“The ego is as you think of yourself. You in relation to all the commitments of your life, as you understand them. The self is the whole range of possibilities that you’ve never even thought of. And you’re stuck with you’re past when you’re stuck with the ego. Because if all you know about yourself is what you found out about yourself, well, that already happened. The self is a whole field of potentialities to come through.”

— Joseph Campbell (The Hero's Journey)

“We’re all just becoming amalgamations of our self-help books and motivational posters.” A simple, yet profound quote on existence from a man who found the true value and meaning of looking inward. The quintessential, quick-fix culture is one that at best designs adversity to create some sense of struggle or at its worst simply flees from it. Micah Fink is here to combat that ideology. Adversity has long been intertwined with Micah’s path and through the course of that odyssey, Fink would tell you some of his most visceral, painful experiences have led to his greatest moments of growth. Why is it that we then run from that idea? We see countless examples of those who’ve experienced the most extensive adversities going on to become the most successful entrepreneurs, non-profit presidents, philanthropists, corporate leaders, etc… Yet, the wind stream of society continues to placate us with ideas of comfort and relaxation. Is this a technique forged by some elite, carnal structure to create a somnambulant society? Possibly… and Micah might or might not make that argument. Regardless, his success as both an elite member of our nation’s Navy SEALs, and as the Founder of his non-profit, Heroes & Horses is hard to argue with.

Spend two minutes with Fink and you will undoubtedly wish for two hours. The realization quickly sets in that you’re in the presence of a master storyteller of the olden days, a veritable Renaissance man in his impeccable ability to weave a thematic series of ethical elements into every tale. Micah lives there, impassioned by his own pursuit of truth and teaching others to help themselves. Heroes & Horses is not for the faint of heart, nor those looking for a quick fix. It is a program built on action over awareness that seeks out adverse conditions through the natural selection of the program. 41 days of mind over matter. 41 days of percussive reality and a reflection pool of inward resonance. 41 days of realization. Micah and his team are simply the conduits, the guides on the spiritual journey of un-programming the soul. There is no better person to lead the way… Micah has lived and continues to live the journey.

Can you tell us about the young Micah Fink?

MF: I'm actually a small-town kid from upstate New York. I grew up in the Catskill Mountains and come from a long line of ruffians. My grandfather was a railroad man and he served 10 years in federal prison due to being tied up in the mob. He had six children, one, who was my father, and my father kind of followed in his dad’s footsteps. When my dad got out of prison in the 70’s he ended up finding Jesus. My dad worked on the railroad as I was growing up, and then he became a preacher in a small town of about 600 people. I grew up going to all the tent revivals and my dad was a pretty awesome guy but also a hard human being. My mom worked as a lifeguard. The town she was raised in was pretty depressed, economically. The first few years of my life when we lived there, we all had the same bedroom and just lived a food pantry type of life. I didn't really recognize those things as a kid. I had a wonderful childhood despite all of that.

We traveled all over the state doing tent revivals with my dad. I ended up leaving home at 16 and I never looked back. I had some challenging years in my life after that. I worked on and off for a good part of my life as a telephone pole lineman working for the power company. I was a climber and happened to be working on a telephone pole in Queens, New York when the first plane hit the World Trade Center. I was also an amateur boxer at the time and played drums in a ska band, Funk Shop Loomis then WAG (laughs). We actually opened up for Long Beach Dub All-Stars which was formally known as Sublime. We were actually a pretty good band. I was into fighting and music which kind of went hand in hand. I was a hooded sweatshirt wearing street punk from upstate New York (laughs). I grew up in an agricultural town though, which was mostly made up of dairy farmers. My first job was working on a dairy farm which meant working with livestock. Farming has always been a regular part of my life.

What was it about your experiences that led you to the military?

MF: I climbed down off the telephone pole the day the Twin Towers were hit and I'll never forget that moment. I saw the smoke coming from the city and my friend called me on his Nextel phone when it happened. He said, "Hey, man, I think an airplane just hit the World Trade Center." I told him I could see it. I came down from the pole, knocked on a lady's door, and when she answered the door she was crying. Her husband was a Port Authority police officer. I walked inside and I remember looking at the television and seeing the second plane hit. I looked at my friend that I'd grown up my whole life with and said, "I'm going into the city." I thought there was a war going on to tell you the truth. I jumped in my car and I ended up making it all the way to Cherry and Montgomery Street. I got stopped at the Lincoln Tunnel by the authorities. They had all the tactical teams geared up outside and it was smoky chaos all around. I had all these cable TV IDs on me so I faked it and I told them I was working with demolition and had been called into the city. I had my hardhat with me and all of the rest of my gear. I was the only person on the Long Island Expressway and I remember I was doing like 120 mph to get into the city. I was hauling ass and somehow they let me through so I could get to the towers. I parked somewhere around the World Trade Center and went into the rubble to help however I could.

“I saw the smoke coming from the city and my friend called me on his Nextel phone when it happened. He said, ‘Hey, man, I think an airplane just hit the World Trade Center.’ I told him I could see it. I came down from the pole, knocked on a lady’s door, and when she answered the door she was crying. Her husband was a Port Authority police officer. I walked inside and I remember looking at the television and seeing the second plane hit. I looked at my friend that I’d grown up my whole life with and said, “I’m going into the city.”

— PO1 Micah Fink (Navy SEALs, OEF Veteran)

I was there when the Citibank tower fell and I was buried for hours. I couldn't even see my hand in front of my face because of all the smoke and I remember first finding a dead police officer. I found the arm and torso of another person. I stayed there all through the night. The next day, September 12th, I remember there being a bagel cart that was just absolutely destroyed and it was just laying there. We went to salvage some food out of that. It was complete chaos. I was sitting where that structure was, that you see in all the pictures of the building’s exoskeleton. It's become the iconic 9/11 picture where the firemen are putting the flag up. I was sitting not far from that. I had climbed around in the rubble all night. I had a hard hat with a bicycle tire and lights on the side with those disposable flashlights tied to the sides of my helmet. We were just screaming into the darkness of the rubble trying to find people so we could help them. I had no training. I just wanted to do something. I'll never forget the feeling of... it's probably the most helpless feeling I've ever felt in my whole life. Well, at that point I remember I was sitting there with my friend and we went to that bagel cart to pull food out and we dusted off some bagels.

I looked over at my friend and he was crying. I was sitting there and I just let my emotions go. He looked at me and said, "What are we going to do about this?" I just looked at him and said, "I'm going to fucking kill whoever did this. I'm just going to kill as many of them as I can." My buddy looks at me and said, "Yeah, sure bro." (laughs) He just sat there patting me on the back (laughs). I ended up enlisting in the military in 2003. I wasn't one of the types to be running around dressing up as an Army dude as a kid. I didn't know what the hell the Navy Seals were or anything like that. I was trying to join the Army and thank God I didn't. Once they found out I could read they wouldn't let me in (laughs).

The Navy recruiter came out to me to talk. I do not take any of these things to be by chance. The recruiter came out and said, "Hey, man, I've seen you here quite a few times. What are you doing?" I said, “I'm joining the Army." He said, "Why are you doing that?" I told him I wanted to be an Army Ranger and he proceeded to ask me why. I told him, “Because they are the best of the best.” He said, "No, they're not. Let me show you a video." He brings me into this room with a VHS and mind you I don't know anything about the military. I roll in there and watch this heavy metal 1980s SEALs and steroids video (laughs). CJ Caracas is doing hip thrusters and pull-ups with climbing gear on and I thought, "Damn, that's cool." I like 80’s action movies and that's kind of what it looked like. I got all charged up to the heavy metal playing in the video. He said, "Are you interested in this? These guys are called Navy SEALs.” I was like, “Cool, what do I have to do to be a part of that?” He told me all I had to do was sign up. I told him, “Alright…” and I left. I went and did some research and found out, “I guess I need to learn how to swim.” (laughs) I was not a High School athlete or anything.

I was an undefeated boxer and my claim to fame was being a sparring partner for Ray Mercer, while I was in the 18 Delta course, who was the heavyweight champion of the world. I just knew I was tough. I joined the military and went to BUD/S (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training) then went through boot camp. It really changed my life because I had never been a hardcore workout guy. I didn't really know much about the military lifestyle. I bought a book, "12 Weeks To Buds.” There are guys nowadays that send me messages saying they want to join and they hit me up on social media asking, "Hey, man, thinking about joining. Do you have any tips?" I just tell them they would never make it (laughs). They would tell me I was a dick and I’d just block them on social media. I always block them if they say anything back and the reason I block them because they're not going to make it. I know that if my words are enough to deter them from their goal, they have no chance. I said to this one guy, "I looked at your Instagram photos and you're too fat." He said back to me, "Dude, you're a dick. I'm not going to do it now." I thought to myself, “Cool, I just saved the Navy some money.” (laughs)

The Navy is probably actually mad because most of the guys that they need are cooks, paint scrapers, and that's really what the SEAL teams are. They funnel out a lot of the guys who fail, into the necessary Navy occupations. They just try to get other people to join the Navy and get them to think they're going to become SEALs. Then those dropouts wind up in the galley peeling potatoes for ex-division guys. I remember I went to bootcamp and had a pretty hard, tough life and I already knew who I was. I knew I wasn't going to quit, but I also didn't know what else to expect. I'll never forget that or my mentality going into it. I'll never forget, this guy... his last name was Walker and he was a Petty Officer First Class. I remember he came into my room and said, "Hey, turn the music down." I said, "Get the fuck out of my room." He said, "Excuse me? I'm a first-class!” I said back to him, “I'll knock your teeth out." He just said, “Okay…” and walked away. My roommate, who ended up not making it, said to me, "Dude, you can't do that." I asked, “Why?” He told me, “We are in the military. You can’t respond to authority that way.” I just replied, "So what…” He was confused as to why I was acting like that.

