Travis Haley
Appearances
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And I wouldn't say microdosing would be abusing it. If you have a system or a plan and it's working for you where, and a lot of people will take microdosing overboard. You shouldn't feel a microdose. It should be just on the edge to just give you a heightened sense of things. And this is where a lot of people are like, God, I can't believe you guys are talking about this, man.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
Like that's so taboo in your world. It's like, no, it is our world. That's the first thing I tell people that are very confused. Like, wait, you do plant medicine? Just like the last 3,000 years that I've been able to study in warrior cultures, yes, before you go into battle, especially when you get home from battle. The rituals, you look into some of these, dude.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
I mean, I went down, I think it was with the Pima Indians in Arizona. And they put me through a sweat lodge camp. Worst pain in my life. And these guys have hooks on their, I'm sorry, not hooks, scars on their chests. The chief of the village, again, beautiful long black hair, 80 pounds, soaking wet dude, just wearing like jean shorts and flip flops and running us through the whole scenario.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
You're butt naked inside with six other dudes in this Buffalo hide tent. They stoked the fire for three days. It's like, it's pretty cool, the ritual aspect. And it's all helping, it's giving. You can tell everybody's there for you.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
It's not, hey, I'm paying you to go to this $10,000, $12,000 camp in South America to have 90 other people laying on the floor going through the same experience as I am. It is just you and only you. And... Then I ask like, chief, what's, I'm curious the scars on your chest. He's like, and he eventually tells me it's another passage, another rite, a ritual, rite of passage for become a warrior.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And at a certain age, they hang themselves with hooks and they hook themselves through their chest muscles and they hang from an oak tree in the village and they hang there for three days and they have to take the hooks out themselves in order to come off of this rite of passage. And then once they do, they're good. I'm like, why is your chest so fucked up?
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And he's like, I've done this seven times as a medicine man and demonstrator. And I'm like, yeah, I'm not a warrior. I'm not a warrior, dude. I would never do that. So you hear some of the craziest stories from these guys that are still doing it to this day on reservations. Not all of them do.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
It's like you have still the small warrior groups inside of every culture and then the rest of them and same with us, right? You have the small warrior groups inside of the culture and then all of us. And what they do is they introduce you to the spirit aspect of it. And that's what I look for.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
So even if I'm microing one day, it's because it's for me, I'm gonna be out in the mountains today, I might just run up to Sedona, meet my buddies, we'll go paramotoring through, not on medicine, but we'll have this night, this campfire, we'll bathe in the mesquite trees, which mesquite trees release a natural DMT into the water. That's what the natives believed.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And so we would bathe in the freezing waters, we'd lay out in the sun and meditate and journal, and then we'd go fly. We'd have this amazing flight. And then we'd land and we'd off gas, hug, high five, man. We'd go back to our lives. Like that would be maybe even a full journey or maybe just a micro dose.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
Some days I just want to be really creative and I just can't get that spirit to work inside me. I will turn on that frequency just a little bit. But I won't abuse it. And that's the thing is people don't understand the divine feminine, divine masculine aspect of all of these drugs. Ayahuasca, they call a grandmother for a reason. She's gonna take you on a journey.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
Psilocybin, it's divine feminine drug. It's gonna take you on a journey. DMT is even on the feminine side. THC is on the feminine side. But LSD acid or Ibogaine, that's divine masculine. You are going here whether you like it or not. And so it's to understand that Shakti and Shiva aspect, the old ancient. world of divine feminine, divine masculine.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
You have to understand that in order to really, I think, get the full benefits of it and be with good people that can share or just give to you.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
Just in my studies. And this wasn't medicine studies, this was like ancient warrior studies. Because everybody has divine masculine and divine feminine. And that's where our love and our, even protecting comes from is on the feminine side of the house.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
Our words in which we use or the fight or the flight or the more masculine aspects of what we would do to protect somebody, even a female, we all have the same thing. And so that's where a lot of the divine, you know, that comes out of these plant medicines is on that wavelength. And I think if you know that about it, it makes your journey so much better.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
Like my biggest journey I ever had, which was last year, maybe a year and a half ago, needed to really unlock some stuff, needed to really, you know, break down some darkness that I had that was residual from something in the past. Plus my father just died, and that messed me up pretty bad. Still does. Sorry to hear that. You know, greatest hero of my life, and all of a sudden it's gone.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And it's like, wait a minute. And I don't know why I just struggle with it. I just did a podcast with a good friend of mine, Mark England. He's a mindset coach and breath coach. And he helped me unlock that problem about, it was my dad's helped so many more millions of people than I could ever possibly fathom helping. And when he left, I wanted to celebrate him.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
my family didn't wanna celebrate my father. And so I did this podcast with Mark and he did a four-step process on me to help me slow the story down in my head. Cause like we get tight, we get high and tight going back to kind of the PTSD a little bit and some of the things that we hold onto. It's in our chest, we're trapped in our chest.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
Thanks for having me, Sean.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And if we can unlock that breath, we can't switch from being high and tight because we don't know what it's like to be low and slow in our breath, that's gonna get you. So a lot of these guys need to learn to unlock that before they go on a journey. So we would even do massive breath work stuff. That's where the cold water comes into play to really get somebody to take it seriously.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And then we have them dial on their breath and then we'll start educating them on what we're going to be doing at this point in time. So like on my last one, it was, like seven grams of psilocybin, which is what they consider a hero's dose. And then that wasn't working. I think five grams is considered a hero's dose. Five's a hero. Seven is a warrior's dose. Shit. That's right.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
So I did seven, so I did a warrior's dose. That wasn't working for me. It was taking me on a journey, but this is where the coaches come into play. We had UFC movement fighting coaches there. So we fight all night long as well on the medicine. We go through the mountains, through Bryce Canyon and run through the snow and the mud and barefooted in just silkies, man.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And you're like, how are we out here living for four hours in nothingness? It's just like, it's a different world of mindset, you know? And so then that wasn't working for me. So they said, hey, he needs divine masculine. So they dropped in some more. And that was the LSD. And my life has changed since that moment, more so than any other experience. What changed?
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
The ability to see myself, my past life, which is what I've been living in. You know, not necessarily a past life, even though I saw some pretty gory, like the most real combat I've ever seen in my life. My hands hurt so bad the next day. Hold on.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
So I saw a past life image of me standing on top of a pile of bodies with blood soaking through my hands around a katana. And I remember screaming, how can one man do this? And that scared the shit out of me. Then my past life started coming. Why did that scare you? I don't know. What did you think it was? How did you process that? I felt like I was just a murderous...
