Feb. 13, 2024

Living the dream with author, former Marine Corps Captain and college professor Jayson Downing

Show Notes
Transcript

Send us a text

Embark on a profound journey with former Marine Captain, author, and professor Jayson Downing, as he shares his remarkable story on "Living the Dream with Curveball." Delve into the ethos of a warrior and discover how Jayson transitioned from the battlefield to the classroom, shaping the lives of others through his teachings and his book, "Awakening the Warrior Spirit." This episode promises to inspire and ignite a fire within, as Jayson discusses the importance of living with purpose, honor, and integrity.
www.thewarriorjournal.com

WEBVTT

00:00:00.569 --> 00:00:09.710
> Speaker A>Welcome, um, to the Living the dream podcast with curveball. Um, if you believe you can achieve, cheat, cheat.

00:00:19.089 --> 00:00:47.130
> Speaker A>Welcome, um, to the living the dream with curveball podcast, a show where I and of you guests that teach, motivate and inspire. Today I am joined by former marine captain, author, business coach and professor Jason Downing. Jason is a combat veteran that has served multiple tours overseas. He has multiple graduate degrees with honors.

00:00:47.630 --> 00:01:03.520
> Speaker A>He works as a professor. He's also a business consultant. He has a book out called awakening the Warrior Spirit. So we're going to be talking to him, his story and about the awakening, uh, the warrior spirit. So Jason, thank you so much for joining me today.

00:01:04.049 --> 00:01:06.353
> Speaker B>Hey, thanks for having me. It's a pleasure being here.

00:01:06.471 --> 00:01:09.540
> Speaker A>Why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself?

00:01:10.549 --> 00:01:30.730
> Speaker B>Yeah. So I grew up, know San Diego, California, born and raised and always, um, had a great respect for, uh, the military and for people who served. Um, one of the most impressionable impacts on me, um, from a very young age was going to my uncle's, uh, funeral.

00:01:31.170 --> 00:02:56.680
> Speaker B>Um, he was a California highway patrolman and they called him sa uno out in San Diego. And just hearing everybody talk about him and how much respect that they had for his service, um, it left a lasting impact on me and I wanted to be able to figure out what I could do in order to be able to create an impact on my community and be able to leave a legacy. And so that was something that, uh, just kind of a mission statement that occurred to me very early in my life. And when I was at college, I decided to, uh, go to a ten week training program with the Marines. And it was called OCS officer candidate school. And it's more or less boot camp, uh, but for officers, and that's where you're trained and tested to see if you have what it takes to be a Marine Corps officer. And that was ten weeks in Virginia. And even though I got my butt kicked royally out there, um, I had an absolutely phenomenal experience. I loved the mentality and the ethos that I was taught while I was out there. Um, all about broadening your perspective and having responsibility for yourself, but then also broadening that scope and realizing that you have responsibility to your friends, to your teammates, to your unit, um, to the social group that you belong to, to your community, and then even larger than that, possibly to your nation, if you're able to handle that.

00:02:57.129 --> 00:03:13.659
> Speaker B>And all about living with integrity, living with honor, and embracing a strong and powerful mode of living, um, that would enable you to create a lasting impact. I kind of found what I had been looking for, and so that's what I decided to do.

00:03:14.110 --> 00:03:50.680
> Speaker B>Uh, after I left college, I joined the marines, went on two tours. One to Afghanistan, um, and the second to, um, the western Pacific, and had, um, so many great experiences, learned a lot, had a lot of great mentorships in the marines. Um, and then after those two deployments, I realized that, uh, my next mission statement really involved, um, something outside the marines, um, because I had really accomplished everything I'd wanted to in the marines. Uh, I'd been able to go overseas, I'd been able to lead a platoon, and, uh, I could talk about that in detail.

00:03:51.530 --> 00:04:19.839
> Speaker B>Um, so that's what I'm figuring out now. That's what I'm doing now, is I'm living on the next, uh, mission statement of my life and trying to give to others what was given to me. And that's just a code and, uh, an ethos, a way of living that engages, that promotes personal responsibility and creating power in the individual such that they can reach their dreams. Just like your podcast says, living the dreams with the curveball. So that's what I'm trying to do right now.

