on July 22nd 2010 I was in the sanghun
district of Helmand province Afghanistan
as a combat engineer attachment to kilo
company 3rd battalion 7th Marines Minh
our mission that day was to push into
Taliban territory clear it of enemy
fighters and establish a stronghold from
which we could launch future operations
my specific role in this mission was to
identify safe routes through areas that
had a high likelihood of containing IEDs
or as you may know them improvised
explosive devices the squad I was with
first squad third Platoon was tasked
with providing security for a vehicle
column that was the part of the main
thrust into Taliban country throughout
the day there was machine-gun fire and
firefights going on off in the distance
but for us it was an easy day nothing
was going on and after a long morning of
walking we finally sat down in order to
take a rest and eat some food
I used this opportunity to take a few
sips out on my Camelback and have a
gourmet meal of peanut butter and
crackers after about 15 minutes break
time was over so we stood back up and
our point man led us on no more than
five seconds later we heard the loud pop
of a blasting cap exploding and we
realized that our point man had just
stepped on an ie D luckily there were no
injuries because the ie D malfunctioned
and the blasting cap did not set off the
main charge as it was intended to do now
because the Taliban’s protocol is to
emplace IEDs and clusters the likelihood
that there was going to be another ie D
in this area or a secondary ie D became
about a hundred percent so I stepped
forward in order to do my job and guide
myself and my fellow Marines through the
area I instructed the Marines to retrace
their steps exactly back to the where we
had come from in order to take cover I
removed my metal detector from the pouch
on my hip unfolded it and turned it on
and then
took a long hard look at the route that
I was planning to take identified any
suspicious spots and I made note of them
for later I then began my interrogation
of the route keeping the search head of
the metal detector parallel to and about
an inch off of the ground I slowly moved
it side to side in front of me being
sure to cover every square inch of
terrain as I went I took small steps
forward and I laid a trail of chem
lights behind me in order to mark my
path about four feet into this slow
March I heard a loud high-pitched whine
hemat from my metal detector indicating
a metal hit I paused and I passed the
metal detector back over the spot in
order to determine the center and the
leading edge of the metal signature
having done now I squatted down and with
the gentleness of a butterfly landing on
a rose petal I reached my hand out and
began to move the dirt to the side a
single grain at a time I continued to do
this until my fingers gently grazed
against the source of the metal after I
had found it I began to uncover it until
I could tell exactly what it was an old
shell casing from a machine gun round
that had probably been there for years
I picked the machine gun round up put it
in my pocket and I rechecked the spot
hearing nothing from the metal detector
I continued my interrogation I took a
few more steps and the world went black
when I awoke all I could hear were my
own screams all I could see was a blurry
tunnel leading to a blue sky all I could
smell and taste was dust and the
distinct chemical stench of a recent
explosion after about thirty seconds
my body regained control of itself and I
could hear my brothers calling out to me
telling me that they were coming when
they got there they put tourniquets on
both my destroyed legs and stopped the
bleeding next to arrive was the corpsman
who gave me a shot of morphine and
together they loaded me onto a stretcher
and carried me to a nearby tank once I
was loaded into the tank the corpsman
gave me another shot and again the world
went black I spent about the next five
days
unconscious being transported from
Afghanistan to Germany to Bethesda Naval
Hospital I spent the next seven days
after that in a haze of hallucinations
being caused by copious amounts of
painkillers I don’t remember much from
that first week aside from going in for
surgeries most every day
and being visited by my friends and
family which was a huge boon to my
morale once I was no longer in critical
condition I was transferred from the
intensive care unit to the normal care
unit and my senses returned now that I
could think clearly I began to reflect
on what my future might be like and I
quickly realized that despite my legs
being amputated above the knee the
mission for my life hadn’t changed I
still wanted to have a life that I could
enjoy I wanted to have a life that made
a difference in the world and to the
people around me I wanted to have a life
that when I looked back on it when it
was all over I could be proud the only
thing that had actually changed was the
circumstances from which I was
attempting to accomplish this mission
and the path that I needed to take to
get there and this realization led into
a second realization and that was that
every person when faced with the tragedy
has the opportunity to make a choice
they can either see their new hardship
as a barrier that is blocking their path
and doing everything it can to prevent
them from realizing their life’s mission
or they can view their adversity as
another tool that they can use in order
to propel themselves not only to
realizing their life’s mission but
accomplishing more than what their life
they ever thought possible I think the
best way to conceptualize this choice is
to imagine oneself in the gym as you can
see I like to lift weights imagine you
are in the middle of the gym floor