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
It was the most real, I mean, I don't know what it's like to be in a sword fight, but I was like, now I know what it's like to be in a sword fight after that experience, a vivid, like just real screaming. They had to hold me down at times. They had to put a Buffalo hide blanket over me and pin me down to try to just calm. And they're very good.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
They know when to speak and when to be in there and when to kind of touch you and just kind of make you calm back down. And I could see then my current life, past life, you know, being in combat, family, traumas, death, everything. And then I started realizing I'm living in my past lives when I should be living in my path. What's my path? My path is created by my past.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And that was the first time I've been able to actually see that. It's the first time I've been able to breathe through with coaching and hearing my best friend Byron going, Ride the exhale. Ride the exhale. And by seeing all of that, again, showed me who I was and what I was living in and where I should have been living.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And so now every day I wake up, I will think about what is my path moving forward, not reminiscing on my past or worrying about something. being in fear of my past and having anxiety for my future. And that's like the now concept. Everybody understands the now concept. Everything happens right now in this moment, in this time. It's not my dad's time anymore. It's not my ancestor's time anymore.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
It's like the problem with our country. When's somebody gonna step up? It's you, it's your time. And hopefully many moons from now, our grandchildren will be reading about the history that we created in this country to keep it free, to keep the world free. So those are things that I couldn't really see a whole lot. And now I'm seeing a whole clearer message about what do we do moving forward?
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
It's not about what I did. That doesn't define me. My traumas don't define me. My childhood traumas don't define me. What I'm doing right now does. What do you believe happens when you die? I think I'm still trying to figure that one out. Now, not to say I'm not a man of spirit or a man of God, because I am.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
I am. I am. I was raised Catholic. It's kind of funny. I went to Catholic school, didn't really get along with the, because I went to Jewish community center after Catholic school, which my sister hated. And so it was this conflict and I got caught saying Hail Mary's in Yiddish one day and they kicked me out of school.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
Because the JCC guy, I think his name was Tommy, big old jolly fat guy drives up in this little Volkswagen van and picks me up every day from Catholic school and Sister Pat would just stand there with her nun suit on and just like, just scowl at this dude. And he would teach me to speak a little Yiddish. And he taught me Hail Marys in Yiddish.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And I was out of the, I got a math problem wrong one day in Catholic school. And she's like, go to Mother Mary and do your Hail Marys. So I'm out there, I'm doing them. And all of a sudden I feel this ruler on my shoulder. It was like old school Catholic ruler stuff. And parents came in and that didn't work out too well. So then my mom's like, well, maybe Christian school would be a better thing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
So she sends me to Christian school. And that was good. And that was good. I got in a fight with a teacher about dinosaurs one time because I went outside and grabbed a fossil. And she said, well, that's because the government put those fossils there to make you think dinosaurs are real. And I'm like, don't they talked about beasts in the Bible? So I was confused.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And then I brought a link of 20 millimeter shells from my dad's Air Force time as a pilot. And they kicked me out of school for a show and tell. I guess you're not allowed to have live rounds. And in school. So, um, anyways, I, I, I've studied religion. I've really tried to make, um, a habit of it. You know, I've, I've been to some big universities, went to Cornell.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
Oh, I used to study the promised land, Judaism and the Palestinian conflict. Um, really started diving into the Quran and reading it and trying to understand it. And then started even played with Buddhism for a little while to understand, not to practice and to realize, well, what are people's motives and intentions?
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
Because you know how it is, man, young and dumb, we're in the military, go here, do this. You don't know anything about the people. You never really given good intel. And so I wanted to try to change that in my life. So for my kids that are growing up, if they decide to serve, which they are, I can educate them from a different place than what the education I got.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And I think that's important for people to realize. Because look how many Muslims that we would trust our lives to. We have. We've had best friends, man. Look at this fricking Afghani pullout, man. Like how many dudes on some of those teams that, you know the story there. But there's a misconception.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And that's where I don't, I mean, I wouldn't consider myself the most diehard Christian in that regard. I would say that there's definitely an afterlife and that's what we would consider heaven. Some people would consider that the next density, you know, like we're in a density right now, just like rocks and plants are in a density and animals are in a density.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
We're in the next density and the next density we move on to is a higher self, that's heaven.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
um so i love i love dabbing into those stories too and listen to those people kind of talk about how that works on their scale you know the the frequency or the spirit world it's like so and it's all the same you know so so you do you believe that you'll go on and have another so this is kind of like reincarnation right that's
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
That's the density aspect, which again is confusing where most people would think, oh, if you're going on to a next density, what is that? That's like this, you know, spirit alien world. It's like, it could also be heaven. It could be in that next world. Then we're put on this earth to get our PhD at a very hard place in the universe. And we're judged for how we respond to it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
We're judged for how we help people, how we love, how we show our compassion, how we are able to be vulnerable and have the courage to be imperfect. And I think if you do all those things well, you'll be rewarded to the next life or density or heaven. And I know some people that... You know, our diehard in that case wouldn't be like, no, you need to pick a side.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
It's like, I love studying everything and I'm still trying to figure it out at this point in time in my life.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
I actually came in with my fiance. She's diehard Christian, mega church upbringing, mom, dad, own a Christian bookstore. And she can recite the Bible like the back of her hand. But she's also looked into a lot of these other things and has not changed her mind about God or spirit, but it's just more information to understand and to take in and have fun exploring. versus being absolute about it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
I'm just not an absolute person. I'm not gonna say, oh, all religions are bad except Christianity. Shame on us for thinking that. You know, why are we so special? You know, faith is faith, spirit is spirit.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And when you have, like I said earlier, like if you're a man of spirit, a man of faith, well, that's gonna help with a lot of things, like being more resilient to things, to trust the process that like, hey man, first thing is the facts, right? nobody gets off the spaceship alive, right? So enjoy it while you're on it and make the best of it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And if you only get this one in 400 trillion chance or whatever it is to become a human being, I'm going to play the most magnificent game I could ever play in that short ass amount of time that I have. That's why I have a dragonfly as my logo. It's because I realized that short life that it has, there's a lot of great aspects to it from the warrior side and the survival side.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And it's a symbol of life because its lifespan is only about 30 days when you see a dragonfly flying around. And so, well, how can something be one of the oldest living creatures on the face of the planet? Again, depending on what you believe in. How can it be the most adaptive, most efficient, the greatest hunter on the face of the planet for its size and its capacity and what it does?
