MSgt Cody Alford (MARSOC, OIF, OEF Veteran)
“The bended knee is not a tradition of our Corps.”
It’s a rough road at times… those who’ve been to combat know it well and those life experiences either strengthen your resolve or ultimately leave you feeling lost. That sense of purpose through the hard times is something granted through serving something greater. Cody Alford lived that sense of service in many ways. First, through a storied career in the Marine Corps and then on the other side of that space in transition out of the Corps. But, he didn’t find it right away. It took time, soul searching, out with the old and in with the new. He bought the new house, and the cars to go with it then ditched it all… lived the nomad life in search to find a new way and with that, hope… for a return to the sense of purpose we all desire.
Nowadays, he finds himself in a similar role in a completely different capacity, and that all might sound confusing unless you understand Cody’s ideals. If you get to know the man, the Marine, the leader… you’ll better understand his vision. “We Defy.” A mantra, an ideology, a quest to break down the internal barriers of lacking purpose. It’s an all-encompassing idea that seeks the betterment of self so that those feeling lost can find their tribe. Alford’s confidence in creating that place for others has allowed them to find their own voice. His beliefs are earthed in the idea that in the long run, the collective is more robust through first finding one’s own fortitude. Fear of failure is the fundamental enemy and Alford is seeking a scourge in order to create a new order of warriors ready to push the fight to that enemy.
This story is brought to you by HeartSupport. To learn more about HeartSupport and its efforts in the mental health space, please visit heartsupport.com.
What was the young Cody Alford like? What led your path to the Marine Corps?
Cody: I always wanted to be G.I. Joe growing up. I originally wanted to be a Ranger. I think the Ranger (poster) was the first poster I ever saw back when I was in kindergarten. There weren’t any smartphones or the Internet. There were posters, billboards, and every now and then a commercial on TV. The poster kind of got my attention. Then, I watched the movie Sniper with Tom Berenger and that sent me over the top. I always watched everything I could on Special Operations, Special Forces, the French Foreign Legion, and all those kinds of movies. When I was growing up as a kid, it was always on the History Channel and Discovery Channel. I had sought out and built this library of imagination by watching all that and I realized I wanted to be a sniper. The Marine Corps is the only one that had “Scout Sniper,” you know, that extra word (Scout). I knew, “I have to do this.” Then seeing all the history that talks about how hard it is and that it (passing) doesn’t have a high success rate, it was really interesting to realize that people actually do it and pass these extremely hard courses. I remember thinking, “Dude, I'm doing that. That's what I want to do.” I set out to pursue that when I turned eighteen and joined the service.
What do you think it was about your home life? Did your parents have an effect on that and your path? Did you feel as though it was groomed into you from a young age? Or were you just always looking for adventure?
Cody: My dad was a Marine, but he never talked about it. I heard a few boot camp stories here and there. He talked about his friends every now and then, but that was very few and far between. My mom never talked about anything. I guess they just kind of assumed that I was into that stuff. I wanted to do ROTC, but they didn't have it at my school. I was always into the thought of joining the police force, ROTC, or anything I could do to touch a rifle, wear a uniform, or march around. It felt like I was one step closer to what I wanted to do. I just liked playing G.I. Joe and obviously, I’m an American kid so like most I enjoyed war movies; I enjoyed them for what they were. I liked the action. I realized that I could be anything I wanted to be and that was what I wanted to be. There was never a “runner-up” or a “backup plan.” There was never a thought to be an astronaut, doctor, or lawyer. Nothing else sounded cool to me. I wanted to join, and nothing was changing that. I joined the Marines when I was seventeen. I went to boot camp and turned eighteen a few days later. I kept going to the recruiting station, so my parents finally signed the document. I wanted to secure my 0311 contract and I wanted to do everything I could to get to where I was going. What a ride (laughs). You couldn't just enlist and go to sniper school so my best route was to go 0311, which is an infantry rifleman, and that's what I did.
What was it like getting to boot camp? Was it everything you thought it would be?
Cody: The boot camp part was pretty on par with what I thought I'd be getting into. I watched anything and everything I could about Marine Corps boot camp. Not to game the game, but I was just so infatuated with all of it. I went out of my way and made time to fantasize about this career life experience that I was wanting. When I got to boot camp, I remember seeing those yellow footprints. I was so stoked because I saw that in plenty of movies and then, there I was actually experiencing it. Except it wasn’t exactly the same because I was like, “Shit, I'm actually kind of tired and hungry. I kind of don't know what I'm getting into but I'm one of those stories now.” That part was cool, to live out that fantasy, to see it all come to fruition. There were a few things about boot camp that sucked but it was a means to an end. This was the entry-level discomfort I needed to go through to get what I wanted. I kind of enjoyed it. I knew boot camp was a stopping point or checkpoint I needed to go through to get to the next phase. Even as a seventeen-year-old kid, I always looked past that first layer. I was thinking about being at sniper school, building a ghillie suit, or whatever was after that. I was always at the next level, thinking ahead, because I was committed. It wasn’t a question. It was just a matter of when I was going to go.
“Even as a seventeen-year-old kid, I always looked past that first layer. I was thinking about being at sniper school, building a ghillie suit, or whatever was after that. I was always at the next level, thinking ahead, because I was committed. It wasn’t a question. It was just a matter of when I was going to go.”
Where did you go when you got to your unit, who were you with, and how long before your first deployment?
Cody: My unit was 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines, 1st Marine Division. I was right outside Camp Horno, Camp Pendleton, California. I think I was there probably six or seven months, not too long, before my first deployment to Fallujah, Iraq. This was around March 2004. March to October, specifically. One thing I never really mapped out in my head—was combat. One, I had no concept of it. Two, I was brought up to be “careful what you wish for.” I was brought up to believe killing isn’t cool, and that war kind of sucks. I really didn't know what to expect. Our training definitely didn’t prepare us for Fallujah. We were doing (in the U.S.) some SASO training (Support and Stability Operations). It's like a “hugs and kisses” martial law type of concept. Fallujah was a one-eighty from this training evolution. It was a culture shock for everybody. A few guys from OIF 1 (Operation Iraqi Freedom 1) were there. They had a big boot drop (first-timers getting to combat) and I was part of that boot drop. It was definitely interesting. The Army, 101st Airborne, and some Air Force units were there on the ground and they got kind of beat up on their way out. They were just getting abused by the battlefield, doing patrols and just catching some bad (unfortunate) grenades. We all thought, “Damn, these guys are about to be out the door and they're still taking it.”
I think that was a really big wake-up for a lot of the guys in my unit, including myself. Right when we got there, we started doing risky patrols with the scouts from the Army. A few of our snipers went out with them and a couple of our guys got hit with a grenade on their first day at the district center while doing an overwatch mission. So, we're already down two guys in a very small platoon of snipers. It kind of set the tone of, “Oh, this is real. This is crazy.” And it progressively got more intense day by day... indirect fire, mortars, and workers that were working for the base getting killed, losing that outside source, going on water rations, all sorts of things. It made it kind of interesting, but you're already used to the Marine Corps standard, which is very low in the aspects of comfort… and very high in the aspects of discipline and getting the job done. I remember we had like three bottles of water a day and that was for hygiene, cooking, drinking, all that type of stuff. It was kind of fun and it was also weird. I was eighteen years old. It felt like big boy camping and still not really understanding where I was at and what was going on. I wasn’t an idiot, but I was also unaware of the damn hornet's nest that was out there. It took a few weeks before we actually went into the city. It was the most interesting deployment I’ve ever been on.
There was no kicking down doors for me. My team was basically tasked with going in front of the battalion, establishing overwatch positions and relaying information back to the battalion commander and the company commander, and then formulating the decisions. A lot of the buildings that we were rolling through were unconstructed or being constructed still so we weren't really dealing with any barriers. We really just opened doors to get access. The city was pretty quiet. Before we got to Fallujah, the C-130s were dropping air campaigns, dropping flyers telling them, “Get out of the city unless you're a fighter. If you're a fighter, stay.” They were really trying to minimize civilian casualties and kind of prep the battlespace for what was coming. It was weird, it was quiet until it wasn't quiet. And when it got loud, it got extremely loud.
There would always be those quiet breaks between prayer time, and then the fighting would just pick back up. We found out very quickly what a routine would be like. You had quiet hours, and you had like extremely loud hours of harassment… violent/murder/death/kill hours. It was like all the compilation of books or movies you ever saw, but then you were living it out. And maybe that was the same perception for a lot of people that were 18 years old. This was my first experience. From my understanding, the OIF 1, back in 2001, in Iraq was intense in certain areas. It wasn't the same across the board and there was definitely a mix and match of experiences there. So, this Fallujah experience, even for second-time deployers, it was just a completely different environment. They went from vehicles and mop suits to on the ground, walking in a highly congested urban environment that was prepped (by the enemy) way before we ever got there.
