The Taliban surrounded Chuck Ritter’s unit and shot him three times. He lived to tell the tale — and redeployed back to Afghanistan.
In this episode, decorated veteran Chuck Ritter sat down for a fascinating conversation sharing lessons learned over his 25-year career in Army Special Forces. Ritter highlighted the intense 2013 combat experience that resulted in him getting shot three times while rescuing an Afghan soldier. Showing unbelievable grit, Ritter returned to battle just months later after extensive surgeries and rehab.
Amidst riveting stories, Ritter unpacked leadership, self-improvement,and optimization philosophies honed through hundreds of missions. Effective leaders must balance humility, self-awareness, and decisiveness – listening yet synthesizing input to make necessary calls. He stressed that relevance requires constant learning and avoiding complacency.
The conversation offered motivating testimony to Ritter’s courage and service alongside practical wisdom applicable far beyond war zones. Listeners can learn much from this heroic soldier’s resilience mindset and leadership acumen.
Here is the bodycam footage and Chris’ harrowing story.
FULL TRANSCRIPTION
Chuck Ritter: All right, so the story you didn’t hear is when I got shot in the back. I got shot three times in Afghanistan and one of those hit my upper back and it broke through the brachial nerve complex in the artery, tore through all the nerves and it bleeding out and crashing on the operating table. When I got back here, uh, extreme nerve pain.
It took a long time. To recover from that. But in my recovery phase, I couldn’t sleep at a nonprofit organization that’s special operations related. They reached out to Keith Moneymaker from Sweet Dreams Mattress here in Southern Pines and asked him what the mattress would be to get. And he recommended one.
They got a top of the line Sealy Posturepedic and then Delivered to my house. Keith and his infinite wisdom decided to send some 68 year old guy Like a hundred degree weather day and this is an old house that we had to get this mattress in it was built in 1928 and the only way to get this mattress in was to bring it up over into the second floor And of course I couldn’t help because I’m all I saw the tubes and stuff sticking out of me.
So it’s This old guy that Keith sent, obviously Keith didn’t show up for whatever reason, but he sent this guy who’s like out there almost dying of heat stroke. Um, my wife at the time and I think one other individual. So it took him like an hour and a half to get this thing in there and everybody’s almost dead, but they got it in there.
Slept amazingly after that. It was pretty awesome. And it’s probably one of the reasons why I was able to recover so quickly and return to combat within two and a half months was. You know, being able to recover with that mattress
Mark Kinsley: Welcome to the Sleep Summit show.
That full story starts now.
Mark Kinsley: welcome to the sleep summit show. Uh, you know, let’s start here. Let’s start here. So I’m at an Italian restaurant in Southern pines. I think it was Southern pines and I’m out there for the, what is it?
Chuck Ritter: I think it’s Aberdeen.
Mark Kinsley: Oh, Aberdeen. Okay. So we’ll start there.
Sorry. Blurry. There we go. So I’m sitting at an Italian restaurant in Aberdeen, North Carolina. We’re in town for the dreams for all foundation fundraiser. I’m emceeing the event that next day. And I sat down across from, from you, across from Chuck critter. And we get to talking about how you were coming up on retirement.
And you’ve been a Sergeant Major in the United States Army for many years and you’re about to retire and somehow the conversation gets into how many combat related surgeries you’ve had or no, it just came up as surgeries at that time. And I asked you the question, Chuck, I said, do you have any kind of go to stories behind those surgeries?
Because I’m thinking to myself, anybody that’s had 31 surgeries, I got to know some of the stories behind this. And you proceeded to tell me a story that I then went and watched on YouTube and we’ll put the link to that in the show notes about being surrounded by hundreds of Taliban and what happened as a result of those firefights.
Welcome to the show. First of all, it’s good to see you again.
Chuck Ritter: Yeah. Thanks man. Thanks for having me on.
Mark Kinsley: Tell, tell, tell us that story. And I love how you started the show about talking about how it all relates to sleep. And I think people in this industry, you know, we’re dealing with people that have problems, problems sleeping, uh, problems with pain.
And, and so, you know, we have a lot of, you know, veterans and active duty soldiers that will come in trying to get a better night’s sleep. Um, but it all goes back to How you served your country and how you continue to serve your country. And this is one of those amazing stories. I, I just had to bring on the show.
Have you tell it?
Chuck Ritter: So the story I told you, and it was weird because Keith, you know, I don’t really talk about military stuff. Keith is kind of busted me out there. You know, it was one iteration. I I’ve been blown up, you know, previously before being shot that time, which took about four years to rebuild my face and, you know, broke all my ribs and had to really learn how to walk.
So I’d had sleep problems, obviously, forever before I told you the story about when I got shot in, in Afghanistan for the first time and then came back the next trip and, and got shot again. And, uh, sleep is one of those things that, I mean, in the military, you do struggle with a lot. Even if you didn’t go to combat, you probably struggle with it just from our schedule and, and, and how everything pans out.
But that specific story that you can send the link to the video and it’s, you know, it’s 2013. We were in Afghanistan, I was on my special forces team. I was the team sergeant. Um, so yeah, I’m an E nine in the military. I’ve been in the military now for 25 years. Most of that in Army Special Forces. But we were found ourselves in a very bad place in Afghanistan where we knew it was gonna be bad.
We, we knew what we were getting into. Uh, the enemy just happened to be able to outmaneuver us and surprised us in, in many ways, I am getting shot, took three bullets and, uh, I’m having to medevac me out and fight all day to, to get out themselves. But when I returned home. I made a commitment to myself that I was going to recover and return to combat.
And I think it took five surgeries on my back. And there’s pictures in the video. It shows how bad it was. I actually bled out. I had to get 13 units of blood. Um, tons of nerve damage. Had to relearn how to use my arm, but I had my physical therapist, our psychological therapist or psych coach and our physical trainers.