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
How can it be all of these amazing things and only live for 30 days? I can't answer that question. But what I can answer is like, or ask, like every student that comes to our programs or every person that I encounter, I say, what are you gonna do with your 30 days to make the world just a little bit better place than what you came in it? And that's what that means to me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
You know, because my dad gave me that as a kid when a dragonfly landed on my finger one time. And he told me I had good luck and then taught me all the significance of it. And that was the thing that stood out to me the most was how short our lives really are and how much conflict and how much diversity and everything else that's in this life that we're being tested on.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And so I will always make sure that Well, I mean, we were talking about haters earlier, right? I will always make sure that I'm hated and not being a hater. It's much better to be in that world. I feel sorry for the ones that are so full of themselves that all they do is hate on others and create common enemy intimacy in the world. That's the biggest problem we have.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
That's not God-like, that's not good. And I think if, you know, and I'll speak a lot to God, but I think one of the things that God made primarily over everything else is good. So, and I think with good comes truth, with truth comes love, or love comes from good too. And then uncertainty, you don't know what's gonna happen next.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
So I think I like to live in the uncertain world where I don't have an answer for everything because I realized that if I try to be too certain about something in my life, I'll drive myself batshit crazy trying to figure out what's gonna happen next to me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
I told myself the same thing at one point is stop counting. Just stop paying attention to it. Yeah. It was really hard to stop paying attention to it. You know, when you get that call in the middle of the night or an email or text next day, hey, bro, you know what happened.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And then I have to realize like, well, if I knew what was gonna happen tomorrow morning or knew what was gonna happen even tonight, what would be the point of being alive? What would be the point of waking up tomorrow if we already knew what was gonna happen? So I don't think uncertainty should be a problem that's ever solved. And so when I study religion, I go, don't be so certain about it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
Let's just keep exploring. Let's keep looking into all of these crazy thoughts and things and plant medicine, man, dude, I've never touched drugs or alcohol and stuff in my life. I was a pretty straight laced kid growing up. I was a troublemaker. I mean, bad, attempted murder type trouble that I got into. Wow.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
Yeah, me and DJ actually have a weird, I noticed listening to him have an interesting kind of pathway there. where I was extremely curious, adventurous to a point where I would, well, let's see what happens to this mailbox when it detonates with these types of chemicals or this or that or whatever, pipe bombs on cows or, hey, there's somebody that needs help. Let's shoot at them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
That's getting hurt. Shoot the person that's hurting the person that needs help. And that was my situation. I wasn't bad, but I was extremely curious. And And that put me in a lot of bad places. And I probably pissed my parents off and stressed them out more than anybody, but it was all good. That was my upbringing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And so the religion was different because I was bouncing around from JCCs to Catholic schools, to Christian schools. So I think I've always had this kind of everything in my life and I was never grounded in something. So maybe my next, My actual journey in life is to maybe find something to ground to.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
So I'm on that path.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And medicine has certainly helped me think of a different world of spirit and code. And it's like, okay, there's something we can't explain here. Is that just medicine doing that to me or is that God? No, that's everybody sees the same thing. So that's a godly thing to me. There's a spirit world to that. And I love that, man. So constantly asking questions and exploring.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
Well, I think that's the biggest problem we all have is the lack of time. And try to keep this as succinct as possible. There's a instinctual nature to every human being, right? We all have an instinct. We're all born with something. We're not born with knowledge. We're not born knowing how to do something, but we're born with some type of instinctual thing that they call conation, not cognition.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And so instead of running away from it, which I think I did for a long time in the very beginning, because I'm sure we'll get into it more, but I did not know how to deal with loss. I didn't know what it was. I didn't know how to define it. And I started... instead of running away from it, diving into it. And saying, how can I maybe do something to prevent this from happening more.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
Cognition, I believe, comes from conation, your instinctual self. And in your conation, you have four action modes. Fact-finding, how you gather and share information. Following through, which is how you arrange, organize, or systemize. quick starting, which is how you deal with risk or uncertainty, and then implementing how you handle spaces or tangibles, how you build.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
So like to give an example, if I said, hey, man, if we had a box from the store and it's a desk or something we had to build, like got parts and letters and instructions, what's the first thing you would do? Would you A, open up the box, pull the instructions out, start laying things out and do an inventory of every part and piece and make sure it's all there?
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
Would you start organizing every A and B and Cs and Ds and then start organizing into a system of how I'm going to start building and then read all the directions and go, okay, and then come back to step one? Or are you the guy that turns the box and looks at the picture and dumps the shit on the floor and goes, I can do this? You know, that's what your instinctual makeup is.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
How you problem solve that is exactly the way you problem solved it when you were 12 years old. You do the same thing today. You cannot change it. That's the thing that kind of upsets people is that you're going to score high in two of those categories, higher than the others. So for me, I'm a mid-range fact finder four. That means I can go either way.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
I can read a book, but I'm not going to probably read the whole thing like front to back. I'll highlight stuff and post a note and make notes in it and come back to it later. I'll have 16 books open and I'll come back again. God, I'm never going to get these books done. But eventually I do. And eventually I get the same amount of information as the person that just reads one book front to back.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
That's just how I do things. My systemizing is a two follow through. Like if you said, hey, Travis, call me tomorrow at three o'clock. Like, all right, Sean, I'll see you tomorrow. Talk to you tomorrow. Dude, don't expect me to call you tomorrow at three o'clock because I'm going to probably seize the moment elsewhere. Something's going to happen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
So why do I carry my stupid EDC Apple watch to go, hey, Siri, remind me to call Sean tomorrow at three o'clock. Now, why did I do that? Is it because I'm a procrastinator? Is it because I'm like gonna just forget? No, it's because I love being raced against the clock because I'm a seven and quick starting. I love risk and uncertainty. I love the uncertainty of life. And so if I understand that,
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
Now I'm going to take a risk. It doesn't mean you're not going to take a risk if you're higher in these categories and lower here. It just means you're going to probably systemize fact find. Like the jump master that's like, come on, dude, we got this. You've got 16 pages of weather reports and you're asking the freaking nav again for the winds at altitude. We got it. Let's go. Let's jump.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
That's the quick starter talking. Yeah, I think I see the drop zone. Stand by. You're like, Taley, don't do it. That's the quick starter, right? 60% of the time it works out every time. And then you have the... You have the fact finder that's really diving into it. So I think coming back full circle, it depends on how you instinctually operate.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
So coming back to this guy like me that has seven kids, seven companies or eight companies now, How do I manage all that? I love the risk and certainty of all those things. I'm good at being a jack of all trades. I'm not good at sitting down and systemizing one thing. I love to build teams. I love to build products and development systems.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
I love to sit down and go, okay, here's how we're making this product. There's a 16-step product phase to all of this. I'm going to write that down. I'm going to build that and then start building on teams and teach them how to do this 16-step product development phase. And then, all right, engineers, ID guys, go ahead and start developing shortcuts to that system.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And then next thing you know, efficiency starts happening. That's what the quick starter does. That's the entrepreneur. That's the musician. That's the creator. That's the artist that just wings it and probably your buddy you're talking about. where your systemizers are guys that I want as my CFO. That's right, because my CFO, if I walk into Grant's desk and I look at his desk and I go...
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
how the hell is he getting any work done with a clean desk like this, right? His stuff's always organized, but he'll come into my office and go, how the hell is Haley getting any work done with a messy desk like this? You see the conflict that just happened in the workplace?
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
So I think if we could all understand our instinctual strengths, which every one of my guys, my gals are psychologically evaluated on this cognitive scale. It's a test called the Kolbe test, K-O-L-B-E. It's an alpha test. Kathy Kolbe developed this many years ago. And it's a test you can't lie on. You cannot lie on it. It'll put you in transition if you try to lie on this.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And you're not going to stop it, right? It's not going to stop it. We've got to change the message somehow, some way, and help people reframe the situation that's in their life, the circumstances that's happening to them at this point in time, as they may not understand them. I mean, I've had my dark moments where I get reckless in the past. I've, you know, knock on wood, I've never...
