Order of Man - BRENT OLIVER ｜ You Are the Master of Your Fate

00:00:00.000 Most men will never even come close to the kind of pain and suffering that my guest today, Brent Oliver, has lived through.

00:00:09.880 And that is exactly why I think this conversation matters.

00:00:14.920 Today, Brent and I are going to talk about the difference between a man who lets his circumstances define him

00:00:21.600 and a man who decides moment by moment, pain to pain, that he's still the one in control.

00:00:29.220 and you're going to actually hear what it looks like to rebuild a body and a mind from nothing

00:00:34.740 and why the story you tell yourself about your pain really determines whether it makes you

00:00:41.140 dangerous or makes you soft and weak. This episode is about the strength to overcome

00:00:49.360 some of the worst moments of your life and the idea that these moments aren't happening to you,

00:00:55.380 they're either shaping you into as brent might say a weapon or a victim he breaks down why he

00:01:02.380 refused to let anyone see weakness why he also refuses pain medication to this day in the wake

00:01:10.200 of severe pain and hardship and why effort equals outcome isn't just a slogan for him it's the only

00:01:20.380 reason that he is alive. So if you guys have ever used your circumstances as I have as an excuse to

00:01:28.700 coast, this conversation might make that a lot harder to do. You're a man of action. You live

00:01:35.540 life to the fullest. Embrace your fears and boldly chart your own path. When life knocks you down,

00:01:40.680 you get back up one more time. Every time you are not easily deterred, defeated, rugged, resilient,

00:01:47.580 strong. This is your life. This is who you are. This is who you will become at the end of the

00:01:54.020 day. And after all is said and done, you can call yourself a man. Gentlemen, welcome to the Order

00:02:00.800 of Man podcast. I am your host and the founder of the Order of Man movement, Ryan Michler. I'm glad

00:02:07.380 you're tuning in today. This might be one of my favorite conversations. And guys, I've been doing

00:02:13.240 this for 11 years. I think I've interviewed over 630 very successful men at this point.

00:02:21.700 And I think we've done over 1600 podcast episodes. So the fact that this one stands out as one of my

00:02:30.200 favorite might tell you to tune in and maybe take notes if you need to at least pay attention.

00:02:37.560 Very excited about this. I'll get to it in a minute. I'm also very excited about my friends

00:02:42.220 over at Montana Knife Company.

00:02:44.260 Now, I know that might be kind of an interesting segue

00:02:47.120 when it comes to the severity of the conversation

00:02:49.480 we're having today,

00:02:50.340 but I want to let you know that incredible men

00:02:52.900 are doing incredible things,

00:02:54.440 regardless of their circumstances.

00:02:56.200 And I'm not here to compare one circumstance to another,

00:02:59.040 but what I am here to say

00:03:00.360 is that regardless of your circumstances,

00:03:03.040 there's something you can do about it.

00:03:05.240 And my friends, Josh Smith, Brandon Horoho,

00:03:07.320 and the entire crew over at Montana Knife

00:03:10.020 are doing something about great knife making

00:03:14.020 and bringing back American manufacturing.

00:03:17.140 Brent, my guest today, is an avid hunter.

00:03:20.520 And although I don't know if he has a Montana Knife Company knife,

00:03:24.000 which I am going to get to him,

00:03:26.200 I think he would appreciate the fact that these guys are also doing

00:03:30.400 some incredible things, bringing back American manufacturing,

00:03:34.580 making great knives, and getting us out into the woods

00:03:37.600 for some tools that help.

00:03:39.200 So if you're looking for a good tool, a good knife as you go on a hunt this year, and I

00:03:44.180 hope all of you are, every single one of you should be, then look no further than montananifecompany.com.

00:03:50.860 Make sure you use the code ORDEROFMAN, all one word, ORDEROFMAN at checkout, and we'll

00:03:56.640 make sure that you save some money when you do.

00:03:59.740 montananifecompany.com, use the code ORDEROFMAN.

00:04:02.460 All right, let me introduce you to this guy.

00:04:04.720 I mean, phenomenal.

00:04:06.640 He called me a couple weeks ago, and I was a little skeptical.

00:04:10.220 You'll hear that in the podcast for some reasons that you'll hear,

00:04:13.660 but I'm glad I took the call.

00:04:16.000 So in 1991, he was 20 years old.

00:04:18.660 Brent Oliver broke his neck in a motorcycle accident,

00:04:21.700 and it severed his trachea and also his esophagus,

00:04:26.220 and it left him without a pulse for about 20 minutes before,

00:04:30.480 I think there was a family friend who performed CPR on him for literally two hours, and he ended up surviving as an incomplete quadriplegic with a permanent airway left, breathing through essentially a hole in his neck and operating on roughly 30% of a surviving spinal cord.

00:04:55.020 His doctors said that he's got a prognosis that included a feeding tube and a ventilator for the rest of his life, but he rejected that prognosis.

00:05:06.940 And through the years of self-taught rehabilitation, teaching his own muscles to fire again by watching how people move, that's an interesting short story he shares in the podcast today.

00:05:17.580 And then he eventually relearned to walk, split firewood, learn how to drive, and he rebuilt his body that no one expected would function again.

00:05:29.120 And he did it all without ever taking a pain pill.

00:05:32.700 Now today, Brent holds multiple endurance and hunting world records.

00:05:37.060 He showed me, he has the largest non-typical whitetail ever shot.

00:05:48.040 I mean, you should see this thing.

00:05:49.140 It's crazy.

00:05:49.600 He showed it to me.

00:05:51.180 He's got hunting records, the highest solo unassisted crossing of an inhabitable mountain

00:05:58.480 pass in North America.

00:05:59.620 And now he's the subject of a documentary and a feature film.

00:06:04.060 He runs the Brent Oliver 541 Foundation, which supports families facing catastrophic injury.

00:06:11.760 He's spearheading the Jubilee Lake Trail Restoration in Northeast Oregon, which is an effort that at this point is gaining national attention and bipartisan political support for improving outdoor access for the Mobility Limited.

00:06:28.200 He's also currently working with medical researchers at St. Luke's Rehabilitation Center

00:06:33.380 who are studying him as a survivability outlier, I guess you could say.

00:06:40.820 You can follow his story and support his work at brentoliver541.org.

00:06:47.180 And you can see I was trying to be very sensitive in this conversation,

00:06:49.820 but I also wanted to ask him real questions.

00:06:51.680 So this is a real conversation that I'm proud to be able to bring to you guys.

00:06:57.680 Brent, what's up, man? So glad that you reached out to me. What has it been a week, week and a

00:07:02.900 half or so? We had, we had joked about it. You freaked me out a little bit, man, when you called

00:07:08.140 me and, uh, but I'm glad you did. Cause I'm very, very interested in your story. I know a lot of

00:07:13.240 guys will be as well. Thanks, man. It's good to meet you. I wasn't trying to sell you a computer

00:07:18.980 upgrade. I can promise you that. That's what I thought at first. I'm like, okay, he's good. He's

00:07:24.720 calling about my warranty on my vehicle or, you know, like a computer upgrade or something

00:07:31.800 that I absolutely do not need. But we had a really compelling conversation. I was honest with you.

00:07:38.100 You were honest with me. And I thought, all right, this is somebody we got to have a conversation

00:07:42.020 with. Well, it's good to meet you. I've been following you for a little while and

00:07:46.900 we have a lot of the same philosophies. You worded a little more eloquently than I do, but

00:07:52.520 yeah, effort equals outcome in life.

00:07:55.900 You kind of get what out of life, what you put into it.

00:07:59.880 Yeah, and I'm sure also it's probably interesting for you

00:08:04.100 because I'm sure you get treated differently when,

00:08:08.760 oh, I don't want to put words in your mouth.

00:08:09.900 How do people treat you?

00:08:11.720 Do they treat you like too delicately?