And the dietician will meet me in the hospital right before my last surgery. We came with a game plan and then I had my last surgery and I think it was Monday or Tuesday. The next week I was in the gym with a bunch of tubes sticking out of me, training back to recovery. And then, um, obviously thanks to Mr.
Keith Moneymaker, local mattress store owner, he got me a pretty sweet mattress that a nonprofit paid for as part of my recovery. And I was able to return to combat in two and a half months when the neurosurgeon said it would take. At least a year, if not longer, just to be able to use my arm. And obviously sleep was a part of that.
But yeah, so that’s, that’s the story in a nutshell. That’s the, the Cliff Notes version.
Mark Kinsley: And I’ll tell you the non CliffNotes version, like I said, we’re gonna put it in the show notes. So if, uh, you get the YouTube, you know, video pulled up, you can just click on over there. But, uh, the non Cliff Notes version is.
Harrowing there’s body cam footage of, of this unfolding of this taking place. And I’ve, I’ve watched it a couple of times and just it’s edgy or seat stuff. And, you know, I think on behalf of everybody, thank you to you and your everybody in the military for your service. It’s just to see it. And to actually talk to the people that have been there really changes my perspective.
Um, because it’s, it seems it’s inconceivable. You know, let’s go there for a minute. And this, this might be a tough question to answer, but how are you Chuck wired maybe differently than other people?
Chuck Ritter: I don’t think it’s so much about being wired differently, it’s just kind of what you choose to put your effort towards.
Uh, you know, I, I can lie and say like I joined the military because you know, it’s great love of country and whatnot, which, which I do, but that’s not why it’s really hard to describe. It’s more, you know, it’s kind of like a professional football team. You know, people want to go and play a sport like football and they’re going to go and they’re going to, they’re going to train hard and they’re going to try to be the best.
And their goal is to play the game and win it and be at the top. We’re no different. We chose to play this game called the army. Some of us chose to play the game within the army called special operations. We want to play it. We want to win. And, you know, for us, it’s the football field or the game field is out there, you know, in these other countries, and it’s kind of what we, we strive to do.
And we, it’s not all about going out and doing combat in the vast majority of what we do, especially in my realm is, is working with indigenous people and forces in order to make their lives better or in order to help them. Do things on their own, you know, both a lot of schools and just working with people and, you know, obviously you’re going to find yourself on the battlefield at some point in those environments because we’re not just going over to these, these places that are calm and then, you know, we do it over and over again for me, it’s 13 combat trips, you know, people have plenty of people have more combat trips than I do, but it’s, I don’t know, it’s hard to describe the mindset because most people have families and we keep doing it over and over again for me and I’ve got three purple hearts and I keep doing it.
I wouldn’t say it’s because I’m wired. I’ve Differently, I just make the choice to do something that my job, just one of the occupational hazards is you might come home severely wounded or you might not come home at all. And you choose to put yourself in that position and go do those things. And you also choose to, you also choose to, you know, Possibly put other people in harm’s way.
You’re going to ask people to do dangerous things and you’re going to put yourself in, in situations that are extremely dangerous because the game is very real. And you’re doing that for reasons beyond yourself. Like when I got shot in the back, I didn’t get shot in the back. Well, I got shot in the back because I was fighting out into a close ambush where there’s multiple machine guns within 25 to 50 meters to retrieve an Afghan that had been wounded.
You know, I didn’t know the guy. Um, you know, it’s a guy I’d never met before. Like personally, I remember obviously I was on the battlefield with him, but you know, when you’re working with. 300 people. You don’t, you don’t know everybody, but the right call was to go out and retrieve this person. So the Taliban didn’t get them and torture them.
So it’s just, I don’t know, it’s wired if you’re just choosing to do that type of thing and live that life where, you know, you’re doing something for more than just yourself. That’s, that’s the way I feel. I’m always looking forward to, or looking to do something in life that has a positive impact on other people or systems.
outside of me. So I don’t think that it’s not that you’re wired differently. I’m no different than anybody else. Like anybody could do what I’ve done if they, if they choose to have that mindset. Right. My belief is that if you choose to believe that you’re an unstoppable force of nature in life, then you will be.
Um, I’m sure things can stop you, right, but you can get back up because failure and defeat are two different things. I think that maybe, maybe one thing that, that wires me differently than anybody else can do is you’ve got to normalize failing, right? I think we need to normalize failure because failure and defeat aren’t the same thing.
But once you normalize failure, you can always get back up. Okay, I got shot. Okay, that was a fail. How do I get back up and make, make myself stronger or fail this task? How do I use that to learn from it and make myself even stronger than before, right? Maybe, maybe that’s what sets us apart a little bit is a lot of people get stuck in this no fail environment when the reality is if you want to be your best in life, you have to normalize failing and be okay with it.
And accept that if you don’t fail, you’re never going to be superior than you were before to your, to your former self. That’s quite a rant. Sorry.
Mark Kinsley: Difference between failure and defeat. And then let’s unpack the thing you said before that though. If you truly believe that you’re an unstoppable force of nature in life, then you will be.
So let’s, let’s say that you choose to be that unstoppable force of nature and then you do fail. What does your mentality as an unstoppable force of nature tell you to do at that moment? Or tell you to do in the wake of that. How does somebody cultivate that mindset?
Chuck Ritter: So it’s what’s defined as a growth mindset where you’re okay with failing because you know it’s not defeat.
So it’s okay to fail, but it’s not okay to keep failing the same thing over and over again. It’s ridiculous, right? That’s the definition of insanity. So the mindset when you go into something is that, okay, has this something, is this something that I’ve failed at before? Because if it is, I’m set a pattern that’s kind of messed up.
How do I get out of that? But the reality is you got to own it. That’s, that’s the key is okay. This was a failure. What part of this was mine to own and being okay with that because if you don’t own things and you try to pass it off and use excuses, you can never truly better yourself and you’re always going to end up being a narcissist by the end of the day, but owning it and being okay with owning it.