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
But if you've ever taken like a Myers-Briggs or like those Starpoint tests or some of those IQ type tests, those are cognitive based tests. You can lie on those. So like I know a lot of Intel agencies, like we were working with the Australians, and they give their guys neuroticism tests. And so I took the test and I scored 98% neurotic.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And the dude's like, bro, we didn't think you were a neurotic guy. And I'm like, yeah, I lied on your test, man. And he's like, what? I was like, it's a cognitive based test. I lied on it because I want to get a job with you guys. I want to be a case officer with you guys. And he's like, holy shit. I was like, yeah, you have neurotic case officers running around.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
that are neurotic, that lied on your test. You need to give them more of an instinctual based test that you can't lie on. So that's why I like working with the Colby Corporation. And so out of hundreds of employees that I have, all of them, I can walk into any department and know exactly what everybody's cognitive instinct does. That's my job as a leader.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
I have to, because if I can go up to you and say, let's say you're the high fact finding systemizing engineer, and you're like in building a cab model, and you're into it. And I walk in and go, hey, Sean, come with me real quick. I need you on a project. You're gonna be like, Like right now? Like, yes, right now. But like inside they're saying that. Like, please don't make me stop what I'm doing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
I need to finish this system. Where if it's me and you come in, I'm in the middle of something, I'm diving really deep. You're like, Travis, come here. I want to show you something. All right, man. Hey, what's up? So you'll see that in people. You'll see that in your kids. And when you can see that and you can understand their innate motives and intentions and innate force and talents,
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
I can now direct my teams better. I can not have as much conflict in the workplace. I can have collaboration. So going back to the question of how do I manage all that stuff? I do it by really making sure that everybody's operating in their instinctual strengths, not just their cognitive-based strengths. That's your resume. Your resume of life is your cognition.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
That's what you've learned, you're going to learn, and you continue to learn. And you'll keep filling out that resume, all right? You didn't know how to jump out of an airplane before you went to free fall school. You were taught to do that, cognition. But what made you really fly better than maybe somebody else? Your spatial awareness, your ability to implement and see and mimic somebody else.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
Like watching the instructor in front of me, I could be like, Okay, what's he doing with his elbows? I'm going to try that. Next thing you know, it starts working or gripping a gun. I sit there and watch the great ones back in the day. Like how does freaking Robbie Latham doing that, man? I'd rewind and like VHS, like, okay, and I'd replicate it. And next thing you know, I'm shooting well.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
That's the good implementer. Some people can't do that. So even teach somebody on a range, I'll find out every class. We go through a conation exercise. I have a guy that's an implementer. I'll show him. I'll point. I'll touch. I'll feel. I have somebody that's a fact finder. Hey, put the gun away. All right, let's go back to the three points that we talked about in class.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
What was the first element of the grip? It was something about friction and this bone. I forget the name of that bone. The trapezium bone. What does that do? Ah, that's right. It traps. Traps the hand. Okay, what does that do as you extend the gun? That's what I'm missing. What is it doing if you think about lever systems in class one and class two levers?
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
Pair of scissors does what versus a pair of nutcracker does what? Two different tools because the pin's in a different place. Don't put your pin back here when you grip a gun. Put your pin up here and grip a gun, and what do you have? Leverage. Good. Try that. I don't even show him.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
He looks the same as the implementer down at the end of the line because we've taken and put cognitive and cognitive-based outcome training into a firearms program versus just saying, just keep going, you'll eventually get it. Get a better grip. Like how? What does that mean? So I've implemented that across my family, across my companies.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
I've never had suicidal, like I'm gonna go do this right now. And so maybe I'm blessed or maybe I'm not blessed. Maybe some people have had those situations in their life. And even that, I had a friend last night call me and he was on the edge and he's having bad anxiety panic attacks. And then he said, yeah, I even put a, I think it was a 44 Magnum in his mouth and couldn't pull the trigger.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And it allows me to trust everybody more with their instinctual strengths. And if they mess up, I go, hey, quick starter. Why'd you screw up? Because I was being an impulsive boss. Good. What are you going to do next? I'm going to build a system for myself. Why? Because I use my quick starting as a crutch instead of working on the thing that I'm not good at, like setting an alarm to call you.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
Because from here on out, if I set that alarm right now to call you tomorrow at three o'clock, guess what happens to all my other tasks? It's a race. I have to be there for Sean at three o'clock. So I will knock out this, I'll knock out that. I'll go back in and finish a project or go and spend some time with my kids.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And all of a sudden my life becomes so much fuller because instinctually that's what I want. I want to be raced against a clock. So when we brain map this and put it on EEG systems, you will see stress in me trying to organize and systemize. Even if I love it, you will see no stress and flatlining in my Delta, Beta, Alpha, Theta waves in my brain.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
When I'm about to sling load 450 pounds on a towards jump out of the back of a C-130 and a full wall locker jump, my heart rate actually goes into almost a resting heart rate when I'm in those situations. But me reading and writing and doing taxes, Okay, man, what the hell's wrong with me? You know what I mean? So once you understand that about people, I think it becomes easier.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And that was a big struggle for me in the beginning, starting businesses, quick starting all over the place and failing and getting fired. And like, dude, you're not doing the right thing. You're moving too fast, slow down. That system alone has really helped me help people. Interesting. And then in return, I can sit here and say, I can successfully manage people.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
almost successfully managed seven kids. I'm still trying to figure that one out. But the companies, it's like, yeah, they're self-sufficient because I let them have that self-sufficient nature by giving them the trust that they're gonna operate in their cognitive instincts well, and help others identify when they're not operating in their cognitive instincts well.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
That's why I don't care about how much you know, because knowledge is just potential power. It doesn't give you any power. The plan of execution gives you power. And that baseline, understanding myself instinctually, okay, now what do I know cognitively? And then how do I affect that with my affect, my emotions? Because that's the three elements of life, right?
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
Your instinct, which grows your cognition, which your cognition then helps develop your emotional state. what I know, what I've seen, what I've done will make me kind of anxiety, make me happy, make me whatever. Like that's the order of those things.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And I think if we understand them as leaders of organizations or family members and as individual operators, imagine how many less people I would have fired in the team that couldn't get the, hey man, if you just keep tumbling for 10,000 feet, bro, you're not gonna be on team. You're not gonna be on jump team, sorry. Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
If you can't figure out how to breathe on pure oxygen and you're having trouble and you're in hypercapnia constantly because you don't know how to fin because you never go to the pool and work out, you're fired. It's like, no, I could have taught them differently by using their cognitive instinct. So it's complicated, but when you get into it, you're like, man, this is actually extremely simple.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
Why aren't we thinking or teaching like this? Imagine if they taught your kids in school with their instinct versus just giving them the shit that the Department of Education gives them, which hopefully that changes.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
That's one answer that helps me balance. Then, of course, off-gassing and doing other things and trying to make sure I stay as healthy as possible. I used to love all the extreme sports. I can't do them all anymore. But anytime I can get out in the elements, that's my off-gassing. Thanks for sharing that. You bet.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
That's it. I've been waiting on these.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
Oh, yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
Yes, I've been watching you talk about this, and I've been very curious to dive into this.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And I, so I immediately asked him, was it wrong that you put a 44 Magnum in your mouth? And it's like, yeah, moment of silence. And he's like, I said, think about the answer before you say it. When was that? He said, a while back. I said, was it wrong that you did that? Because we're still having a conversation right now. And he says, no. I said, say it again.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
That was my biggest question. I'm sure a lot of people will look at this and go, can I operate it as a normal phone?