00:08:16.080 I mean, I'm sure everybody's fairly respectful,

00:08:20.000 but like what is your perspective on how other people treat you probably the biggest problem

00:08:26.900 obviously is the audio problem it's uh just speaking differently like when you call someone

00:08:34.260 on the phone um if someone's not as accepting of that as you or when i called you it's generally

00:08:43.940 a completely different conversation it's five to 15 seconds and generally followed by a x one if

00:08:51.000 and a click so it's just a little tough to navigate the world when you when everything's

00:08:57.900 just a little different you know and people don't take enough time everybody's stuck in that 30 30

00:09:02.600 second window right a meme or something's just a few seconds so nobody gives two or three minutes

00:09:09.920 to understand something before they move on so that's probably my biggest hang up is just

00:09:15.300 communication in general yeah let let's talk a little bit about how to be be some of your

00:09:23.080 injuries and the experiences that you've had that led to these circumstances and then maybe we can

00:09:28.120 talk about the technology that's allowed you to vocalize your thoughts and ideas and express your

00:09:35.100 opinions and then also i mean i've got a lot i want to talk with you about so let's just start

00:09:39.460 there um why don't you tell me what happened because this is not something that you were born

00:09:45.280 with this this is a tragic accident if i understand correctly and if i remember right yep yep so in

00:09:51.520 1991 i was 20 years old and you can kind of see behind me that chunk of tree and you see that

00:09:58.380 cable wrapped around that tree well somebody put a cable up around that tree 30 40 years ago and it

00:10:04.740 was pretty low to the ground when they put it up probably two two and a half feet well when the

00:10:08.840 tree stopped growing and choked itself out as about five and a half six feet off the ground

00:10:12.860 and I came underneath of it in a motorcycle and broke my neck at C3, C5, punctured both

00:10:20.080 lungs and severed my trachea and esophagus and was found about 20 minutes after the accident

00:10:25.840 by an off-dirty ER nurse and she started CPR on me for 15-20 minutes and realized she couldn't

00:10:34.180 sustain it so she went to look for help and uh found some friends of mine family friends of mine

00:10:42.980 and started doing cpr on me for two hours and it was an hour and a half i was so discolored

00:10:49.700 um i was blue i'd been deceased for so long and i was so discolored that this guy had known my

00:10:56.740 family for four generations and worked on me for an hour and a half and didn't know it was me so it

00:11:04.180 was a pretty horrific scene um yeah i don't know how to put that really into i just learned about

00:11:14.420 the actual story about three years ago because after my injury i just went back to living life

00:11:20.740 so that to hear it for the first time something what you look like that is kind of a different

00:11:28.020 thing to swallow so that was that's something that's unique i mean that's really interesting

00:11:36.400 and not only is that unique that you survived because all odds would probably and likely say

00:11:42.280 that at that point you would have passed away it's pretty amazing that that individual

00:11:46.680 administered cpr for an hour and a half you said uh it was two hours total yeah they before the

00:11:54.340 first responders arrived i'm being studied by a hospital in spokane washington st luke's

00:12:01.820 medical rehabilitation center is an nf1 case both on survivability and function there's a couple of

00:12:07.880 other things that they're studying but they believe that i'm a nf1 which is a no medical

00:12:16.120 outlier to measure you against your number one have they have they come to any sort of

00:12:24.200 conclusion was there something different about your physiology something about uh your your

00:12:31.800 mindset which be i would think would be infinitely harder to measure where they've said hey i think

00:12:37.600 this is why you survived when 99.9999 percent of other people would have would have died you know

00:12:45.600 it's a the mind thing is unbelievably important um that's something that dr ken isaac's neurologist

00:12:55.140 on the team is interested in they're interested in eye functioning and and burnout when you

00:13:01.500 function at that eye level and everybody's kind of questioning about why i function and how i

00:13:08.840 function at the ability that i do so it's been a learning curve we're just starting down this road

00:13:14.940 July 22nd I actually spoke at the hospital

00:13:18.560 and we kind of talked about it

00:13:20.020 and started down this road at that point

00:13:21.760 so far we've got some baseline measurements

00:13:25.360 with Dr. Chris Meadows and Gordelaine

00:13:27.440 at C5 Clinic

00:13:30.260 they're a performance clinic

00:13:31.960 really really good people

00:13:34.600 Dr. Greg Carter

00:13:37.260 the director of St. Luke's

00:13:38.680 is involved in it as well

00:13:39.880 they had some big fires up in Spokane

00:13:42.560 so that kind of took some

00:13:43.560 time to get that all under control and then take some patients from the VA hospital actually to

00:13:50.000 to relieve the load because the fires were so bad and so once this gets all gets sorted out I'm sure

00:13:55.520 we're going to get back on track but right now the forest fires and the emergencies kind of took

00:13:59.480 precedence what kind of uh what kind of testing are we talking about because I imagine it's pretty

00:14:06.320 relatively easy to do ekgs and x-rays and mris and all all the love but what other tests outside

00:14:14.720 of the realm of what we might expect are taking place for you so so far we've measured um

00:14:23.220 metaphysical metabolic stuff and just kind of established some baseline they've got um

00:14:30.320 all my medical records to go through and we're still gathering all of that up and that's

00:14:34.760 a lot of medical records um so right now they're in the research and the there's a tremendous

00:14:43.180 amount of data on me because they i go back every couple years for a re-evaluation so i'm

00:14:49.460 re-evaluated every couple years and uh once they i've actually given them permission to kind of

00:14:56.880 dig through everything so these three guys are going to be able to get everything in one lump

00:15:01.460 and look at it and really start to dissect, you know, pull things apart, maybe figure it out a

00:15:08.120 little bit. What are they looking at? Are they looking at brain function? Are they looking at

00:15:13.520 brainwaves? I'm speaking out of complete ignorance here. Are they looking at...

00:15:17.880 To be honest, I don't know. Everything's on the table. To be honest, I don't know the direction

00:15:22.880 they're going to go yet because they're still trying to kind of figure out what set me apart.

00:15:27.860 I mean, I'm an incomplete quadriplegic with a permanent airway.

00:15:33.380 If you look that up, look at long-term survivability, try to find another person that's 35-plus years and functioning in my level.

00:15:44.540 The list is so short that I couldn't find others.

00:15:48.140 There's others that have lived with permanent airways and injuries, but just not that we've found that are in my functioning level.

00:15:57.860 You said – I didn't know if I understood you correctly. You said an incomplete paraplegic and permanent airway.

00:16:06.880 Quadriplegic and incomplete airway. Can you explain that a little bit more?

00:16:12.380 What does it mean by incomplete? Incomplete quadriplegic, what does that mean?

00:16:17.020 Complete quadriplegic means there's meth and fire.

00:16:19.500 Oh, complete. Complete.

00:16:19.660 Yeah, and incomplete means that you still have some sensation. You still have some feeling.

00:16:25.120 You're not a complete, it's not a complete injury.

00:16:28.180 The cord's not severed.

00:16:29.420 You're not, it's not complete.

00:16:32.220 Mine was incomplete, and my spinal cord was really, well, it's a big cynic, and for lack

00:16:40.240 of a better word, it's a giant split, and if your wife has long hair and she's got a

00:16:45.880 ponytail, and you grab the bottom of that ponytail, and you stuck your hand in the, 0.99

00:16:49.860 between the rubber band and your hand, that division would be a syrnax.

00:16:55.760 You divided that gap.

00:16:57.720 So I have a very large one in my spinal cord,

00:17:01.360 and that's causing some issues I've got.

00:17:04.920 After my injury, I have 30% of my spinal cord that survived,

00:17:08.540 so everything I've done has been on about 30% of my cord.

00:17:11.920 And that's another thing that they're trying to figure out is

00:17:14.360 how I'm able to do what I do.

00:17:16.880 And last May, I potentially set multiple world records by driving a wheeled vehicle over the highest inhabitable pass in North America, solo, unassisted, without oxygen, in the snow.

00:17:31.000 And they're still scratching their head about that one.

00:17:33.520 There's a guy with a permanent airway, which is an open airway.

00:17:38.280 You don't breathe through your nose or your mouth.

00:17:40.180 Some folks can. They're connected, but I'm not. I'm completely severed.

00:17:45.520 So I breathe through a hole in my neck and with my C3, C5 injury, it's INF, but it really

00:17:51.880 affects your respiratory system.

00:17:53.840 So doing the things that I did shouldn't be possible, I guess.

00:18:01.020 So in layman terms with your, with your, uh, I guess partially paralyzed for lack of better

00:18:08.840 term, maybe, I don't know if that's the right term, but if, if I were jokingly and I'm not

00:18:13.100 trying to be insensitive but if i were jokingly to take a lighter and like light it under your

00:18:17.240 foot you could feel that but you might not be able to move your foot am i understanding you

00:18:20.740 correctly so my my injuries are that you have loss of sensation obviously um our part of that

00:18:29.940 is some numbing spots you just don't get all the feeling back in your body but when i was

00:18:35.240 originally injured i would have a muscle spasm that would cause something to flinch some random

00:18:41.500 thing that would just fire and flinch and one day i figured out that i could replicate that

00:18:47.980 flinch and once i figured out how to do it i literally was just focused on watching people

00:18:56.340 move in the hospital i would watch i loved summer because people wear shorts and i could physically

00:19:02.960 see your leg move you know your calf your mid i could see the quad and i figured out

00:19:08.860 how to make my toe wiggle and once once i did that i literally just repeated that on the rest

00:19:17.340 of my limbs until i could get more movement back and eventually got to where i'm at not

00:19:23.260 to just get my head through that is a huge understatement because what it took to do this

00:19:32.800 was astronomically difficult to say the least.

00:19:38.920 Yeah, I mean, obviously I can't – I mean, I can assume,

00:19:43.020 but I can't even imagine the – I mean, if I want my time to move,

00:19:48.240 I have the luxury of being able to tell it to move.

00:19:51.100 I don't even have to tell it to move.

00:19:52.140 It just moves, right?

00:19:53.480 It's an arm switch.

00:19:54.840 It's an arm switch.

00:19:55.600 Just imagine it below the injury that you just shut the switch off.

00:20:02.800 There's, there's nothing. That's what it's like.