And not trying to be defensive because we all want to protect our own egos, right? Our egos are our worst enemies in life. We all have an ego. It’s a sense of self. Sometimes our self protection mechanism is to shy away and make excuses for a failure when the reality is we always have some kind of blame in there.
So what is it? What is ours to take? And you know what? What does fall outside entities? But for me, What can I do to learn from that and better myself? What lessons can I take to not do the same thing and fail again with it? Right? I think that’s the key is, is being that fulcrum, knowing that we all have an ego, but on any given day, none of us are as awesome or as bad as we believe us to be, because we’re just not, um, you know, we’re all just humans.
We all make mistakes. We all screw things up. We’re all wrong. And being okay with that, like, Hey, I know that I’m probably wrong somewhere. Where is it? And not defending yourself against that to just internally to you and then to others like, yep, that’s mine. Um, here’s what we can extract from that to not make this mistake again and better ourselves and be a better person or, you know, better salesman, whatever that might be.
It’s
Mark Kinsley: like the ownership mentality. I’m just going to own this and, and sometimes even say, good, like, good, this, this happened. What can I learn from it? How can I use it to get better?
Chuck Ritter: And just being okay with it and being, Hey, that was mine. Let me take it. And then not just that, but then evaluate taking the time and energy to evaluate it and expanding it and figure out what it is that actually happened.
So you can not do it again. Like, and being okay with that.
Mark Kinsley: It almost seems like there’s a. An extreme amount of reflection that happens, especially probably operating at the highest level, like you and your teams have done, you know, you and the other soldiers that have done, I think maybe that’s something that’s lost, um, on a lot of people, maybe in a lot of businesses and a lot of different organizations is that time to reflect, is that something that’s built in to, to the military or built into the special forces?
Like we are going to spend a significant amount of time debriefing, reflecting, and then figuring out who owns what piece of it.
Chuck Ritter: It is. So throughout the entire military, like it’s called the after action review. So anytime you do anything, you come back and you have an after action review where you break apart everything that happened, good and bad.
And then you figure out what you want to sustain and improve. Right. And we can say that we’re up to a certain level because I would, I would argue that some most higher levels, higher, higher levels of the military and the government refuse to do some reflection on themselves, but at least in the military at a lower level, it’s built into the system to where you come back.
You crush yourselves. Even if you had a flawless operation, like there’s something that you could have improved on there. What was it? Whether that was in planning or something in the execution phase or even, you know, post execution phase, like what could you have done better? And then write it down.
That’s the key thing is, is logging it. When you reflect, like, you know, people talk about journaling and stuff, but I think that’s, that’s pretty key. Every morning when I wake up, I do what we call mission analysis. But for me, I go through the day, like I try to visualize it, figure out what my priorities are.
You know, what am I doing? That’s in line with things that I want to do or things that I have to do. And then, you know, prioritize that and just kind of go into the day in my, my head. So it’s not the first time I’ve seen it when I come across something. And then at the day, reflecting like, okay, like what happened today, especially if something significant happened or if it was bad, obviously like, okay, well, was it, you know, and how can I, how can I become better from that event?
Whatever it was. Cause life’s going to keep you down. Like life is going to kick you. And the reality is we should fail and you should just be okay with it. Unless you’re doing, if you’re feeling like three times in a row over the same thing, because you don’t want to change your mindset, then that’s probably an issue.
Mark Kinsley: Yeah, yeah, no, I hear that. It’s, it’s almost like the failure that comes along with trying the failure that comes along with pushing yourself by playing at a higher, higher level. Alongside people that are better than you that, that, that type of failure. And then, like you said, not doing it over and over again, because that would just be insanity.
Um, you
Chuck Ritter: have a kind of shooting, right? I’m going to, I’m going to fail to kind of the same thing over and over again, but it’s okay. Cause I’m going to, I’m going to fail forward. So I can get better. That makes sense.
Mark Kinsley: Let’s go back to something that you said that I, I, I’d like to unpack a little bit. You mentioned.
Not only writing down the beginning, you know, what’s going to happen during your day in the morning, but you said you also visualize Your day so that it’s not the first time you’ve seen it. Talk us through that.
Chuck Ritter: It’s a little stress inoculation, you know trick. The reality is our nervous system is what it is.
We have a parasympathetic and a sympathetic nervous system and it operates a certain way and the way our body reacts to stress. It’s biological. It’s not some magical thing. Even if you go to psychotherapy and all the other things that you do, somehow that your, your, your nervous system is having some kind of reaction there.
So, you know, we call it rehearsal of concept in the military, but it’s a mental rehearsal to where you’re going to rehearse the day. And say for me, okay, like I’m going to rehearse today. If these are the things that could possibly trip me up, like, okay, I know that this certain individual is probably going to come at 11 o’clock and try to take an hour of my time.
And I don’t have that. So what am I going to do? I’m going to put some headphones on and plug in the computer, even though I’m not on a zoom call, I’m going to act like him when he comes in. So then he’s like, oh, okay, I’ll come back later. I’ve just saved myself from that event. Right. Um, but whatever. And if it possibly could happen, what you’re doing is, since you visualized it and you’ve seen it, you’re minimizing your body’s stress response to certain things.
And that way when it comes, you already know what your options are, you’ve got a menu and you can do them. Or even if you don’t, at least you’ve kind of, okay, this could possibly happen, so when it does, you’re It’s not going to affect you as much like biologically, physiologically, your body’s not going to be pumping out cortisol and other things.
You’re just going to, you’re more likely just to work through it. And I found that’s pretty helpful. And then it just gives you a vision too. It’s good to have a vision on what are you trying to achieve for the day? Like what are you trying to achieve in your life and for the week? But then how does that daily, you know, task list fall into that?