It didn't click for me until later why I was acting out that way. My mentality was one where I just wanted to go to war because I was really impacted by what I experienced during 9/11. It became my sole purpose just to go to war. I wasn't trying to get a book deal or post pictures of myself on the rower looking like a badass (laughs). I wasn't going to tell everybody how ripped I was because that wasn’t what I was about. I was just a small-town kid from upstate New York that had just pulled bodies out of burning rubble. I just didn't want to have that be the closing chapter in my life where I had this experience and I did nothing about that experience. I enlisted and ended up making it through the pipeline. I became a Special Operations Medic and went to Fort Bragg where I made it through the 18 Delta course. I ended up getting sent out of Fort Bragg to an SDV team.

How was the medical training portion of it for you?

MF: Medical training was a tough deal. It was really hard because of the academics, and just the pace of the entire course. When you are a Special Operations Medic it is a really tough occupation, because you have a lot of responsibility. Everyone is staring at you when things go wrong on a mission so it becomes imperative that you know what you're doing. There’s a lot of pressure in that role. You could be on an airplane and it's a nighttime mission. You’re surrounded by nothing but guys wearing red headlamps and dudes that are bleeding out, screaming and yelling. You’re there putting chest tubes in, cracking people, and putting tourniquets on. There’s always a thought of, "What if it doesn't work out?" That makes it a very tough job. I really enjoyed it though. Most of the time I was just kind of treating guys for ED and STDs. I'm just kidding (laughs).

Where’d your career take you from there?

MF: As I said before, I was a medic and I ended up getting sent to an SDV team, which is on an undersea mobility platform. It's really an interesting place to be and most people don't know about it, even in the military. The majority of people think you're doing a diver’s job. The only two national strategic defense missions have actually been completed by SDV teams. I received an award for that because we were running missions in some highly dangerous parts of the world. The implications could have been as bad as starting World War III if we had been compromised. It's not the type of job where you run around with your sleeves cut off and your hair spiked up or anything like that (laughs). It’s a mission I will take with me to my grave and it will never be unclassified. I was really proud to be amongst the guys that completed that mission with me and I felt very honored to be in that occupation. I look back in my life to when we finished that mission and a couple of days later we climbed inside this submarine housing together. We had been training for 18 months for the one mission all over the country and all over the world. We didn't know where we were going but we knew what we were doing. We didn't know anything else until the night that we went on the mission. It was a pretty intense and emotional moment where I thought, "Fuck… I should have probably gone to college instead." (laughs)

We held up the American flag inside this little submarine and we took a picture with the entire team. It was a pretty cool moment. I got out of that operation after we got to the country that we were onboarding and I was sent to Afghanistan with Task Force 373. They needed assault medics. I got home and I was dating my now wife at the time who had moved and quit her job. I thought she was going to be rich because that's what she kept telling me (laughs). I remember I looked at her and said, "I'm leaving on Wednesday and I'll be back in six months. I'm going to Afghanistan." The back-to-back deployments are pretty tough and I was gone for the majority of those years. It was 2008 and it was the deadliest year at the time for the teams and we lost three guys on that deployment. One of them was right next to me, who died, Josh Harris. He drowned. It was a really tough deployment for me. It was my first combat deployment, we lost a lot of guys, and we were constantly in contact. We were constantly in gunfights. I had crossed that river that Josh drowned in three times before the night he drowned.

The night of the third crossing, they took me off the mission, Josh replaced me and he drowned right where I almost did. We found him 40 clicks downriver the next morning. What had happened to me was that before that mission went down the rope was caught around a huge rock as we were crossing the river. It got caught around that rock and augered me to the bottom, pulled all my clothes off and I was in nothing but a speedo. I was able to get the carabiner off before I drowned. I'd like to try to tell you that it was like a cool guy thing but I basically was like a cat in a bathtub (laughs). I started blacking out and I was thinking, “Welp, this could be the end of my life.” I started seeing my whole life flash before my eyes but fortunately, I ended up getting the carabiner off the line. I was about 250 meters in attached to some one-inch tubular nylon in class four rapids and they were holding me on the line. I hit this dogleg in the water and popped off that carabiner and I crawled underneath some rocks in the border region. I wasn't found until the next morning with no shoes on or anything. I'd lost all my gear. The next day it was back to business as usual. We were going to do it again but I got bumped off the mission and was just on the assault force the night of the mission. We lost Josh and then a couple of weeks later we lost John Marcum and Jason Freewald. I got out of that deployment and came home where I was sent into another platoon.

I put in my paperwork to go screen for Dam Neck (Team 6) and my master chief wouldn't let me go. He hated me. You know who you are and if you're reading this, you're dead. I'm just kidding (laughs). I won't kill you... I'll just hurt you (laughs). Anyways, I got sent to standoff weapons and explosives. I did that and ended up getting out and going into the reserves. I started contracting. I had gotten into the contracting world while in the reserves and was still doing a lot with the teams. I was with them jumping and shooting, you know, shoot trips, Hurst cast master, all those kinds of things. I ended up meeting this dude who got me into contracting. I did a trip to Iraq and got to smoke a lot of cigs with the Speaker of the House, during the signing of the SOFA agreement. I was over there in Iraq and I ran into an old team guy, a buddy of mine. He asked what I was doing over here. I told him I was doing diplomatic security. He asked for my email address and that's how I ended up getting over to the agency as a CIA contractor, paramilitary guy. I did nine deployments over there.

Can you talk about that last deployment and then leaving the military? What was that transition like for you?

MF: My last deployment was one of the worst in the history of that unit. I ended up moving out here to Montana in 2013 and then I actually resigned in 2014. I quit but I guess “resign” is the professional word. I fucking quit. I was done. I was just done. I was done with war. I was done doing soldier stuff. That really is what started the journey in my life that I'll be on for the rest of it. I had a hard time transitioning out. I came back and got into the VA system. I showed up and I'll never forget it. I was sitting in front of this girl who was probably about 25 years old and I went in there to get all my paperwork stuff done. They did the psychological eval on me and she told me that I had combat-related bipolar disorder and PTSD and that I was fucking ripped (laughs). I'm just kidding but I did have a way sweeter body at the time (laughs)

She looked at me and I said to her, "Let me ask you a question. You know nothing about me... and you're going to give me a litany of drugs right now?" She prescribed me Lunesta, Valium, Wellbutrin. They were all antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds. I said, "What is this stuff going to do?" She told me, “It's going to help you get back to normal.” I said, "How do you know what normal is for me?" She responded, “This is why you need the meds.” We got into this huge argument and long story short, it got very heated, and I left. She had no baseline to treat me off of. I didn't know all the stuff I know today about the whole entire system. I got out of that situation and when I did, I felt disturbed. It’s like that feeling when somebody tells you you're sick, all of a sudden you start to think to yourself, “My throat hurts.” You start to notice more things and it makes you paranoid and also makes you believe that you really are sick. I remember looking at a box as I was driving down the road and it was a pizza box. I was like, “Shit… that’s an IED. Oh, dude, I need help. I need help.” It seemed that everything that was out there trying to “heal” veterans was about taking us canoeing, hog hunting, or to the Super Bowl. I didn't want to do any of those things. I didn't want to go ride four-wheelers or any of that stuff. I ended up meeting some cowboys out here in Montana, who taught me how to shoe horses and work around them. Horses started becoming a huge part of my life... like seven days a week. This wasn't a program. These were basically a couple of asshole scam artists who had a big horse ranch and found somebody that was dumb enough to get on these horses that are man killers (laughs). I became angry at horses. I was there because I was in a fight with them and a fight with myself. I kept coming back and I liked the challenge. I liked all those difficulties brought on by the stress of the situation in learning a completely different way. I learned how to pack horses and started packing up into the mountains.

I brought some friends of mine with me on one of those trips. One guy hadn't come out of his house in six months. He was kind of a “tinfoil hat” type of guy and thinking the Feds were coming through the window to get him. I didn't even know he was in a bad way. He came out with another team guy, who was a buddy of mine. We were on a two-week trip and really didn't know what we were doing. It was one horse wreck after the next. I didn't really even know what the horses were fully capable of. I was doing horse mountaineering and that didn't work out because I had no idea what I was doing. I’ll admit I was nervous that first night. We would be sitting in our tent and my buddy would be opening up his revolver and playing with the rounds. He would be taking them out of his revolver and just talking to himself. I'm sitting there thinking, “Am I going to have to smoke my own friend?” (laughs) He was so dark. He was wanting to shoot the trees and there was a dark way about him. It was two weeks of just going through that together. Today I look back and it was like it was hell. It sucked. We were doing everything wrong. When the two weeks ended we were wanting to do it again though. We went back out and did it again. It was really a culmination of experiences in my life where I started realizing that it's actually the struggle that gives things value. I realized that's what I was missing.

I had focused too much on helping myself rather than discovering who I was as a person post-career in the military. I think that we create these hybrid identities where all I knew about myself was that I was Micah Fink the Navy SEAL. I thought to myself, “What are you doing? What are you actually doing?” We create these identities and create these labels. The labels create these markets and trends that we all follow. We never really learn about who we are and we just become a reflection of what we did. We've been told that what we did is who we are. We never really learn about who we are. It's actually in the face of adversity and challenge that you can begin to discover that conscious being that we all have inside of us. This knowledge or relationship with self is what allows us to overcome our external circumstances and essentially learn to live from the inside out. It doesn't really matter what's happening on the outside, or how bad it gets because you have this knowledge. There's something much deeper and much more important than collecting as many things as you can. It's not about becoming popular and getting money or chasing fame. It's not about projecting yourself as something you're not or being somebody you want to be. It's not falling in love with what you used to be or creating identities from experiences. When we think that way that's the trap and that’s the supposed elixir. I mean, to this day I don't like to roll around saying I was a SEAL. That’s not who I am today. What I did was I took those experiences that I learned, but I left that identity behind because it’s not who I am now.