00:20:06.020 What was, was, I imagine there were a lot of frustrations and potentially tear filled,

00:20:14.060 lowly moments. Um, I'm just trying to put myself to some degree, the extent that I can in your

00:20:19.380 shoes. What, what were some of the negative thoughts that ran through your mind? Because

00:20:24.980 obviously you're a very optimistic person. I, I imagine at least anecdotally that part of your

00:20:31.820 recovery is your level of optimism and mindset and the way you viewed people's quads and calves

00:20:38.680 to see if you could simulate it but what were some of the the lone lights the hard nights

00:20:45.420 the frustrations the fear the tears the sorrow etc there there's more of that than i could tell you

00:20:56.020 but

00:20:56.900 ask anybody if they ever saw it

00:21:01.940 ask anybody

00:21:03.880 in my circles that were there

00:21:05.380 ask anybody if I ever showed

00:21:07.960 weakness or let the world

00:21:09.820 see that

00:21:10.440 that's mine to control, that's mine to share

00:21:14.020 and

00:21:15.120 I'm

00:21:17.260 they told me that the prognosis

00:21:22.120 was not good

00:21:22.940 you know, you're gonna be a

00:21:25.240 quadriplegic, you're going to eat through a feeding tube

00:21:27.540 the rest of your life, you're going to be out to a

00:21:29.400 breathing machine the rest of your life.

00:21:31.220 There's all of these things, these

00:21:33.200 prognoses that they gave me.

00:21:35.880 And

00:21:36.180 when you start to realize that a

00:21:39.120 prognosis is a doctor's best guess

00:21:41.500 and not a definition, it's not

00:21:43.440 going to define your life. I mean,

00:21:46.860 nobody

00:21:47.380 ever built a past, right?

00:21:49.760 But they can build a future.

00:21:51.700 And once you kind of wrap

00:21:53.340 right around forward movement,

00:21:55.240 progression and I really didn't share those moments with anybody I had a lot

00:22:03.700 of dark moments I had a nurse one night actually tried to take my life about 1

00:22:13.060 30 in the morning it was a there's a documentary about my life which we're

00:22:18.820 not gonna go public with because there's a feature film and being talked about so

00:22:23.200 the documentary is kind of on the side burner

00:22:26.000 but it talks a little bit about that night

00:22:27.760 and kind of what happened

00:22:28.740 and she had come in 0.92

00:22:31.580 and they would suction out 0.90

00:22:33.260 I was split open from the bottom of my chin

00:22:36.380 to where your sternum meets

00:22:38.080 right here in the middle

00:22:39.020 because this was all reconstructed

00:22:42.080 I had all this reconstructive surgery

00:22:44.020 to get my throat put back together

00:22:45.660 and esophagus put back together

00:22:47.160 and they had to let it heal from the inside out

00:22:50.000 so I had this breathing fixture

00:22:52.220 down here where my drake is

00:22:54.120 and they would suction that out

00:22:56.260 every couple hours 1.00

00:22:57.800 and this old gal would come in 1.00

00:23:00.620 and she's an older lady 1.00

00:23:01.600 and she'd come in 1.00

00:23:02.500 and get down to my bronchial tubes 0.77

00:23:04.560 and it just hurt like hell 1.00

00:23:05.700 when she did it

00:23:06.260 because she'd go past the fincture

00:23:07.500 and it really hurt

00:23:09.660 and I asked her to please be gentle

00:23:11.420 those were the exact words that I said 1.00

00:23:13.520 and she got in my face 1.00

00:23:16.860 and said some derogatory things 1.00

00:23:18.340 just right in my face

00:23:19.540 I can still 1.00

00:23:20.260 so I literally can still smell this lady's breath 1.00

00:23:23.520 and she jerked that tube out of my throat 1.00

00:23:25.500 and says let was add you a little effort 1.00

00:23:27.840 and kind of trashed the room a little bit 0.99

00:23:31.320 and security went down and it got my mom

00:23:36.300 after this had kind of transpired

00:23:38.360 I don't want to talk too much about that moment

00:23:41.240 because it's going to be in the movie and the film

00:23:43.720 but it

00:23:45.360 when you realize how powerful

00:23:49.340 and how much control you have over your life.

00:23:53.060 You have to resign your last breath.

00:23:58.220 It's not when push comes to shove,

00:24:01.460 the fight that's in you and what's inside of you.

00:24:03.680 You have no idea what that is

00:24:06.100 until you're put in a situation like that.

00:24:09.060 And it kind of unlogged something in me.

00:24:12.740 And the fact that I knew that I was the master of my own ship

00:24:17.520 and I was controlling my own life,

00:24:19.100 I was, at that point, completely paralyzed, couldn't move, couldn't yell, couldn't do anything. 1.00

00:24:24.380 I mean, this lady could have just put a bag over my head and that would have been the end of it.

00:24:28.740 But the moment changed me when I realized that I was in control.

00:24:39.180 I was in control of my breathing.

00:24:41.100 I was in control of the blood coming out of my neck.

00:24:44.020 I literally could just exhale hard and clear the blood out so I wasn't drowning.

00:24:50.640 And over the next couple of minutes, I figured out a breathing rhythm that worked.

00:24:54.600 I'd breathe in slow and exhale hard and get that out.

00:24:57.860 But it was just a powerful moment that put me on my course of

00:25:08.400 don't

00:25:10.940 don't think somebody else

00:25:13.380 is going to come save you

00:25:14.460 the person that's looking in the mirror every day

00:25:16.640 is the person that's going to be there every time for you

00:25:18.780 and if you don't respect that person

00:25:21.040 that is just a sensitive subject for me

00:25:27.380 I mean I imagine

00:25:30.140 would you say that you're

00:25:35.860 i don't know if this is too far of a stretch or making light of that situation i can't even

00:25:41.400 i can't even fathom um would you say that you're grateful for that moment or would you say something

00:25:47.500 else about that moment when do you think in history and you're a smart guy when do you

00:25:54.320 think in history or in somebody's lives and lessons are learned do you think that they're

00:25:59.320 learned it 100 percent in the worst darkest crappiest times of your life is when you're

00:26:06.180 forged here and i use this analogy a lot there's a lot of people that have a lot of really rough

00:26:13.780 life right there but into the forge and they're beat on their shape or beat on their shaped

00:26:19.740 but the more those people are forged and the more those people trudge through life

00:26:24.920 the harder the sharper they become

00:26:27.840 and when you

00:26:29.780 don't let that drag you into a dark

00:26:31.780 place you don't become

00:26:33.860 a

00:26:34.900 bad weapon you become

00:26:37.740 a good weapon and

00:26:39.400 I think

00:26:41.720 a lot of people just need to understand that

00:26:43.760 perspective is a lot of this stuff

00:26:45.680 if you

00:26:46.360 it's just that you need

00:26:51.660 to just take a little bit of time and

00:26:53.480 and perspective is a lot of it you're in control of your destiny life's a choice

00:27:00.660 what do you mean by bad weapon versus good weapon what does that mean some people think of

00:27:08.560 injury like this and turn it into something that's not good something that they they've got

00:27:16.900 their reason now to build their victim mentality or their struggle past whatever you want to call

00:27:24.260 it they've got this thing right they're going through the same forge you're going through

00:27:28.720 they're going through the same struggles that you're going through but the way that you direct

00:27:34.780 your life and your energy and what you put into this thing it really starts to manifest down the

00:27:44.280 road and you're not going to see it immediately but in life i can tell you that effort equals

00:27:50.420 outcome and if you're not if you're not getting the outcome you want in life it's because you're

00:27:55.100 probably putting effort into the wrong spot or you're not putting enough effort into what you

00:28:00.280 need to be putting effort into i think that's the grugs of it that makes sense it does make sense

00:28:09.640 yeah it does um what's your take on the the modern version of masculinity excuse me um not

00:28:17.200 masculinity but vulnerability and maybe let me give some some context to this because you talked

00:28:23.380 about not letting other people see that not even letting yourself be exposed to that negativity

00:28:30.140 but i think there's this modern concept of vulnerability that says we're just going to air

00:28:34.560 out all of our dirty laundry just for the sake of airing it out I would loosely define that as

00:28:40.200 the modern version of vulnerability I'm really curious what you think about that word and the

00:28:44.480 concept of it I think that the definition of a man if that's what we're talking about here is

00:28:55.320 the definition of a man you know in my life we my granddad you're probably I don't know all you

00:29:02.680 mid 40s how old are you somewhere around there 45 yeah 45 so you you probably grew up with a

00:29:08.180 granddad that was the greatest generation and then your parents are that obviously in between

00:29:13.700 gen x and the greatest generation so we grew up with a little bit of whole styles of influence

00:29:19.700 a little bit of a what a tough life forges as a strong man and then a good life in some cases

00:29:26.300 forged a little bit of a weaker man, and I think those lessons just are not passed on

00:29:38.920 like they were when we were younger.

00:29:40.480 We learned from people that didn't make excuses.

00:29:46.720 They produced results, and instead of complaining about it, they got up every day and kept trying

00:29:53.600 every day.