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
That I'd be using like an iPhone or a Samsung device or Android or whatever else. Can I still have my lifestyle or do I have to use this for something else? Like that was my big question.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
Yeah, and somebody offered me gummy bears yesterday on the range, and I was like, nope, I'm not going to see Sean tonight. I can't do that to him.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
North Florida, in the swamps, farm boy.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
Little town called Denellan, Florida. It's Ocala area. And then there's Crystal River. Crystal River is where all the bandities go and the springs there. Okay. So if you're looking at Florida, I guess it would be like this from the camera side. It's right in the crook. So you've got the panhandle of Pensacola, Panama City and stuff is. And then Miami down here.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
We're right in the Gulf of Mexico side of the house. Okay. um you know lots of river life growing up on boats fishing with dad and swimming um love the water scalloping uh hunting big big hog hunter um hogs and knives kind of thing back in the day um brothers and sisters one brother yeah sister sister died in car accident when she was when I was young, five years old, four or five years old.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And yeah, a big athlete, played multiple sports. I tried to letter in as many sports as I could my senior year, just because I'm trying to be a Jack of all trades. Wanted to be a recon Marine, a force recon Marine since I was about nine years old. That's what I remember seeing or hearing about. I was like nine or 10 actually. And my brother's almost six years older than me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And, uh, I remember seeing a Marine walk into his high school wearing dress blues and, and I wanted to be an A-10 pilot. My dad was a pilot in the air force, um, grew up sitting in the seat next to him flying. Um, like I was, I was soloing and ready to fly at 17 years old. And, uh, um, Had an opportunity to play football at a big university in Florida. Turned it down, joined Marine Corps instead.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
Yeah, turned it down. Was lucky. Again, like I said earlier, I was a troublemaker. Um, you know, I love fire. I loved, I love, I love fire. It's bad, dude.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And so we worked through it from a mind architect standpoint to start to understand the meaning of an event, a decision that you might make, or a word that you might say that's incorrect. Like look at depression. Everybody's depressed nowadays. Well, maybe you're not depressed. And maybe the best way to solve a problem is to identify there isn't one in the first place.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
It's horrible. Um, we've gotten some hot water. You know, I, I, I, uh, um, one night some, some people were breaking into houses and, and they were, you know, meth heads, tweakers. And, and, uh, we decided to go out and stop them. You know, it was a bunch of kids camping out wearing camis. And, uh, we.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
I was 15, I think at the time. Had a sawed off 1022 Ruger, no stock, no barrel. Like we didn't know back then, man. And it was black as night, just about one o'clock in the morning. And they said, shoot at him, shoot at him, get him out of here. So I just, I mean, 50 yards at night, just to shoot to make some noise to scare him. And I see this body drop on the dock and I'm like, oh shit.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
Are you serious? Yeah. And my buddy's like, dude, you hit that dude. Gave me a high five, and then they ran out screaming. Turns out they were bad, and they got busted for what they were doing. But we didn't know any better. We're just like, hey, let's go get rid of these people. We already held them at gunpoint earlier.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
My buddy's dad came out with a shotgun and says, hey, y'all get the hell out of here right now. I'm calling the cops. They lied their ass off, and then they went around, and then dad went back to sleep. So we decided to take it in our own hands. And it was not- Who's we? Me and three other buddies that were camping out and running around and partying at night and shooting guns everywhere.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
It was a total redneck Florida story, man. And so we ran across the street and two guys went left and we went right and basically L-shaped ambushed them before we knew what an L-shape was and dumped one. It turned out to be a female. Just scraped her head, didn't kill her. But about a year later, they found out and tried to, came to school, hooked me up, threw me in jail for about eight days.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
They arrested his dad because he was the only one witnessed with a gun that night. And I was like, dude, what happens if they find out? He's like, he goes, screw my dad. He goes, he abuses me and molests me. Fuck him. He can rot in jail. And I was like, okay. A year later, he breaks. And they come in and say, hey, you're under arrest. So that was an attempt to murder charge at first.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
Then, of course, it dropped down to juvenile. So they dropped that down to some assault charges, aggravated battery assault with a deadly weapon. Um, they, I ended up taking a plea and the judge used to be a former JAG, uh, Colonel and my recruiter, I'm, I'm in, I'm in delayed entry program at this point in time.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And cause now I'm like 16 and a half by the time this all comes around and I'm thinking my entire life is ruined. I'm not gonna be able to join the Marines. I'm not gonna be able to go play ball now. Can't do anything. And the judge, he reviews it, and my staff sergeant's like, look, I can speak for this kid. You know, he's helped us immensely in the delayed entry program.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
My dad worked for Florida Power Corporation, so I had access to numerous resources on the family farm. So I built an obstacle course on my family farm that was bigger than Parris Island, South Carolina's confidence course. Towers. almost a thousand foot zip line coming out of a 62 foot platform, fast ropes. Like I was a nerd. Wow. I was a nerd.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
Every time we want alone time or we want to like off gas or I just need to get away from it all, man, I've got these anxieties and problems. I think that you could look at it as a word. A lot of experts are now starting to talk about this more It's a compression state that you want to go into to compress myself, to off-gas the chaos and corruption of my day or my experience that I had.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
Because the guy that built the original fast ropes had a hanger right next to my dad's hanger and we'd fly. Colonel John Matthews, he introduced me to him. Because I used to pull up old wells and the old plastic pipe and I'd hang it in trees like 40 feet up. And I'd drill holes through it and hang it. I'd slide down it until one night I sprained my ankle because it was wet. Hit the ground.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And my dad was like, you're not doing it anymore. Cut that out of the tree. And then he introduced me to John. He said, go ahead and pick one. Back as a kid when fast ropes were brand new, you never heard of this concept. It was always repelling. I see this rope. I'm like, holy shit. And so I hung in the tree and I just fast roped every single day of my life.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And, you know, so we'd have delayed entry program meetings at my farm. We'd have like 60, 70 kids running through the whole course. And the recruiter's like, who the, who does this? So that's how I grew up. I was just a military nerd. Grew up on my grandfather and my father's blood-soaked horror stories from war.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
What I would say, maybe blood-soaked horror stories for some, but for me, I was like, that's my destiny. I feel like I need to do that. I need to serve in some way. Do you feel like, was it pushed on you at all? No, not one bit.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
