I believe the biggest fight comes from wrestling with the demons inside us - those past unhealed traumas.
My next guest is a former shipmate I served with during a very stressful carrier tour, which has now transformed his life. He has created a holistic environment around him based on the hard work we must all do when we suffer.
Dave Snell is a retired Navy Cryptologist who spent the majority of his career focused on the Pacific theater but enjoyed deployments to the European theater and multiple deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Philippines.
Relatively early in his career, Dave began dealing with depression and anxiety. It got so bad that he saw suicide as the only option. He did not talk about the subject with many of his peers because of fear of stigma and the lack of opportunities presented to him in his career.
He was able to continue his career with a second tour at the National Security Agency, followed by the U.S. Pacific Fleet, and Special Operations Command, Pacific where he could again deploy to the Afghanistan theater after a deployment to the Philippines.
After his naval career, Dave went into industry conducting risk management assessments of Fortune 500 company cybersecurity programs to ensure they met different regulatory requirements. And yet, he could not shake the traumas.
The traumas began adding up and he eventually found himself in therapy again, and again, and again. Finally, the pandemic offered an extreme period of self-reflection for Dave and he found a means of getting beyond his traumas and associated depression and anxiety.
Dave found that Movement, Mind, Meditation, and Meaning were four areas he was able to integrate to ensure that he kept the depression and anxiety at bay.
Having lost a lot of weight during the pandemic, Dave focused on a near 30-year goal of running the Marine Corps Marathon and eventually did in 2022 and again in 2023. These marathons culminated in working through the 4Ms and putting them into action when things during the races didn’t go as planned. And yet, he was able to make it through both and looks forward to doing more in the coming years.
Today, Dave is a security consultant, combining his experiences in cybersecurity, intelligence, and private investigations to help companies protect their critical information and infrastructure from internal and external threats.
Simultaneously, Dave has continued his service, sha
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