I mean, those guys had tunnel systems, they had holes in walls to get through the whole city, running through houses so you couldn't see anything overhead and you were not going to see anyone walk out front. It was like The Hunger Games. It was a pre-staged battlefield for what was to come. At that time, there wasn't a big significant push through the city, probably a lot of just cordoning it off, establishing supply routes, and really kind of setting the stage for what the army did when they rolled into an area, creating the whole battle space. The infantry was brought in to do their very specific job. And it was kind of interesting to watch it all unfold. At the time, I wasn't looking at it that way. And as I grew older in the military, I was like, “Dude, that was like chess.” It was insane.
“Before we got to Fallujah, the C-130s were dropping air campaigns, dropping flyers telling them, ‘Get out of the city unless you’re a fighter. If you’re a fighter, stay.’ They were really trying to minimize civilian casualties and kind of prep the battlespace for what was coming. It was weird, it was quiet until it wasn’t quiet. And when it got loud, it got extremely loud.”
Did you realize how violent it could get? Did you have any feelings about that? Obviously, we've seen some of the videos on YouTube of the actions that happened inside some of those buildings and how rough it could get. Did you start to see that escalate and realize it was going to get worse?
Cody: My first day in the city, around afternoon time, I took a round right to the helmet from a gunfight across the street and that kind of set the stage for me. I never thought it was fake. I wasn’t smiling at the time. There were definitely times on the first day, I wanted to be able to return fire. My team was shooting and I was pulling rooftop security. And I know rooftop security is important but at the same time, I remember thinking, “This is something new. I want to go experience the action. I want to go do my part.” And at the time, I realized how important my six o'clock security was. I was still dodging bullets there. Later on that afternoon, we were getting set up in an overwatch position and we received contact from across the street. I was going back and forth with my radio operator and shooting out the window because we were the only two with M-16s on the team. The two snipers had a pistol and a bolt action, you know… not a very urban-friendly weapon platform. I just finished my reload and as I peeked out, I got domed in the helmet and had this whole out-of-body experience, a crazy, chaotic experience. And I came back to my team, they thought I was dead, but they didn’t see any blood.
I was calling in for support and was just butchering every transmission. I was saying, “Break”, after every breath that I was taking. After this whole ordeal went down, I just said, “Damn. This is crazy. I could have totally died there.” And I had seven plus more months of this. I remember thinking, “Dude, this is insane.” And it definitely made me worry about my head because I wasn't even Turkey peeking (glancing out) at the time. Periscopes weren't a thing back then at least not for us. That set the tone for me. I saw a few guys get killed and explosions happen that day but I still wasn’t really prepared for what could be possible inside that city. At that time, we’d been in the country for a few weeks and we weren’t even testing the waters, we were just executing. Now looking back and understanding mission planning and execution, it was just bad missions and bad planning that led to poor communication, lack of phase lines, lack of limited advances, potential blue on blue (friendly fire), and crossfire. There was probably a lot that wasn’t taken into consideration back in the day but that's how we grow and learn.
The Army’s 101st Airborne was doing a lot of “outside the box” stuff dealing with the district senator. Where these meetings were taking place, I mean, it was still a dangerous environment. If they give you guns and bullets, you're in a dangerous environment (laughs). And so, it was completely different. We didn't have armor on our vehicles. We were taking it (armor) from the Army or taking it from the Air Force and putting in blast blankets, filling trucks with sandbags everywhere, because we were thinking, “This is a crazy place and anything can happen.” You know, we could figure out the fight but, enhancing our survivability, that was obviously the main focus. None of us really knew what was coming inside the city and how violent it could be. But… violence is violence. Seeing the whites of someone’s eyes is a completely different thing from seeing a guy, you know, 50 yards away. Seeing someone’s face where you can make out the skin, even the wrinkles on the skin, you start to realize just how dangerous it is.
If you’ve ever seen Marine Corps boot camp videos, there are two guys running at each other with helmets and pugil sticks, like big cotton Q tips, and they're beating each other. When you're in those types of scenarios, that close (in combat), it just really changes the game. Because there is no question about what's happening. It's fight or flight. Do your job or don't. Be first or last. It's like there's no in-between. And it's not cool… it's just different. It's always amazing to see how training can relate to such an extremely practical application. It's really crazy to see that because you have to think, “How do we train our guys to kill in combat, instantly react, and think just enough to formulate a decision?” And that's crazy when you go back and you look at all the training. You start to think, “Once our guys get put in a life-or-death situation, they're going to perform or they're not.” Nothing's ever guaranteed. But it was just a weird feeling. I was eighteen years old and suddenly my whole perception of life, time, and reality had already been skewed in a matter of a couple of weeks.
Talk about some of those actions inside the city when you started getting really kinetic and when things start really kicking off and the strategy changed.
Cody: When the strategy changed, they said that we were going to take over some compounds and battle spaces from other units. We were basically going to funnel guys towards us and the other surrounding battalions in Fallujah. They were going to push the fighters (enemy) towards us, and my battalion was going to be the anvil essentially, and just hammer dudes as they funneled our way. And so, the company I was tasked to, Echo 2/1, was the main effort. They took over the few compounds that my sniper team and another sniper team would go to, and I mean, there were dead bodies everywhere from them (Echo 2/1) just taking those buildings. Marines do what Marines do, making their fighting positions worth it, setting up sleeping areas prior to work, and taking care of other basic needs. There were plenty of times when it was almost like “fish in a barrel,” where there was just an insane amount of people being killed and fights that were constantly happening. The violence almost seemed made up. But I mean… violence is real, and ideologies can be insane. Sometimes you just can’t break an ideology so therefore you have people on that side who are absolutely fearless in the craft that they're performing. We saw them on both sides, the insurgent side and obviously our side. People believe what they believe in, and pretty much everyone over there put up a hell of a fight. You hear stories of bravery and courage but it's really hard to comprehend those things until seeing them firsthand. And to me, bravery and courage don’t always have to be, “They killed somebody.” It's really just showing up when you don't have to, you don't want to, and no one's going to know but you chose to snap out of the funk and encourage people and move people around and do your actual job.
If people think that no one gets shell shocked in combat or no one has “Oh, shit…”moments where they're slowing down or maybe thinking about something else or confused about what's going on or looking for guidance… that shit is absolutely real, and it happens all the time. And to see these guys step up and just work together where no one's talking shit, everyone's a team, you know… that was super amazing to bear witness to. It really set the foundation for me going forward in my career. It’s what “right” looked like and what putting out looked like, what standing your ground looked like, and what facing your fears looked like. All this type of shit mattered and I saw it from a lot of different people. I remember one particular day in April 26, 2004, actually like 30 days later after I got dinged (shot) in the helmet, we got in this super gnarly ambush. So, Doug Zembiec, back at the time, was the company commander for Echo Company. He was the “Lion of Fallujah.” Everyone's heard this beast of a man story. I remember him saying, “Hey, we're going to take over this house and set up a sniper ambush point,” because we were always getting potshots from this certain spot. They had the advantage on us to some point, and he (Zembiec) said, “Dude, I'm done with this. We have a mission over here and we're going to kill as many fighters as we possibly can. That's your job. We're going to ambush them and bring the sniping to them.” That's what we did. This time we had a few Delta (1st SFOD-D) sniper teams with us. They came to us specifically. I remember them saying something like, “Hey, we heard you guys are in the craziest fights ever. And we figured we could maybe come and give a hand.” Of course, we were like, “We could use all the hands.”
Their medical, their weaponry, their skill set… we were definitely task saturated and those guys helped a lot. Multiple nights, everyone's standing on the rooftop and our building is yawing back and forth because a C-130 gunship is firing missions at our facility because we have enemy fighters coming into the area. There was never a dull moment. So anyways, one morning, the 26th, (2004) we set out to head to this certain position. The assaulters rocketed a wall, we breached it, we went through it and we hit the compound of this building that we were going to take over and set up our shop in, and lo and behold, there were weapons caches there, there were spider holes (shoulder deep, protected round hole), mortar positions everywhere, and some of those shooting positions, had burned out vegetation where they had obscuration between them and us. They definitely had proper setups to be fully employed for survivability and not be seen but it was quiet. It was super quiet. We ended up establishing overwatch positions, guys set up on multiple floors. And we just waited. And it was about, I don't know, late morning or really early afternoon, it's pretty hot and we're on limited water, we're still in daypacks for this. We kind of carried a light, and a lot of ammo. So, my team leader says, “Hey, go downstairs with a radio operator. We will come to get you guys in an hour. There’s no need for all of us to be up here sweating and going through water and if something was to happen, we're kind of all sitting ducks up here.” I said, “Okay, cool.” I asked him if he wants my rifle and he says, “No, you might need it.” My radio operator asks my ATL (Assistant Team Leader) if he wants his rifle and he's like, “Yeah, I'll take it.”