00:29:56.300 yeah that's that's really a good question because it's i'm a little bit old school i don't think

00:30:06.660 that if you're carrying a burden letting somebody else let the world see that burden

00:30:14.220 and showing that weakness or opening up that part of yourself to the world isn't always a good thing

00:30:21.020 to do is

00:30:22.380 I've never gotten

00:30:27.060 anywhere in life by being

00:30:29.000 a victim

00:30:29.480 in my career I did very

00:30:32.480 well and I had to prove I worked with a bunch

00:30:35.180 of tough dudes in the

00:30:37.000 concrete industry and

00:30:38.880 you had to prove

00:30:41.120 yourself and I never

00:30:43.080 really understood that

00:30:46.360 mentality because I never really let myself

00:30:49.180 get into it

00:30:51.080 I don't know

00:30:51.480 maybe I'm a poor person

00:30:53.100 to ask about this

00:30:53.980 because I'm

00:30:54.460 I'm the opposite of that

00:30:55.940 I think

00:30:56.360 I think that

00:30:57.040 you have to portray

00:31:01.020 what you want to be in life

00:31:02.320 if you want to be weak

00:31:03.500 you're going to portray

00:31:04.420 you're weak

00:31:04.980 if you want to be strong

00:31:05.960 you're going to portray

00:31:06.600 you're strong

00:31:07.180 I don't think

00:31:08.200 there's a fine line

00:31:10.620 between being insensitive

00:31:12.620 about things right

00:31:14.060 I'm a very

00:31:14.560 I'm a very sensitive person

00:31:16.640 I'm a very empathetic person

00:31:18.060 I have a charity that, that's what we do, is a 501c3.

00:31:22.240 We help people after catastrophic injuries get back on life and to see families go through this

00:31:28.500 and to see some of the husbands go through this and how it kind of shakes them up.

00:31:34.920 I just try to kind of bring them back to get a foundation set underneath their feet,

00:31:39.280 pick them up and let them know it's going to be okay.

00:31:41.700 but it's when a child's injured or somebody's injured it changes everybody's life not that

00:31:49.360 person's life but the caregivers the family from everybody in that environment's life's changed

00:31:55.000 so i try to instill strength and not weakness

00:31:58.720 well i mean i i will tell you brent um i've talked with a lot of men and i'm i'm paying

00:32:09.420 you lip service when i say this you're you're you're likely one of the most assertive people

00:32:13.780 that i've had the privilege of having a conversation with and and i say that because

00:32:18.580 it's really easy to be courageous or bold or assertive when everything is going well in fact

00:32:26.580 i wouldn't even call it courage or assertiveness or boldness but uh when you called me i was a

00:32:32.340 little taken back i didn't even know how you got my number but you figured it out and that alone

00:32:36.840 I was like, okay, like, who is this guy? Uh, you got my personal cell phone number. And I even

00:32:44.780 asked you, I'm like, how'd you get my number? Uh, and you told me, you're like, Hey, I'm pretty

00:32:48.780 relentless when it comes to this. I can't remember the exact words you used, but, um, it it's,

00:32:55.140 it's pretty inspiring. I do have to ask. And again, I'm asking you questions. I'm not trying

00:33:00.480 to treat you like sensitively you're you're a grown man you know i i'm trying to be respectful

00:33:07.840 of what you're dealing with but also i want to ask you real questions do you ever feel like you're

00:33:12.320 a burden to the people around you i hope that comes out the way that i intend it from a level

00:33:17.020 of curiosity it slowly you stumble onto something so this is my this is what when i was injured i

00:33:26.340 my mom noticed

00:33:29.080 that I was pretty positive

00:33:31.060 you know I just like was always positive

00:33:33.200 I was smiling I was happy

00:33:34.840 I was not

00:33:35.720 put out or depressed

00:33:38.560 and

00:33:39.380 someone I think it was my mom

00:33:43.340 had come in and asked me what

00:33:44.700 are you scared of and I said the two

00:33:47.240 things that scare me are cancer

00:33:49.160 and being a burden

00:33:50.720 I said I don't want to be a burden

00:33:53.220 and

00:33:54.440 And I strive to not be a bird, and maybe that's what's driven me all my life.

00:34:00.780 But I'm a bit of an overachiever when it comes to stuff.

00:34:05.080 I just, I'm relentless.

00:34:06.940 I started on a mission as a pilot project up here at Jubilee Lake in northeastern Oregon.

00:34:12.400 There's a hard surface trail that we're refurbishing,

00:34:14.440 and everybody was kind of scratching their heads when I came up with this plan.

00:34:19.840 and I think there was a lot of skepticism

00:34:23.780 but as of Monday that pilot project officially starts

00:34:27.640 Western States Caterpillar is a sponsor

00:34:29.620 there's a lot of big players that are sponsoring this thing

00:34:32.440 and I'm even going to go back to Washington DC

00:34:35.260 and speak to members of Congress and lawmakers

00:34:37.320 the 21st and the 25th of September

00:34:40.240 about all this

00:34:41.740 so I've, as relentless as I was to find your cell phone number

00:34:45.960 I've been as relentless to drive change

00:34:48.880 all right man i know you've been enjoying this one i'm going to step away from the conversation

00:34:54.000 just for a brief minute um i need you at the war room it's going to be held on september 16th at

00:35:00.400 8 p.m eastern and we're going to be talking about the enforcer the rescuer and the victim i think

00:35:07.600 it would have been very easy for brent to fall into that victim mentality but clearly just through

00:35:12.840 the podcast and the conversation we've had. He is not. But if you've ever felt stuck playing

00:35:18.540 in one of those three roles, the enforcer, the rescuer, or the victim in your relationships,

00:35:24.220 your family, even just in your own head, then don't skip this call. Okay, guys, we're going

00:35:29.640 to break down how to recognize which role that you default to under pressure. That's what really

00:35:34.560 matters under pressure. And more importantly, how to just get out of it for good. So again,

00:35:41.040 it's happening September 16th, 8 p.m. Eastern. It's free. It's available. I'm going to talk about

00:35:46.960 some of the programs that we run, but Kip Sorensen, my good friend and co-host is going to lead that

00:35:52.080 one. I'll be there as well. And you're not going to want to miss this because if you want to be a

00:35:55.700 better leader in your family, your business, your neighborhood, your home, wherever, then you got

00:36:00.860 to get out of these roles of victim, rescuer, and enforcer. So make sure you check it out.

00:36:05.760 Head to orderofman.com slash war room.

00:36:09.360 That's orderofman.com slash war room.

00:36:11.620 Again, it's free to join.

00:36:12.500 We're doing it every single month,

00:36:14.000 but you've got to show up and you've got to be there live.

00:36:16.660 So I hope to see you there again,

00:36:18.560 orderofman.com slash war room.

00:36:20.640 You can RSVP right after the conversation.

00:36:24.080 Let's finish it up with Brent.

00:36:28.220 I mean, clearly, clearly that is,

00:36:30.680 that is happening.

00:36:33.160 And I, I appreciate you sharing that.

00:36:37.040 It gives us a perspective, you know, like my, my setbacks are somebody turns me down

00:36:42.880 to come on a podcast.

00:36:43.940 You know, my setbacks are, I didn't, you know, maybe I lost my cool with my kids.

00:36:49.860 My setback is, you know, I, I, you know, didn't show up fully the way I should have,

00:36:58.460 or maybe mistreated somebody.

00:37:00.200 I think my, and I don't, we don't need to compare, but I think my setbacks pale in comparison, which should give us all hope. Like if I can do this in spite of everything that's going on, I can treat people kindly. I can be patient. I can overcome somebody declining on the podcast. Like that seems pale in comparison to what you're dealing with.

00:37:25.960 it's all about perspective it's uh i have a mission i have a goal that i want to achieve

00:37:34.220 before i do give my last breath back and uh i drive pretty hard on that goal the

00:37:40.480 it's it every day the starting line gets a little further away i'm not gonna lie to you i'm not

00:37:48.660 gonna sugarcoat it it's whether the grinding spinal cord every morning you wake up it's a

00:37:53.280 little bit different a little bit different day it's a little bit further a little more effort

00:37:57.900 to get to that starting line but i'm nowhere near done and proverbs 327 says if you have the ability

00:38:06.060 to do something for others you should and uh i still do so i'm it's kind of what i'm doing and

00:38:14.680 i'm not out here bragging or trying to be boisterous i'm just gonna share you the facts

00:38:20.180 the facts of my life are going to come out

00:38:22.200 you're going to see at the level which I've regained

00:38:24.420 function and what I've done in life

00:38:26.260 and

00:38:27.420 it's just proof it can be done

00:38:30.120 it's not

00:38:31.440 I fail a lot

00:38:33.620 that's why I'm good at stuff

00:38:35.720 because I fail a lot

00:38:37.560 you know, fail at something a couple hundred times

00:38:40.520 and you figure out a way to make it work

00:38:42.180 you know, a couple hundred ways it didn't

00:38:44.560 you know, it just makes you that much

00:38:46.660 better

00:38:46.960 i'm sure in in all of the conversations and the charitable work and non-profit work that you're

00:38:55.680 doing you've met incredible men and women with catastrophic injuries and mental illness and

00:39:02.620 disease and everything else uh what do you think in everything that you've seen not only with your

00:39:10.220 experience but others separates those who rise above like yourself and strive to do better and

00:39:19.100 be a good you know force of good in the world versus those who potentially cower who slink away

00:39:27.260 into obscurity who throw themselves the the pity party and turn themselves into the perpetual

00:39:33.040 victim what what do you think separates the two so i think a lot of it and saint luke's and i've

00:39:39.500 been talking a lot about this but i think a lot of it has to do with the initial

00:39:45.980 prognosis if you will when when somebody comes in with a catastrophic injury

00:39:54.580 and the family's in there and they're praying to god for a miracle and the doctor walks in

00:39:59.800 and that's the second person they're waiting for a tear that there's a miracle from they're

00:40:03.660 praying to God, but doctors right there, you know?