I took the experiences from what I learned... the hardships, the failures, the mistakes that I made, successes that I had, and I used those as building blocks of growth in my life. What I began to realize was that so many times we have these experiences and we take the emotions that are attached to the experiences at the time. We bring them forward into the future along with the lesson. All we are affected by is emotion. We never learned from the experience because we start telling a story to ourselves and get diaphoretic… we start breathing heavy and that mental strain becomes very intense. Your body doesn't know that you're not there in the past moment. It creates that memory because that memory was traumatic because you almost died, and at the end of the day we are designed to survive and pass on the gene pool so that feeling is a safety mechanism. It came to this point for me where I basically had to suffer my way to grace and happiness.

“I had focused too much on helping myself rather than discovering who I was as a person post-military. I think that we create these hybrid identities where all I knew about myself was that I was Micah Fink the Navy SEAL. I thought to myself, ‘What are you doing? What are you actually doing?’ We create these identities and create these labels. The labels create these markets and trends that we all follow. We never really learn about who we are and we just become a reflection of what we did. We’ve been told that what we did is who we are. We never really learn about who we are.”

— PO1 Micah Fink (Navy SEALs, OEF Veteran)

You were speaking on identity. Do you think that journey started when you were younger? You were very clear that you didn't really identify as any one thing, and you were tough. So, I'm sure when you were in the World Trade Center helping people out of the rubble that your immediate thought wasn’t, “I want to be a Navy SEAL, or I want to be Special Forces because you didn’t even know what that was. You’d already developed that toughness from a very young age because of how you were raised by your father. Do you think that played into how you saw yourself, post-military?

MF: There are people that say we're a product of our environment and that really isn't brand new information. I was running a couple of days ago down my road and my road is basically a trail. I was running and I was thinking about that very thing. We're a product of our environment and how does that affect us? I just had this thought that we're really actually just a product of ourselves, right? That is where there’s personal agency involved in our life where we have the ability to create and become anything. The experiences in our life when we don't know who we are create these hybrid sections of our lives which we constantly work to uphold, almost on autopilot. I grew up and I was told this is what we did and I lived it. I didn't question those things. We went to church on Sundays and my dad told me what to do. I was being programmed. I was being programmed by my parent’s program. I never learned about who I really was. I was doing what I was supposed to do but it wasn't about discovering my authentic self. I wasn't asking, “Why am I here and does my life matter? What does it mean to have meaning and what is a consciously aware human being?” It wasn't about that because I did what I was told to do. I did the school thing and I went to jobs to become a “somebody” as everyone does. I worked hard but those are all identities I accumulated along the way and how I chose to interpret them became me.

The only thing that I could say is that my whole life I just never took things at face value. I would always ask questions and eventually was just told to shut up. I never just believed everything. The identity of the military is a really hard thing to get away from because it's a master program. The master program is you enter the program, they shave your head, they take everything away from you, they take your friends away, and take your money away from you and kill your ability to buy things. They make you reliant on their food, reliant on their clothes, reliant on their system. When you move through that program you start to get weeded out and they tell you, “You're going to be good at mechanics. You're going to be infantry, and you're going to move up. You're going to do this, or you're going to move all the way up through the ranks. You're going to be an officer, you're going to be an admiral and all those things.” You're being programmed and groomed the entire time. The programs start to become, “Hey, shoot these little paper targets…” and they look like people, and then you shoot those. They start to get more realistic, and the program starts to become more intense. There's more shooting, there is more psychological training, then more shooting, then more training, and then more stress tests. The whole time you're being put through a series of programs. When you get out of the military you go to five days of TAPs. They teach you how to write a resume and they tell you, “Thanks for your service…” basically. You get in the real world and your programming doesn't work as it did. It has no place here in the civilized world.

You begin to think, “If I did the things that we did in the military in America I would be placed in prison or probably executed.” That's just the truth. That program is not compatible here. You feel out of place. That's the reintegration portion. This is why I say this organization Heroes and Horses is a reintegration program. We're not here to cure people of PTSD, anxiety or any of those things. The reintegration portion actually happens between your ears and in your heart. The tools on the outside are what help you shift your focus to the inside. It took a while for me to shed all those identities I had accrued throughout my life. It took a series of extremely difficult situations and circumstances that broke me down to a point where I stopped looking out for answers from others. I stopped looking to be told what to do. I didn't need the 25-year-old grad student from Georgetown to tell me that I had a problem. We have all these things built into programs for us and somebody shows up in a white coat to give us a bunch of meds and we willingly outsource our life to complete strangers. This is the deprogramming which is actually the control phase over the American veteran. You know I spoke to some folks on Capitol Hill, from the Veterans Administration, and they said it's a liability issue. There's a reason why one in six veterans now, actually two in six, that walk in the front door of the VA and leave on psychiatric meds. It's probably more than that now. We can't have soldiers running around thinking for themselves because that would be “dangerous.”

It's such a significant number because our military programming is not compatible in the civilian world. Therefore, we have to find a way to maintain somebody that has this type of programming. The meds they give you are mind-numbing and sever the link with the source of life and that kills all self knowledge. By the end of this year more than 148,000 vets will have killed themselves since 2005. That number is probably even higher than that now. There were 7,000 guys that died in the whole war and around 1,500 amputees. The unprogramming of these guys is all about just giving us meds and numbing us, feeding us ideas that are made up. These ideas are vapid and contrived by people in lab coats far away who are numbing us to who we really are. There's no self-discovery portion to the exercise. There is no dignity in the human experience left because it's been hijacked.

I don't think that I'm resilient just because of the path of my life. I think that it’s probably the way that I just learned to look at things because that's who I am. It was the reason why I went out on 9/11 and ran into the towers. Others ran the other way. I was running into the burning building, and most everyone else was fleeing the building. I didn’t have any training. I could’ve easily been knocked out or hurt badly because I had no training but I knew I had to do something. There was something inside me where I just never wanted to be a victim in my life. I always try to see a way out. I never ever got to a point in my life where I felt there was no way out. I always felt like there was something else out there. I think that's why I joined the military because I felt very helpless on 9/11.

I was sitting there on September 12th, 2001 with my friend and I had just seen all those dead bodies lying in the rubble. I was crushed. I couldn't live with the thought that I had been defeated. I went out, enlisted, and joined the military. I think it's probably a combination of all those things together that led me to this point. I also think that I don't ever take the easy way out. I think people think the easy way helps them, but the easy way kills. The easy way is to perpetuate an identity or live off the past successes or live with the past failures. That's really the easy way. The hard way is to press in, challenge yourself, fight your thinking, and begin discovering who you are outside those identities. That's the hard way. But that to me, is the only way to overcome the obstacles that every single human being faces... veteran or non-veteran.

Was there ever a moment on those first missions where you thought about all you had gone through to become a SEAL?

MF: There's actually a picture I posted last year on my Instagram where I’m looking over the Korengal Valley. I'm just standing there looking out over the valley. I'm geared up and running up and down the hill. I was having a pretty emotional moment because I was looking over this valley when I thought back to that former version of myself standing at the World Trade Center. I thought about everything that I had gone through to get to that moment and no way did I feel that I had arrived. It was an amazing feeling though. I might as well have been 350 pounds and sitting next to my buddies and still, I would’ve been thinking I'm going to get this shit. Your buddies hear your dream and say, “Sure fatty… eat another swiss roll.” (laughs) You see that guy a year later and he's running the Boston Marathon. You're like, “Holy shit…” The journey along the way is incredible. My buddy had snapped a picture of me looking over the valley and I didn't even know it. He's an amazing guy and I was a young team guy at the time.

He snapped that picture. I remember at that very moment everything stopped for me, mentally. I wasn't thinking in those moments, “I'm doing this for 9/11…” or any of those kinds of things. I was getting tortured, going through BUD/S, and getting treated like shit like everyone else. I was going through all this training just to have a chance to serve in such a capacity. The next thing I know I’m wielding a gun in a foreign country. It was in that moment overlooking the Korengal where, for the first time, I actually was able to pause and look at these years of my life that had led me to this point. It was the combination of luck, hard work, effort, and commitment. I don't think that any of those could exist without the other. I feel fortunate to have done what I did. I don't consider myself special in any way. I just consider myself fortunate to have realized that I had the fortitude to do anything that I put my mind to.

How did you prepare yourself for that or was there preparation to get there?

MF: Somebody said to me one time, “What program did you go through to make it through transition?” I said, “The one that I created because what I needed didn't exist out there.” I was doing it subconsciously and sitting still was hard for me, right? Those were the dark days. If I'd had nothing to do, I would find something to do. I tell this story of how we first moved here to Montana right before my last deployment. I came home from Afghanistan. I called my wife three days before and at the time we’re moving to Montana and we're pregnant. She went and bought a trailer she found on Craigslist. The next day she picked it up and had never driven a trailer before in her life. It's a 24-foot car hauler and she couldn’t even turn this thing around. When I got home it was parked up on the curb, sideways. She drove up from Delaware. I have to give it to her. She's ten times smarter than me. I came home and I remember we got the moving part knocked out really quick. I started loading the boxes and she was pregnant. She's wearing a bikini, the air conditioner was broken in my 95 Ford big blue and the kids are in the back. I had the barbeque grill strapped to the tongue of the trailer (laughs). We pulled up here to Montana and we rented a house out here in this Dutch church community. I got out of the truck and here I am covered in tattoos, long hair, looking huge with this Viking beard. I get out and I have a beer in my hand. The neighbors just closed their garage and walked inside. I'm pretty sure they hated me. They were afraid of me and I was afraid of myself.

This was kind of the start of me recognizing what the experiences in my life meant. I wanted to grow my own vegetables and learn to create my own pattern of sustainability. I started this garden, and I got into a full-on war with these underground moles that were destroying my plants. I had gasoline and hoses out there trying to kill all of them. I'd caught the yard on fire just trying to obliterate all of them. I had a bunch of starter plants that I was trying to get through those initial stages of growth. I was ultimately so impatient at the time. I had all these seeds in my window, probably hundreds of them. The moment they started to show a little bit of growth, I would just brush all the dirt away. I just wanted to make them grow so I could plant them. I killed almost every one of them. The plants needed to struggle so they could develop a root system and the strength to rise up through the dirt. I remember I had this thought, and I said to my wife, "I helped them to death. I helped them so much that they died." You can't truly live and thrive without the struggle. It's impossible. That's why babies’ heads are larger than the rest of the body. They're meant to fall down because they need to push themselves up so they can develop muscular structure and balance. It's a very natural biological process and we don’t fight that process. The natural world is the struggle and it’s what forges our strength, character, and resilience. I came back from my deployment and it was a really hard time in my life. I was having a lot of nightmares all the time and I had left the job I’d been doing previously. I was doing this horse thing on the side. I didn't know anybody here and of course like the typical cool guy I thought I was, I didn't ask anybody for help. Yeah, because that's cool (laughs).