We went downstairs and we found this mattress room where they (Iraqis) sleep and have events and stuff like that. There were big mattresses everywhere. My helmet was off, my flak jacket was undone and I was smoking a cigarette. We were smoking and shooting the shit and just enjoying that extremely peaceful silence in a very violent area. It was super enjoyable until a machine gun started blasting through a window, RPGs started going off, and grenades started hitting the rooftop. Then you start hearing the screaming and yelling and all sorts of shit, just all hell broke loose. We finally made it out of our room. I was guys shell-shocked… I was guys not moving. I was guys scattered all over… dragging bodies and shit. Medical equipment wasn't a big thing back in the day like it is now. I mean, we had this thing called “Quick Clot” which they told us basically not to use (laughs). We didn't have tourniquets. Basic field med was very basic. People were doing the best they could with what they had at the time.
Our big thing at the time was stretchers and gurneys to get wounded guys out, so guys were banging down doors trying to use anything they could to move these Marines that were KIA or wounded. We seemingly had a firefight taking place all over. We were being shot up from a few angles, and I was still trapped inside the building, and I didn’t know what the hell was really going on outside. My homie and I barely made it out of our room and we were low crawling to get to the doorframe to get out. And at that time, half my team comes running down. They’d been hit with a grenade. A homie of mine came down and he was missing his arm. He rolled over on his SAW (Squad Automatic Weapon) to protect it because it was the only machine gun we had in the house. He rolled on top of that, lost his arm in the process, and saved the gun. Another homie of mine had his leg turned into Swiss cheese, and every single one of them seemed to be hobbling and dragging each other and kind of screaming and shell-shocked. On hearing those things, I thought, “We need to get to the roof.” But, at the same time, I was thinking, “Fuck that roof. I don't want to go there.” (laughs) I sure didn't want to go there. But you don't have those opportunities to think that way. I mean, I guess you can but then you're just worthless on the battlefield. Those weird feelings of, “I don't want to go to the rooftop, the chances of me getting killed are extremely high…” but you just go. It's like jumping off the tower at boot camp or Recon school. Like 25-plus meters up you know you could make it, or you could belly flop, but you just step off anyway. And you do that when you don't want to in combat.
We were in a fight back and forth for a few hours, and it seemed like even the Delta guys got shot up. One of their guys was shot in the ear, shot in the groin protector, and one of them had been grazed in the neck. Their weapons were shot up, and they were using pistols to kill people. Just chaos really broke loose. We had to go to the rooftop. If we had lost the rooftop, we would have stood a high chance of all being murdered. So, I went to the rooftop, and it was just a grenade tossing war back and forth. We were getting shot up by a minaret (mosque tower) which was right in our peripheral, so they had the high ground on us as well.
Dudes (enemy) tried to jump onto the rooftop, threw grenades on the rooftop, dudes (enemy) were wounded on the rooftop, and our Marines were trying to get wounded bodies down while maintaining security and engaging with the enemy. Just chaos, absolute chaos. It was so hard to hear everything, and there were no personal radios back in the day, so there were one or two guys that had some in squad communication radios, but everyone else was just yelling. However, there was still some type of control that was happening, which was impressive, and that's when you see good leaders come in, and when being good at your craft really pays off. Just witnessing all that was intense. That was a life lesson right there. We ended up getting out of that house only because we couldn't make a run back to our own friendly lines because we were being absolutely “L shaped” (ambushed) and engaged from everywhere.
They definitely had the drop on us. Right next door to us was a building that had not been cleared; it was bad news. At the same time, the guys we left on the front lines were being attacked. One of our snipers had something like 21 or 23 kills just that day, 17 of which were in one engagement, and that was with a broken bolt gun. That was just one day. Everyone was actively engaged in that firefight; it was definitely a total effort. Finally, the tanks made it to our position and provided cover, allowing us to start running back and bringing our casualties with us. By this time, the Cobras (gunship helicopters) had arrived and were engaging the minaret (mosque tower) and hitting all the surrounding buildings. That famous clip (video) of hundreds of people walking through an urban area and a jet takes them out with a JDAM...that was our location. It was crazy. We were about to be straight-up murdered. It was almost like a "fix bayonets" scenario, but thank God it wasn't (laughs). To top it off, we had damaged weapons, all our sniper ammo was on the rooftop with us since we went up there to work, all our crypto, radios, night vision, ammo, and grenades for our grenade launcher were gone. They were all being destroyed up there, so we salvaged as much equipment as we could. We were bringing down not only our wounded, but also any equipment and shit that could be saved.
At the same time, we were running out of ammo inside the building. We finally made a run back to our friendly lines, where guys were already outfitting us with rockets and staging with more ammunition ready to go because they were on the rooftop at this point. Now, the fight was closing in, coming to us. It seemed never-ending. It went on for a few more hours until the sun started going down, and that was the introduction to Fallujah. That was like, “Hey, check us out. We can get close and pretty violent, and we hate you, and you're in our home. Go away.” I get it, you know. I can understand, but it was still intense. I couldn't comprehend what I didn't see, and now that I was seeing what I saw, I thought, “Dude, how many more months of this shit?” It was a free game for everybody there, and I mean, back then, the ROEs (Rules of Engagement) were insane. The battle space was crazy. And, there were so many fighters in that city fighting for their life, fighting for what they believed in, or fighting just because… trying to kill us. There was no lack of work there. There was never a dull moment. Almost every day was an all-out conflict.
Cody speaks with Joey Szatmary, friend and Owner of The Lions Den.
“My first day in the city, around afternoon time, I took a round right to the helmet from a gunfight across the street... When you’re in those types of scenarios, that close (in combat), it just really changes the game. Because, there is no question about what’s happening. It’s fight or flight. Do your job or don’t. Be first or last. It’s like there’s no in-between. ”
When it finally settled down and things got quiet that day, do you remember what you were thinking about?
Cody: I was thinking about my friends who either got killed or wounded, and I was pretty emotional. One of my best friends at the time died just five minutes away from one of the firebases where he was supposed to receive aid, and I was pissed. I was really pissed, hurt, and I was talking badly about my command because they were just driving around. What was happening in our area was a big deal, and people were always trying to go out there and see what was going on, but we needed those security vehicles for medivac. It sucked to realize that we were only five minutes away and yet we were losing people just five minutes away from actual care. That was a tough thing. Even the Delta medics who were there were doing everything they could do. Of course, they were doing more advanced stuff than our corpsmen, but our corpsmen were doing amazing work. Corpsmen back in the day were just super G's (gangsters). Those dudes were the real McCoy. Our corpsmen back in the day were basically just handed a pistol. They didn't start getting rifles until Marines started getting wounded and killed. My corpsman was straight-stacking bodies, and people were asking, “Why does this corpsman have a scope on his rifle?” My answer? “Because that corpsman was putting in the work” (laughs).
There was never a dull moment in Iraq. If you could imagine it, it could happen there. It was just crazy. I thought about when that day started dying down and was like, “Fuck. More friends are dead. How many more months of this shit?” At the time, I wasn't dreading going home. I wasn't thinking, “Oh my god, I can't wait to go home.” I was just thinking to myself, “Dude, this is a short timeline so far. We haven’t even been here that long and this is what has already happened? This is how many guys are already wounded. This is insane. These numbers are outrageous.” And you also have to think, I believed it was 2/4 (2nd Battalion, 4th Marines) and 2/2 (2nd Battalion, 2nd Marines)... were in Ramadi, fighting, doing Fallujah type work. We were looking to do work and we were just taking mad casualties and going through hellacious fighting. What was happening was making news back at home, and we were being told this was the craziest combat since Vietnam. Then, I heard Vietnam stories from SOG (MAC V SOG), and I was like, “Nah, actually… now THAT sounded pretty crazy.” But at the same time, I don't think it’s what’s happening that matters that much. I think it's how it's happening. I got tired of seeing the chaplain all the time. I got tired of him coming to do candle lighting ceremonies, and I got tired of doing the silent ceremonies for our homies that were dead. I was thinking, “Dude, what does any of this even mean?” And being eighteen years old, that shaped me. That was a culture shock. I wasn't avoiding a fight, but I also wasn't looking for a fight. But having those experiences that early on in my military career and in my life was really eye-opening.
So, for the rest of the tour that you had over in Fallujah, how would you say the rest of that went? You said there was a lot more conflict, there was a lot more that went on. How would you say that tour went overall? Did you feel successful? Did you feel like you guys did what you came there to do?
Cody: I wouldn’t say that I felt my time in Fallujah was successful. I mean, what is success on a battlefield? What did winning the war on terror in six months even mean? It took more than six months to bring in all the assets to fight. And then, how were we going to win? What was success then? Did we liberate anything? I didn't know, dude. When I think about why we were in Iraq in the first place during the whole time of the “weapons of mass destruction” thing… and those were never missions I went on… We were just clearing these big insurgent-infested cities that had significant tactical, operational, and strategic significance. I didn't feel like a failure. I guess I didn't even feel like I succeeded in anything either. I was definitely thinking more on the tactical side of things. I never thought, “Oh, my country is going to be so proud of me.” I never thought about that, nor did I even care about that. It was just weird at that time in the Marine Corps and in the military. I don't think the Marine Corps or the military knew how to handle what was happening there. The amount of PTSD and TBIs that came from there… I got a Motrin and a cigarette as I was throwing up, right after I got a bullet to my helmet. TBIs weren't a thing until years later. They didn't realize, “Oh, we're just kind of stirring the pot day by day.” I mean, it is what it is because at that point… we were really focused on the mission.
