it? Two words.
John Ballen 1:04
It's... But then I realized the reality of the job. You kill people. And I had really leaned into being as, like, alpha as I possibly could be, but there were just some things that I did, and I just... I struggled so, so bad. I had to face my demons. What have you learned about dealing with demons? If you begin to have those thoughts, the only way I have found to sort of cope with them is...
Steven 1:32
I find it incredibly fascinating that when we look at the back end of Spotify and Apple and our audio channels, the majority of people that watch this podcast haven't yet hit the follow button or the subscribe button, wherever you're listening to this. I would like to make a deal with you. If you could do me a huge favor and hit that subscribe button, I will work tirelessly from now until forever to make the show better and better and better and better. I can't tell you how much it helps when you hit that subscribe button. The show gets bigger, which means we can expand the production, bring in all the guests you want to see and continue to do in this thing we love. If you could do me that small favor and hit the follow button wherever you're listening to this, that would mean the world to me. That is the only favor I will ever ask you. Thank you so much for your time. Back to this episode. There are clues in your early context that suggest you might have walked the path that you've walked in your life.
Steven 2:23
But there's also clues that suggest you absolutely would never have done what you've done. So taking me back to that early context, what do I need to know about that environment, the influences of that environment to understand how you ended up where you are today?
John Ballen 2:36
I think it all starts with, you know, the family I was born into were like very successful academic people. So I was born in a town called Quincy, Massachusetts. It's just south of Boston, Mass. And, you know, my mother, father, and two sisters are like brilliant minds in like the academic sense of the word, just like brilliant. You know, my sister, one of my sisters has gone on to win two Pulitzer Prizes. My dad's won a Pulitzer Prize. My... And this doesn't even flex, but to give you a sense of the people in my life, my other sister like has a PhD and she like worked out of a Harvard lab. My mom was a professional writer. And then there's me. When I was growing up, I could have done well in school, you know, but I didn't want to. It was sort of like my form of rebellion was being a bad student willfully. And I would like go out and party with my friends and just was like –
John Ballen 3:28
trying to be sort of like a bad kid in a way and also like the town i grew up in was sort of a it was not a place where academics really thrived it's like a really working class like hard and tough place i mean quincy's becoming much much nicer but it was a little bit of a tough place And I sort of wanted to be like an edgy, like tough guy.

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