innocently contemplating and preparing
for the day’s work out when a huge
bodybuilder walks up behind you and puts
a barbell on your shoulders you
instinctively take hold of the barbell
and feel the weight it’s heavy but it’s
not overwhelming the bodybuilder then
walks away and leaves you to make your
decision your first option is to do
nothing and simply hold on to the weight
you curse the barbell and the
bodybuilder for placing it upon you this
isn’t what you had intended for the day
and you don’t see how you could possibly
complete your original work out with
this barbell across your shoulders and
at the time it seems like this is the
only choice and then maybe if you wait
long enough it might actually work but
pretty soon that weight that didn’t feel
like it was that big of a deal to begin
with is now overwhelming you your
shoulders get tired but you let them sag
and that seems to reduce the burden
enough that you think you might be able
to hang on a little bit longer but
eventually your back gets tired as well
and no amount of sagging can reduce the
pain ultimately you’re taking knee and
then you take another knee but your back
still burns until finally it gives out
and you fall forward but the weight
doesn’t get magically lighter just
because you’re tired and now it’s laying
across your back pinning you to the
ground
unable to move now consider the second
option the bodybuilders just walked away
and he’s left you with the barbell on
your shoulders except this time instead
of cursing the barbell and the mechanism
for its presence upon you you welcome
this new and unexpected challenge
instead of simply holding the weight you
fight against it you tighten your grip
on the bar you can tract your muscles
and you lift that weight over your head
and show it who is in charge and then
you do it again and again and again each
time adapting and becoming stronger you
lift the weight so many times that the
resistance becomes comical to you and
you start to laugh the bodybuilder
rushes over and puts more weight on the
bar in order to try and slow you down
but at this point you’re so strong that
not only can you handle that original
weight easily you can handle the new
weight as well eventually it gets to a
point where the bodybuilder just gives
up and you have to purposefully ask him
to bring you more weight and you keep
lifting in the end you fling the barbell
off your shoulders and you continue on
to do your original workout and when you
get there you realize that that workout
that you thought was gonna be so hard at
the beginning of the day is now easy and
not only can you do that workout but you
can do even more you’ve just discovered
how to use the weight to complete this
comparison replace the barbell in this
scenario with the adversity that you
face the key is to determine how this
burden can be put to use in order to
make yourself more capable of
accomplishing the goals you’ve set out
for your life in the gym situation the
more you lifted the weight the stronger
you became and the more weight you could
handle later on and just like with the
barbell when you use your hardships to
make yourself more capable not only can
you handle that hardship but you can
handle even greater hardships later on
until eventually you get to a point
where you can withstand anything life
can throw at you now making such a
change in attitude and
and policy doesn’t come without diligent
practice and attention you have to work
daily and constantly to develop this
habit at every opportunity now
counter-intuitively
it is a lot easier to make such a change
in attitude with the larger more
consequential life events than it is to
make a change like this with the
everyday rudimentary occurrences and the
reason for this is that the scale is so
much larger it’s a lot easier to
identify the opportunities to adapt
however since these rudimentary
occurrences are much more frequent
you’ll get much better practice with the
smaller events but the key is to always
keep in mind this principle in every
situation and once you develop the habit
the reaction will become a lot more
natural and you’ll be constantly
calculating how you can use every
negative occurrence in your life as a
tool no using the weight is not
synonymous with enjoying or being happy
about tragedy in order to use the weight
it’s not required that you approach
hardship with a sense of thankfulness or
happiness in fact many instances for
example the loss of a limb it’s almost
impossible to feel thankful but what is
required is acceptance of reality the
ability to use the weight of a tragedy
is entirely independent of whether or
not you’re happy about the tragedy the
opportunity and the result will be
present and will occur regardless of
own self happiness about the tragedy
now you skip forward 7 years and it’s
been seven years since my my injury and
I am finishing the last mile of my 31st
marathon in as many days running around
the National Mall in Washington DC I
have my wife running with me by my side
and I have at least fifty people all
running in a line behind me there to
support me some of them were family some
of them were brothers but they were all
my friends and I used that last mile to
reflect on how it was possible that in
the only seven years I was able to marry
the perfect woman and win a bronze medal
in the Paralympics and ride my bike
5,200 miles across the country in the
dead of winter and run 31 marathons in
31 days and 31 different cities raising
awareness and money for my fellow
veterans and as I rounded that last
corner I realized it was because from
the moment that I woke up in that
hospital bed I did one thing I figured
out how to use the weight thank you
everybody
[Applause]