00:40:07.340 And the conversation steered into a way that isn't uplifting.

00:40:13.420 Like, you're going to be a quadriplegic. 0.82

00:40:16.240 This is, like, exactly what they did to me. 0.79

00:40:19.060 So I think that if you, in today's society,

00:40:23.260 everyone's so broken and so entrapped with the easy way out,

00:40:28.020 that the words that are said in that room

00:40:33.600 when you tell somebody that they're this, this, and this,

00:40:36.320 and it's all negative,

00:40:37.360 and there's nothing that's lifting anyone yet,

00:40:39.900 you know, that sets a tone,

00:40:43.520 and that starts a person down a path.

00:40:45.760 You're either a victim or a warrior,

00:40:48.900 and I think that those initial conversations

00:40:52.260 are what separate the two.

00:40:54.500 I think if you plant a seed in a weak mind,

00:40:57.120 it grows well does that make sense it does who are the people that spoke into you because i'm

00:41:05.200 there was plenty of uh victimhood thinking i'm sure you could you can correct me if i'm wrong

00:41:12.520 there's plenty of doubt and fear and worry who are the people in life who plant those seeds of

00:41:18.580 growth as opposed to the seeds of of doubt and fear

00:41:22.580 to be honest with you when you go into a doctor they're always going to give you the worst version

00:41:31.400 of whatever right this is what's happening i've been told i'm going to be dead for whatever reason

00:41:36.280 more than once after this through this 35 year problems we've had you know this life there's

00:41:42.640 been problems there's been times i've been told where you don't make your arrangements or things

00:41:47.420 turn looking good, and that I've always rallied back, but there'll come a time where I won't,

00:41:54.480 and I think that I just know that I beat it, and I don't need anybody to tell me that I'm

00:42:03.280 going to do it again. I just, I know what it's like to come back from being dead, and

00:42:11.420 i feel myself going that other direction now but i'm nowhere near the end so it's going to be a

00:42:19.900 while they they can think what they want to think and i'm telling you it's going to be a while

00:42:23.940 we should have a conversation in 10 years about that let's put that on the schedule

00:42:29.300 let's put another podcast in 10 years let's visit again i would love to i'd love to get

00:42:35.980 to know you more outside of the next 10 years i'd love to get to know you more um

00:42:40.500 you know with one thing that came to mind is with you being i mean correct me if you would

00:42:49.720 say this differently but for all intents and purposes dead for two hours it sounds like

00:42:54.940 well 20 minutes twice say it again i had 20 minutes twice with no cpr but i couldn't sustain

00:43:03.400 myself so there was just cpr performed for two hours i mean i literally my trachea dude was a

00:43:09.800 lump in the side of my neck i have the doctors that have heard this and talked to the people

00:43:16.160 that did the rescue are now thinking they don't even know how they got oxygen to me

00:43:20.460 so it's just this crazy turn of events and they did cpr in a very weird position they didn't lay

00:43:27.600 me out they left me alone and i think that that that's why they were able to do it was because

00:43:33.000 my head and everything was conned in an odd position and it allowed that airway on that

00:43:40.260 side to be opened up. That's the only thing I can think of. It's just kind of gruesome,

00:43:45.720 but it's, yeah. Is there, is there any, any sort of, um, outside of your, your, your,

00:43:54.740 your, you know, physical capacity to speak? And I'm sure you had a lot of reconstructive

00:43:58.580 surgery on your sternum it sounds like and your throat and esophagus and your airway

00:44:03.260 is there any sort of lasting brain damage brain issues that you have have had to overcome over

00:44:11.320 the past decades my wife would say yes every tuesday i forget to take out the garbage but

00:44:16.660 it's yeah it's every wife would say yes about her husband so you're not special there okay

00:44:21.200 so uh that's something we're checking into it's uh i don't after my wreck they had actually done

00:44:29.300 some reconstructive surgery before they transformed me to the university hospital

00:44:32.940 and i got an infection and thrown at and part of what caused that was pain medicines so like

00:44:39.360 i refused pain medicine i would not let them give me anything from that point on so all the years

00:44:46.700 that i've gone through this all the surgeries everything i've never taken a pain bill or

00:44:51.820 anything so that takes a lot of focus to not uh to hide that from the world it takes a lot of

00:45:02.120 focus the pain's still there and it hurts like hell but what you let the world see is a is a

00:45:07.360 different story and uh that that's been a little bit rough to be honest it's getting a little

00:45:14.460 rougher and uh yeah what's what's painful to you i i know when we initially talked uh you said that

00:45:25.760 even just the act of of speaking and i'm very curious about your speaking apparatus that you

00:45:31.340 have what is it and and by the way i thank you for coming on because i know this is probably

00:45:36.500 laboring for you based on our previous conversation but what what kind of pain do you experience

00:45:42.520 What specifically are you dealing with and wrestling with that you're not willing to take pain medication for?

00:45:48.880 I won't take it for anything, but the biggest thing is the nerve pain as things deteriorate.

00:45:56.440 The phantom pain, it's a creps.

00:46:00.800 You can look it up.

00:46:01.720 It's a chronic pain, and on the Paxom pain index, it's regarded as one of the highest forms of pain measured.

00:46:10.300 and it's just a

00:46:12.120 yeah it's a

00:46:13.900 CREPS CRB

00:46:16.180 as I think it is

00:46:18.100 it's a

00:46:18.880 chronic nerve condition

00:46:21.420 anyway it

00:46:24.080 it's a

00:46:26.220 burning sensation for lack of a better word

00:46:28.680 in your throat?

00:46:30.240 do you feel it in your throat?

00:46:31.000 no no it's on your body

00:46:32.880 it's on your skin

00:46:33.940 like if a light breeze blows across you

00:46:37.140 it sets it off it's just miserable

00:46:38.860 so it's just something you gotta manage

00:46:41.180 and

00:46:41.520 it ain't easy

00:46:43.800 because that is like no joke

00:46:46.060 it's like getting burnt

00:46:47.080 if you see my face go white

00:46:51.360 you know that it's

00:46:52.160 I'm fighting

00:46:53.620 that's the only thing I can't mask

00:46:55.380 because when I do

00:46:55.980 when it hits me

00:46:57.120 I can keep talking

00:46:57.920 I lose my train of thought just a bit

00:46:59.600 but my face will start to turn a little white

00:47:01.800 how do you manage it?

00:47:05.940 what do you do?

00:47:06.940 is it mantras?

00:47:07.980 is it affirmations is it just gritting is it like what is it you do i learned to i learned

00:47:15.300 to focus and i learned the meditation believe it or not and i learned that that i could get

00:47:22.900 in a situation where i could get my body to kind of can calm down a little bit if i

00:47:27.940 for lack of a better word let my mind drift and kind of let i disengage for lack of a better word

00:47:35.680 And, uh, it's something I learned staring at a spot in the ceiling in the hospital when I was, when I was fighting this, after those surgeries, it was pretty brutal.

00:47:46.120 And, uh, some of them were seven hours, and how do I take pain medicine after those things is, when your throat's been reconstructed, it's not easy.

00:47:55.080 So it, uh, it was a long learned, um, and I, I've been asked to explain it, and I just don't know.

00:48:05.680 I don't know how to explain it to people.

00:48:07.140 It's just self-taught, a long-learned self-taught response.

00:48:13.840 I just can focus on a spot and let my mind drift and then let's up.

00:48:21.000 Yeah, I like the idea of detachment, you know, where you're detaching from that.

00:48:26.000 It's an exercise in something I think only humans can do as a species, which is pretty incredible.

00:48:30.620 The fact that we can be aware and project ourselves into different places in time just by thinking is, I think, uniquely human, which is pretty powerful if you utilize it correctly.

00:48:42.240 And I'm sure I'm not even tapping into the availability that you've tapped into.

00:48:46.600 So what led me down this old path is back, there's nothing on TV back in the 90s, right?

00:48:52.620 All these old dog shows, I think Donahue was even on back then, maybe.

00:48:57.040 But anyway.

00:48:58.760 Jerry Springer, maybe?

00:49:00.380 That was before Springer, I think.