Never, never. My dad never really talked about it a whole lot. My grandfather did, but there was never any, you should think about this, son. Never. Ultimate support. I think they expected it from me. And as soon as I joined up, and of course, when the judge goes, that's exactly what you need is some discipline.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
So upon completion of your community service and all this other stuff you got to do, you will join the United States Marine Corps. Do you understand me? And I'm like... Yes, sir. And he goes, and staff sergeant, he goes, if this kid doesn't do these things, then you will come back to me and we're going to have another meeting. And we'll readdress your future.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And so I did everything I was supposed to do and still had that shot to join the Marine Corps. So I equate that back to a lot of guys do bad things, but it doesn't mean they're bad people. And I realized that later, because I really questioned myself, am I a bad person for trying to help people? I didn't know the law. I didn't know what I could and couldn't do.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And then I still had the shot to go and do what I did in my life. I'm extremely grateful for that and blessed that I was afforded that opportunity.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
My dad, my grandfather, all the way back to American Revolution. My grandfather's got probably the most unique story. Omaha Beach, first wave, first boots, first ramp to drop. He survives four out of 40 in his boat team. Makes it to the beachhead, tries to jump overboard when everybody's getting shot inside the boat.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
realizes he can't swim, sees one of the other soldiers drowning, and jumps back in. And the staff sort of just like, let's go. And he grabs a Thompson off of one of the dead guys, an M1, and goes in. Gets injured, goes back to London, does the whole rehabilitation camp stuff. Then he goes back to New York, meets grandma, gets his orders to go back to Europe Command for a second tour.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
gets on the train, and about three hours in the train ride, he's like, are we going to New York? And these guys next to him are like, no, man, we're going to Camp Pendleton, California. We're Marines. And he's like, what? And he couldn't stop. So by the time, you know, trying to wire to people back then, you ain't getting off the train and going back to Europe or back to New York.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
So he ends up going to California. They retask him. And then he was in California. First wave invasion, Iwo Jima, first ramp to drop, got hit by a kamikaze, came in and ripped off the back of his boat, and then packed their shit up a few months later, went to Okinawa, Japan, and was in Okinawa. So he's the only known warrior that was in both theaters in all three major campaigns.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
It's not, but you'll label it as depression versus compression. So if we can just maybe identify and define the words more that we use, depression. the spelling, right? That's why they call them spells because you're casting a spell every time you say, I'm depressed. Are you? Or you just need some compression time because you need that time. And I think we don't understand that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
Both of his flags are down in New Orleans World War II Museum, the stories that he has. So I got to grow up on that, and I'm like, that's cool. I didn't even know until about 10 years ago the lineage of my family. I didn't know this growing up. I didn't know anybody beyond my grandfather in World War II. Because my dad's like, yeah, I think we're from Germany.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
I think great grandpa Gershbach is from Germany on your mom's side. And then grandpa Haley, you know, we got family. I'm like, Haley's not German, dad. It's Irish English. And he's like, well, I don't know.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And then I found out 10 years ago, I got this whole family tree and I found all the military documentation all the way back to James Haley was my seventh generation grandfather who was a sergeant in the 11th Virginia infantry in 1776. And then he ran home to his dad, William Haley, who was 52 years old, retired on the farm and said, dad, the revolution's starting.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
You got to come out of retirement and fight. So he served as a private under his son who was a sergeant in the 11th Virginia military. and infantry and they fought in the revolution. And I just found last month, another name popped up, John Haley before him. So now I just found my ninth, but I don't know where he comes from. There's not a whole lot of information on it yet.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
So I'm still digging into that. And then I go back to my dad, I'm like, dad, We're not from Germany at all, man. We've freaking been in America. He's like, well, how long? I said, I don't know. We've been here since at least the 1600s. So we're early settlers in this country. And, you know, every male has stepped up.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
I wish I could ask them that question because I don't know the answer. I know they were super proud when I did. And I think, you know, how that generation, both those generations were a little quieter, especially Korea and World War II. Now, my grandfather didn't hesitate to talk about slaying Japs and freaking, you know, and World War II or, you know, killing the Nazis.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
But my dad was quiet about it. Not from a trauma standpoint. I don't think, I think he was just a quiet man. And... Um, it's probably why I run my mouth too much sometimes. And cause I always wanted him to speak out more. I always wanted him to tell more stories. So I think that he was extremely proud of me joining.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
Um, cause he never gave me any sense of, you know, or like any weird frequency or feeling I never got from him. Um, so no, I don't, I'd love to one day, one day I'll ask him that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
I think that was the most bittersweet moment when, and maybe in that feeling, I may now know what my dad and grandfather might have felt. You know, like I told you, I found out from the recruiter, not my son. And so a lot, because of course my ex calls like, did you, you made him join the Marines? Like, I said, no, I had nothing to do with this. This is all on him.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And so I was confused at first because I was worried that they weren't picking anything, no job. You know, they talked about a couple of things, but military was never on the table. And all of a sudden, this recruiter is telling me, hey, I'd like to meet with you. He's 18.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
I know he can do what he wants, but since he still lives under your house, I want to give you that respect and talk to you about his desires. And I'm like, okay, find out. Get down there. Hayden, what's going on, man? I'm joining the Marines, Dad. Okay. And I'm going recon. I'm like, what? Like, you didn't think to talk to me about this? We talk about this all the time.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And so we just get more depressed and more anxiety comes on. And then next thing you know, I'm like, I want to end it all. I don't want to be here anymore. And And next thing you know, we're creating organizations of trying to stop suicide. And I've even talked to the guys a long time ago. I haven't talked to anybody recently at Mission 22. But, you know, 22 vets a day die.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
You come out to my classes, you hang out with these guys, you talk to these dudes a lot. Like, you know, why not tell me? And it just wasn't my time for him to tell me that. So maybe he was thinking I would talk him out of it. I think he would say that, maybe. And maybe I should open that transparency up with him and make sure that that's clear.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
But I did tell him, I said, look, if you do this, you have to promise me one thing. You are not allowed to walk in my footsteps. You will make your own. So, because I don't want you, because he's going to get compared to me, of course, you know. You know, I was honor graduate, high shooter, all that stuff in boot camp. He's living under that. And guess what he does?