00:04:20.689 --> 00:04:32.769
> Speaker A>Well, you also work as a professor, and you have multiple graduate degrees with honors. So would you want to kind of highlight those for the listeners? Sure. What you do as a professor?

00:04:33.269 --> 00:05:39.033
> Speaker B>Well, yes. So, absolutely. Following, uh, the marines, I went to school, um, got my master's in business administration, um, and then started working for a number of different fortune 500 companies, um, over the following years. Then, um, when Covid hit, um, we were all locked inside. Um, life was changing radically for everybody, and everybody was super stressed out. And so we were all kind of faced with that. What do I do now? Um, that I'm locked up inside? I needed to find something to do, so I actually applied to another graduate program. Um, it was a year long, kind of truncated master's program at the University of San Diego and was able to get into that. So now I have a master's degree in finance, which complements well with the business degree. So now, um, know, use both of those degrees. I work as a financial consultant, helping companies to value their businesses. That's kind of what I do, uh, for a nine to five job.

00:05:39.199 --> 00:06:27.509
> Speaker B>Um, and on the side, I've also worked as a college professor at a couple of local, um, universities, uh, teaching everything from, uh, business finance, um, um, entrepreneurship, and then also, uh, public speaking, uh, communication skills, which is, um, one of the greatest skills, I think, that, um, people can learn when they're, um, in an educational environment, is how to stand up in front of a group of people, present themselves professionally, and to be able to do that effectively. And if you learn that simple skill, you can really accelerate your growth, and there's really no limit, uh, to the heights that you can reach. And, uh, one thing I really enjoyed about that is, for me, personally, I'm actually quite, uh, an introverted person by nature.

00:06:27.610 --> 00:06:43.439
> Speaker B>Um, I'm not the life of the party. That's my wife, but not me. And so speak. Getting up in front of a group of young adults and being able to tell them that it doesn't matter whether or not you're introverted or extroverted.

00:06:43.439 --> 00:07:00.899
> Speaker B>Um, you can be a great public speaker. You can stand up in front of people and give a professional presentation and present yourself effectively, even if this is not something that your personality naturally lends itself towards. And so that's just something that I love being able to, uh, relay to, uh, students.

00:07:01.910 --> 00:07:08.497
> Speaker A>Okay, well, I hope I'm pronouncing this right, but I know you talk about the m. Modern day, so.

00:07:08.584 --> 00:07:09.382
> Speaker B>Ronan. Yes.

00:07:09.435 --> 00:07:19.740
> Speaker A>Ronan. Okay. Ronan. Okay. Yeah, I figured I might butcher that. But tell us what a modern day Ronin is and what is the issue with it?

00:07:20.430 --> 00:07:42.800
> Speaker B>The ronin is actually a term that comes from the japanese, um, samurai. And so the japanese samurai, as everybody know, were an ancient group of warriors that left really, a lasting impact on japanese civilization, um, and really, um, on martial arts training around the world. That's how well respected they were.

00:07:43.110 --> 00:08:33.214
> Speaker B>And they were trained, um, to be warriors from the age of five. They were trained in swordsmanship. They were trained in military discipline. They were trained in military strategy. Um, and they were also trained to obey their master. That was kind of the purpose of their existence, was to obey their master and to honor their master and to protect, uh, their master. Now, Ronan was a samurai who, through one fault or another, through an unfortunate circumstance, or potentially through warfare, had lost his master. His master had died, and what happened, he then became a ronin because he didn't have any purpose to live for. And the word ronin, um, in japanese language, is written with the characters for floating in man.

00:08:33.331 --> 00:08:38.659
> Speaker B>So it was a floating man, somebody adrift, somebody without purpose, without meaning in their lives.

00:08:39.029 --> 00:09:07.302
> Speaker B>And consequently, they went one of two directions, is they would either get involved in banditry, thievery, um, or they would join whatever warlord raised the battle flag in the area. Um, so they were a source of community instability in the region, um, and in the civilization, or many of them would even commit suicide, um, because they just couldn't bear the shame, um, of a life without any purpose.