Months later, we pulled out of the city and started changing up our tactics, patrolling around outside the city and doing a lot of vehicle drop-offs and a lot of soft patrolling where we deployed our sniper teams with the infantry companies and platoons as they did missions and then went out to do our thing. Everything changed. At this point in time, we had more casualties. We were taking combat replacements. Dudes were getting called up from the Inactive Reserve (IR). They were a few months out from retiring, getting out of the Marine Corps, and they were now activated. They were like, “Dude, I was at the pool punching tickets, and here I am in Fallujah.” That was crazy to see… “Damn, we have combat replacements, and they're cycling through.” It was just like how the movies are, these guys were getting taken out pretty quickly. I couldn't imagine what those men were going through, having this whole life and a family or whatever they may or may not have had, and then, “Oh, hey, by the way, you're being activated, and you're being thrown into Fallujah.” “What? What is that?” “Oh, you'll find out. No training for you. Here's your ticket.” Now they were in this place where they were just executing a task. They weren't invested. Their mindset was probably not there. It was just crazy, a crazy dynamic for the whole mission. It slowly died down because we weren't just hammer-fisting this whole place, and we were able to do a lot more sniping missions, a lot more surveillance, and carrying in different approaches. We were bringing a lot of air assets into what we were doing. But then it was… I don't know, man, it’s like you were sitting around a big pan cooking bacon. You're going to get popped with grease eventually. No place was safe, and no time was ever dull.
I remember being at this thing called "the train trestles," and it was right outside the city. There was a main highway across this bridge, and there was this train that was an active train that would go across the city. I remember one day a dude (enemy) with a parachute and a tank grenade and he threw it out at one of our teams that was there, and I was just thinking, “Did that just happen?” I remember cars on a bridge that were doing drive-bys, or an army convoy that just gets hit and they're just shooting in a giant 360, and you're thinking, “Oh my god, did that just happen?” It just never ended. It was like the Looney Tunes over there. I remember when we were leaving Fallujah, we were only given one magazine, and I don't think it was even 30 rounds. We had a couple of pairs of night vision goggles for the drive back to another base on our 7-ton trucks. We were apparently far away from conflict, but I was just like, “Are you serious? This is crazy, bro.” (laughs) I remember being in one firefight and one of my homies got shot in the head and we were holding in his skull. Another dude got shot in the foot, our Major got shot in the head, and another guy got shot in the arm. I remember thinking, “What the hell is going on here?” There was no place you could go that was safe.
And there I was, in the back of a 7-ton, leaving the battlespace, but I only had half a magazine. My butt was super puckered because I was thinking, "This doesn’t feel right to me." You couldn't let your guard down, but at the same time, you were on your way home. At that particular time, six guys from my sniper team had come home early, about 29-30 days early, to attend sniper school because things were dying down. I believe Phantom Fury had already started around the same time. We were preparing to go back to sniper school to become certified and graduate. We were all looking forward to coming home. For me personally, continuing that process was important. I had joined the Marine Corps to be a Scout Sniper, and on my first deployment, I was in a sniper platoon, which was awesome. Now, I was going to attend this course to earn my title and continue on with my career. I had successfully completed my first deployment. I was no longer a boot. I was one of the very few guys who had a lot of experience, and it was just a weird feeling. That's a lot of things, I guess, for an eighteen-year-old. Everything about my life had changed.
“I remember being in one firefight and one of my homies got shot in the head and we were holding in his skull. Another dude got shot in the foot, our Major got shot in the head, and another guy got shot in the arm. I remember thinking, “What the hell is going on here?” There was no place you could go that was safe.”
Watching those operators do their thing while they were over there, how much did that form your ideas of wanting to be Special Operations?
Cody: I thought it was awesome that those guys (Delta Operators) were super mature and professional. They definitely didn't fit the stigma that I saw in the Marine Corps. They were force multipliers, and that's what I really enjoyed. They were all leaders, and no one was micromanaging in that unit. They were independent force multipliers, and that was super interesting. I didn't fanboy too much, but we had a few guys that did. Those dudes were great, and they weren't frontin’ to get fanboys either. They were like, “Hey, we're just here to do our job too. Let's work together and help out. And hey, let's use our cool toys like a revolver with a scope on it.” I remember thinking, “Is that real? Oh, it works too. Nice.” (laughs) Seeing them, I now saw this higher version of what was possible. I'd heard about them before, but actually seeing them made me realize there was always something bigger, always something better. There was another level of what "right" looked like, and I was able to apply that standard and pick and pull from the leadership that I saw from them and the way they acted. I incorporated that into my E-3 (Private First Class) life that I was living at the time. Being exposed to that level of professionalism and experience definitely shifted my mindset.
Obviously, there was no MARSOC at the time. It was Recon. Did you know that you wanted to go Recon at that point, or were you just intent on the Scout Sniper route and then seeing where it went?
Cody: I ended up being a team leader for my next sniper deployment or my next infantry deployment as a sniper. And after that, during the 2005-2006 timeframe, I was like, “Man, I have to get out of my platoon. I have to do something different.” I really didn’t like the way the platoon was going. To me, a lot more handouts were happening, a lot more lack of respect was happening, and a lot of cultural stuff. I mean, I grew up a certain way in the sniper community where you earned it, and every single day you're under observation. If you weren't a sniper, you didn't do certain things. The platoon was kind of just getting different and I wasn't about it. I didn't really enjoy it that much anymore. And, I felt like I kind of reached my peak. I felt that if I would have stayed any longer, I would have been in charge of my platoon, but it would have just been one of those things like… “I have $5,000. I know I can buy a $5,000 car and well, that's kind of easy. It’s almost a given. I want that Ferrari though, I don't have the money for it, but I'm going to make it happen.” That's kind of like where I was in my career. I didn’t want it to be easy.
On my second deployment, I worked with a bunch of the Force Recon guys, I was friends with them. I did a lot of shit with their sniper teams and a lot of courses with them and all these types of workups and on the way home from Iraq, I'm like, “Hey, how do I come over? What do I have to do?” They started telling me about their indoctrination and that was my main focus. I ended up signing up for that before I came home. On leave, I'm swimming the whole time in cammies, I’m sucking a lot, and I’m getting yelled at the YMCA a lot because my head went underwater (laughs). But it was time to go. I just felt it. If I stayed, I was going to be comfortable and then be regretful. I was scared, obviously. Command was like, “Oh… you did a great job. What do you want to do?” I said back, “I want to go to Ranger School.” They replied, “Okay, we'll send you to Ranger School.” I remember working with another guy who was arranging the time and going over my creed and I'm getting ready for school. I was visualizing this whole thing. I remember showing up at the pool on my base because that's where the Pendleton pool was, where Recon does all their screenings. I remember showing up at the barracks at five o'clock in the morning, eating a banana. I was drinking water and was just thinking, “Oh my god. What am I getting into?” I was just freaking out and then I showed up at the pool. The steam was coming off the water, people were in black silkies, black hoodies... and it was just a completely out of place feeling, and next thing you know, I was getting in this cold fucking water. I remember thinking, “Dude, this is the real thing.”
Had you already stepped into the Recon world before MARSOC was formed?
Cody: Force Recon was like the top tier outside of MARSOC. And to even get to that thing (MARSOC), you had to be a Force Recon guy. Since I was a Sergeant, I was able to try out for the Force Reconnaissance screening. Some of the other guys I was there with, were all Sergeants at this point in time, and the Force is a more senior unit and so that was it, man. I mean, making it to that and suffering through that was tough. I was not a great swimmer. I didn't even successfully make it through the swimming portion. On my very first screening, they were just like, “Oh, hey, this guy is either stupid or just doesn't quit. We could probably train him.” And that's actually how I got an invite back to go do it all over again and pay my dues again. Then I went to pre-BRC, which is the course you go to before you go to BRC, which is Basic Reconnaissance Course. At the time, it was in Coronado.
We had to go through the two-week Recon Indoctrination program, which Battalion Reconnaissance runs. I was screening for Force Reconnaissance, and I was training with a bunch of privates and private first classes and a lot of them were kind of butthurt, some were actually really cool, but some of them were butthurt. Because me and my friends, we were on kind of like a Force Reconnaissance contract where we had to pass all this, then pass the Force Indoc (indoctrination), and then go to Recon school, and then we were going to make it to Force. And this one guy wanted to be in with Force (Recon) for a long time, and it just wasn't happening. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, though. It made for an interesting dynamic the entire time. But I think it was all out of good love. And if it wasn't, it still made me stronger. I went to BRC and smoked it.
It was fun and definitely challenging. Like I said before though, a lot of things in life are hard, but I was imagining it... I was fantasizing about all of it. I remember being in BRC and doing the SEAL obstacle course one day. It was crazy to live out those experiences. When I say it was easy, there were definitely times that were hard. There were plenty of times in just the training like pre-BRC where I wanted to quit, but I never told an instructor that. I would jaw-jack with my friends and be like, "Oh my god, we're going to the pool today. I don't know if I'm going to make it. I'm just going to quit tomorrow, fuck this." I had to tell myself to get my mind to take my body there. And once my body got there, I knew I wasn't going to quit.