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
He gets Ironman and high shooter and honor graduate, gets E3 promotion, meritorious Lance Corporal out of boot camp. I've never heard of that in my life. So he's already kicking my ass and my brother's ass, who was also Ironman and high shooter and honor graduate and then became a colonel, just retired. And now he's heading to the same path and the same footsteps that I stepped into.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And you know, like those fins, man, when he puts those feet down on that pool deck here coming up soon, he's gonna kill it. And he's doing more now than I was doing. And I was pretty prepared going in. So I think my feelings at first was like pride. Man, he's doing something that most people on the face of the planet would never do. Second emotion. fear, suffering.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
Just like the old saying, ignorance is bliss. He's ignorant right now. Wisdom is suffering. The pains that we have, the visions, the memories, the sounds, the smells, whatever it is from our past and our combat experience is the suffering from how much we now know about it, how much we know about the world.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
I mean, look at the things we're talking about with the state of America, the border, the drugs, you name it, the sex trafficking, the wars, the corruption. We didn't have that. At least I didn't remember that when I went in. I was like, going to go serve my country, put foot to ask for my country, you know, against evil people in the world. And that was all I had to worry about.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
Now our kids are joining the military with all of those things that we're talking about. And they hear podcasts, they hear guys talking about it. He has access to all this information and he's still choosing to join. That's where I go, why? Why are you joining? Because I want to make the world a better place. Okay. That's a really good start.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And so, of course, a lot of people would say, you sure you want your son joining the military in a time like this? You sure you want him working for this administration? Of course not. But I worked for some shitty administrations too, just like you did and just like a lot of us did, just like my grandfather did. There was people that were running the country back then that weren't the best.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
Now it's up to 40 right now. As we speak and sit here, it's up to 40. Well, why is it up to 40? Maybe we're reminding them that it's okay to commit suicide instead of saying it's not okay. How about rebrand your company? I said this one time, I said, rebrand it next year as Mission 21 and then Mission 20 and then Mission 19. And they were like, they laughed at that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And you're always gonna have bad leaders. And so you're always gonna have bad people. And I think people forget in all the chaos and the bullshit in the world that we talk about all the time, it's like music, man. There's so much beautiful music in the world. Just like the world is a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful place. The problem is the bad is louder. That's it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
So my opinion is the only way to fix a problem like the problems we're having in a woke-ass military, in a government that's not prioritizing Americans first, et cetera, et cetera, is to put good people into that system and stop quitting. Now I get it, I'm a victim of quitting law enforcement because I was forced out because I was making too good of decisions.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
I was increasing people's hit probabilities and survivability rates like astronomically and world record national highs and percentages around the country. Well, that puts out the improper psychological mindset to our communities that we're training killers, not police officers. So shut it down. Like, what do you mean? We only do four quals a year. Shut it down. You only need to do one a year. Why?
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
you can't justify that to me, then goodbye. And I had to throw my badge across the table because I won't be a part of that when I know I can fight harder outside on that system. So I've not told him any of these things. I've not said, hey, here's all the corruption and stuff you're gonna be up against. Here's the things that you need to worry about. No.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
you need to worry about swimming, running, breath work, meditation. And I'm teaching him old cultural warrior ways, not the new stuff. Like I'll see him get really stressed out and all of a sudden he starts going. And then he goes, and I'm like, damn, I wish I had the senses to do that when I was younger.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
So it's not my job to tell him about all my horrors and my suffering and the wisdom that I have. I want him to be a little ignorant. I want him to go in with a good foundation and good parenting strategies, which we can pride ourselves on for, I think, doing a great job.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
decent job and and a hard life that we've all had you know broken phone divorces and trauma me i was not the best guy man i wasn't i wasn't around much that's why i stopped that's why i left the marine corps 15 years and try to find something else because i was confused and i want him to find those lessons on his own what is your what is your what bothers you the most what's your biggest fear about him potentially going to war
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
It's a selfish thing I've realized. I don't want him to have the same darkness that maybe we have afterwards, but he's going to. And that's the choice he's making. That's the life he's manifesting. And I realized that if you're gonna step up and take on that hardship of a life, I mean, just think about a pipeline alone. Who does that to themselves?
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
But so if anybody hears that now, I think that's a good idea is to talk about how do we get rid of it, not just acknowledge it exists. And that's what I'm trying to do the best I can.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
Why would you want to, you know, be deprived of food and sleep and be wet and cold all the time and be beat down and mentally and physically exhausted at the end of every day for two solid years? Who does that to themselves? Very special people. And I know a lot of operators don't consider themselves special and that's the problem. They are. They are special.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And when you get out, you look back at your brothers and you look back at what you did, you're like, there's not a lot of dudes in the world that would do those types of things to themselves and with each other. And that's what creates the bond that we have. I'm excited for him to feel that. Really excited.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
All the great things that we've encountered in our lives and in the operational community, I want him to feel all of that. I'm scared that he'll feel all the bad. I'm not sure how he'll react to it, but that's the selfishness. That's why I have no business trying to change his physics because that's nonsensical. You can't have that conversation. That's like trying to change the position of the sun.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
You can't change somebody else's physics, man. And so I want him to be on this journey. I know he's gonna be a savage, a compassionate savage. He cares, he's vulnerable. And I want him to find all the hard things and deal with them in his own way. And I hope that I have given him the best that I can with what I have, a structure of how to manage the stressors where I didn't have one.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
He's gone through the passages, not medicine stuff, the meditation work, the cold stuff. He's a fighter. He knows what pain is. And that's the biggest lesson that I want him to understand is the difference between those two words, pain and suffering.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
do you worry that he is trying to live up to to the life that you've manifested yeah that's that's another piece of it that i think when i heard marine first i'm like whoa what and then all of a sudden he goes and i want to be a recon marine i'm like okay i hope i didn't do something to make you think that you have to take that same path that i did and after exploring that deeply with him
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
I don't think it is. I really don't. Because I had some buddies of mine talk to him. I had him talk to a couple of my buddies that were former force guys, went to PJs down in Tucson, had him talk to a couple of buddies in CAG that came in. And my buddy in CAG, he's like, look, man, your son's not joining because he wants to be like you. Because he went deep on him.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And because I told him the same exact thing. I said, man, I'm worried that he's doing this because I'm doing it. And he goes, nah, man, he wants to get it out of the system. He wants to choose the hardest branch of service. He wants to get the badass uniform, wants to get the ass, and he wants to go out and be hard. But he goes, I understand.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And after talking to your son, he is extremely intellectual. I said, yeah, he scored perfect on all his tests, 100% on the ASVAB or 99, whatever that is. I was like, he could have any job he wanted. choose his recon. And he's like, he wants to take the hardest thing. And then he started asking me about our world. And I was like, oh, really? He's like, yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
He goes, a kid like him in four or five years from now, we're going to look for him. That made me feel good, right? Because especially the hardships that Marines go through and the force reconnaissance or reconnaissance community, the Raiders are getting their, they're always constantly messed with by the Marine Corps. And that's why a lot of guys go contract.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
No.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
That's why a lot of guys go over to the dark side. They start their own companies. They get out and they do something different because they're at this point of like, I think I've maxed out what the Marine Corps can give me at this point. And it's getting better.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
Luckily, I've never done that, never dealt with it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
I hope the Marine Corps starts learning their lesson and starts taking care of their people because you have the greatest organization of, again, brotherhood and camaraderie and this crazy-ass, psychopathic, compassionate fraternity of men that come together to go destroy evil that came together in a bar one night in Pennsylvania and said, we need to kill people.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And they started a branch of service in a bar. Okay, that tells you a lot about the Marine Corps. So I'm honored that he's a part of that. And I'm also, you know, I was grateful to hear, and when I started talking to him about, hey, what do you think about some special mission stuff? Later on down the road, he's like, oh yeah. He goes, I would absolutely love to do that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
He goes, I just, I love the water. I love the amphib side. I tried, I said, dude, I need you to come down to Colorado, work with some of the teams that I work with, some of my buddies down there. I want you to check out the Naval Special Warfare side of the house. We go down there, hang out, talk to a bunch of my buddies. And he's like, I'm just not, I don't feel it. I don't feel it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
I was like, okay, what about pararescue? What about helping, saving lives, man? You know, so others may live concept. Introduced him, had him work with a team of guys that came in from Tucson. And he's like, these dudes are badass. He goes, they're, he goes, incredibly talented. He goes, I just don't like the medical side too much. I'm like, all right, okay. What about ASOS? What about this?