And then you’re going to feel more accomplished at the end of the day, probably because you’re like, okay, this is what I set out to do. I did these three things. I didn’t do these three things, but you know, they’re kind of on the bottom of my party list. Anyway, I’m, I’m fine with putting those off until tomorrow.
And I think it just helps you, you know, you feel less stressed in the evening. So it’s going to help you sleep better, obviously. And then you’re just a happier person in my opinion. I think it works for me. Um, I see it work for a lot of other people. It’s kind of time consuming and you have to make it a habit because if you don’t, you just won’t do it.
But once you actually implement it and you make that a habit in your life, uh, you know, I think it works. Yeah. I can back it up with science. You know, I do a lot of heart rate variability stuff. I can prove that it works at least for me scientifically.
Mark Kinsley: What are some of the more stressful or intense things that you visualized and then actually were a part of and what, what happened as a result of that?
Chuck Ritter: I mean, when it comes to combat operations, you’re, you’re visualizing the worst case scenarios. Like, okay, what if we have a mass casualty event where, you know, and. And the eight Americans I’m taking on the objective with 80 indigenous forces. What if half of us are incapacitated? What do we do? How do we not just react to the situation up front, but how do we medivac them?
But then how do we continue or make the decision that we have to stop the mission and get out of there? Or, okay, well, Maybe the scenario is okay. We’re having, we’re going to set up elections. We got a polling station. There’s a, a car bomb that injures or kills 30 to 40 people. How do we, how do we react to that?
Like, how do we prepare for that? And what are we going to do in that situation? And these things actually happen, right? Like, so you plan for them up front, you do a rehearsal concept, you do a walkthrough and a talk through, and then you go out and rehearse on the ground to where it’s moving pieces. But those are the type of things that I mean, those are the worst case scenarios in life, right?
But you’re going to, you’re going to. Visualize it that way. Everybody too. If you have a team of people and you’re doing the visualization, then everybody has the same vision. So when things happen, pretty much everybody knows what everybody else is going to do, if that makes sense. But for you, for you, when you do it, I mean, those are the things that I’ve walked through and talked to in my head.
And then when we get out and those things actually happen, it’s almost like you’re on autopilot. You’re, you’re making an autopilot for yourself, even if it’s just your daily life to where you’ve You can just work through those things, but you still have the brain power and the bandwidth to think about other things too.
You’re not just hyper focused on that one thing because you’ve already anticipated it, you’ve already worked through it in your head.
Mark Kinsley: Do you visualize like the positive outcomes as well? Like here’s what the perfect mission is going to be and visualizing that so that it’s more likely to come true. Because I’ve heard about positive visualization and I’ve used it myself. Um, so I understand what you’re saying about. Uh, looking at these potential chaos type situations so that you can react to them properly in the moment, is there also an element of the positive so that it goes the way you want it
Chuck Ritter: to?
Well, that’s actually where you start. So even before you start the visualization, right? Before you start that concept rehearsal, you, you already know what the end state is. It’s supposed to look like, okay, this is my mission. This is what I’m, I’m supposed to do here. These are my key tasks. If I don’t accomplish these things today or in this situation, I have failed.
And then, like, what is the end state? What do I visualize this looking like at the end of the day if I’m going to be successful, right? So here’s my mission. Here’s my key tasks. I must do these things. They’re prioritized. And then this is what I want to look like at the day. And then you start the visualization.
So you’re always visualizing through. how to get to that. So okay, I want to get to this thing. If nothing happens, this is what I need to do. If I want to get to this, this end state that I want to happen, but all these things could possibly stop me from achieving that. Here’s how I work around them. Still get to that instinct.
That makes sense. So you start there. So it’s all positive because you always start with what it is you want to achieve and what you must do to achieve it. And then you work through all the scenarios on how do you get there when she hits the fan, right? Like in the mattress world, it could be you wake up and somebody stole the Cadillac converters off your delivery truck, right?
Like something bizarre like that. But. Okay. What happens if that happens? How do I get my deliveries out? Right. You gotta have an app. You gotta have an answer for that. Or you can just wing it, which a lot of people do, but I find that to be probably a little less efficient.
Mark Kinsley: Let’s talk about, let’s talk about efficiency.
Let’s go there. And by the way, we are going to find out, you can probably imagine if you listen to the show. Um, one of my favorite questions is where is the strangest place you’ve ever slept? And yes, we’re going to find out where’s the strangest place that Chuck Ritter. Has ever slept. It’s probably going to easily go in the top five.
Um, but you just mentioned efficiency and when we talked previously. Uh, I remember you talking about this idea, you know, let’s talk about it from the perspective of an organization, effective first, efficient later. What does that mean to you?
Chuck Ritter: So when you’re, when you’re going to be, if you’re going to be an entrepreneur or just part of a bigger business, you’re trying to achieve something, right?
And the reality is it’s a business. So you’re trying to make money with a certain thing, but the reality is. You need to learn how to be effective first. How do I effectively accomplish whatever my goal is? If I own a mattress store, I just opened it and, you know, to be effective, I know that I can just sell mattresses, right?
Like, regardless of how many that is, like, I need to sell mattresses, maybe have a few more staff members. I’m not all that efficient. I’m probably spending more money and time. Time being the thing you never get back. It’s the most valuable resource we have. Learn how to be effective first. And once you’re effective in whatever your mission is, then you add that efficiency because it’s optimization.
Optimization is being effective. While being the most efficient as you possibly can. So you’re not wasting time, you’re not wasting resources and money. But I think that’s a key. ’cause a lot of people, you know, if you’re a grifter, a lot of grifters will try to be efficient first because they’re just trying to make a buck and they can sacrifice their morals and they can sleep well at night, right?