It was all about the little things I did to make it fun and interesting. I was never scared; I made it comical. I would tell myself, “I'm not quitting after this mile, but for sure after the next one.” I gave myself these future goals, but I never actually stopped during the process. If I could see past what was happening and focus on what I was doing in the moment, I'd realize that time wasn't going to stop and I knew I wasn't going to quit. So unless I died, I was going to make it to the next visualization checkpoint. That's how I built up my entire career. Nothing was easy, but that thought made it easier. I enjoyed it a lot more because I wanted to be there. I visualized it the entire time.
How long were you in Force Recon before MARSOC got stood up?
Cody: I wasn’t in Force Recon very long before MARSOC. I made Force right at the beginning of 2006. I think I was in jump school in October of that year. By the time I came back from jump school at Fort Benning, they just stood down the 1st Force Reconnaissance flag colors and raised the first Marine Special Operations Battalion guidon flag and I was thinking, “Oh shit.” That kind of hurt us in the pipeline. There was a lot of speculation. A lot of people were saying, “Det One is getting disbanded and they're coming to 1st and 2nd Force Recon and some Recon platoons are going to come to 1st and 2nd Force and 1st and 2nd Force are forming Marine Special Operations Battalion (MSOB).” It was crazy at the time. All this happened in like eight or nine months.
Fortunately, my previous experiences kept me there too because at the time, we didn't have a pipeline or selection process. There was no ITC, only merit and SOCOM (Special Operations Command Standards). It was a simple question of "Do you meet these requirements?" and some guys were told "yes," and others were told "no." A lot of change of command in Force started happening. Within a few months, we were preparing for our first rotation. Even though there was still no schoolhouse at the time, we were deploying as platoons, still as a Force Reconnaissance structure. It was a quick transition, and we were getting right into the pipeline with SOCOM to get our certification trainings happening. This brought in a ton of money, which gave us better access to different assets such as attachments, weaponry, insert platforms, and training missions. Training just got a whole new facelift, and it was super cool in preparation for our first deployment.
So, Rumsfeld (Secretary Donald Rumsfeld) comes into the room, goes to the Marine Corps Commanders and says, “Hey, you guys need Special Operations.” And they say, “Yeah, sure. Okay. Whatever.” He walks out, and they never form it. And then he comes back in the room like six months later and says, “You guys need Special Operations. By the way, that wasn't a request.” And they have to stand it up. You guys weren't loved, right?
Cody: We were definitely not loved because we were still fairly new, and then going downrange on my first rotation with MARSOC (2007 timeframe, Afghanistan) and linking up with the SEALS and the Green Berets down there, it was an interesting dynamic, and we definitely were bastardized. Not a lot of love there from those commands, but I mean, I get it, man. I'd be pissed off too. Like, “Hey, what did you guys do to get here? Why did you guys get these missions?” But you know what Marines do best is we perform. We put out. I thought our missions were really good, and that we were extremely successful. There was a lot of controversy in the first few rotations with MARSOC. There was speculation… I don't know what it was. The first few rotations from both coasts were nothing like the next rotations, the third rotations from each coast. After six months, four total companies had deployed, and it was a completely different battlespace. It was a completely different involvement for us.
I mean, our teams were formed, we were broken down completely differently, and we were fully enabled. We were bringing to the table what the other SOF units weren’t. We had all our engineers, our EOD (Explosive Ordinance), our medics, our dogs, our linguists, all this shit is all internal, our controllers, everything we own is part of our team. Other units are having to basically leverage other assets to bring them to the fold. MARSOC really started making waves downrange and showing what they could actually do and what they actually could get accomplished. At the time, a lot of the Marine infantry units were there and MARSOC was working alongside them. It was a really good dynamic for the most part. Most of the officers and senior enlisted from the big Marine Corps weren't a big fan of MARSOC guys, because we were showing up in different cammies, talking to their guys on base, bringing them food, looking out for them, and making sure we were doing our part to make sure everyone is taken care of.
I never was on a team where we didn't take care of the grunts somehow, the little things like making sure we’d given them heaters because we had an abundance of gear. When we got things, we made sure we spread all of that love because 9 times out of 10, it was those guys and gals guarding our gates. They were our outside perimeter; they were the ones doing the combat patrolling and giving us information. We had to take care of those dudes because they were getting treated like crap. They're getting treated like Marines, with a lot of really strict rules that don't make sense, and no comfort items. “You will only blink when I say to blink.” And that's really hard because there’s a different Marine Corps when you leave America. It often felt like, “I don't know how to be a leader in combat or in general so I’m going to instill Gestapo tactics for you and I’m going to make it way more stressful and micromanage.” Then, when it's time to fight, you're absolutely pissed off and you're not even focused. Like, “Well, it'd be great if I actually had a bunker that worked.”
You had an opportunity to impact those younger guys and you did.
Cody: It was a completely different experience. That was the cool thing about MARSOC; I was able to do more now. I had more freedom of movement and the capability of working on such a small team, with various ranks briefing very high-ranking individuals, and we were able to get away with it. At the time, we weren't wearing rank, and some of us were wearing multi-cam uniforms. We realized we were being treated differently in our Marine Corps uniform because of our rank showing. They would say, “Oh, you're just an E-7 or you're just an E-6.” I remember thinking, “Bro, we just brought you hella information to keep your guys safe because you guys keep doing the same dumb stuff, and you're refusing to take input from us.” So, we bypassed them and went to the squad leaders (laughs) and said, “Listen, man. Here's this packet that nobody wants to listen to just because we have beards and we're wearing multi-cam.” That part was really frustrating, especially from our own Marine Corps. Later in the years, obviously, the Marine Corps seemed like they completely did not like MARSOC.
The impact that you were able to make on some of the youth and some of the Marines coming up… What was it like going on that first rotation in 2007 with MARSOC?
Cody: It was a new and cool experience for me. Unlike my previous deployments where we patrolled on foot, this time we were in gun trucks the entire time. I had never experienced anything like that before, and I was assigned as a "trunk monkey" in the back of a gun truck. I had a .50 cal sniper rifle (Sasser) and a machine gun on a swing mount, a mortar tube right behind me, and all kinds of gadgets and toys that I didn't have to carry around. I was really excited about it. The landscape in Afghanistan was similar to Iraq, with everything being L-shaped. We were on three-day patrols everywhere we went, rotating every three days.
What was the dynamic like down in Helmand?
Cody: I would say that Helmand was pretty kinetic, but not at an Iraq status. It involved a lot of mid to long-range engagements. At that time, there were still many residual Russian mines scattered from the Afghan-Russian environment, and we were constantly popping tires. It seemed like we were always trying to gain the plateau, get the high ground, and guess what? That's where all the booby-traps were. It was a really muddy conflict, with mid to long-range types of engagement, making it definitely a sniper’s playground. It was also a playground for "call for fire" and "close air support."
It was interesting because, at the time, we were doing humanitarian assistance. We were now injecting different modalities to acquire information that I was never exposed to before, and we had various different technologies that I had never been exposed to before. Seeing it all come to fruition at this place where we seemed to be doing a lot of damage was just different. Everything about it was a different experience. Afghanistan was cold. We were actually training for Iraq before this deployment, and we were on the ship heading over to Kuwait when we got redirected to go to Afghanistan. That seemed like, “Whoa, super specialized.” I was exposed to a whole new world. MARSOC was just so junior (infancy stages). I was in the second company from the west coast to deploy, and at the time, I think I was in the third or fourth company to ever leave to go anywhere. It was super cool. I was the first one from my platoon or company, and that was obviously super awesome. But yeah, it was just different. It's kind of hard to explain.
Did you notice some of this starting to take a toll on you from your time in Fallujah and going over to Afghanistan? Did you notice the mental toll that it was taking on you?
Cody: I started to have suicidal spells, and it seemed like that was stemming from my friends who got killed on previous deployments. Around that time, I was in MARSOC. But when I was in Force Recon, there was a lot of stress as well. I was married, and that was toxic and crazy. I was trying to figure out how to be human, how to be a Marine, how to be the guy, how to be the billet, and how to do the thing that I was supposed to be doing. At the same time, I was dealing with outbursts and memory issues already. This was four or five years after my first significant TBI. Each deployment, I was stacking some form of TBI from explosions, getting thrown out of a vehicle — insert "if it could happen to someone, it probably happened to me." It started taking its toll on me. I even remember trying to get help back in the day, but I stopped because that stigma was real. It seemed like if you go to get help, people are going to think you're crazy. You're going to lose your job, your clearance, or be unable to go to free fall (Military Freefall School).