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
What about that? No. I was like, well, what do you want to do then, bud? I don't know. I tried. So I tried to introduce him to as many people as I could. And I think what he'll do is he'll take that path. He'll go up and then he'll cross deck and go to the CAG program.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
Of course, I've had that worry. And so with that worry, I've just said to him, like, look, this is a hard life and not everybody makes this through on the first one. It's okay. It's okay if you don't make it through some of the selections or vettings or basic reconnaissance course. You know, so...
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
What I want you to do is think about the trusting side of the house, all the things that I ever taught you about the braving system, the boundaries, the reliability, the accountability, the vault, the integrity, the non-judgment, the generosity that you need to have as a leader before you go and outperform everybody else over here.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
I think Simon Sinek talked about that a little bit with the SEAL teams. Like he always looks for the trusted and performer guy. You know, he's got a school graph that he talks about with that. But I'm like, no, that's, you need to understand what the anatomy of trust is first. And that is setting healthy boundaries. That is reliability. That is vulnerability and accountability of your actions.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
That is, you know, being a quiet professional because there's no such thing as a silent professional. And that's something the military's messing us up with bad. That's the problem with a lot of these guys that get into going back to the stress and the PTSD, not to bounce around here, but like they're taught to be a silent professional. And that's a problem.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
There's a, look again, define the words. Silent means what? Nothing. Quiet, though, means, hey, can you guys keep your voices down? You know, and I know the teams get their balls busted for writing books and making movies. I wish we did that. I wish we had 5,000 force recon Marines in the world, but we don't. We have maybe 400. Actually, that's up to 800 right now. It's the highest it's ever been.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
When I was in, 300 dudes. 100 on the East Coast, 100 on the West Coast, 100 in Okinawa, Japan. That's it. And then your reserve guys. You guys have like 5,000 Navy SEALs in the world right now or something like that. Why? Because you guys are good at marketing and storytelling. And, you know, regardless of people busting balls, the Marine Corps won't do that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
You look on their Instagram channels, you'll have a recon Marine doing something, jumping out of an airplane, and it'll say, US Marines doing this, conducting this exercise here and there. I'm like, why don't you talk about it? That's the quiet side I'm trying to get people to do more of.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And so I'm shocked that he came to me and wanted to do that, because I've never really talked about it much of what I did in force recon.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
Yeah, the global war on terror in 25-ish years now, I guess, is somewhere around 92 or 9,300. And don't quote me on exactly that number, but it's over 9,000. Okay, if we look back to Vietnam and Korea in World War II, we know what the numbers were there, right? You had, what, 45,000, 52,000, and then World War II was like, what, 400-plus thousand men died. Okay. Damn, that's pretty good.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
Global war on terror in 25 years. We've only lost nine. I mean, it sounds shitty to say it like this, but we've only lost 9,000 plus people. Okay. Technology, better medical facilities. I mean, we can get air medevaced, you know, very quickly nowadays. Um, so like people would say, well, that's not that bad.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
But then you add the suicide numbers, which we're starting to see a lot of numbers come out and I'm going to fact check them. Um, Apparently like two months ago, it peaked 140,000 GWAT veterans in 25 years, whether you served somewhere in that timeframe, have committed suicide. So in theory, our actual death toll of the war, again, not everything is combat related.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
It could have been some family issue, childhood trauma, something like that. drugs, whatever, that influence that decision, but they still are considered the G1 number. That's why I'm kind of fact-checking the number itself. It could be 140, but how many are actually combat-related? I can't handle the trauma and the nightmares anymore kind of thing. You'll never figure that out.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
But if that number is true of suicides alone in the last 25 years, that means that we're almost at 150,000 dead in this war on terror. And if I can personally say I know 36 of them that are good friends of mine, maybe that's true. And that makes me want to fight harder.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
I've tried. It doesn't work. I'm actually allergic to alcohol. And that's happened in like the last year and a half. Like even if I have like a glass of wine, I got really big into wine and make them my own wines for a while. Can't do it anymore. And I'm happy because I don't like waking up like that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
Plus I have a TBI and I think there was some stuff going on there that was activating it and certain dyes I can't have, et cetera. But... Another issue is not to say that I haven't had a problem with drugs or alcohol, but I've tried them. I've done all the experiments. I think besides Ibogaine is one of the few things that I haven't done. But now I'm hearing guys coming back and when I do it,
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
I do it very, very, very traditionally. I have shamans that everything is free. Nothing is paid for because in that world, and I believe this, if you pay for that service, you take away the spirit of it. Interesting. Yeah. So it's hard to find guys like that. But now I got dudes coming back saying, bro, I just got back from South America. I just did my 12th Ibogaine or my 12th ayahuasca trip.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And I'm like... That's not how it works, bro. You're now using these medical treatments that we have really found a lot of great things with from psilocybin to all these other subjects that have, I mean, dude, woken me up. Like I found myself in some of these situations, but they were like six day long, not one second of sleep for six days, very little food.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
cold plunging in the snow, running through the mountains, getting beat down by 80-pound soaking wet Native Americans that put these rite of warrior passages together to off-gas you from combat.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And when you find out, you study ancient warriors, you'll see how much that we used to do as warriors to off-gas ourselves from the chaos and corruption before you were allowed to go back to your tent, your teepee, your family, your village. the medicine men would keep you there and say, you're not ready to go home yet.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
The Romans did it, the Spartans did it, the Samurais did it, every known African tribal warriors did it, natives of this country, every tribe had their own process and it was based around medicines, but it was a graduating process. It wasn't like, we're just gonna keep giving you Ibogaine until you're better. I was like, that's another problem on that end of the spectrum I'm starting to see now.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
And on the other end, it's like, I'm just smoking weed every night and doing heroin now or taking pills because I can't take the pain. And then it's like, where's the balance? And so we need to find that balance as well.
Shawn Ryan Show
#172 Travis Haley - Blackwater Sniper's Controversial Moments in Deadly War Zones
So my plan worked exactly as planned, I guess.