I just had to figure it out for myself. I created this process for my friends but really what was happening was I was creating what I needed for my own life. People ask all the time, “How did you come up with this 41-day program?” It's so comprehensive and I was initially actually just doing it for myself. It was because I was really broken and that almost destroyed my marriage and my life. I almost destroyed my relationship with my kids too. I've got four kids. I was really in a bad way. I just didn't know it at the time but everybody around me knew it. I think everybody was afraid of me. Nobody would say anything because I'm kind of an intense dude. You know you've got a problem when you jump out your window and chase down a local cop because he tried to shut your car door for you (laughs). I was just so inside my own head. The horses, the mountains, and environmental challenges and then bringing other vets out was good for me. The first season I did it we made a film with YETI called “180 Out” through a friend of mine named Mark Seacat. It's a great film. They came to me initially and the story was going to be a story about me killing an elk. God... knows nobody cares about that anymore. I mean, come on, I'm a lifelong hunter but now it’s all about looking like you're hunting and eating natural foods off the land while you’re actually probably just behind your garage. I'm killing all the dinosaurs, by the way, just so y'all know. I'm a dinosaur killer (laughs).

What did you learn through that experience?

MF: The film crew started learning about me and that I was on my own journey. I look at myself in that film and I think, “Whoa…” when I watch it today. I know what was going on in my own head. I had founded the organization as a nonprofit, run three classes, and I didn't even know what a nonprofit was. I bought a book, read all about starting a nonprofit, and did the paperwork on my last deployment. I finished it with my wife at my house. I pretty much self-funded the first portion of it. The program used to be set up in a way where you’d come out for two weeks, go home, come out for another two weeks for phase two, go home and then go forward into phase three. I ran out of money on the third phase since I was self-funding it. I was burning it into the ground and had this huge argument with my wife. I was putting all the funding of the experience on the credit cards and she was telling me I was going to bankrupt our family. I told her, “I'm going to finish what we started and don’t argue about it.”

I had just delivered my daughter at home by myself with my wife in our bedroom. I always tell people it wasn't bad until she got on all fours and I wasn't prepared for that. It was a lot to visualize and handle but I delivered my girl (laughs). My daughter came out with a cord around her neck, and I pulled the cord off. My wife was a big meditation person and didn't even make any noise. She rolled over and the baby didn't get a bath for like the first three or four days. She never went to the doctor or anything like that. My father delivered me at home and so it was something I wanted to do too. I delivered my little girl Nora and then I went and had some ravioli. That's the end of the story (laughs). That restaurant shut down but damn that ravioli was good.

I left a few days later and went into the backcountry for National Geographic. They were doing a film on the organization that a good friend of mine had made possible. I had no money to pay for the students that were coming back and I was pretty stressed at the time. We were filming the “180 Out” deal for YETI as I mentioned before. My buddy came through Montana after doing these pack trips to raise awareness for the program. He brought these three horses, and rode them from Colorado, here to Montana. He had some breaks on the way and so National Geographic was covering that. I was leaving to go down there and I showed up to pack in the crew in Wyoming. There's a scene where we're hugging and there is actually a side story to that moment. It's crazy. I was into the furthest place you can get from any road in the lower 48 states. It's 32 miles into the backcountry and I met him there. He'd been riding up from Colorado and we just got absolutely wasted. We started chugging Pendleton and we were in the middle of nowhere. We set up camp one night and he came to my tent at around 8 p.m. He says, "Hey, man can I use your SAT (satellite) phone and call my wife?” I said, “Sure man.”

I gave it to him and I fell back asleep because my body was hurting and I needed the rest. It had been a long ride on a horse and plus we drank that entire bottle of Pendleton (laughs). I was in my tent sleeping and it was about two o'clock in the morning. I heard something outside my tent and I pulled out my .44 mag. I'm thinking it's a bear. It's him and he was saying, "Help me." I turned my light on. It's was like Swamp Thing. He was covered in mud from head to toe. The Yellowstone River has these huge cutouts like cut banks and they are something like ten feet high. I mean, they're huge cutouts where it comes in from the Yellowstone Lake. He was drunk talking to his wife and wandering around. He had walked off one of those cutouts and had fallen into the Yellowstone River and was swept away. He did save the SAT phone which was pretty much my net worth at the time (laughs). He said, "I almost died." I asked him if he was good? He tells me, “Yeah…” and I said, “Alright, good night.”

I had total PTS (Post Traumatic Stress) that next morning. What happened was I started questioning, “What am I even doing right now with this? What am I doing with these horses and I have leased all these horses from this ranch.” Those are the ones you see in that film 180 Out. I was basically 65,000 bucks into this deal and I needed another 24 grand. So, I'm on my way to Wyoming with the horses and my friend calls me to say he wants me to get a beer with this guy. And to this day this gentleman has become like a father to me I love him. I would not be here today if it were not for his guiding hand on my heart. He is just an incredible guy. I said, “Nah, man, I can't do it.” He's a Marine. He told me I needed to come meet this guy. I told him, “I can't bro. I have no money and I've got problems right now.” I'm heading to Wyoming and he just keeps pressing the issue. Reluctantly, I showed up at this place and I decided I’d have one beer. I sit down and I start talking about what I'm doing. I was a little punchy at the time. He asked me if I had horses with me. I told him I did.

He said, "Can I pet one of them?" I told him he could. I was in Bozeman and I took the horse out in the parking lot. He was petting the horse and he handed me a check. He looked at me and told me, "You're the worst nonprofit guy I've ever met in my life. And I've been dealing with nonprofits for 40 years now." (laughs) I was thinking, “Thanks, dude.” He just handed me a check and he told me, “Ya know, you're supposed to ask people for money.” I got in the truck and what I needed was $24,500 to pay this other half of the lease all the way through. I had the students coming in a week when I got back from Wyoming. I had no money and I was going into debt. This was the big fight and my wife’s pregnant hormones are still recovering. I was putting everything on the credit cards and had no money. I was not getting paid and not making any money and mentally I was struggling. I opened up the check and it was for 25 grand and I had 500 bucks leftover which I spent on cigarettes and weed. I'm kidding (laughs).

I knew at that moment that I was doing the right thing. Whatever you believe in is cool but I really believed it was the providence of God that was looking out for me. It was the higher being or whatever you subscribe to or maybe you subscribe to nothing, which is really sad (laughs). I knew that no matter how bad it got, I knew right at that moment, that no matter what happened, that I was doing the right thing. I did not take what happened with that check as a chance. I went and I paid for everything and I finished the season. We finished that 180 Out film. It was in that year I went through one of the classes where I had a veteran attack me on that trip. I remember it was during the first class and he was detoxing from a pretty heavy heroin addiction. I'll never forget. I was out there and I was feeling a little tacky myself. He said something to me and I told him to pick up the horse’s halters. He says to me, "Why don't you pick them up?" I turned around and said, "You know I've been really nice to you like this like whole time. Don't you ever talk to me like again or I will smash your head like a grape." He just looked at me and ran towards me while screaming at me. He will tell you the story because he comes back here and volunteers every year. I love that guy... shout out to that guy because you know who you are. I love that guy. He's like a brother to me. He came at me and attacked me. I remember I just stood there and as soon as he got close to me I just tripped him. I jumped on top of him and I choked him out. He started tapping and I didn't let up. We're not in the UFC dude. We're in the horse pen right now buddy and I needed him to remember this moment. He was on the ground doing the whole choking thing. We were slapping him and shaking him. He jumped up and ran away. I'm thinking, “Shit. We're doing the 180 Out video and the YETI guys are definitely thinking I’d lost my mind (laughs).

He came back later and was crying. He told me "I love you." It is that veteran love. He went on to detox off heroin. That experience changed his life. I lived it and that's the point of all my stories. The time leading up to that was what I was living in. I didn't see a psychologist, I didn't have a counselor, I didn't take pills, and I didn't do any of those things. I lived through an immense amount of one of the greatest suffering periods of my life. It was hard. Every guy that's had any form of trauma or served in combat was just suffering at some point. I was so lost in my own head and I was so busy leading other people. I was supposed to be the one that had it together. That's why horses are such an important part of what we do. The horses not only are a reflection of who you are inside but they get down to the authentic part of your soul. You're leading these animals and so you have this responsibility where you can't just lay down and play dead. They're your wheels and when you're 20 to 30 miles in the backcountry they've got all your gear. The focus starts to come off of you and begins to become about them. I think that’s when perspective changes and that's one small component of what happens here with Heroes and Horses. That's what I essentially was doing. I was leading other people and finding my own way by helping other people find their own path.

How relevant was this learning period to your own path now in what you do?

MF: It's never more relevant than it is right at this very moment. You find out what the world's doing, find out what they're telling you what to do, and do the complete opposite. I didn't realize that until I started Heroes and Horses. This all goes back to what I was saying earlier that the greater the emotional quotient attached to an experience, the more prevalent the memory becomes. If I'm walking down the street and a smokin’ hot chick in tight pants drops a hot dog on the ground I'm probably not really going to remember that. However, if I'm standing at the hotdog stand when a dude walks up and pops the dude in the forehead and robs the cash register I'm going to remember that for the rest of my life. Well, why? When something happens like that your body releases huge amounts of adrenaline, hormones, catecholamines and that's designed to make you remember. Your body does that so you can avoid that situation moving forward in your life. What happens is we get wrapped up in the emotion of an experience, when there's a lesson to be had in every single experience in our life big and small.