Back then, it was like you were doomed for trying to get help because of all the stigmas associated with it. Most people don't do things in the military, not because the order says they can't, they just think that they can't do it. It keeps them from actually doing the thing they should be doing for themselves. Most people think that if you do get help, even some of the practitioners, they don't even know the truth about what's going to happen to your security clearance or your employment status. I just cut it all off in my head. I thought, “I'll just suck it up, dude. I have goals. I'm trying to deploy. I'm trying to do all these cool things.” It made the dynamic of trying to get help interesting because I realized I was such a new guy in this community now that I had wanted to be a part of (MARSOC). I needed to choose, “Do I want to be that guy that is getting his head checked? That guy that's getting his sleep fixed that's new to this unit or that guy that's shutting up and coloring and doing his job and being part of the team and doing the things that he needs to get done?” And that's what I was mainly focused on. But ultimately, in like 2008-2009, I really started to feel some of the TBI effects creeping in.
How many rotations did you do with MARSOC?
Cody: I deployed to Germany, Africa, Iraq, and Afghanistan. I went three times to Afghanistan with MARSOC. Every time was different. Every time the teams got cooler, our assets and our capabilities got cooler. I got back from our first rotation, and I went to our schoolhouse, helped start up our entire pipeline, our selection, our instructor training program, and then the ITC (Individual Training Course). I ended up putting the first three classes through that whole pipeline. I taught the Advanced Sniper Course from MARSOC, I taught various reconnaissance surveillance platforms. It was super cool to see those Marines and invest in those guys that were going to be coming to my team. Some guys would always have that hard gate (by the book) mentality whereas others understood that like, “Hey, it's up to us to have a vested interest in making sure these guys are taken care of and held accountable but valued at the same time, not belittled because we’re going to be on their team in a year or two years, whenever we get our time done here at the schoolhouse.” I ended up deploying from all three MARSOC battalions and I knew pretty much everyone. It was pretty awesome to have that level of connectivity. Your reputation is everything in that job.
Sometimes it's, “Oh, this guy's a killer,” but he's a piece of shit leader back at home. He can't even look out for his guys or have any accountability. He's not a good tactician. He just got in a gnarly gunfight and the ego side of people responds with, “Oh, this guy's a killer. He's a savage.” But that's the worst thing a leader can be: not very well-rounded. So, you're always reinventing. At least, I was always reinventing who I was, and what leaders I was learning from. It was kind of like boot camp where you could tell who the guys were that just wanted to be on a team for the rest of their careers. They are the ones that are like, “I'm never going to get promoted. I just want to be on a team.” I was just thinking, “Bro, that's a loser mindset. I hear you bitch about things. How are you going to change them if you never move up?” I had a lot of complaints about stuff, but the only way I was going to change it was by moving up. I wanted to get promoted. I wanted to be in charge of a team. I was ready to step into this role and provide value unlike some of the things I’d seen in the past. No one is a douche like a Marine can be a douche. When it comes to one another, a lot of guys put each other down or have a scarcity mindset. That's what happens when you're constantly told, “You're not special. You're no different. But hey, sacrifice more than anyone in this organization for your family, your time away from home, your time away from your kids, and just keep on doing those things.” And then like, “Hey, by the way, make sure you're not wearing white socks” (laughs). There was a lot of silly nonsense.
No one was looking to get their ego stroked or patted on the back but you can't expand unless you expand. We were never going to level up if we didn't level up our outlooks and our mindsets. And, a lot of that was our senior enlisted… we had a bunch of old guys in our unit. There were some that provided a lot of value for sure and a lot of them were my mentors for my entire career for the most part in the Force Reconnaissance/MARSOC space. And then some of them were just straphangers. Old methodologies, old ways, old tactics, and very narrow views fit the exact form of the Marine Corps that kept us in check and made sure we were still being Marines. I was thinking, “Dude, we're obviously always going to be Marines, because A: You'll never let us not be that. And B: you'll never let us not remember that.” They would (USMC) always find a way to kind of bring us down on some level, which is fine, because our Marines are resilient. It’s what kind of made things interesting. We thought, “Big Marine Corps might be hating us, or whatever but we're putting in the work. We're doing what Marines do best. We have a task, condition, and standard, and we're going to execute. We're going to produce the best students. We're going to make sure these dudes are smart. We're going to make sure these guys are strong because they're going to, at the time, our first 2nd Battalion.”
We were strictly Afghanistan-involved, running three teams and three companies before we ever went to four teams and four companies, and dudes were just turning and burning. They were coming back home for a few months and then deploying again. We were going to Helmand Province, Sangin, very contentious spots, very actively involved areas, and that took a toll on our guys. You'd go do that repeatedly, and you'd come back home and get treated like shit because you didn't do “insert some check in the box that needs to get done,” and it was like, “What? I'm not above it, but damn. I can't even come home and drop my bag off first before I'm just getting drilled (beat up) about something silly.” But everything's always silly to you compared to what it is for someone else. I think a lot of us had that mindset, at least I did, but I'd think to myself in the moment, “No one's going to tell me I'm special, but I'm going to act the part, dude. I'm going to take care of my dudes. I'm going to use my rank how it's intended to be used. I'm going to force multiply every chance I can. I'm going to make sure that I'm doing my part because these other people don't really control me.” They have their say, but at the end of the day, I have a say in how I am going to show up.
Most of the guys did show up as professionally as they possibly could because we knew what was at stake. Other sister services were looking at us. The whole time, we were like, “No, bro. We're not punks. We're not coming for your jobs. We're just coming to work alongside you. And just so happens, if we take some of your jobs, it's because we're actually doing pretty good.” That's really what happened as MARSOC progressed. The leadership transformed, the ideology transformed, the training transformed, the standards transformed. And we seemed to almost have this legacy where we had officers that were going into the courses that were now holding higher rank billets where it went from ground zero to this new level that gave us a little more skin in the game. In my personal opinion, I think MARSOC absolutely crushed it. It had become very educational and very resourceful. If you can do those two things on the battlefield, in being self-sustaining and very resourceful with all the assets that you need to adapt and not be a one-trick pony, but find new modalities and methodologies to go execute your tasks, you are a force multiplier. In my personal and professional opinion, that's exactly what we were at the time.
“In my personal opinion, I think MARSOC absolutely crushed it. It had become very educational and very resourceful. If you can do those two things on the battlefield, in being self-sustaining and very resourceful with all the assets that you need to adapt and not be a one-trick pony, but find new modalities and methodologies to go execute your tasks, you are a force multiplier. In my personal and professional opinion, that’s exactly what we were at the time.”
You were an extremely fast riser through the ranks. Some say you were the fastest up the chain to Master Sergeant. What did you want to see happen with MARSOC? What was the goal going forward? You're in a high position, you're finally starting to really impact some change. Were you happy with the direction it was going?
Cody: I wasn't really happy with how things were going. I wanted to see a standard, but I felt like that was lacking somewhat. Sometimes, I felt like the team guy, the CSO (Critical Skill Operator), wasn't the main focus in a lot of ways. But at the same time, I saw how the CSO was like cancer - I saw both sides of that position. It was like, “We can't get into the massages or the therapy sessions.” And I'm like, “But you didn't even sign your name on the list. You didn't even take that first step.” But then sometimes, I saw where that wasn't the case, and we were being stack jumped by support personnel who just checked in. I felt there was a big miscommunication about what we were. It seemed to be that there were “those” and “them,” and there was this definitive line and it affected the way we were treated. It was like, “Yo, dude, we're all working together. So why am I walking into our headquarters building getting mean mugged by this administrative person?” I didn't treat people like shit, and that's how I took care of my guys. But I'm like, "Dude, why is this guy mean-mugging me? This dude doesn't even know me."
I'm actually on a tactical picture, at least at the time, on the wall in my headquarters building because they're setting up a historical lineage site. Why are we mean mugging our own? Why are we peacocking and chest puffing in front of each other? Why aren't we one? I felt like that was just a big cyst that needed to get popped. For me, being in the teams and working my way up from like point man all the way up to being in charge of my entire company, with four teams and over a hundred support and enabler people, and on top of that, in deployment, I'm managing SEALs, Green Berets, and all these multiple teams in multiple countries all at once. I had some pretty big responsibilities and seeing that level and that perspective of things, I just realized that a lot of the standards were lacking. There was this big stigma, I think in the military in general, where if you mess up, you get kind of promoted. That person has been in long enough where they're a very senior rank, and there aren't many people that are that rank or available to fill this very key position because everyone else on the team is doing something else. I noticed that a lot and got tired of it.
I realized that there were a lot of guys out there who were really chasing their chest candy at the expense of the dudes on the ground. They weren't thinking about how they could support our guys and gals operating in the battlespace; instead, they were focused on how they could influence the battlespace. That part pissed me off a lot. And then seeing people hold their tongues and not speak the truth to the commander when he asked if anyone had anything to say, frustrated me even more. I thought to myself, “Bro, we're in the business of life and death. We're straight-up killing and influencing battlespace. How are we scared to speak our truth and not hold these guys accountable?” I saw how people were trying to backstab each other, so I was really about setting that standard. I remember I had a team guy who was an E-8. He was honestly a great guy, just not a great E-8 team chief. He wasn't a great leader at the time, and it wasn't anything against him. He was just a product of the environment where you get passed around, don't get held accountable, and get moved to different positions that you might not want. But the Marine Corps and the unit are telling you, “Hey, now you have to do it.” So now they feel weird because they don't want to do it. They're not prepared to do it, but they're forced to do it. And if they say anything about it, insert whatever name people are going to call them. It's kind of crazy.
