Matt Brady, Retired U.S. Army Major
Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais
Dr. Michael Gervais
4.6 • 1.8K Ratings
🗓️ 6 February 2019
⏱️ 115 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week’s conversation is with retired U.S. Army Major Matt Brady.
Matt is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point where he was ranked #1 of 940 cadets in leadership for 7 consecutive semesters and graduated in the top 5% of his class overall.
While serving in the Army on active duty, Matt flew over 2,000 hours in the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior (Reconnaissance), MH- 47D, and MH-47G Chinook helicopters (Army Special Operations).
A seasoned combat veteran, he has deployed 12 times to both Iraq and Afghanistan and commanded forces during multiple high stakes/pressure conflicts including the 3rd Infantry Division charge to Baghdad in 2003 and “Operation REDWING,” the tragic SEAL mission depicted in the movie “Lone Survivor.”
His awards include the Air Medal for combat Valor in both Iraq and Afghanistan and the Bronze Star Medal.
Matt retired from the U.S. Army in late 2016 after two decades of service to the Nation.
There is so much to unpack in this conversation.
I’m sure many of you are familiar with the “Lone Survivor” story but for those who aren’t, definitely take a moment and look up it.
While Matt was fortunate enough to survive that mission, the decisions he faced that day lived with him for years afterwards.
And that’s a focal point of this conversation.
What was his thought process like in an incredibly hostile situation? One that was near impossible to prepare for?
How did he cope with those decisions after the fact and how did it impact his life?
You may rethink what you deem as a “difficult decision” and the things that are worth “dwelling on” after listening to this conversation.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | So I'm thinking, okay, you know, I've got a brand new child at home. |
| 0:05.0 | These are the guys on this helicopter who I've been getting to know, you know intimately |
| 0:11.0 | over the last few months. they've all got families too this could |
| 0:15.0 | potentially be a one-way ticket and so we talk about that very very briefly not |
| 0:19.1 | to dwell on it because then people won't go but we this is, you know, we got to do this right now, |
| 0:25.2 | we've got to launch. All right. All right. All right. |
| 0:34.0 | All right. |
| 0:35.0 | Welcome back. |
| 0:36.0 | We're welcome to the Finding Mastery Podcast |
| 0:38.0 | I'm Michael Jervay. |
| 0:39.0 | And by Trade and Training, a Sport and Performance Psychologist, |
| 0:42.0 | as well as the co-founder of Compete to Create. in training a sport and performance psychologist, |
| 0:42.6 | as well as the co-founder of Compete to Create. |
| 0:45.1 | And the whole idea behind these conversations, |
| 0:47.5 | behind this podcast, is to learn from people |
| 0:50.6 | who are committed to the path of mastery. We want to understand their |
| 0:54.0 | psychological framework. How do they make sense of themselves? How do they organize |
| 0:58.7 | their internal life as well as their external world to line their arrows up in a particular direction to pursue |
| 1:04.7 | mastery. |
| 1:05.9 | And then we also want to dig to understand the mental skills that they use to build and refine |
| 1:10.3 | their craft. |
| 1:12.4 | Refining mastery is brought to you by Vitruvian. |
... |
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