We don't take that moment very often and look for the lessons. We take that and focus on the emotions associated with what happened; and that creates massive problems. Those emotions are meant for the past. They are not meant for the future. If we can leave those emotions behind and take the lesson forward, then that's how we establish growth. This is how we begin to put one block on top of two blocks. I didn't recognize those things because I knew my whole life, but they hadn't been bridged together. There was a series of events in my life, but none of them were strung together. It really didn't start until Heroes and Horses. Everybody wanted to do things like take me down to shoot a deer in Texas. “We'll tie it to the tree and give you some Mossy Oak gear. You can eat as much pizza as you want.” I was like, “No, thanks.” I got invited to all these weird events and I always just thought, “No, I'm not doing that.” I didn't want to go do that because I felt like I was going to die or something. What happened was I realized that every single thing out there for vets was associated with peace, serenity, and relaxation. There was a horse program, out there at the time, that I did not buy into at all. They tried to bring me out but they told me, “There's no riding, but there is a lot of petting.” How would you feel if you went out with a girl and she said, “There's no riding. There's only petting.” You'd think, “I can't go out with you.” (laughs)

I'm not disabled and I want to ride. I want to do stuff and I'm capable of doing it. I can do 30 pull-ups and I'm not allowed to ride the horse because I was in combat? I didn't like that and what I wanted to do was to be challenged. I needed to be challenged to learn about myself and not let my past experiences define me. I wrote a quote and it's what you see on our website. It's still the most relevant quote to our program, and I've made up tons of quotes (laughs). The most important one for me in my life was one that I came up with sitting at my kitchen table during the first year of Heroes and Horses. I said, "We're not defined by our many scars but by what we do after the wound closes." If you really take a minute and think about that you begin to understand it. I remember when I wrote that. I had been defining my life by the scars whether it was from my family, from leaving home from or from the experiences I had when I was a kid on the street. Those were hard times, really hard times. I had this chip on my shoulder. The military, the teams, the culture, and the agencies all these things just added up. I had been defining my life by every single thing that I had done but I really didn't know who I was. I had done a lot of great things. I'm proud of those things but I'm more proud of the guys that I served with. I got to see other people do incredible things which really inspired me to want to do more and pursue more. I'm just a guy walking among giants.

I was defined by my experiences. I was doing things that were self-destructive, and what do they let us do as veterans? We get a free pass. You get pulled over for a DUI and tell them, "I'm a veteran.’ They usually just reply, "Alright... move along." We get a pass for bad behavior because of what we did. If there's no personal agency then we're not responsible for what we do going forward because we had an experience. I wasn't taking responsibility for myself and I knew that deep down inside that I had to find a way. It had to be my way. The way that everybody else was advertising I just didn't buy into that. I didn't buy into that I should take a shit ton of mind-altering chemicals that put me into an altered state of reality when I didn't even understand this reality. Shouldn’t I figure out this reality before I get into another altered reality (laughs)?

I know that once that came together with all my experiences I could figure it out. If you imagine a chain link that's sitting on your desk not linked and then you link those chains together, all of a sudden everything starts to click. All the links come together and it becomes one continuous chain. I can travel along that chain learning from each and every experience to draw from them. If it was negative or positive, it doesn't really matter. This ability only comes from learning about yourself and who you are. We get master's degrees and really all we are doing is taking on other people's ideas. We get PhDs and those are also other people's ideas, but most people don't have any of their own. You go to a self-help section. The books are always like “12 steps to The New You..” and you're like shit, I've got to read other books so I can learn more people’s ideas.

What’s changed in our current culture compared to what was happening with past veterans?

MF:There's a cultural shift. Obviously, that happened during that time. My grandfather was a World War Two veteran, and he served in Korea as well. He came home and he had to get a job immediately. He had a kid and wife to support. There was no Wounded Warrior skydiving program for him to go to. He got back and knew he didn't have time for anything other than work. I support my family and I have to live the same way. There's a Vietnam Veteran that lives out here, who is an incredible human being. I actually met him a couple months ago. He talked about how when he got out he didn't really have any problems because he immediately went to college. He got a job and started working. He didn't really start having problems until he retired because he had never dealt with anything. It was basically just “go, go, go” all the time for him and then next thing he knew he was 55 years old. He started having Vietnam problems because he started thinking about his experiences and there was an emotional attachment there. I think there's been a huge cultural shift with these modern wars because life has become so easy. When you make life super easy, we help people to death which goes back to my point about those plants I murdered. It's so true. We help people to death.

The easier it becomes the more there's a death that happens inside of us. There's a death that happens and then it causes all these symptoms of depression, anxiety, fear, helplessness and hopelessness. There's no meaning left anymore for you. Everything in life that has any value has a struggle component. That's why we literally have to create struggle like all of these modern obstacle course races. I jumped over the log, I was flopping around in the mud and I got tazed. I get whacked over the head by some roided out meat stick with a jousting stick. When I get done I show up to the office Monday morning. Everyone is telling me, "Dude, you did it. You like faced an obstacle. What was it?" It’s because you've learned something about yourself. What do you do from there? I want to then go train for the next one. I want to go to the next obstacle and to the next obstacle. We have obstacle machines where we enter the obstacle again and again to see what we are capable of. I know most of you out there reading this does the same thing where you commit yourself to this crazy workout on the treadmill. You enter your obstacle at a certain speed at three percent incline for a certain amount of time, and you get off, get in your car and go home. You call your best bud and you tell them what you just did. “I just did a 30 x 30 on the ‘mill bro (treadmill).” They say something like, "Oh, dude, nice..." because you faced an obstacle and conquered it. Every single thing that has any value is associated with struggle. People think you get strong from working out. No, you get strong from tearing up your muscles and them regrowing to adapt so they’re ready for the next lift. Our spirits are the same way except we are learning to listen and that voice becomes apparent when everything has been stripped away.

The obstacles are our opportunity to learn about who we are. So by reducing obstacles the only thing that you know is past experiences. Those experiences have emotions attached to them and that's what fucks with your head. That's what fucks with your reality because you think that your experiences are your entire identity. What we do with vets is we make life easier and easier when they get back. We have guys come here that are chugging Monster Energy drinks, eating Snickers bars, and have no job. They are 50 pounds overweight, play video games all day, and their biggest obstacle is peeing on the toilet seat, and then their family hates them. It's not the war in 2005 that’s causing your problems. I'm sorry. It's your poor choices. If you have trouble sleeping, let's remove all caffeine and reset your circadian rhythm. Start working out. Start meditating. They all say, "Whoa, whoa, whoa... dude, I don't have that kind of time." What they don't realize is that the easy way kills you.

The difficult way is suffering your way to grace and happiness which is the story of mankind and my life. This is not me stating that I have all the solutions and I'm not saying follow what I say. What I'm saying is that you know who you're supposed to be. It's the challenges in life that will show you that path. If you really want to know what it is then get ready for hardship, get ready for difficulty and get ready to make choices that are going to make you feel uncomfortable. That's why this program is 41 days long. When you do make things uncomfortable for yourself, your addiction to other people's ideas in life constructs, socio economic constructs and veteranism and victimism and all these other isms just dissipate. You begin to discover who you are. When you gain that knowledge of who you are and who you were created to be is where purpose allows you to overcome your external circumstances.

I started working with wild mustangs four years ago. We did a film called “The 500 Mile Project” and we broke some mustangs. It's a very moving film. It's the story on the un-purposed horse and the un-purposed human being. The story is about how purpose allowed people and horses to overcome their external circumstances. Here is a little bit of knowledge about horses. They obviously survived the dinosaur period and they're pretty amazing creatures. The first horse that was ever discovered here in North America was this little Eohippus that was about a foot tall. Horses came over here from the Spanish and they were turned loose. The native peoples here started capturing them and they really became a tool of locomotion. Horses are physiologically designed to do one thing and one thing only... run away from predators as fast as possible. They have the highest VO2 max of any lean animal on earth. Horses have this ability to process oxygen differently and they have binocular monocular vision. They see things between eight and 10 times larger than they are. That’s why if you walk over with like a grocery bag they freak out and go crazy. You're thinking, “Dude, it's a bag…” but it's a huge bag to them... kind of scary (laughs). They can't see four feet in front of them. They can't see four feet behind them. They can only breathe through their nose and a horse can't vomit. His stomach hangs off 110 and so as he moves, it sloshes and hits his diaphragm causing it to breathe. When the diaphragm gets impacted it's causing the horse to move. The faster they go, the more that 50 liters of fluid sloshes against their diaphragm. Their neck straightens and they have what’s called a ram air system. They're uptaking the air around them. This is all to stay away from humans, mountain lions and grizzly bears. They can see you from miles away and they can sense you. They're highly evolved. I always tell people horses are dumb but instinctually they are highly evolved and developed.

Let's say we have a vet that comes to Heroes and Horses, and he's super angry. He's violent, angry, in and out of jail. The moment the guys start walking up to the horses on day one of a 41 day program you start to see certain animals react to them differently. We strategically matched the horse and the human. You'll start to see like the nicest horse start to act very strange because here comes this guy with anger and anxiety. These vets are bound up and as they walk up to go meet their horses you can see the horses like freaking out. The horse will then start to react because the vet is projecting this energy. They're designed to run away from us. The horse is thinking or feeling, “What is this human being going to do to me? He's going to hurt me or attack me.” What happens is you learn that the horse becomes a reflecting pool of who you are. So initially, the vet blames the horse. “Surely, this is a bad horse. This horse is a dick or this horse is mean…” when really it's you. You're doing that to that animal. The horse-human connection is transformational because 90% of everything in this organization happens with zero talking. We're not having conversations like you and I are right now. We put you in a place with your animals with huge amounts of responsibility. Everything else happens very naturally.