I had a friend who graduated as an E-7 because, back in the day, when MARSOC started, there was no rank restriction. He was, I think, the first class, and they graduated him because he passed everything. They made him team chief, and he's in charge of a team now, but he's new as shit. He didn't want to be team chief; he just wanted to learn how to do the job. People gave him so much shit, but he had the courage to say, “Hey, I'm not prepared. I don't know any of this. And it's not right for the team.” At the time, it made sense to me, but I mean, it's kind of like a dog-eat-dog world where people say, “What? You're not doing your mission? You can't do your job?” And they just put you out to pasture.
You hear about these other units where if you're a younger guy but you're the most seasoned and senior, you're the guy in charge no matter what rank you hold. The whole system of rank is just like a pipe dream to me, but I do know that with every level I went up, I had the opportunity to influence those below and sometimes even above me just by setting an example and empowering people. Do you empower people? You'd be surprised by what can be accomplished. You'd be amazed at what stigmas you can change just by making your team or unit feel like they're truly cared for, seen, heard, and understood. That's what's lacking, and being able to look out for these guys and gals while I was in the military was the coolest thing ever. Forget all the combat stories, they're just stories that helped forge who I am today. But seeing these people transform their lives because they're given belief, power, and authority - that's what's inspiring. That's what a force multiplier is. Many units are full of force multipliers, but the problem is that most of the time they're just not treated that way.
So either you'll never know or these people get frustrated and leave. That's why I wanted to take over the unit. My goal was to take over the unit, and hell, I wanted to be in charge of SOCOM. That fit my plan perfectly. I completely could have done it if I stayed for 30 years. I had 12 years left to do all these things, and none of my guys senior to me would have even been in the chain of command at that point. I would have outlived them in years in the military. But I was just as senior as most of them because, at the time, I was already an E-8 for three years. I still had like 11 years left if I maxed out to 30 years in the military. As I got older, I saw how I was suffering, and other guys were suffering as well. People need advocates because no matter how tough some guys are on the battlefield, they're just not that tough themselves. They need people who can see that and support, educate, and encourage them so that they're not scared like I was when I was an E-6 trying to get mental health help, and there were all these negative stigmas associated with it. How are we supposed to grow and change if we can't even change the way we think and see? When do we become the problem instead of the solution in our own system that we can actually control?
Did you want to make it to 30 years in the Marine Corps?
Cody: I didn’t want to make it to 30 years in the Corps. I just knew that I had that space to do that if I wanted. So, I was an E-8 already. When it came to pitching myself to MARSOC, I was very able. I've already done a couple of joint billets at this point. I realized that if I wanted to diversify myself, I had to go do things that were uncomfortable or may not be as cool. But dude, that's where I was going to learn. All the knowledge is there. It's not where I'm comfortable at, it's where I have no idea what it is. But being a young guy and looking like I did - fully tattooed, I walked confidently, I spoke up for myself, I spoke up for other people. That all wasn't really encouraged. They knew that I was going to say stuff. I remember, plenty of times, “Cody, don't ask the General any questions” because I'm going to ask something - not as a child, but thought-provoking. I'm curious. I don't believe in blind orders. I was a Marine that was always asking, “Why? Why am I doing this?” Not like I'm challenging you or being combative. If I now know why, I have a belief in it, then I can make sure that I'm doing everything in my power to make it as accessible as possible - especially when times are going to get very challenging.
But I realized that wasn't a thing. Luckily, I had a really good support network and a lot of great senior enlisted that, throughout my entire MARSOC/Marine Corps career, were really looking out for me. I definitely didn't have a clean slate the entire time. From accusations or investigations, or people saying whatever the hell people say when they're butthurt and they talk shit and try to put people down, to have these older dudes speaking up for me, that's powerful. It made me feel really loved and grateful that these old timers, these guys that have been in 20 plus years, don't owe me shit, and are just sticking their neck out for me. It makes you feel good, like people actually care. They're encouraging you, saying, “Man, you're such a good leader, bro. This unit is not going to be the same when you leave.” Towards the end of my career, I began to realize that Cody Alford and the other members of my team who are still on active duty are not being replaced.
There are no versions of them coming through the pipeline anytime soon. At the time, there was an Instagram/social media trend where you attached your flag to the back of your plate carrier because you saw it on social media. This era of people was coming through the pipeline, and this era of officers was growing from wherever they came from in the Marine Corps to where they are now. It created a new dynamic. A standard is crucial as organizations grow and develop. Old ways do not necessarily produce new results. We should adapt and overcome as times change. Struggling to do so is always a part of it. If you care about something and it represents you, why wouldn't you want to produce a great product? Nothing else made me feel as bad as when I went up to a briefing in Germany to operate in another country, and they asked, “Oh, you guys are the MARSOC people?” I responded, “Who are you? You're like a monkey in a suit. Are you this fucking incompetent? Is nothing serious to you? Is there no respect in the game that you come from?” It was just annoying.
Bro, you're giving us guns and grenades and telling us to go do the work and make decisions by ourselves, but when I come here to this circus arena, things are a joke.” I just never understood that. And I never really liked being back at home because downrange, you're in your flow state, and it's really easy actually, so I enjoyed those moments. But as I got older, I didn't enjoy any of them. I realized it was all a fucking system, and it's all just bureaucracy - all red tape. The farther you go up, the crazier it is, and you start seeing things behind the curtain. It just really started to change my perspective on everything. But you know, I've always been a different thinker. There weren't a lot of peers or senior guys like me. So, I mean, what was I supposed to expect? When you're a different person compared to the pack, you're going to encounter different resistance - good or bad. I'm not saying I was better than anybody; I was just different. But that's also what made my experience extremely unique and fulfilling.
So, you did 15 ½ years. Did you want to make it to 20? Was that the goal? Or once you were up that high, and you started the med board process, or whatever happened at that point, did you realize, “Hey, man, I'm good with it. I’m ready to go.”
Cody: I actually just got back from my last deployment - this was my sixth combat deployment, and my seventh deployment in total - and I was butthurt. There was a lot of bad leadership and drama stuff going on. It was like Desperate Housewives with guns and air platforms. At times, I was just so pissed off. And a few of my senior guys were feeling the same way. We had just come back home and we were venting about everything. I had to go talk to the shrink - we call it home location decompression. They said, “Hey, we did your admin stuff. We talked to the chaplain, he talked to the psych, he talked to the sports medicine person, he made sure your pay is good to go.” Then, you get to go home for like 96 hours before you come back to work and start checking things back in before you take leave. When I got to the psych, he asked me, “So, tell me what's going on.”
I said, “Screw you, bro. I've told my story like a gazillion times. Nothing's ever happened. I'll tell you what. I need Adderall, and I need my sleep fixed now. And like, if you can do that for me, I'll talk to you.” This guy, his name is Kevin. He's literally the greatest that organization has ever had, in my personal opinion. And anyways, he looked after me, he got me going on the right path. This was about 13 ½ years in. I came back from my sixth deployment. I’d say seven, seven deployments total. I spent just under 90 days in Africa, so I didn't receive my ribbon. I only made it for about 70 days, guys. Sorry, I wasn't a true hero. But as it was my sixth combat deployment, I was done, dude. That's when Kevin started getting me help, as I realized I was so tired and always fatigued. I went to our traumatic brain injury or TBI clinic, Intrepid Spirit Center, at Camp Lejeune, and did my sleep study test. Long story short, I finally met with a neurosurgeon. He said, “Hey dude, what if I told you that you couldn't be a Marine anymore?” I was thrown off, and I said, “Whaaat?” At the same time, I always told myself I would only get out of the Marine Corps early if I retired or medically retired. Those were my only two options because I lived in scarcity. I was living in fear of what I would do when I got out. I thought I had to do twenty years because I needed my retirement. I had this vision, this mindset about all this type of stuff. So I went to my command, to my medical staff there, and said, “Dude, what do I do?” They told me about this thing called TERA (Temporary Early Retirement Authority).
If you're part of Special Operations and you've served for at least 15 years, and you're found unfit on the medical board, you can early retire and submit your retirement package. They introduced TERA back in the day when they were trying to get people out of the military early. They would say, “Oh, hey, you've been an E-5 for 12 years. It's time to go. Congratulations, early retirement, hustle away, go.” So, when I heard about this, I thought, “Okay, that's cool. But that's like a year and a half out. What do I do?” Well, little did I know that the medical board process is super long, and I was undergoing a lot of medical treatments because I thought, “Dude, I'm getting out because I'm either getting medically retired, or I'm just getting out. I'm clearly suffering. I'm not going to make it 20 years.” It was just like anything else for me; you start working on yourself once, and you start pulling that string, and everything starts coming unraveled. “Oh, my head hurts. Oh, shit, my back hurts. Oh, now I'm actually giving myself some time to be real and be human.”