district of Helmand province Afghanistan
as a combat engineer attachment to kilo
company 3rd battalion 7th Marines Minh
our mission that day was to push into
Taliban territory clear it of enemy
fighters and establish a stronghold from
which we could launch future operations
my specific role in this mission was to
identify safe routes through areas that
had a high likelihood of containing IEDs
or as you may know them improvised
explosive devices the squad I was with
first squad third Platoon was tasked
with providing security for a vehicle
column that was the part of the main
thrust into Taliban country throughout
the day there was machine-gun fire and
firefights going on off in the distance
but for us it was an easy day nothing
was going on and after a long morning of
walking we finally sat down in order to
take a rest and eat some food
I used this opportunity to take a few
sips out on my Camelback and have a
gourmet meal of peanut butter and
crackers after about 15 minutes break
time was over so we stood back up and
our point man led us on no more than
five seconds later we heard the loud pop
of a blasting cap exploding and we
realized that our point man had just
stepped on an ie D luckily there were no
injuries because the ie D malfunctioned
and the blasting cap did not set off the
main charge as it was intended to do now
because the Taliban’s protocol is to
emplace IEDs and clusters the likelihood
that there was going to be another ie D
in this area or a secondary ie D became
about a hundred percent so I stepped
forward in order to do my job and guide
myself and my fellow Marines through the
area I instructed the Marines to retrace
their steps exactly back to the where we
had come from in order to take cover I
removed my metal detector from the pouch
on my hip unfolded it and turned it on
and then
took a long hard look at the route that
I was planning to take identified any
suspicious spots and I made note of them
for later I then began my interrogation
of the route keeping the search head of
the metal detector parallel to and about
an inch off of the ground I slowly moved
it side to side in front of me being
sure to cover every square inch of
terrain as I went I took small steps
forward and I laid a trail of chem
lights behind me in order to mark my
path about four feet into this slow
March I heard a loud high-pitched whine
hemat from my metal detector indicating
a metal hit I paused and I passed the
metal detector back over the spot in
order to determine the center and the
leading edge of the metal signature
having done now I squatted down and with
the gentleness of a butterfly landing on
a rose petal I reached my hand out and
began to move the dirt to the side a
single grain at a time I continued to do
this until my fingers gently grazed
against the source of the metal after I
had found it I began to uncover it until
I could tell exactly what it was an old
shell casing from a machine gun round
that had probably been there for years
I picked the machine gun round up put it
in my pocket and I rechecked the spot
hearing nothing from the metal detector
I continued my interrogation I took a
few more steps and the world went black
when I awoke all I could hear were my
own screams all I could see was a blurry
tunnel leading to a blue sky all I could
smell and taste was dust and the
distinct chemical stench of a recent
explosion after about thirty seconds
my body regained control of itself and I
could hear my brothers calling out to me
telling me that they were coming when
they got there they put tourniquets on
both my destroyed legs and stopped the
bleeding next to arrive was the corpsman
who gave me a shot of morphine and
together they loaded me onto a stretcher
and carried me to a nearby tank once I
was loaded into the tank the corpsman
gave me another shot and again the world
went black I spent about the next five
days
unconscious being transported from
Afghanistan to Germany to Bethesda Naval
Hospital I spent the next seven days
after that in a haze of hallucinations
being caused by copious amounts of
painkillers I don’t remember much from
that first week aside from going in for
surgeries most every day
and being visited by my friends and
family which was a huge boon to my
morale once I was no longer in critical
condition I was transferred from the
intensive care unit to the normal care
unit and my senses returned now that I
could think clearly I began to reflect
on what my future might be like and I
quickly realized that despite my legs
being amputated above the knee the
mission for my life hadn’t changed I
still wanted to have a life that I could
enjoy I wanted to have a life that made
a difference in the world and to the
people around me I wanted to have a life
that when I looked back on it when it
was all over I could be proud the only
thing that had actually changed was the
circumstances from which I was
attempting to accomplish this mission
and the path that I needed to take to
get there and this realization led into
a second realization and that was that
every person when faced with the tragedy
has the opportunity to make a choice
they can either see their new hardship
as a barrier that is blocking their path
and doing everything it can to prevent
them from realizing their life’s mission
or they can view their adversity as
another tool that they can use in order
to propel themselves not only to
realizing their life’s mission but
accomplishing more than what their life
they ever thought possible I think the
best way to conceptualize this choice is
to imagine oneself in the gym as you can
see I like to lift weights imagine you
are in the middle of the gym floor
innocently contemplating and preparing