The guys get very angry, blames the horses and hates the horses until they begin to really look at themselves as humans. We help them see that. I had a guy last year and I put him on a specific horse for a reason. He got off this horse, it was day 10 or something, and he started crying to the point where he got off his horse and started saying things like, "This horse is gonna kill me." I walked over to the horse and I got on the horse. I stepped off the side and passed him, moved him around, walked around him… nothing. I shook a bag and he did nothing. I gave him back to the guy and the horse started backing up. The horse started backing up when this guy would walk near him because he was so angry. He was so angry and so frustrated with himself. He was just not aware. When he learned to calm down, relax, lower his shoulders and stop behaving like that it was different. I told him, “Don't treat this horse like you treat people.” All of a sudden the horse just became calm. It was great. I've seen so many people just really break down, especially in the back country with their horses. When they begin to realize they see that, "Oh my God, this is what I do to my wife. This is what I do to my little children. I do this to them. This is what they're living with." When the magnitude of who you are comes flooding back at you through the medium of a horse and you're at 10,000 feet in the middle of nowhere, you can't run away. You can't escape and you can't quit. The guys will say stuff like, "I quit…” and I tell them, “You can't take the horse by the way.” They get mad and reply, "I'm out of here." About 10 minutes later they come back and ask, "You guys have any coffee?" They always come back because it's scary out there. I'm not going to lie... it's scary. The horses become the greatest teachers, because they're evolutionarily designed to run away from things that want to hurt them so radical honesty and trust is the only way to come into relationship with them.

When you become the leader of that animal it changes. Horses are not looking for friends because they live in a hierarchy. Where you are in that hierarchy that’s what you're going to get. If I walk into the horse corral I'm the low man on the totem pole. There's another horse there but I'm not done eating and what's happening is I pin my ears back and I smash them. This is because you're the low dude on the totem pole. There's an alpha mare and an alpha male. The horse in the wild looks out for predators. He's watching out for the herd and you'll see him in the wild circling the herd. The mare is leading them to food and water. Nobody messes with her because she is the queen bee. She's out there, no one's kicking her and she's leading them. She eats and then everybody in the pecking order comes next. Well, with human beings, you're going to fall somewhere in that pecking order. When people lead a horse, and I'm watching the horse like right next to their shoulder, and that person says, "Aw, he loves me." What the horse is saying to you and the reason why they want to keep walking up on you is because they want to say, “I'm the same as you so I'm not following you.” They want to actually get past you because they don't respect you. I always tell guys that you're not going to get the respect of the animals until you have the respect for yourself. You have to learn how to respect yourself, you have to learn how to be as firm as necessary and you have to become a leader of that animal. When you become the leader, and that horse’s head drops down, the horse recognizes you're the leader. At that point, he will kill himself for you.

Some of my horses will run into a barbed wire fence for me. They know that I'm the leader but sometimes it's a fight to get to that point. It's brutal, and it's a very difficult fight. When they are in the wild, what do you think they do to fight for dominance? They strike, they kick, they bite, they attack each other and they fight to the death. Mustangs in the wild will attack another horse and bite the back of the leg. That's why it's really hard to touch the back of their legs when they're wild. The stud horses will fight and they'll grab the tendon on the back of the leg. They'll bow it and then once that horse is lame they are easy prey for predators. They can't get away because their primary thing is to fight or fly. If you put a horse in a situation where he can't move, his next mechanism is going to be to fight. When you are breaking a horse and training people it’s all the same to me. When you let it be a horse's own free choice it’s basically all of horsemanship philosophy. It's the same when you let it be people's own free choice which is our philosophy at Heroes and Horses. It's not for fear and repetition, do what we want, do what we say and follow our philosophy. It's not about committing yourself to the Heroes and Horses methodology because there is no methodology, there is no thought. What it is... is that it's all about you. I always tell guys, I can't fail at this because you can only fail you. I'm me and you're you. I'm controlling this medium, and you have my word that if you finish this... if you finish this you will not recognize who you are. The person that you thought you were goes away. I've just seen it so many times where they witness their own transition.

I have guys call me up and their mothers, wives, girlfriends, prostitutes and all kinds of people (laughs). They call up here and they just want to say, “Thank you.” I always say, “That’s not necessary and I haven't done anything.” They always insist, "No, we want to thank you." I haven't done anything. I just put these guys in a place where they had to do it themselves. Whatever they become after this experience has nothing to do with me. It has to do with them, because this is their life. When they have that kind of level of commitment to discovering who they are, that's a really powerful tool that we all have. When you realize the power as human beings that we have to transform our lives and you get ahold of that power you start to make those decisions without fear and without trepidation. You have this confidence and the more the world opens up to you, your life instantaneously changes. You transcend the bullshit. The thoughts of losing a friend in Iraq and all these experiences that are very difficult becomes things you can move past. You transcend that stuff. I've met plenty of those with survivor's guilt that come here and I tell them there is a reason. You better spend your life finding that out because that is the only way that you are going to feel complete and whole. If not you'll be lying on your deathbed terrified out of your mind. You believe somebody else's idea about what life should be and you never discovered who you're supposed to be. You want to transcend all that and if you look at history you either suffer your way to grace and happiness or you give up. It's the only way.

Where was that moment of recognition for you where you realized that these animals provided that kind of feedback loop?

MF: I had been discovering all this working on this ranch, shoeing horses, and riding colts. I was not like these guys who were like crooks, liars, charlatan cowboys, horse traders and brand foragers. Some of them are rough dudes. When guys would come to Heroes and Horses I would bring a horse in and flank it. I'd bring all of that around and then my buddy that was a bronc rider would come in there. We'd pull the horse’s flank strap and guys have no idea what a flank strap is, or any of those kind of things. Basically, we make the horse buck. The horse would explode and that was day one for the class coming into the program. These dudes coming in here are terrified, and the horse is smashing their own feed bucket when we drop its flank strap on the ground. The horse would go crazy then I’d say something like, "Okay, here, Tim, here's your horse." Right? We thought it was funny because that's like cowboy shit. Of course I would never do that today (laughs). Back then, I wanted to make it so hard on these guys because that's what was helping me. I knew that if you could make it through the blizzard and the snowstorms on the mountain you could make it in life. I'll tell you right now we ride terrain that will make your toenails curl and if you fall off it's hundreds of feet down. You're really trusting this animal with your life. It even changes those tough guys when they’re on the side of a mountain and it's 40 or 50 mile an hour winds, it's hailing, and there's lightning. You look down and it's 250 feet down. You ain't thinking about Afghanistan in '07. You’re thinking, "Nice horsey." (laughs)

You're learning to discover the journey and you're learning to trust. So for me, initially, I thought I had to make this super hard. I look back and I have a pamphlet in here that I keep as my first pamphlet. It said, "We do extreme packing." Everything was extreme in our curriculum with quotes like, "You'll die doing this." (laughs) I knew that if I put these guys through a hard experience when they came out the other side and they’d cheated death, they’d learn a lot about themselves. You have this experience where you run the obstacle course race, you come out the other side and the experience doesn’t kill you. You feel like, "I want to do that again. I just did something and I overcame a huge obstacle." Today the process and program is much more refined. My initial thought process was that struggle gives everything life value. I didn't at the time know how much struggle was needed, because I didn't really have a struggle meter. I was taking a lot of risks.The guys would say they were going to die up here. I would tell them that they were already dead and that was really my thought process. I told them, "You're on ten medications, you're suicidal. What do you have to lose? Let's ride." It's so much more refined than that now. We still have some of that of course. I had to live that experience of learning and get a baseline. I was on the right path but I just didn't have the right ratio. It was almost like mixing gas and oil. I just didn't have the ratio quite right. I was a little wild. I broke Mustangs and then three months later rode them 760 miles, which I wouldn't suggest (laughs). That was my whole concept initially. It was a very simple thing. I knew there had to be a lot of struggle and there had to be a lot of time involved. I knew that coming out here for three days wouldn’t do shit. I didn’t want it to be a 24 hour intensive horse petting course. I’m sorry but that doesn't change things.

Where’s the transformation?

MF: It's pressure and time that changes people. It's either an extreme amount of pressure in a short amount of time, like an IED blast. It turns you from a solid to a gas at 30,000 feet per second, or it’s a drop of water on a stone over 1,000 years. We are shaped through pressure and time. It's a medium of pressure and time that begins to change the individual’s focus from the outside to the inside.

So what changed the model from a couple of weeks with a break to another couple weeks to now the 41 days straight?

MF: I was in the back country with a guy who came out to detox off of oxycontin. He was in a really, really tough place. He was an Army officer, smart guy, and even had his Master's Degree. If you would have looked at him you would think he had it all together. He actually didn't and he was out here to detox. I remember one day where we had a break on our eight day trip. We were in the back country and I was riding around with basically just my underwear on, no shoes or anything like that. I was riding around bareback and running my horse through the river. We had an off day. We were shoeing horses and once the guys got finished with the first training iteration when we were in the backcountry these guys were allowed to do whatever they want. I'm not going to do anything stupid but If they want to saddle their horse and just leave then I let them. They are grownups and have the skills and abilities to handle themselves. They have passed the first test. I was out riding around bareback and I was dragging logs. This guy came over to me and said, "Can I do that?" I said, "Yeah.”

He then asked, "Can I like, take my clothes off?" I told him, “Sure… do whatever you want.” People used to ride into war with no shirts on or anything. When you do that you feel totally connected to the animal. It's really awesome, especially when you can really haul ass on an animal and you don't have any shoes on or shirt. I was just holding on to the mane. It's some pretty cool shit. We were riding around and I took him across a river. He was having a hard time staying on and of course his natural tendency was to squeeze the horse harder, which makes the horse go quicker. He fell off and hit the mud and I asked if he's alright. He tells me, “Yes,” and he gets up to come over to where I am. We had this moment. We were sitting there and I turned around… I was laying backwards on my horse and he started crying. He said to me, "I'm killing myself, man. I'm killing myself, I have a kid." He started really opening up to me and tells me all of this. He told me he pees in the bed, and would disappear for days on end.