Or, you know, if you’re in the mattress industry, you probably won’t return customers. You probably don’t wanna be a grifter. You know, you wanna be known for quality and service. So it’s always that, that balance of like, how do, how do I achieve being effective? And then work on efficiencies. After I’ve hit that, I don’t know if that answers your question, but that’s what I got.
Mark Kinsley: Yeah, no, I’m with you. Like if, if you’re trying to be, even just like you mentioned, if you’re trying to be efficient with people, they can feel that like, you’re just trying to create a transaction, right? Is that going to make an effective business that’s built on a foundation that you can grow that business as opposed to just trying to optimize.
People want
Chuck Ritter: you to care, right? They don’t want to feel transactional. Like this relationship’s transactional. Even if, even if it is transactional, which at the end of the day, a business is a business, but they want to feel like you care. Like it’s no different than military. Like your leaders, you want your leaders to feel they should care about you.
You should feel they care about you. It’s not just, you know, you’re going to do what I tell you to do type of thing.
Mark Kinsley: Let’s go there for a second. What are some of the things that great leaders do that maybe, you know, the average citizen, um, that’s not in the military would never see or never hear or never experience, but maybe they want to learn
Chuck Ritter: from that.
Um, I mean, generally your great leaders, you get a little bit of charisma to them. Um, but most of them are fairly humble people, you know, not everybody. You’ve got your, your examples out there of, of great leaders who are not humble at all, you know, from what you see, but the greatest leaders I’ve ever worked for are humble.
And they can balance transmit and receive very well, you know, they’re not just always running their mouth. They’ll stop, they’ll listen to what you have to say, and they’ll at least make you feel like they care about your opinion or what you have to say, and they care about your well being, and they understand that.
And like the military is like any business. It’s run by people. Like you take people away. It doesn’t, it doesn’t work. Right. It’s on paper. It looks like it function. We take people away. It doesn’t work. So how do you balance that and create that culture where people feel like you do care about them and that.
You’re going to listen to them. At the end of the day, you’re going to make a decision, but I think that’s, that’s the key is being able to listen actively and be able to take in what a person’s saying. And not just always be running your mouth for one, being humble and not breathing your own oxygen. I see a lot of when people make it up the ladder in a company or in the military, people start believing in their own hype and they start huffing their own oxygen.
The reality is, is. Relevancy is like a fart in the wind. It can be lost like that, right? Just because I’m good today at my job, when I move into the next job, it’s a whole new thing. I have to earn my place there. I have to start, you know, my reputation is one thing, but what am I bringing to the table today?
So that’s probably what really makes a good leader is they understand that nobody cares what you did yesterday. It doesn’t matter. What are you bringing to the table today that brings something to the team and matters for the mission? Whatever that might be, uh, not resting on your laurels. Like, you know, I walk in my uniform, all these awards and stuff.
It means nothing. The reality is that gets me in the door, but then I have to earn my place at the table every single day. Uh, my special forces tab means nothing. It’s a hall pass. It means that I have the privilege to show up to work every day and earn the right to wear it. And that takes work and dedication and commitment to my people, to the mission, to the organization every day.
It doesn’t matter, you know, what I did 10 years ago.
Mark Kinsley: It’s like consistency over time,
Chuck Ritter: consistency and, you know, just being humble. None of us are as good as we think we are.
Mark Kinsley: What does it mean for maybe if there’s a leader out there, somebody that’s aspiring to become a better leader, how would you describe being humble?
Like how, or how do you cultivate that mindset of being humble?
Chuck Ritter: So anybody can be a manager, right? You, you manage things. You lead people. So if we’re just talking about leadership, so we’re leading people, like I can put anybody in managerial position, they can probably be successful. It’s harder if I expect that person to also be a leader.
So if somebody would like to be a better leader, and they want to, am I humble enough? You know, humility is not like, Oh yes, I got to listen to everything. And you still got to make decisions. You still have to be decisive. It’s not, humility is not being indecisive, but it’s, it’s also understanding that if I’m in a room with five people, if I’m in charge.
I’m probably not the, collectively, I’m definitely not the smartest person in the world. If I can, I can take the time to extract, you know, information to be more decentralized and not just run it like, Hey, this is what we’re going to do. It’s more effective. It’s less efficient that way, but it’s definitely more effective because, you know, people, people are smart.
Um, if you got the right people in the room and just taking the time to realize that maybe you don’t have all the answers, maybe you need to stop, just shut up. And extract some input from other people before making a decision. And again, that’s twofold. Now, those people feel like they’re respected. You respect their opinion and they’re more bought into whatever the idea is anyway.
So there’s a, there’s a, there’s a game and there’s a, it’s, we call it mission command in the military. It’s just working in a decentralized environment to where I don’t have to micromanage, you know, people know the instate, they know what we’re trying to achieve. We talked about earlier and. They, they have the trust in me and I have the trust in them that they can execute without me telling them what to do every day specifically to reach that end statement that allows creativity, you know, it allows us people to use their own initiative and their own good ideas, um, to get to where you want to be.
It’s, it’s kind of hard to do because you have to relinquish control to do that. I mean, you can’t always do that, especially if you had new people, but if you can find that balance, you can play that game. That’s. That’s where being the ultimate leader is. It’s just really hard. Even people that have done it their whole lives.
Like I’m, I’m by no means a master at that. I mean, I struggle with it to this day, but if you can do that, you’re always going to end up with a better team and you’re going to end up with a better output that’s more creative and innovative than something that you could have done by yourself.
Mark Kinsley: And you mentioned transmitting and receiving, and then you talked about being humble.
And it, it reminds me, somebody told me one time, you know, a good leader is more interested than interesting. And like you said, being able to take those inputs, process them and know that people are heard, you know, surface the best ideas from a team of really smart people, then you got to make a call, you got to synthesize that into something meaningful.