for the day’s work out when a huge
bodybuilder walks up behind you and puts
a barbell on your shoulders you
instinctively take hold of the barbell
and feel the weight it’s heavy but it’s
not overwhelming the bodybuilder then
walks away and leaves you to make your
decision your first option is to do
nothing and simply hold on to the weight
you curse the barbell and the
bodybuilder for placing it upon you this
isn’t what you had intended for the day
and you don’t see how you could possibly
complete your original work out with
this barbell across your shoulders and
at the time it seems like this is the
only choice and then maybe if you wait
long enough it might actually work but
pretty soon that weight that didn’t feel
like it was that big of a deal to begin
with is now overwhelming you your
shoulders get tired but you let them sag
and that seems to reduce the burden
enough that you think you might be able
to hang on a little bit longer but
eventually your back gets tired as well
and no amount of sagging can reduce the
pain ultimately you’re taking knee and
then you take another knee but your back
still burns until finally it gives out
and you fall forward but the weight
doesn’t get magically lighter just
because you’re tired and now it’s laying
across your back pinning you to the
ground
unable to move now consider the second
option the bodybuilders just walked away
and he’s left you with the barbell on
your shoulders except this time instead
of cursing the barbell and the mechanism
for its presence upon you you welcome
this new and unexpected challenge
instead of simply holding the weight you
fight against it you tighten your grip
on the bar you can tract your muscles
and you lift that weight over your head
and show it who is in charge and then
you do it again and again and again each
time adapting and becoming stronger you
lift the weight so many times that the
resistance becomes comical to you and
you start to laugh the bodybuilder
rushes over and puts more weight on the
bar in order to try and slow you down
but at this point you’re so strong that
not only can you handle that original
weight easily you can handle the new
weight as well eventually it gets to a
point where the bodybuilder just gives
up and you have to purposefully ask him
to bring you more weight and you keep
lifting in the end you fling the barbell
off your shoulders and you continue on
to do your original workout and when you
get there you realize that that workout
that you thought was gonna be so hard at
the beginning of the day is now easy and
not only can you do that workout but you
can do even more you’ve just discovered
how to use the weight to complete this
comparison replace the barbell in this
scenario with the adversity that you
face the key is to determine how this
burden can be put to use in order to
make yourself more capable of
accomplishing the goals you’ve set out
for your life in the gym situation the
more you lifted the weight the stronger
you became and the more weight you could
handle later on and just like with the
barbell when you use your hardships to
make yourself more capable not only can
you handle that hardship but you can
handle even greater hardships later on
until eventually you get to a point
where you can withstand anything life
can throw at you now making such a
change in attitude and
and policy doesn’t come without diligent
practice and attention you have to work
daily and constantly to develop this
habit at every opportunity now
counter-intuitively
it is a lot easier to make such a change
in attitude with the larger more
consequential life events than it is to
make a change like this with the
everyday rudimentary occurrences and the
reason for this is that the scale is so
much larger it’s a lot easier to
identify the opportunities to adapt
however since these rudimentary
occurrences are much more frequent
you’ll get much better practice with the
smaller events but the key is to always
keep in mind this principle in every
situation and once you develop the habit
the reaction will become a lot more
natural and you’ll be constantly
calculating how you can use every
negative occurrence in your life as a
tool no using the weight is not
synonymous with enjoying or being happy
about tragedy in order to use the weight
it’s not required that you approach
hardship with a sense of thankfulness or
happiness in fact many instances for
example the loss of a limb it’s almost
impossible to feel thankful but what is
required is acceptance of reality the
ability to use the weight of a tragedy
is entirely independent of whether or
not you’re happy about the tragedy the
opportunity and the result will be
present and will occur regardless of
own self happiness about the tragedy
now you skip forward 7 years and it’s
been seven years since my my injury and
I am finishing the last mile of my 31st
marathon in as many days running around
the National Mall in Washington DC I
have my wife running with me by my side
and I have at least fifty people all
running in a line behind me there to
support me some of them were family some
of them were brothers but they were all
my friends and I used that last mile to
reflect on how it was possible that in
the only seven years I was able to marry
the perfect woman and win a bronze medal
in the Paralympics and ride my bike
5,200 miles across the country in the
dead of winter and run 31 marathons in
31 days and 31 different cities raising
awareness and money for my fellow
veterans and as I rounded that last
corner I realized it was because from
the moment that I woke up in that
hospital bed I did one thing I figured
out how to use the weight thank you
everybody
[Applause]
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