00:49:01.900 But back then it was at one of those Don shows was talking just about that very thing about manifesting the opposite.

00:49:14.840 Like when you think about negative, think about negative, and you're going to feel negative when you think about being sick, you are sick.

00:49:21.800 and that's what started me thinking about that

00:49:24.320 is when I started

00:49:25.000 listening to them and realizing

00:49:28.160 that maybe if you did the opposite

00:49:30.540 maybe something else

00:49:32.540 would happen so I started really focusing on that

00:49:34.620 and that's what got me looking at that

00:49:36.000 literally there was a spot on the wall

00:49:37.920 on that old ceiling, those old tile ceilings

00:49:40.440 I'm sure you've seen them in hospitals where the

00:49:42.220 two foot by four foot swing tile

00:49:44.280 there was a spot on that that I just stared at

00:49:46.600 and realized

00:49:48.740 after about five minutes that my body

00:49:50.600 anymore or not as bad. Like I could physically feel the tension in my body just kind of relax and

00:50:00.520 it was a weird sensation because I'm not as a incomplete quadriplegic you're not supposed

00:50:09.000 to be able to like feel relaxed but I could just I don't know how to describe it to you it's just

00:50:14.360 that I felt like somebody took a weight off of me, and I fell asleep shortly after, which

00:50:23.800 was something I didn't do a lot of, and I remember waking up afterwards, and I thought,

00:50:27.800 man, did I just dream about that?

00:50:29.580 It was so surreal what had happened that I just, I could distinguish if I dreamed about

00:50:36.660 it or not, and after I woke up and got a little less groggy, I realized what I had done, and

00:50:43.140 I started trying to do it again and later that evening I did them I was able to do it again

00:50:47.900 it was just about dark and this nurse would come in and check on me every night and she was the

00:50:54.880 sweetest lady and she'd stand there with me and rub my head and I just stare at that spot and

00:51:01.540 pretty soon I'd be asleep and I that's that's the routine I got in and I was like now I'm able to

00:51:08.400 do it and my waking hours i don't have to do it close to bedtime or any of that but for the

00:51:14.400 longest time i could only do it before i was going to go relax or before bed i couldn't get there

00:51:19.940 unless i had time to unwind or wind down but i'm getting good enough at it now that i can

00:51:25.980 do it a little easier

00:51:28.140 do you feel like in those moments that you focused on something in particular

00:51:34.020 for example either either like that spot on the ceiling or a vision of what you wanted to do in

00:51:41.980 the future or did you let your mind just wander and navigate where it wanted to go everything is

00:51:49.140 about my friends always make fun of me about this but anytime i say i'm gonna go do something i

00:51:55.620 always say we like let's go or i'm always including somebody else because i

00:52:00.560 yeah it's just

00:52:04.880 that's a that's a weird question is it's yeah i don't know i've just never thought of myself as

00:52:13.680 i don't know it's tough for me to answer that one i mean

00:52:21.180 yeah i'm always curious about that because i mean look we hear to a lesser extent things like

00:52:28.000 box breathing and meditation and visualization and i think all these practices have merit

00:52:33.380 but i personally i can't speak for everybody else i personally have not found something that

00:52:40.940 allows me to really get into the this stage that it seems like you have and maybe it's the severity

00:52:49.000 of what you might be dealing with that that makes the difference or maybe i'm just doing it wrong i

00:52:53.000 Well, and I think it has a lot to do with the state you're in

00:52:58.100 when you're trying to solve the problem.

00:53:00.900 You know what I mean?

00:53:02.520 When you're low enough, when there's no hope, and there's nothing,

00:53:08.740 you know what, you're at the bottom.

00:53:11.680 The only place that goes up.

00:53:13.900 So maybe it's just from a different perspective of injury,

00:53:20.940 severity of injury or

00:53:22.460 where I was at. I don't know

00:53:26.980 but it's just a different

00:53:28.800 that is really difficult. There's been other

00:53:32.920 people that have asked me that same question and I've never

00:53:35.060 been able to answer it because it's something

00:53:36.960 that I just

00:53:39.080 do. I don't know how to

00:53:40.780 you

00:53:42.600 just decide that you're not going to be

00:53:45.120 negative. I'm just not.

00:53:46.940 There's always a path forward in life. There's

00:53:49.000 always a

00:53:49.480 if you're not

00:53:51.380 if you have to reach down in the room you're in

00:53:54.000 you're in the wrong room

00:53:54.880 you need to always be reaching out

00:53:57.100 you're never going to get growth

00:53:58.480 you're never going to do more

00:53:59.560 you're never going to achieve

00:54:00.680 unless you're moving forward

00:54:02.280 and I guess that's

00:54:04.500 kind of a little bit of it in a nutshell

00:54:07.200 you've got to find a path forward

00:54:09.100 you've got to find a way

00:54:10.180 what are your choices

00:54:11.580 lay there and

00:54:13.160 breathe through to

00:54:14.580 I mean

00:54:15.620 the reason I'm better

00:54:17.480 because I thought about going fishing and doing things with my friends

00:54:21.140 and living a normal life every day.

00:54:23.820 I didn't buy into the whole, you need to be in a chair,

00:54:27.280 you know, you need to have special utensils to eat.

00:54:32.520 I didn't buy into any of that.

00:54:34.640 I didn't accept it, and I didn't want it.

00:54:37.680 And I fought every day to stay away from it.

00:54:41.420 But if you physically actually get to know me,

00:54:45.000 And if we get to talk personally and stuff and you understand what I did to do this, this is a multi-hour conversation.

00:54:52.780 This isn't something we can talk about in an hour.

00:54:55.320 But what I did in the mountains with a chainsaw, rebuilding my life and learning how to walk again and learning those struggles and figuring it out.

00:55:04.760 Those years were what taught me that there's not an obstacle that you can't get around.

00:55:11.400 It's always a solvable problem, whether it was starting to chainsaw as an incomplete quadriplegic or trying to figure out a way to get a piece of firewood in the back of your pickup.

00:55:21.400 It started out as a single piece of firewood and turned into hundreds of cords of firewood being cut every year, to where I was a fairly unambulatory, for lack of a better word, person.

00:55:38.400 I couldn't get around very well, but I got done cutting firewood. I can almost run.

00:55:42.400 I mean, I'm a very high-functioning person.

00:55:45.400 If I don't want you to know that I'm disabled, you're not gonna know what I can...

00:55:50.400 It hurts to do it, but I can walk fairly normally, which is the small limb,

00:55:55.400 and you never know walking by me that I was an incomplete quadruplegic with a permanent airway.

00:56:02.400 It's about perception. No one in life is gonna give you a chance.

00:56:07.400 If you're not gonna put yourself out there, if you're gonna count in life as a victim, everybody judges you. I guess if I'm not saying this very eloquently, but everybody's judging you. And when you're disabled, you're a liability, especially in the workforce, especially in construction, right?

00:56:24.920 So if you show weakness, if you show that you're less than the person you're working with, you're not going to get anywhere. 1.00

00:56:32.940 You have to prove yourself.

00:56:34.340 You have to prove more than anybody that you're able to do that.

00:56:39.120 And as you saw from some of my information that I said, I got pretty high level in that career.

00:56:46.500 you you talk about um being in a place of no hope and i imagine you've had conversations with some

00:56:57.800 people who have been there and i've often thought to myself you know that's the lowest point you

00:57:01.220 can be is when there's no hope of recovery or no hope of a better life or anything like goals

00:57:07.280 dreams visions ambitions i mean i think that's the point at which people kill themselves quite

00:57:13.520 frankly um again as sensitive as i can say but i want to ask you real questions

00:57:18.140 have you ever thought about killing yourself

00:57:21.080 no because i made a promise to somebody that i loved she came in and asked me before she

00:57:28.420 my grandma that she came in and asked me about this very question and uh i kind of chuckled

00:57:36.180 And I said, Grandma, I promise you that'll never happen.

00:57:39.260 And I've had some horribly rough days.

00:57:44.140 I mean, it would be unbelievably easy to take that route.

00:57:48.500 But what people need to realize is that a bad moment is, look, a moment in the dictionary.

00:57:55.860 A moment is a fleeting thing.

00:57:57.440 It passes.

00:57:58.620 And there's good moments and there's bad moments.

00:58:01.300 And you don't know what a good moment is until you experience a bad moment.

00:58:04.480 because you can't you can't have one without the other and doing something rash in a bad moment

00:58:11.980 no matter how bad that moment is it's just a moment there's no path forward if you if you're

00:58:20.340 not there to be on the path slightest thing that before somebody does that before they really get

00:58:28.000 into the situation where it's that bad you just need to look at this in the light that it is it's

00:58:32.320 a bad moment and you're in this moment because of choices or circumstances or whatever happened

00:58:39.740 but it's a moment and will pass there there's always somebody worse than you in this world

00:58:45.600 there's always somebody that's got it worse and if you don't believe that maybe go spend

00:58:50.900 a little time in the hospital look around a little bit

00:58:54.160 um do you ever feel like this one's a tough question i mean you've you've encountered and

00:59:08.100 worked with so many people that are dealing with physical ailments that we we that a person like me

00:59:14.920 cannot even imagine i'm trying to think about how to word this do you ever feel like you're

00:59:21.840 an anomaly and other people that are in similar circumstances situations cannot do what you've

00:59:31.000 done and if that's the case do you feel like you're potentially discounting their physical

00:59:38.140 ailment when you speak about mindset and these sorts of things i hope i hope i'm communicating

00:59:44.380 that correctly have you ever experienced that no but i think you're on a good point here

00:59:48.880 because not everybody's dealt the same cards.