Um, but those are, those are really good notes. And you’re right. I think a lot of really good leaders don’t wake up every day and just have that something that’s natural. You still got to fight yourself sometimes. And to get to where you want to be as a leader and to cultivate, you know, being humble and reminding yourself to be interested.
Right.
Chuck Ritter: And now that’s, and that’s the key to being leadership every day, waking up and realizing, okay, like, I’m not perfect. What do I need to work on? Because everything’s perishable. Leadership’s perishable. Um, you know, shooting’s perishable in our job. Speaking is perishable. Everything is perishable. If you don’t work on it, and that includes everything with you as well.
So that’s something that you have to constantly work on. Like, am I resting on my laurels? Am I maybe being a bit too cocky? There’s a fine line between confidence and cockiness, like getting to realize like, okay, am I, am I over that line to where it’s becoming problematic? Right. Am I buying my own hype?
Am I not listening to people? Because I think that, well, we were successful last quarter. We met all of our goals. So we’re good now. Like, no, the reality is. I can’t remember the name of the effect, but it’s when you’re on top of your game is when you need to change your game because that’s how you can be successful.
It’s not just like, well, this worked this time, so let me just go with it. Maybe, but the reality is you probably have to take a step back. Okay, how do I need to transition to be innovative now to continue to be successful? That applies to you as well as it does like a business model or in the military was, there’s, I can recommend one book to every anybody it’s called legacy.
It’s about the all blacks. Even if you’re not a sports person, it’s the most winning sports team ever. But the, the knowledge in that book applies to any business, any leader. And it’s pretty incredible. Like the way they built that culture for that team can be applied to anybody.
Mark Kinsley: And you’re talking about the New Zealand rugby team, the all blacks.
Yep. Yeah. Um, All right. We’ll put that, uh, let’s see. We’ll put that in the show notes. James Kerr
Chuck Ritter: is the author. It’s just a great book. The audio book’s great too. I listen to that when I’m going to the gym sometimes because I got the, uh, they get the hakas in there because every chapter starts off with a haka.
It’s pretty motivating before a workout or
Mark Kinsley: something. By James Kerr. James K E R R. All right. We’ll put that in the show notes and we’ll be sure to pick up the audio book. Yeah. And that’s, gosh, it’s, it’s, You know, it’s theoretical in a lot of ways until, until you start putting it into play. And that’s one of the things I think a lot of leaders and a lot of organizations continually try to figure out is, you know, where are we in this, in this push to create a great culture and are, are, are we there?
Are we, you’re never there in terms of like a static state. But it’s like, what do we concentrate on now? Like, what do we make part of the, uh, the magic rhythm of, of our year of our month of our meetings, um, there’s, there’s a lot to absorb and like, think about to. You know, perfect that
Chuck Ritter: yeah, it takes time.
It takes effort and you just can’t ever get comfortable with it or else you’re going to become irrelevant. I think that’s that’s something a lot of leaders fall into the trap of, you know, there’s in order to be relevant at the match, at least in my profession at the match knowledge. and experience. The knowledge piece is always evolving.
I got to keep up on studying and make sure I know what I’m talking about. Because once you start resting on your laurels, you’re just going to become irrelevant to your company or to your people, whatever that is. And you, you got to be aware of that. It’s self awareness, I guess, is the other big thing.
Like being self aware is really hard and sometimes people can’t change their, their personalities. It’s just not possible, but you can be aware of, okay, well, when I communicate this way, I can’t really change that. I know it’s going to. Probably piss off these people. So how do I get ahead of that? Right?
You can do that. Like if you get some kind of like personality disorder, that’s good luck with that. But for most of us that don’t have that, we can, we can probably at least change some of the ways we communicate or the way we come across.
Mark Kinsley: Well, I think part of that self awareness piece, it’s tough. Like if I have a blind spot, you know, how do I fill that in?
And one of the really effective ways that Um, you know, I’ve, I’ve been working with a group of people lately, and one of the exercises is, you know, email eight people and that, that you trust and ask them, what are my unique abilities? Um, but, you know, find that group of people that you can ask questions and get real honest feedback that help you.
Develop in a direction, you know, that, that you want to develop or help you fill in those blind spots that you may not even know are there. Um, just having people around you that, you know, you can reach out to and be honest with and finding that group, finding that, you know,
Chuck Ritter: your crew. Right. What’s, what’s the old saying is like, your, your success is depending upon the top five people you surround yourself with.
So that’s not the exact quote, but it’s something like that. Right.
Mark Kinsley: Yeah. Yeah. My friend James press says, you know, his dad was always, you know, show me your friends, I’ll show you who you are. All right. It’s kind of like the
Chuck Ritter: military thing is, is show me your, show me your budget and I’ll show you what your priorities are, right?
Like what’s important to you.
Mark Kinsley: Yeah. All right. We got to do it. We got to do this right now. We got to know where’s the strangest place Mr. Chuck Ritter has ever slept. So there’s, there’s
Chuck Ritter: two places. So for special forces, if, if you want to be a part of the special forces regiment, you got to come to a three week selection process, which sucks.
And if you make it, then you go through the rest of the special force qualification course. For me, that was two years long. It ends in learning another language, speak a second language. But the very first thing you go to is, is called small unit tactics. So we went past selection. I came to what was Fort Bragg at the time, now Fort Liberty.
And you go to small unit tactics. It was 46 days, I believe at the time. And it’s mostly out in the woods, but you do have these barracks. So we came in and it was just plywood on these bunk beds. What the hell? And the caddy was like, look, a couple of classes ago, some of your classmates on the end of course critique said that the mattresses were nasty and they weren’t humane.
So we don’t have enough money for mattresses. So you get to sleep on plywood. That’s what, that’s what you get to do, right? So you get 46 days on plywood. Well, I found that everybody else was sleeping on the plywood and what we call them puss pads. That’s really. You know, this little foam mattress looking thing.