00:09:07.446 --> 00:09:27.985
> Speaker B>And when I came across that story, it just really struck me, because when I left the marines and I tried to transition back into civilian life, even though I had planned for it, even though I thought that I was well prepared, I didn't realize what a big gap, uh, it would be.

00:09:28.008 --> 00:10:04.429
> Speaker B>Leaving in my life the source of identity that I had had for so many years of being a marine and having a mission statement, having a purpose, something greater to live for, was just like that. One day it was just gone, and I needed to try to figure out what was next. And that was a very difficult thing for me to do. Uh, I got into a downroad spiral for a while, um, started self medicating. It was a bad deal for a while, and I lost some relationships and went through a number of hard years in my life following leaving the marines, because it just left this huge gap.

00:10:08.769 --> 00:10:51.693
> Speaker B>Once I got out of that kind of, that downward spiral, and I kind of picked my head up and I looked around, I realized just how many other veterans out there, um, were experiencing many of the same things that I did. And I think that the disturbing number of veteran suicides every single, um, day, every single year is kind of a testament to the fact that this, uh, impact of the ronin mentality, um, is not unique to the japanese civilization. And then as I was writing the book, I even took that a step further and realized that a lot of people, even people who have never been in the military, but a lot of the young adults that I meet at the college level that I've taught, um, a lot of them are feeling very much the same thing.

00:10:51.731 --> 00:10:59.759
> Speaker B>I saw it a lot during COVID uh, when everybody was stressed out and the nation was very divided at the time.

00:10:59.919 --> 00:11:05.470
> Speaker B>Um, and people are just wondering, what is the purpose? What is the meaning of my life? Where do I fit in?

00:11:05.620 --> 00:11:23.799
> Speaker B>Where is my identity? Where do I belong? And there's not a lot of hope out there. So that's the case of what I call the modern day ronin. It's this sense of purposeless and meaninglessness that I've seen in young people, and I've also seen it in the veteran population, and it's something that I'm trying to provide a solution for in my book.

00:11:24.570 --> 00:11:27.000
> Speaker A>Well, what do you feel the solution is?

00:11:27.789 --> 00:12:11.559
> Speaker B>Well, um, to put it succinctly, I believe that the solution to living life without purpose is to live life with purpose, and that is to purposely pursue life with the warrior spirit and so that is about engaging your responsibilities that you have in your life and living, um, a life that is full of the honorable warrior virtues. And, um, I go through four of them in the book. Um, m I start out with the service mentality, which I've already kind of alluded to. That idea of it's more than just personal responsibility. You understand who you are as an individual, but you also understand the social obligation you have to your team, to your family and to your community.

00:12:12.570 --> 00:13:04.614
> Speaker B>The second virtue I talk through is the idea of truth. Living a life that's honest, that's full of truth. And, um, truth is a rather tricky concept in our modern day. Maybe it's always been that way, but it seems to be particularly tricky nowadays. And so, um, I just dive into that topic, like, kind of how do you live an honest and truthful life, um, in our modern day, um, culture? Uh, the third virtue is strength. And then I also talk about power in that chapter, how to be strong and powerful as an individual. And to also realize how to use your strength in order to better those around you. And then the fourth virtue I talk through is what I call fortitude, um, which is how you react and how you deal with the hardships and the suffering that will inevitably come in life when the storms come, when the curveballs come, how do you react to that?

00:13:04.652 --> 00:13:15.019
> Speaker B>Do you crumble and fall? Or are you able to rise to the challenge, um, and meet those challenges head on? So, in short, that's the answer that I provide.

00:13:16.029 --> 00:13:21.279
> Speaker A>Where you say western culture isn't a culture war, explain that.

00:13:22.129 --> 00:13:52.360
> Speaker B>Yeah, I think there's a lot of competing ideas out there which are all, um, vying for our attention right now. And it seems like a lot of the more traditional values, um, that seem to, um, um, kind of be taken for granted or seem to animate and kind of undergird our thinking for a very long time, are under attack, um, to where we'll take the idea of power.