00:59:53.100 Not everybody can do what I did.

00:59:54.600 Not everybody's going to have the recovery that I did.

00:59:57.160 But there's always a path forward.

00:59:59.500 Look at some of the people that were the greatest folks on the...

01:00:02.480 Look at Stephen Hawking, case in point.

01:00:05.340 That guy couldn't do anything.

01:00:08.660 But he had a brilliant mind and lived a full life,

01:00:12.460 productive life, member of society.

01:00:14.840 when you

01:00:16.500 whether you're disabled, able-bodied

01:00:20.880 when you build value in yourself

01:00:22.640 people wait to hear what you've got to say

01:00:24.860 if you don't

01:00:26.680 if you wanna

01:00:28.800 be impactful in life

01:00:32.480 and be more in life

01:00:33.840 you need to

01:00:36.640 value yourself more

01:00:39.440 I don't know how to work that without

01:00:40.640 I really don't know how to work that

01:00:42.560 but you need to be

01:00:43.660 in a different mindset.

01:00:45.660 It's not an influencer mindset, right?

01:00:48.620 You're not an influencer.

01:00:49.740 You need to be a productive member of society.

01:00:52.000 You're bringing something tangible.

01:00:55.480 You're looking at what the guy did.

01:00:58.020 I mean, geez louise,

01:01:00.460 one of the most brilliant minds in history.

01:01:02.880 I just don't know how a person couldn't find a path forward

01:01:07.340 just based off of his story.

01:01:10.520 I mean, there's always a path forward.

01:01:13.660 I mean, I imagine it's like any, again, I'm just trying to be able-bodied person. I don't know if that's offensive to you or not, but I imagine it's similar to any, I'll just use that term, able-bodied person who might be good at sales and another person might be good at baking and another person might be good at public speaking.

01:01:41.020 and somebody else might be good at sewing or hunting or, you know, fill in the blank,

01:01:45.800 but we all have something to offer the world.

01:01:48.700 Yeah, everybody does.

01:01:50.860 And it's important to remember that just because your life changed

01:01:56.180 doesn't mean that you might not be able to offer what you once were able to offer.

01:02:00.160 But there's always a path forward.

01:02:01.760 It's about perspective.

01:02:03.620 If you don't have the want to be more or do more, then you're not going to do that.

01:02:09.640 I mean, it's just, it's just simple, but if you look at longevity after spinal cord injury, or, you know, the life expectancy of some of these folks after the injury, and then you look at the choices that they, that some of them made, and it's not all, all have made, but that, that mental state that we talked about earlier, and the, and the possibilities that they might have had to do more were scorched early.

01:02:37.400 so they kind of gave up on life

01:02:39.620 and when you give up on life

01:02:42.020 no matter what your HR or what

01:02:43.800 your ailment is, you just don't

01:02:45.700 you don't live long, you know

01:02:47.420 something takes you down

01:02:48.580 so it's just

01:02:51.600 yeah, it's just

01:02:52.480 it really

01:02:54.700 it's important just to not

01:02:58.060 to look

01:03:01.560 to look at these folks and look at

01:03:03.460 I don't mean

01:03:06.080 if you put this into perspective

01:03:07.280 If there's 45.8 million disabled Americans as of the 2044 census, that's more people than the entire population of Canada.

01:03:14.420 But everything they do, they're preyed upon from durable medical goods to access to the outdoors, access to travel.

01:03:24.340 It's an industry that people make money off of, of disability and meaningful access to our trails and our outdoor systems.

01:03:32.760 you know the things that allow somebody to feel good enough to go spend that weekend with their

01:03:38.260 friends at the lake it's disabled or get outdoors or the connection to nature just being able to 0.70

01:03:45.480 move around and have something to look forward to i think is a crucial part of fighting combating

01:03:52.500 that want to just give up and take the short road suicide's a big problem and just whether you use

01:04:01.620 a gun or you just give up it it's the same result and i just if we can help with access and we can

01:04:10.140 help with just lifting these folks up but why are we doing more how do you if you could teach me and

01:04:21.020 other people listening how would you tell me to treat individuals like yourself those who might

01:04:27.980 have even more difficult situations, circumstances, and maybe less than, how would you teach people

01:04:35.440 like me to treat you, not only physically, but mentally, conversationally, et cetera?

01:04:41.580 I'm really don't even identify.

01:04:48.200 I mean, I'm disabled, obviously, but I don't even use that word other than I have to for

01:04:53.380 these kind of things. 0.68

01:04:54.440 but when you consider yourself disabled, I don't care if you're in a wheelchair or not,

01:05:00.200 when you consider yourself disabled, then you're disabled, right?

01:05:05.860 It's about perspective.

01:05:07.560 I just keep saying that, repeating that, but it's so much as when you see yourself as low,

01:05:14.440 that's what you become.

01:05:16.660 And I think it's important to just make sure that, yeah, it's important to just make sure that we take the time to recognize that when you walk into a restaurant, I use this analogy every so often, but somebody in a wheelchair comes in, or somebody with cerebral palsy, or something that makes them a little bit different, and people form a 15-foot bubble around that person, they don't make eye contact, it's like they don't exist, it's like a void in space.

01:05:45.040 i just think that putting the humanity back in humanity is not a bad thing you know saying hello 0.83

01:05:52.540 or or treating them normal they're normal they're they're just bodies just a little damaged and

01:05:59.740 we just need to recognize that there's it's not a completely separate class of people they're

01:06:06.420 they're still humans yeah i've got a um i've got a friend who has a son who has a mental and and

01:06:16.520 nervous system disorder and i'm a very curious person which i think might subject me to being

01:06:25.980 offensive at times i'm not trying to be i'm just very curious about like everything i'm just curious

01:06:30.800 about it and I started asking him about his son and he stopped me and he said hey I really he he

01:06:39.300 said I really appreciate this conversation I'm like what do you mean like I'm just curious about

01:06:43.620 your son he's like nobody ever talks to me about my son nobody asked asked me questions I was at

01:06:50.480 because he was a young man at the time I was asking about his attraction to girls like his

01:06:55.000 mental development and my buddy's like nobody ever asked me they asked me about my other kids

01:07:00.440 but they never asked me about him and he was actually really grateful and then I had a really

01:07:07.180 actually a really cool interaction last year with his son I was out bow hunting and I'm and I've got

01:07:13.980 my bow case laid out on the table and this young man comes up and he shuts my bow case like I'm

01:07:20.840 getting ready and shuts my bow case and I'm like hmm what is he doing so I open it up and he looks

01:07:26.560 at me i'm not kidding he looks at me and he shuts it again and i was like are you teasing me and he

01:07:33.560 just laughs i'm like you're teasing me he's like yeah i'm like okay like that was a really cathartic

01:07:39.240 moment for me that i think a lot of people just often overlook or just ignore like you said create

01:07:45.100 that 15 foot bubble we don't talk about it we don't address it we don't deal with it when i

01:07:50.180 think people just want to be treated like anybody else i imagine yeah we just want to be normal

01:07:57.360 right life was it freedom of pursued life freedom and happiness that's all all we want is the same

01:08:04.820 opportunities uh the outdoors and the meaningful access stuff that we're doing is a big part of

01:08:11.680 that the infrastructure has really failed around outdoor access and as part of the reason we're

01:08:18.260 going back to Washington, D.C. with the Blue Ribbon Coalition to talk about the Outdoor

01:08:22.740 Americans with Disabilities Act a little bit, and talk about some of the problems we see

01:08:28.060 as folks that are a little bit more mobility challenged, maybe, and access, and it's something

01:08:36.180 that's actually protected. Meaningful access was protected under the 1973 Rehabilitation

01:08:42.140 act section 504 is supposed to be practical and not theoretical and it's uh kind of fallen short

01:08:51.020 in our public spaces a little bit some of the accessibility trails that were meant for meeting

01:08:56.460 flags have degraded and fallen apart and that's a pretty big part of what we're doing now is

01:09:03.420 the outdoors lto me i mean the out the reason i can walk and do what i can do is because i've

01:09:08.940 spent the time outdoors and they were not all good dates. They were a lot of really miserable dates, but

01:09:17.420 that really healed me. I don't know, even as an understatement, those few years where I just

01:09:23.340 focused on every day trying to do more, trying to be better, more movement, doing things faster,

01:09:29.820 you know, repetitive motion really shaped me and built me a life in the outdoors.