If I took the plywood off and it’s just this spring, you know, this mesh spring on there that kind of goes down in the middle. I put my puss pad out on that. It actually almost felt like a hammock in a way you just couldn’t, it would, it would snatch your fingers up and stuff like at night when you like roll your hand off and it snatched up in the springs that hurt, but, um, I found it was a hammock.
So I actually slept pretty damn well. I just put my post pad out, put my sleeping bag in there. I’m trying to let my arms and hands get stuck in the springs at night. And it was, it was pretty legit. So, um, yeah, it was way better than sleeping on the mattress. And then the second weirdest place I’ve ever slept was, uh, I was on a mountain team, a special forces mountain team.
And during mountain training, one of the places you got to go is Alaska and you work on the glaciers. And so you’re out there on the glaciers all day long. When you get in water, you basically have a Nalgene bottle. on your neck and under your, all your cold weather stuff. And you just put snow in it. So it melts and you get more water.
It wasn’t just like the second night, you know, we’re building a little like a place to put our tent and sleep on this glacier. I’m so tired. Everybody else is boiling their, their Nalgene. Bottle the, the water they’re gonna put in the Nalgene bottle so they can sleep with it. Well, in my mind I was like, well man, I got this, you know, 800 down-filled sleeping bag.
It’s super warm. I’m just gonna fill two nalgenes full of snow and I’ll put ’em in the, the sleeping bag with me. Um, and they’ll melt and I’ll have water. Like, no, they didn’t melt. I was just freezing. ’cause one was at my feet and one was like up near my body. So I just froze all night and I was too stupid to get up and, and do something about it.
But yeah, sleeping out on a glacier that was. That was pretty wild.
Mark Kinsley: That’s pretty wild. And then of course you slept, you know, in the middle of combat zones. You sleep
Chuck Ritter: in the middle of the car, sleep on the top of vehicles. Like, yeah, I mean, when I got shot in the back, I actually went down for a power nap on the floor and it was like 30 minutes, not even 30 minutes later.
I think, no, I said I was going to go down for a 30 minute power nap. And it was like five minutes later, a bunch of people were on top of me. There’s grenades going off because they’re throwing grenades over the wall into the compound, you know? So, and. Over there, I was sleeping on a napkin mattress, but those things are like super hard.
You know, they’re very flat and you basically sleep on a rock for a pillow. You know, so you just, maybe you’re so tired. You’re like, all right, hey, rest plan is, you know, you get some sleep. When you wake up, I’ll get some sleep. But that just didn’t, it didn’t work out that time. So I went down for like five minutes and that was.
Woken up by hand grenades and people on top of me.
Mark Kinsley: I hate when that happens.
Chuck Ritter: Yeah.
Mark Kinsley: What’s, uh, how are you sleeping these days? I mean, you’ve had 31 combat related surgeries. I think whenever Keith Moneymaker told me he saw you at the gym, you were like swinging one of those, uh, like, I don’t know what you call it, but like you’re, you’re hitting a tire, a sledgehammer, and you had some sort of like tube hanging out of your back, like some sort of drainage tube.
Yeah. And you’re just getting after it. Yeah.
Chuck Ritter: I mean, it’s, it’s been weird. I just had a, a right hip replacement. Both of my femurs were dead. I still got to get my left hip replaced. So I got this awesome mattress right now also from Keith. Um, but for the hip replacement, I had to basically tie my legs into this device at night to where I sleep in my back so that you don’t sleep well after surgery.
Uh, so now I can actually sleep on my sides again. So I’m sleeping pretty well, but I found that, you know, sleep’s not just. Just a mattress or whatever else for me. Like I do mindfulness exercises at night. Uh, you know, make sure I’ve taken the proper supplements that work for me and kind of just have a habit at night of what I get into.
So my body knows it’s time to shut down. It’s time to sleep. And you know, I’m sleeping pretty well. I don’t have any weird body issues. I mean, I wake up and like my arms are asleep or, you know, things are going to hurt. Right. Cause you know, like my right hand, like it’s not even my bones in my right hand and I’ve had most things rebuilt, but overall sleeping pretty well, you know.
But I do have obviously top of line mattress that I probably shouldn’t have. Keith was like, Hey, the thing’s on discount. You better get it right now. Sold.
Mark Kinsley: Everybody should have the best mattress. Everybody deserves that. I firmly believe that, you know, thinking about sleep and being in the military, I’ve seen, you know, just different videos and.
Things that pop up over the years. Are there any like tricks or tips or processes that are widely taught, adopted or used in the military to get to sleep, you know, after the stress of being in combat or whatever it might be being in a foreign country? Is anything like that taught?
Chuck Ritter: Yeah. For back here, it’s weird when you’re, when you’re in a training exercise or you’re deployed, like sleep is easy.
Like you can sleep literally. You’re so tired that when it’s time to sleep, you are going to sleep, right? Like, um, but when you get back here and you’re back in normal life, it becomes a lot harder. So the reality is it all comes down to habit. You know, there’s a book called atomic habit, which is pretty good or atomic habits, which is pretty good, but you have to build habits to where.
You know, for me, the habits are being able to sleep at a certain temperature right now. My chili pads not working, but having a chili pad, which keeps it, takes water through the mattress pad and it’s, you know, it keeps it at 68 degrees and you know, I take GABA, take fish oil. Um, I take zinc and magnesium at night, you know, and, um, tart cherry juice 30 minutes before I go to bed.
And then I’ll read a little bit. I’ll do eight minutes of mindfulness exercises with an app called Headspace. And then generally I’m out. Um, but I’ve trained my body to do that. You can train your body to do almost anything. You can train your nervous system to do what you want to do. We do it in the army.
We, we have sports psychs and we do whole classes on how do I consciously control my autonomic nervous system to where I can take my parasympathetic nervous system and turn it on at will. So my heart rate goes down, my breathing goes down, and I’m more in a relaxed state. And you can do that at night, but it takes a while to do.