00:13:52.879 --> 00:14:21.919
> Speaker B>Uh, it used to be taken for granted, kind of assumed that strong people made for strong communities, and strong communities made for a strong nation. And that it was individuals, um, that were able to affect, um, other people and society and the world around them. That if you, um, lived a purposeful or responsible and meaningful life, that you would be able to have an impact around you. And, um, it just seems like that may be no longer the case.

00:14:22.940 --> 00:14:54.250
> Speaker B>Um, so that's what I talk about when I talk about a culture war. I just mean that there's a disagreement, uh, on values, um, which we seem to be navigating right now. And I go back to. I started writing the book during COVID and so, um, I think that we really all felt it during that time when there was just so much division. And it doesn't seem like either side of this particular, quote, unquote, culture war is able to just sit down and talk to each other, um, anymore.

00:14:55.169 --> 00:15:48.937
> Speaker B>Uh, we get online, we throw insults at each other back and forth. Um, we don't really have real conversations because it's hard to have real conversations when you're on a social media platform, um, and you're not really talking to an individual, you're just talking to an avatar of the individual, many of whom just. They don't actually even have their real name on it. And so it's this breakdown of communication, this breakdown of understanding, um, this breakdown of compromise, and it seems to be getting worse. I think that social media has been exacerbating the problem. People get trapped inside echo chambers where they only ever hear their own opinion being echoed back to them and are unwilling to engage, um, with the other side, which makes it more and more easy to demonize the other side and, um, whatever side that may be.

00:15:49.104 --> 00:16:09.250
> Speaker B>There's hundreds of different issues out there, and there's hundreds of different stances you can take on any issue, but there's always an other, a quote unquote other that you can demonize, um, and throw stones at without actually bothering to talk to them and understand them. So that's what I talk about in this culture where I'm talking about the division.

00:16:09.909 --> 00:16:16.081
> Speaker B>We've seen it on our news media. We've seen it on social media. That's what I'm talking about. In the midst of all this, you.

00:16:16.135 --> 00:16:22.293
> Speaker A>Also talk about praying for peace but preparing for war. So explain your concept on that.

00:16:22.491 --> 00:16:41.274
> Speaker B>That flows from the idea. That's the final chapter of my book. I talk a lot in the first several chapters about the virtues that I've already discussed. And in the final chapter, I wanted to put kind of some meat on the bones and give some practical advice. And so that's, um, where I really dig into that idea. Praying for peace.

00:16:41.322 --> 00:16:56.049
> Speaker B>But preparing for war is a concept in the military that also kind of goes by the idea that, um, the more you bleed in peacetime, or, excuse me, the more you sweat in peacetime, the less you bleed in wartime.

00:16:56.470 --> 00:18:13.402
> Speaker B>And if you go and you talk to, um, anybody in the sporting arena, they'll say how you practice is how you play. That's the same idea. So it's all well and good to pray for peace warriors, especially professional soldiers, professional marines. We love peacetime. Um, but the only way you get to have true and lasting peace, I believe, in your life, is if you're able to prepare for the hard times. Because the hard times are common. It's not if, it's when. So are you going to be prepared or are you going to be unprepared? That's really the only question you have to answer. Um, and how you practice, how you prepare, um, during those times of peace and tranquility in your life is going to determine how you fight or how you play, um, during the more difficult times of your life. To say it another way, um, you don't rise to the level of the challenge. Rather, you fall to the level of your habits. That's been said many times, and it's something I truly believe in, that when the hard times come along, um, you're going to fall to the baseline level of what you practice every single day. And so it just raises the question, what do you practice every single day? What is it that's the norm for you?

00:18:13.455 --> 00:18:21.759
> Speaker B>Because that's going to determine how you're able to, um, fight through those more difficult seasons of your life.

00:18:22.369 --> 00:18:25.920
> Speaker A>So tell the listeners where they can purchase the book.

00:18:26.609 --> 00:18:42.180
> Speaker B>They can purchase the book on Amazon. Um, they can also find more about me@thewarriergournal.com. Is my website. There's also a link to the book in there, as well as some blogs, um, that I've written and some information, um, about what I'm currently doing.