01:09:38.300 And a lot of the people that I used to do a lot of the outdoor stuff with now are passed on,

01:09:43.980 but those memories and those things that you would look forward to every year,

01:09:50.100 you know, if you're somebody's mobility limited, quadriplegic, parablegic, or something,

01:09:55.440 there's a trip, or something that's your friend fishing trip, whatever it is,

01:09:59.000 that your friends go on every year to go be a part of that, or it's a big deal.

01:10:04.560 You know, it's a big deal. It gives a person a reason to get out of bed every morning, something to look forward to. You're talking with your friends about it all year long. And you get there and the access isn't there. You know, the trail system is so degraded that you can't get there. The gate's up and you can't get the wheelchair around the gate.

01:10:21.160 or there's some obstacle that's been put up because they put an environment or the dirt

01:10:28.760 and didn't take it in ahead of people, right?

01:10:33.220 And I'm not saying that those aren't important.

01:10:36.600 What I'm saying is when you do a closure or close a gate,

01:10:40.100 take into consideration the impact on mobility-limited users.

01:10:44.640 Not everybody can just walk around the gate or go across the bridge that's collapsed

01:10:50.220 or step over the hole on the bridge that's failing.

01:10:54.460 These are infrastructures are protected under those civil rights,

01:11:00.120 and we just need to – that's what we're doing is trying to pull some of that back.

01:11:08.780 I love it, man.

01:11:09.760 I've got a good friend, Sidney Smith, who actually does a lot of stuff.

01:11:13.920 He is a double amputee and has run marathons and triathlons,

01:11:20.000 And he does a lot of a lot of work in the the hunting community for disabled individuals with, you know, wheelchairs and like four wheel drive wheelchairs.

01:11:32.600 I'm like, dude, I want to drive that thing. It's just some really cool stuff. And I love it.

01:11:38.680 I am curious and and I want to give you an opportunity to share the work you're doing so people can support you.

01:11:44.660 But before we get to that, I am very curious about your breathing apparatus and your speaking apparatus.

01:11:50.680 I know when we had talked over the phone a week and a half or so ago, I asked you about that partially because I was curious.

01:11:57.960 The other part of it was like, is this AI or is this guy real?

01:12:01.480 Yeah.

01:12:02.040 So it's an electric larynx is what it is.

01:12:06.420 It's an electric larynx is what it is. 0.99

01:12:08.580 It's made in Germany. 1.00

01:12:10.400 And the top of it vibrates. 1.00

01:12:12.700 You can see it again.

01:12:14.660 that's your voice right there i press a button yeah my voice

01:12:19.820 i can't talk yeah there's nothing there's no focal cords and that's when it's all been

01:12:27.100 crushed and removed so this all this does is create the vibration in your old cavity much

01:12:33.580 like your vocal cords do it's just monotone i don't have any cartilage or larynx to shape the

01:12:41.080 sound and that's what that's how your voice works and mine's all been removed so i just have a

01:12:46.540 monotone voice do you think ai will i that's actually an interesting use of ai i imagine

01:12:55.960 ai can take the words you're using and create inflection it could probably do it now i'm very

01:13:01.080 curious if it might work with with that in the future no i'm sure it could i've i've actually

01:13:08.040 started to use some of the AI stuff

01:13:12.060 to help me navigate the world a little bit because I can have it

01:13:15.980 speak certain times when I need to get something across that needs

01:13:20.060 to be clear. I can have it speak in my stead if it's noisy or something, so

01:13:23.960 I've actually used it quite a bit as a speaking tool.

01:13:27.960 I'll paste something in there and turn the voice thing on and use my other phone and just

01:13:31.660 hold it by the phone and let it speak to whoever I'm talking to.

01:13:34.900 works pretty good how um is it painful how difficult is it for you to speak you you kind

01:13:44.160 of alluded to that when we had talked initially and you said this is is it's laboring for you

01:13:48.200 if i understand correctly it's just laboring it's uh it's everything's i'm just getting old

01:13:54.860 everything's getting sore and tired and banged up and you gotta push a little harder on your

01:14:00.840 jogger to get this, this kind of clean sound out. So you start pushing on those graphs after four

01:14:05.680 or five hours, it gets a little sore. Yeah. The things we don't think about, Brent, I just

01:14:13.480 appreciate you taking time and sharing with us. Um, we're going to have a conversation in 10 years.

01:14:18.220 We've already got that on the books, but I really want to get to know you. I want to learn more

01:14:21.420 about your story and I want to support what you're doing. So I'm sure we'll have a lot of

01:14:25.400 really good conversations um can you tell the guys where to connect with your non-profit where

01:14:31.160 to learn more about your story sure you've got a documentary but you've also got a full feature

01:14:35.920 film uh as i understand coming out relatively soon as well how did the guys learn more and

01:14:43.120 more you're up to well the the feature documentary is done and we're going to keep that under wraps

01:14:48.380 the film is we're working with a producer now to kind of get started there's some studio interest

01:14:54.320 but we're in the preliminary stages

01:14:57.160 so we're a ways away

01:14:58.520 no filming, a production's been done

01:15:00.320 we're just trying to get everything lined up

01:15:03.540 this is something we started on about

01:15:05.540 four months ago

01:15:07.520 but it'll move fairly quickly

01:15:10.320 you can follow us at brentoliver541.org

01:15:16.740 and on social media

01:15:18.280 at brentoliver541foundation

01:15:20.500 on Facebook and Instagram

01:15:22.420 um and we we try to keep everybody updated the best we can there there's a lot of moving parts

01:15:28.740 i'm kind of a one-man show at this point we're staffing up but it's a it's a lot of work so

01:15:36.780 just follow along and support it's about meaningful access to life and the outdoors

01:15:42.320 and we're not talking about doing anything that we can't prove and just showing people what's

01:15:50.160 possible one effort equals outcome what's the what's the five four one if you don't mind me

01:15:55.860 asking brent oliver five four one what is that it's just the area code for northeastern oregon

01:16:00.820 i've got a very strong very strong connection to this part what it was yeah yeah no this this

01:16:07.100 part of northeastern oregon's uh the people of it are family they're not i mean walla walla and

01:16:15.160 The surrounding areas are everybody's family to me, so it was pretty just a tribute to them.

01:16:24.040 Excellent.

01:16:25.160 Well, Brent, we'll link everything up.

01:16:26.900 I really appreciate you taking some time with us today.

01:16:30.260 Man, what a powerful and compelling story for people, so I don't know what else to say.

01:16:34.780 I think you said it all.

01:16:35.980 I'm sure we'll have other conversations publicly and privately.

01:16:39.120 I'm really looking forward to all of those and just want to tell you I appreciate your time today.

01:16:43.800 Hey, thank you, my friend.

01:16:44.760 Sorry about the few pauses, but when the old pain sneaks up, I try to hide that well, but I had a couple spots there where she got a little rough, but thank you for the time and the opportunity, and I hope your listeners follow us.

01:16:57.280 We got a lot of good things coming up.

01:16:59.220 Happy to share.

01:17:01.420 All right, gentlemen, there you go.

01:17:03.100 My conversation with Brent Oliver.

01:17:05.880 What an absolutely incredible human being.

01:17:09.000 I know at times it may have been a little hard to hear just because of the device that he uses, but I hope it shows you how powerful human beings actually are.

01:17:18.680 I mean, that's the most important thing.

01:17:20.100 Aren't we incredible?

01:17:21.320 I mean, we really are incredible species.

01:17:24.600 So if you want to connect with Brent, learn more about his upcoming documentary.

01:17:29.400 He sent me a snippet just the other day, and I haven't yet watched it, but I'm going to watch it tonight.

01:17:33.900 I'm very, very excited to dig into it.

01:17:36.000 uh, man, I can't say enough about this guy. Like such an incredible human being. I'm looking

01:17:42.760 forward to getting to know him more. Uh, I think we're going to try to plan a time where he and I

01:17:46.980 can go out and hunt and have a good time. And I'm just inspired by him and men like this. So

01:17:53.160 connect with him, help him out. Uh, brentoliver541.org, or you can check him out on the

01:17:59.440 gram. Check me out on the gram, take a screenshot, let people know, especially if you have somebody

01:18:05.160 in your life who is disabled, mentally or physically, let them know what this guy's

01:18:10.300 doing because I think he could be a real catalyst for change in a person's life if more people

01:18:16.040 heard his story. So again, brentoliver541.org and tag it up, share it, etc, etc. Check out

01:18:23.580 the war room, orderofman.com slash war room, all one word. And I'll see you there on September

01:18:30.300 16th at 8 p.m. Eastern. Guys, we'll be back tomorrow. Got a new co-host tomorrow filling

01:18:36.240 in for my good friend Kip Sorensen. His name is Alan Placer. You guys are not going to want to

01:18:41.080 miss it. Really good questions, really good conversation. And until then, go out there,

01:18:46.740 take action, and become the man you are meant to be. Thank you for listening to the Order of Man

01:18:52.400 podcast. If you're ready to take charge of your life and be more of the man you were meant to be,

01:18:57.160 we invite you to join the order at orderofman.com.

Order of Man - September 08, 2026

BRENT OLIVER ｜ You Are the Master of Your Fate

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