His car got shot up somehow, and he was just in a really bad way. This was a highly educated guy. I said, "Look, we're getting ready to finish here. You're going home for three weeks and then you're coming back." I said, "Why don't you stay here and work with me on the ranch and help me with the other class?" He told me that he would. I told him, "You're not done yet. Just stay here, hang out and when the next class comes, we'll have you work with them. Your class will come back and you can join them." We had this amazing trip. We got back and he talked to his wife. He said, "Look, I just want to go see my wife and my kids." I looked at him and said, “Man. "It's up to you. It's your life. Do whatever you want to do." He just told me, "I know. It’s been two weeks, and I'm just dying to get back. I just want to make amends with a lot of people."

He got on that airplane, and I gave him a hug and said goodbye. It was the last time I ever saw him. He went home and four days later, he died. They didn't even find him for three days because he was in the ghetto in Baltimore. I still have the letter that I wrote to the students of that class, because I think about how those dudes were taking this news. We were all pretty tight. It was really hard. I wrote this letter to the guys and everybody came back to the next phase. I realized that the rest of that class was so hard for me because I felt really bad. I kept thinking about him. I remembered him sitting on the fence and having this conversation and how critical that was. If he could be here today and if he could have said, "I'm going to stay,” his two daughters would still probably have their father. I realized that two and a half weeks wasn't enough time for a person to truly change. The next year I made it 41 straight days long and that was the catalyst. He didn't die in vain because without that I don't know if I would have necessarily changed the course. I know that sounds crazy. There are people who are shocked at the 41 days. Those 41 days in the scope of your life is really nothing. Think about how much of your life has been picking your nose and taking a shit. That was really what changed me. It was a tough experience that led me to the 41 day conclusion.

What do you want to see in the future for the program?

MF: I used to try to explain my vision for this organization. We've got two leased ranches and we're getting ready to purchase a ranch which is going to be a home base here and so that’s kind of the mechanical side of this organization. The one we want to purchase is a 3,500 acre ranch with basically nothing on it. The guys will be living in little log cabins with no electricity and just a woodstove. They'll keep the horses with them the whole program and live with them. When the night is over, they'll ride their horses two miles back to their cabin. They will feed their own horses, water their own horses, get into bed and get up at 4:30 am. They will get up and feed their horses and pull their cinches so they can ride in for PT (Physical Training) in the morning. We're going to have a headquarters here where we have our cold plunges and our fitness center. It’s a human development program from start to finish.

The guys will get cold plunges and meditate twice a day. They have to read two books while they are here. There's no dairy, no cheese, no bread, no sugar, and there's no honey. There are no additives. It's only water, black coffee, meat and vegetables. The average guy loses 18 pounds in this program. We're going to begin raising money next week for these two spots of acreage that have been identified. When I think in terms of humans, my vision is that we get this program up to 100 guys a year. The ideas, the concepts,the data tracking that we have, the partnerships with VMI, MSU, and the people we're working with on Capitol Hill, can change policy for vets. My vision has always been about policy change, because if you're walking into the VA, you should be given the metaphor of the matrix. You should be given the option of a red pill versus a blue pill. The red pill is, “Hi, I'm Betty, a 25 year old grad student. Here's a toxic cocktail that's going to change your conscious reality. It's going to make you sprout a pair of tits and ruin your life.” The blue pill is to just face it that you’re going to go through the most difficult and arduous journey of your life. But if you survive it, you'll discover who you are. I promise the “why” of how you came in here will become your ally, not your enemy. Let them choose their own path and at least give them an option. I want to change policy. I'm sick and tired of the way things are done now because the world's going crazy. There is so much shit going on in the world and where are the veteran leaders? Do you know what they're doing?

They're running around, doing “cool guy stuff” and living at the range. They complain about their PTSD and they're bitching about not having jobs and that's a huge demographic of our veterans. Not every guy is like that, of course… there's some amazing people. There are amazing veterans out there, but there aren’t enough. We're not producing enough citizen leaders. You can't lead anything until you can lead yourself and that's step one. You lead the horse, the horse teaches you to lead yourself, you lead yourself, and then you call the dude next to you, and you teach him the same thing. My vision is to grow the idea and work on policy. I want to keep the organization small so that we can fundamentally transform a life. You go on certain veterans website and it says 1,600 veterans served. Served what? Pancakes? (laughs) What were they served? Nothing. We see the names and think, “Whoa this guy's helping 1,600 people and here I am like helping 32 dads.” People are paying way too much attention to quantity over quality of care. I would ask you a question. Would you rather have 100 random boxers, or Mike Tyson? I'll take Mike because he's going to win. Right? Does one life matter? Let's think about that. There is one Jesus. There is one Martin Luther King. There is one Gandhi and there is one Alexander the Great. There is one Ghengis Khan. One purpose filled life that is on fire with a conscious awareness of who they are changes the world. If one is the most important number, there's one sun, one moon, one earth and if you were one chromosome different from who you are, you would not be you. One is highly significant. So, think about that. One isn't just one. One becomes a family which becomes kids. I would rather turn out one guy, one life that is fundamentally transformed.

It's more important than 1,000 guys that come out and pet the hair off some half dead horse. I'm not interested in that because I love the one guy that realized there’s something inside them that said, “I know I could lose my life, I know I could die or get blown up, or I may have problems after this. But, I'm going to serve what I believe in.” They walk down there to the recruiter’s office, and they give up their college years. They give up all this stuff. They give up all the great times that everyone else is having or getting that amazing “dream job.” They put a uniform on and they march into the face of potentially the last moments of their life. They do it day in and day out, and day in and day out for next to nothing. Everybody loves sports but you're not a fucking hero for playing sports. You're not a hero and you're getting paid $30 million a year. A hero is an 18 year old kid from Texas that decides not to go to school. He picks up a rifle and keeps people from coming to this country to destroy it. That's a special human and they deserve more.The last thing they need is a handout. What they need is a hand up, not a handout. That's my scalability mission. If that's really clear we can do more, I can't do it by myself. We all have to do it. Let's get all the veteran leaders together and let's just take control of this thing ourselves. Let's just say, “You know what… all you pill popping, jacket wearing, paycheck collecting, fruitcakes at government agencies that are causing hundreds of thousands of deaths amongst our peer group, we don't need you. You have never been there. You've never done anything. You're just telling us what to do.” It's the craziest system that we currently have now.

We've helped people to death. My plan is to scale the idea and the concepts not just Heroes and Horses, because I don't want 50 Heroes and Horses. That sounds like a nightmare (laughs). If we tell people what's tangibly changing lives and here's the quantifiable, quantitative data then that’s what works. This is what human beings have always done. We can hit the brakes. I said to some people the other day, “If you're doing 22 push ups a day for vets, you're an asshole. You're just flattering your own ego with 22 pushups. My six year old son can do 101 pushups. If you're doing 900 pushups a day for vets or 1,500 push ups a day for vets then you get a light pass from me but otherwise we need policy change.” We need to get the message out to the vets. You have to get off your ass and put down the fucking energy drinks. Yes... stop playing video games all the time. Yes, stop taking the free handout. You're 25 years old, and you need to start discovering who you are. Once you get that figured out, we need to begin leading this nation. That's our responsibility to be veteran leaders. Everybody has the ability to do that in our community.

I'm really proud of some guys out there and I'm very proud of them because they figured it out. They figured out that there's nothing to figure out. They already had what they were looking for and that's what I love. It's such a diverse demographic and each one of us is discovering our authentic purpose, living that and creating an incredible world around us. The thing that creates the chaos is the same people living a bunch of random ideas and philosophies from random people while taking substances that alter their conscious reality all at the same time. No wonder there are problems with death, suicide, joblessness, homelessness and drug addiction. The real you is sound asleep deep down inside knocking on the window of your soul. My job here is basically to go down there with a sledgehammer and smash the window. When you make the decision to crawl out that has nothing to do with me.

What about self discovery makes this journey so tough?

MF: Self discovery is really tough. You make a lot of mistakes along the way but if you commit yourself to self discovery you have such power at your disposal. You know, if I wanted to, I could do anything right now. I could say I'm going to go climb Mount Everest and I'll just walk up; to my staff and tell them, "Peace out.” I could max out all my credit cards, sell my ‘75 Ford Highboy, which is totally dope (laughs). I could sell that and just show up in the Himalayas. I could hire a guide and just go do it. I could do anything if I really wanted to. But guess what we do? Nothing. You are capable of stepping outside of your shell and becoming what you want. One of our applications for Heroes and Horses is super intense and it weeds out a lot of people in those initial stages of just filling it out. They start to think, “Am I ready to do this? Am I ready to learn about myself?" That's the real question.

There is a question on that application that if money was no object in your life, what would you be doing? What would you be doing? The answers we get are things like, “I want to work on a ranch.” My thought is, “Cool... go get a job tomorrow.” These people don’t realize the power they have because they've been kept asleep. These constructs of control have blinded them from what their capabilities are. Once you realize that, you become supernatural. You become a supernatural human being. I look at my life and I always tell people that of course I have anxieties. I worry about things like, “Did I say the wrong thing? Did I make Bob mad or whatever? Am I being a good dad?” I take a step back in the moment and realize my life is half over. I'm going to be 41 so what do I care? I mean, statistically, I'm dead in 31 years. If I died at 72, I would have had a pretty good life. The focus and commitment needs to be on belief and restoring the link to self, that has been obliterated by experience.

The mission that we're on is the mission within. I'm not going to really get wrapped up in things that don't matter anymore. When I find myself going down that road, I always take a step back, and I do a hard reset. It's easy to bury your face in the social media groups. It's very enticing to let yourself go and to lose focus or start to blame your situations on other things. If you start looking at your life as a truly borrowed allotment of time, you would know that winning this game does not mean collecting the most little gold coins and stuffing them underneath your mattress. The way that you win is by really understanding who you are and then returning back to where you came from.