It’s not easy, but it can be done. And you can do it if you, if you use heart rate variability monitoring devices, like you can just use a Garmin heart rate monitor and, um, a free app on your phone. It’s as easy as that. Or you can, you know, you can spend some money on the rings and stuff too, but you can see what works for you.
Like, Oh, does this supplement work for me? Does this habit work for me? You know, cause everybody’s different. Find what works for you and then use it. You get to change it up sometimes too, cause the body doesn’t like to ever stay static for long. But then, uh, yeah, we train those. We have dedicated people that train those, train that stuff for us in the military.
And then we use it, you know, not everybody uses it, not everybody’s bought in, but I’ve found it works. You can get real nerdy into how the body, the body functions, you know, whether it’s like, you know, when you guys were out here, you guys did the cold dump tank and everything. That’s. That’s been proven to, you know, if you get in the cold dunk tank, generally like 45 minutes to an hour later, you’re kind of tired because your body has gone through some stress and it’s going to engage that parasympathetic nervous system.
Um, but yeah, so for me, you know, mindfulness exercises at night and just the right supplements for me that I’ve found that. You know, put me in that zone and then I’m out and then I generally don’t wake up until the alarm goes off
Mark Kinsley: as key. It’s such a key just having that, that routine. I always tell people like sunlight early in the day and then have a bedtime routine, which means you’re going to send signals to your body and cues that say, this is what we’re doing at this moment, you know, like, like you talked about with the visualization earlier.
I mean, there, there are ways to train your body to do what you want. Like you said, it’s not easy and it takes work, but you can get there. So.
Chuck Ritter: Yeah, I call it like in the military, we call it like just creating a kill switch for yourself. So, you know, it’s the same science behind habit for going to sleep is creating this habits.
So in extreme situations, I’m still very calm. I’m on the radio. I’m sounding calm and I’m making decisions to where I’m not emotional at the time so that the world could be on fire around me. But I’m using logic instead of emotion to make a decision. That’s something you’ve trained. But the science behind going to bed is no different.
It’s the same thing. It’s doing the same thing over and over again to where your body knows what to do.
Mark Kinsley: How did you, just speaking of like reaction in the moment and learning and training all that, the first time you were in a, in a firefight, what happened to you in your mind, your body? How would you describe
Chuck Ritter: that?
Uh, you just kind of go into autopilot, you’ve trained it, so by that time I’d been in the infantry for three years before I went over to special forces, so you train it over and over and over and over again, you just kind of go into an autopilot, and it’s almost like you black out a little bit, to be honest with you, but you just kind of go into the state of mind where You’re just trying to figure out, okay, what’s happening?
What do I do next? What do I need to do to control the situation? Et cetera, et cetera. So I wouldn’t even say, I mean, anybody tells you they’re not scared in combat, they’re full of shit. Everybody’s scared. It’s just, what do you do? Like, how do you work through that fear? It’s the same thing as when I was on a mountain team and used a sock.
I’m afraid of heights. Like, that stuff was terrifying. Right. Um, But you do it, and you gotta be able to work through that fear to, to meet your goal, to make your instinct, because we’re all scared of something. So what are you, what are you afraid of, and why it’s fine, but how do you work through that? So in combat it’s no different.
You’re just on autopilot. Okay, this is scary. But sometimes you gotta make conscious decisions of like, man, I have to move into this enemy fire, and I could possibly die. And you have to be okay with that. But because you’ve created a habit out of all this training, you just do it. Um, the principles are no different than what we just talked about for like going to bed or whatever.
You work on those things over and over again to where, you know, it’s probably going to happen if it goes bad, you know, it’s probably gonna happen if it goes good. And then you just go through your menu items and either you end up at your end state or, you know, you end up on a stretcher, which has happened to me a couple of times, but you’re calm when you’re doing it because of.
Those habits you’ve created because you’ve visualized it, everybody else has visualized it. So everybody’s got the same VR goggles on. So everybody knows we’ve all visualized together. You use that with a team setting for any business too. Everybody puts everybody has the same VR goggles. They know how it’s probably going to play out.
If it doesn’t play out in the way that’s beneficial, like if it goes south, what do you do, you know, in order to get it back on track and get you to the end state?
Mark Kinsley: Great lessons across the board. Uh, well, Chuck, thanks for, thanks for jamming with me here today. I appreciate you. It was great to meet you, uh, in North Carolina and just be there for the dreams for all foundation weekend and raise scotch. We hit over 106, 000 for people that, um, need, need beds, don’t have beds or sleeping on the floor, maybe sleeping.
On something that’s, uh, sounds like as bad as that mattress, uh, you know, that you guys were pulling out of the barracks at that one point. So it was great to be there and spend that time with you and get to know you. And thanks for coming on the show and telling your story. And, uh, thank you for your service.
Thank you for, uh, just putting it out there so we can learn from you.
Chuck Ritter: Thanks. Appreciate you being on the show and let me run my mouth for however long we ran our mouths for.
Mark Kinsley: What, what’s, uh, if people wanted to get in touch with you, like I said, we’re going to put the, the link to the, uh, the, the video you did in the show notes.
But if people wanted to get in touch with you, how do they, how do they reach out to you?
Chuck Ritter: Um, Chuck P Ritter on Twitter or X now, and then Charles P Ritter, Charles. p. ritter on Instagram. That’s probably the easiest place to find me. I’m usually posting some kind of nonsense. It’s mainly. Mainly just entertainment on there to make people laugh, you know, people don’t take themselves too seriously.
Just, you know, talk smack about the military and combat and all that kind of good stuff.
Mark Kinsley: It sounds great, man. Well, thanks again and have a good rest of your day. And, uh, thanks for being on the show.
Chuck Ritter: Yeah. Thanks Mark. Appreciate it.
