Navy SEAL: “Not Killing People Is Hard” - DJ Shipley - #1112

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
You've done a lot of hard things in your life.

**DJ Shipley** (0:03)
A couple.

**Chris Williamson** (0:04)
Why was getting out of the military the hardest thing that you've had to do?

**DJ Shipley** (0:11)
No one ever prepared you for it.
When you get in the teams, any military, especially special operations, it becomes your identity, it becomes the only thing you do, and it becomes a justification for everything you don't do. Why don't you do this? Because it will affect the end state. When you transition away from it, you never thought it was going to be hard. You thought you were going to transition, you were going to find that same love and passion, the energy you had for being in the military, and then when you don't find it, it's a huge fall from grace.
But I mean, you hear these fairy tales of, this billionaire is going to pay you hundreds of thousands of dollars to live on his ranch and to do nothing but tell war stories and shoot coyotes and whatever. Any place you want to go, they'll pick you up because of your background, because of your resume and all these different things. When you get out, you quickly realize that's all a lie.
No one's going to pay you to do a compound assault. No one's going to pay you to skydive. No one's going to pay you to assault a cruise ship or whatever else you did. They don't exist. So I've spent my entire adult life developing a skill set nobody wants. What am I supposed to do now? I don't know how to do anything. You want me to go to Home Depot? Like what am I supposed to do? I've avoided getting my picture taken for 20 years. I've avoided conversations with normal people. I don't have a Rolodex because I've never opened myself up to anybody who wasn't inside of that 12 man team. I don't have anybody. I don't know the CEO of Apple or Google. I don't know any of these people. There's nothing for me to do except contract. That's it.

**Chris Williamson** (1:37)
Which just keeps you in the same system.

**DJ Shipley** (1:39)
It's the exact same thing. You're with the same people, the same deployment schedules, same routine, and you just chip away until you're too old to do anymore and then you just fizzle out.

**Chris Williamson** (1:49)
That must feel to a lot of special operators like they basically can't ever leave.

**DJ Shipley** (1:54)
Exactly. Even the guys who do leave, the majority of them, they're either miserable or they transition to a job that's so similar to the military. It's like they're still in.

**Chris Williamson** (2:02)
What like?

**DJ Shipley** (2:03)
Contracting, agency work, Blackwater, Triple Canopy, stuff like that. You're basically doing a very similar job, just you get paid a little bit more or the guys just come right back in. We've had guys get out and go to Goldman Sachs and try to reinvent themselves. They make it six months, three years.
Nope, right back in.

**Chris Williamson** (2:20)
No way.

**DJ Shipley** (2:21)
Oh, yeah. They miss it that much.

**Chris Williamson** (2:26)
I mean, Wall Street trading feels a lot. It's probably the closest thing that you can get to war in the finance world.
But yeah, if the adrenaline of million-dollar movements every couple of seconds on a market isn't good enough for you, you got to get back into something with a bit more of a kinetic energy.

**DJ Shipley** (2:43)
Kinetic energy is what it is. You need something where you have a little bit of risk of dying. You've never felt more alive than when you're right on the teetering edge of death. Once you feel that and you survive it, more of that. Whatever that was, I need to feel that again. It didn't matter if it's skydiving, if it's combat, if it's whatever else. You're chasing the adrenaline dump.
I need to feel the adrenaline, whatever I'm doing.

**Chris Williamson** (3:08)
What does that feel like?

**DJ Shipley** (3:12)
You've been in a bad car accident or almost in a bad car accident?

**Chris Williamson** (3:15)
Yes.

**DJ Shipley** (3:16)
When you get done, your hands shake a little bit.
I can't believe I made it through that. It's one of those. Then it becomes, of course, I made it through that. I've been training to make it through that. Then it's almost like an ego check, like how close can I come or how successful can I be with everything you do? How much can I plan? How much can I dedicate my life to buy down as much risk as humanly possible to be effective on the battlefield, whatever that battlefield might be?