If you make the decision to run a 5K, then get ready to get uncomfortable. Everything that is worth doing is uncomfortable so just accept that. Through that acceptance, you begin to realize that there is a reward in the end for that struggle. I think that's the greater message. We all want to be at the top and we see another guy up there and we think, "Why can't I be like him?" There's a guy that used to work for me and I fired him because he had a loser’s mentality. There was a man that we were getting some hay from and this guy who worked for me said to me, "Yeah, he's just a fucking rich fat cat." He just made this off the collar comment. Now, keep in mind, I know this guy we were getting the hay from. I stopped in the moment and I said, "Come here. What do you know about him?" He said, "Dude, he's just another rich out of towner." This “rich, fat cat” was actually one of the guys donating hay to us. What this guy said to me was an asshole thing to say.

A lot of people have animosity towards those who have big ranches, money, and trucks. I find myself in survival mode in the nonprofit space so I understand the frustration but I told him, “Let me tell you something about that guy. He had 13 brothers and sisters. He grew up in abject poverty in the south. He had nothing. He used to have to share a single chicken with his 13 brothers and sisters. He got out of high school and the next day he and his brother put their money together and bought a series of wheelbarrows. They started doing door to door concrete. He would carry the bags of concrete, they would show up to people's houses, and would ask to fix their steps. He sold that company as the second largest concrete company in North America. He never went to college. He made a lot of money and he built a shopping mall called “The Mall of America.” I shared that in depth story with him to help him realize the stupidity of his statement. I asked him, "Where was your wheelbarrow? Where were you?"

This guy who was donating hay to us didn't have any money for shoes and he was poor… like Southern, dirt poor. He had a wheelbarrow and a shot because he was willing to start with a wheelbarrow. If all of us are willing to start with a wheelbarrow then we are most likely going to get to the destination we aim at. But if you think that you're going to start with a cement truck you're just going to be miserable your whole life. People that chase fame are the worst. That's kind of rampant in the SEAL teams. There are quite a few guys that want to be the next kung fu instructor for some movie or do something like tactical shooting for the stars. When that's the sole thing you want, you never find happiness and the person that doesn't really want anything... they always wind up with it. This pursuit of commerce and thinking that it's going to give you a great life is completely empty. The change is already at your fingertips. You already have that ability. You could stand up right now and change your whole life. My message is, "Don't wait. Don't wait another minute. Don't wait another 30 seconds." Whatever is holding you back, dump it down the drain. Take your video games and go outside, take a dump on them and smash them with a hammer (laughs). lf we want radical change then let's get our asses in gear. Let's start figuring out what our new role as leaders of this nation is going to look like and start that process by returning to the dignity of the human experience by loving, honoring, and knowing ourselves not just what we have done in the past.

“The mission that we’re on is the mission within. I’m not going to really get wrapped up in things that don’t matter anymore. When I find myself going down that road, I always take a step back, and I do a hard reset. It’s easy to bury your face in social media. It’s very enticing to let yourself go and to lose focus or start to blame your situations on other things. If you start looking at your life as a truly borrowed allotment of time, you would know that winning this game does not mean collecting the most little gold coins and stuffing them underneath your mattress. The way that you win is by really understanding who you are and then returning back to where you came from.”

— PO1 Micah Fink (Navy SEALs, OEF Veteran)

How important was having a network to you in figuring out your path?

MF: Having a network meant nothing. I look at that as my own journey. I knew there were some parts and pieces I needed to pick up because I was a wrecking ball. I was really hard to live with looking back. My wife and I talk about everything now. Her and I had a hard relationship because when you're on deployment cycles it's difficult. You're only home for a couple months, and then you're back out again, especially when you’re contracting which is the worst. When it starts to feel as if, "I've been home a little too long…” I would leave. I never learned how to live with that person. I never learned how to really communicate with her. I used to laugh and tell her, "You know what we should do? You should go in that room and I'll go into this other room. I'll get on Skype and you can get on Skype, and let's like figure this out. We seem to do way better on Skype." The one on one was difficult. I always tell people when I go on a journey, or I go on a pack trip, or take on a challenge or do the Iron Man thing, that I don't take anybody with me. I am not doing this for my kids or for my wife because this is my journey. You have two things in a relationship, you have a collective relationship and then you have your individualism.

I think if you start mixing those two up it ruins you. I think what happens is you become resentful, because you feel like people are holding you back. You feel like you're not being yourself or you feel like you're trying to change yourself for somebody else. We have developed a certain mutual respect over the past 13 years. She has her path and I'm going to support whatever that is. I have mine. We live a collective life together. I didn't really turn to anybody. Of course, I’m thankful for those who’ve helped me. There was that man that wrote me a check and if he hadn’t there would be no Heroes and Horses. He took me under his wing, like a son, and he is a very deep human being, a special, special guy. He laughs now to this day about when I met him. I was thinking that I was the greatest thing since sliced bread but I needed that man’s signature to make this a reality. But, this is mostly a journey of self. We want to have people come along on this journey with us but I don't think that's a reality. I think you have to do it yourself. I think you have to climb that mountain yourself. You need people that support you and all those kinds of things. But, If you don't do it on your own and other people end up doing it for you that doesn't work. We have people call us all the time... wives or girlfriends, and say, "I'm applying for my husband." It happens all the time and we tell them, “You can't do that.”

They immediately ask why and we tell them because it has to be that person’s own idea. He has to want this. It's not about you. We have guys calling and asking if they can bring their service dog. I tell them absolutely not. They ask if they can bring their wives. I tell them they have to learn to stand alone. If you learn to stand alone and learn about who you are then you're going to be so much better for those people in your life when you come back to them. I was an asshole because I couldn't put it all together. I didn't need anybody giving me suggestions or encouraging me to do it. I had to figure it out on my own and life was providing me with obstacles to learn from. Once I fixed myself, then I came back and was really sorry. I want to rebuild this thing. I equate it to this... the war policy in Iraq didn’t work because we did what we try to do in our lives as veterans, which is rebuild and fight the war at the same time. You had guys knocking down buildings and blowing up places in Fallujah. You had guys in Mosul building a school and then they have to blow the school up. They have to start over and rebuild the school because the enemy hasn't been defeated. We put all these projects all over the place and they just got blown up or attacked. Meanwhile, guys are still fighting, and they're still trying to build, win hearts and minds. What should have happened was we should’ve won the war, won the battles, and then rebuilt. You can't rebuild and fight at the same time. It doesn't work.

I came to that realization in my own life. “Okay, I need to fix myself. I need to work on myself and I need to figure this out and go on this journey.” When the guys leave Heroes and Horses to go home and their wife leaves them that's not necessarily a failure to me. We did have a guy that married a prostitute in our program. He was in a terrible way and met her as a hitchhiker. Maybe that wasn't the best decision (laughs) but I told him, "You're a different person now. Now you're version 2.0. Now, you're version 3.0. Now, version 4.0." This was the kind of the trajectory of my relationship and marriage. I wasn't the kind of guy that was home boo-hooing, or asking for help. I've been with my wife for 13 years and what she should have done at the time was bought a rocket ship to get away from me as fast as she possibly could have (laughs). Hats off to her for sticking it out and finding her own way in the process. That is kind of my take on the individual journey. You have to win that war between your ears and in your soul. You have to come back and say, "This is who I am now, and I want to rebuild. I want to walk away." Those are both things you have to figure out on your own.

How do you want people to see Micah Fink? What’s your legacy?

MF: I see myself as a person who stays grounded in the present connected to the source not a person who walks around just thinking up stuff trying to become something. I would say if I had to put a phrase to it, “I want to be remembered for taking the hardships and lessons graciously given to me and using them as a tool for personal evolution and growth. What I learned in my life from those lessons, I shared with the world and did everything I could to help people live a better version of their life making the world a better place.” When I die, I just want it to be known that I lived my life in the pursuit of helping other people live their lives. That's good enough for me. I want to be thrown in the ocean. Don't put me in a hole. If you wear a suit to my funeral, I'll come back to haunt you (laughs). Once I'm gone, I'm up there, kicking it with the universal sound. This isn't the end, in my mind. This isn't the end. It's the beginning.

People should really be more concerned about living because life is a very, very special opportunity. It's only going to come one time. If you don't take advantage of the tools that you've been given then you have a scary road ahead of you. Once you figure it out then this is a beautiful ride. It doesn't mean that life is easier or bad things aren't going to happen. This is a special opportunity to discover individually what lessons we must learn while here on earth that will undoubtedly transcend the space time continuum that we know here on this planet. Human development is about learning the laws of the manifested world to return to the unmanifested world of the great fraternity we come from.

“I see myself as a person who stays grounded in the present connected to the source, not a person who walks around just thinking up stuff trying to become something. I would say if I had to put a phrase to it, “I want to be remembered for taking the hardships and lessons graciously given to me and using them as a tool for personal evolution and growth.”

— PO1 Micah Fink (Navy SEALs, OEF Veteran)

Micah’s story is a powerful example of taking the knowledge from one’s own life and creating a path of purpose for others through that. That’s something incredibly tangible that all humans can understand and relate to. Trauma in moments of transition is not a veteran issue, rather a subject that all humans face at some point in time. Adversity is the ideal condition in which we can learn about ourselves and who we are. That is the Heroes & Horses methodology and a great example of a successful curriculum that’s led to healing in our community.

Check out Heroes & Horses at www.heroesandhorses.org, on Instagram: @heroesandhorses, and Facebook: @HeroesAndHorses. Follow Micah Fink on Instagram: @threefold_world.

The Heroes and Horses program inspires veterans to move beyond the difficulties experienced from years of war, towards a life of restoration and hope. This unique experience challenges these individuals, evokes change, and helps them to develop new ways to approach and solve problems.

This program will peel back the layers to who you are, and it is there where you find your truth - and the truth can be painful, but we promise you that it’s worth it. You not only learn to evolve and grow in real time, but you begin to take on and apply the fundamentals of ownership.

You put the victim-hood away, and close the doors on the past - whether it contains good or bad experiences. The horses and mountains will show you the way, but only you can make the choices that will lead you to find what you’re looking for.

This will be the hardest war you will ever fight.

It’s the war against yourself. But, we’ve got your back.

Learn more

PO1 Micah Fink (Navy SEALs, OEF Veteran)

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