00:18:42.259 --> 00:18:45.182
> Speaker B>Um, I'm also currently writing a collaborative book.

00:18:45.256 --> 00:19:10.380
> Speaker B>The book is going to be called, um, coaching greatness. And I'm writing that with a number of, uh, fitness professionals and coaching, um, fitness coaches, some, uh, of whom are world renowned. And so that book is going to be showing up there probably by the end of this year, uh, maybe the beginning of next year, but that's another project that's going to be on that website, um, before long.

00:19:10.990 --> 00:19:17.119
> Speaker A>Well, that was my next question. Uh, besides that book, what else are you working on that people need to know about?

00:19:17.569 --> 00:19:20.000
> Speaker B>Yeah, I'm really excited about this current project.

00:19:20.059 --> 00:20:50.250
> Speaker B>Um, like I said, the book is going to be called coaching greatness. I believe that's going to be the title, at least that's the working title right now. And I'm writing it with, um, one of the main individuals, uh, that's spearheading the project. His name is Todd Durkin, close, uh, personal friend of mine, a personal coach and somebody who's, um. It's not over exaggerating to say he's a world renowned, uh, speaker, podcaster and fitness coach. He is the fitness professional who has coached people like Drew Brees and ladanian Tomlinson. Uh, so this is a guy who's been in the business for 30 plus years, really knows what he's doing, and he has surrounded himself with a number of just amazing individuals, amazing, um, coaches and people, um, who are making, uh, impact in their community and creating a legacy, um, around them. And so I was able to secure, um, a spot, uh, to write a chapter in this book. Um, and so each one of the authors, there's a few different authors, is going to be writing a chapter based on their experiences in coaching or what coaching means to them. And so for me, uh, that's exactly what I'm doing. And I'm writing from the military perspective of what coaching means to me. Um, I haven't finished the chapter yet, but I can give a little preview.

00:20:50.490 --> 00:20:58.670
> Speaker B>Um. To me, the idea of coaching really boils down to the idea of authentic leadership is what I call it.

00:20:58.819 --> 00:21:32.859
> Speaker B>And the more I've thought about it, the ideas of leadership and coaching are really inseparable. They're two sides of the same coin, because the greatest coaches that I've ever known, you can think of, even in football terms or any other sport that you like to watch. The greatest coaches are great leaders, and the greatest leaders know how to coach. So I think really they're two sides of the same coin. And that's, um, an idea that I'm going to be exploring, um, in the chapter as I move it forward. Um, really excited about that.

00:21:33.630 --> 00:21:45.839
> Speaker A>Okay. You threw out your website, so close us out with any final thoughts that you might have if I forgot to talk about something that you would like to, ah, touch on or just any final thoughts you have.

00:21:46.609 --> 00:22:14.069
> Speaker B>Yeah, it's been a pleasure speaking with you today. Final, um, thoughts are that there's a lot of unwinnable games out there that we're being asked to play, and I encourage people to not engage in those, uh, play the games that are going to make you better and are going to, uh, contribute to your family, to your community, to your health, uh, be a warrior in your life and create lasting impact. That's my encouragement.

00:22:14.730 --> 00:22:17.605
> Speaker A>Ladies and gentlemen, the warriorjournal.com.

00:22:17.708 --> 00:22:37.693
> Speaker A>Jason Downing. Please be sure to check out the website, pick up the book, keep up with everything that he's up to. Follow rate Review share this episode to as many people as possible, especially all the military veterans and people out there. If you have any guests or suggestion topics, see Jackson 102. Uh@cox.net is the place to send them.

00:22:37.811 --> 00:22:42.079
> Speaker A>Jason, thank you for your service and all that you do. And thank you for joining us today.

00:22:42.609 --> 00:22:44.750
> Speaker B>Thanks so much for having me. It was a pleasure.

00:22:45.329 --> 00:22:53.278
> Speaker A>For more information on the living the dream podcast, visit www.djcurveball.com.

00:22:53.443 --> 00:22:58.289
> Speaker A>Until next time, stay focused on living the dream. Dream.