I'm going through all these different treatments for about a year and a half, trying to set myself up for success because I knew that I was going to have a much harder time getting any sort of help as a civilian, even as a retiree, than I was because active duty takes priority. So, I was milking the active-duty aspect as much as I could because I knew, in a matter of months, I was going to be retired or out. At this point, cognitively, I was just crashing, and I was on three different uppers to stay awake: just caffeine all the time, passing out continuously. I was completely stressed out of my life. It was my main mission to create the least amount of responsibility that I possibly could. Try being a Special Operations guy who's been an E-8 for three years and then go up to your boss and say, “Hey, I need no responsibility.” That's a great conversation. But I realized that if I didn't do that, something was going to suffer. I had to stand up for myself, and that was hard. It was almost like a dog-eat-dog community. Like, “Well, we're invincible.”
Meanwhile, my homies are crushing a case of Miller Lite at night, they're not stable. They're just surviving; they’re on fumes. At the time, dudes weren’t talking about, “Hey, bro. How you feeling, man?” No one was talking about this shit. No one's talking about any of this stuff, and it was like, “I want to go get checked out, but I'm afraid they're going to take my clearance.” So, I went on this mission to tell everyone what I was doing, how I got on testosterone, how I got Viagra, how I got my sleep study, how I got Adderall, how I went to this brain appointment, and this brain procedure. I started telling people all these things because there were so many stigmas that were keeping guys from getting any help. I'm like, “Dude, you're not going to lose your clearance.” I have the top clearance that you could possibly have. And, you know, they re-did my stuff before I even got out (laughs). I'm saying like, “You don't lose these things.” But there's this big stigma that keeps people from getting help. And then at this point in my life, I realized there is entities inside MARSOC, at least at the time, it's called the Care Coalition. I think it's now called Warrior Care Coalition. We had this guy, Bryan Link, who was a retired Sergeant Major in MARSOC. In my personal opinion, he was a real Marine Sergeant Major, insert whatever stigma you want to associate with that. But as a retiree civilian doing his job, the wealth of knowledge he had, always helping dudes, he was the man. He was always trying to push these briefs and bring awareness. I'm now finding out more about these things that exist. He used to say, “Bro, I can't get guys to go to these things.” So, I started taking his PowerPoints, telling people about them, and saying, “Do you know what we have in this building, like all these different treatment aspects, and we have all these different things?”
I realized there was actually a group of guys at the unit trying to help people out. We have our human performance staff, these civilians, collegiate coaches, insert crazy years of college degrees for psychology, and just crazy stuff. They want to help the guys. But the guys don't know about it. Or if they do know about it, they stay away from it because they don't want to be judged by their own team. They don't want to risk missing a school or being deployed. The pipeline for MARSOC is a damn year and a half and that's a long time. It's a long commitment. And then to just be like, “Oh, hey, you said you had an issue? Later, bro.” Most guys don't want to do that, so they do what they do best. They suffer and they push forward until something breaks. At this point in my life, everything was breaking and as I pondered more on it, even my work up prior to that, I was showing a lot of telltale signs of being extremely fatigued and just really the stress of that 18 plus hour deployment of staring at screens and yelling on the phone and doing my job, just adds up. I was realizing that I was suffering. I had a really easy job to do, it was almost like a made-up billet, and it was super simple. I was managing two other E-8s that ran two companies. I was at the schoolhouse at the time, our Marine Raider Training Center, and I'm like, “Dude, this is so stupid.” Like, I'm trying to go to appointments, and I'm being harassed like, “When am I coming back? How many more of these appointments do you have?”
I remember thinking, “Dude, you signed my packet. You approved me. You're stressing me out.” And now there I was driving 30-45 minutes away to my appointments every day, telling them to stack as many as they can because the daily drive and my command were stressing me out. I was trying to get help, and I was on the brink of going insane. I was desperate for help because I was getting lost everywhere, passing out, and couldn't remember anything. I was just going downhill quickly. The more I investigated and worked on myself, the more things came to fruition. It was like that scene from "Vegas Vacation" where Chevy Chase moved a piece of gum on the dam wall, and water started spewing out, and he tried to plug it, but another hole spewed out. It was never-ending, and I kind of felt like that was my life. One of my senior enlisted at the time gave me some sound advice. He said, “Cody, we're all going through something hard.” But that's when I stopped and looked at my entire career and everything that was happening. I realized, “I'm not like you, and no one's like me. No one cares about me as much as I care about myself.” I saw it time and time again. Guys got killed, guys killed themselves, guys got fired, and they were instantly replaced. No one called you the next day, "Hey, where's the TPS report?" You were done.
So, I knew that being replaced was just a common thing. Your buddies may love you, but ultimately you are just a number. I was tired of giving so much blood, sweat, and tears to this place without being respected enough to not only have the courage to ask for help, but also to say, "Bro, I'm desperate for help." Despite my great reputation as a super senior guy, I had the hardest time trying to move forward with this whole thing. Fortunately, I had a commander at the schoolhouse, an E-9, who was very open and receptive and gave me the space and opportunity I needed. I'm forever grateful for their help because without it, transitioning out wouldn't have been as smooth as it was. Dealing with my medical board was super stressful. I found myself constantly wondering, “What if I'm making all of this stuff up?” When you tell people that you have eaten 100 rockets, they think you're lying. When you tell them that you were constantly exposed to explosions, throwing up, and seeing shockwaves, it sounds unreal.
But war is unreal, and a lot of these things were too. I worried about whether or not these were good enough reasons or requirements to be found unfit or fit for duty. I was nervous and scared, but I was constantly reminded, “Dude, you'll be fine. Let go.” Stress alone kills a lot of Americans, and you can even create cancer from stress. I did my best not to, but my hair was falling out, I cracked a tooth because I was grinding my teeth all the time, my traps were up to my ears. I just had so much tension in my body. At this point, I was really breaking down. That's when I found myself in Florida, undergoing a brain treatment called MeRT… I forget the exact acronym, but it's like magnets for your forehead and the back of your head, and it basically stimulates neural highways and pathways to get those low functioning areas of your brain to be stimulated and work properly. When I went down to Florida, I couldn't even navigate using my GPS and I got lost in an empty apartment. I couldn't even boil water or set out clothes. Putting food in my face? Yeah, right. I was in really bad shape, and I was super depressed. I went from being a superhero man to a lethargic, helpless, and hopeless person. My life was changing rapidly, and I didn't know what to do about it.
Now my friends were judging me and saying things like, “Cody, it's not that bad.” I asked them, "When have I ever screwed you over or malingered? When have you ever seen me like this?" They'd seen me perform, so why wasn’t this being taken with the same grain of salt? But I realized that it was different. I saw that there was a big issue with standing up for yourself in the military, and I saw an even bigger problem in my own command. These guys and gals have access to all the resources, yet they were not being utilized. As I was using every program available to maximize my flow before I got out, I was sharing all this information with my fellow soldiers. My command let me hold briefs and talk about what I was going through. I told them, “I have all this crazy anxiety, and if I don't tell you, I'll stop breathing and pass out. So now that that's out of the way, let's continue with this brief.” I'd tell the guys about what I was doing and what resources they should have access to. I'd ask, “Hey, any questions?” Obviously, none. Then when they leave, they’d ask little things like, “Hey man, where did you get that one thing? Who did you contact.”
It's truly remarkable that these men can confidently gear up with night vision, explosives, and multiple rounds of ammunition, fist bump each other, board a helicopter, fly into the darkness, hold their positions during dustoff, and successfully execute a patrol for hours without uttering a single word. However, it's disheartening to see that the same men struggle to ask for help when they need it at home. Even worse, they're afraid to seek education on important topics like erectile dysfunction, which can be caused by stress and TBI. There’s been a striking realization that there's a significant gap in their knowledge, and we need to work to bridge it.
“It’s truly remarkable that these men can confidently gear up with night vision, explosives, and multiple rounds of ammunition, fist bump each other, board a helicopter, fly into the darkness, hold their positions during dustoff, and successfully execute a patrol for hours without uttering a single word. However, it’s disheartening to see that the same men struggle to ask for help when they need it at home.”
Cody pictured with his son on his knee and friend, Nate, who is the photographer for Cody’s company We Defy the Norm.
What was the toughest part about getting out of the Marine Corps? What was that feeling like when one day you're not putting that uniform on anymore? You're going from 100 to zero, right?
Cody: I was ecstatic when I finally finished my service. Getting my DD 214 was such a high point in my life, and it felt like a blessing just to be alive. I left four and a half years earlier than I would have in a 20-year stint, which meant I had four years to do something else with my life. I was optimistic about my future, but the hardest part was that I didn't know who I was. For 15 years, I was the guy that people told dragon-slaying stories about, and everyone had certain expectations of me. All I knew was the military and everything that came with it. I was left wondering, “What do I do now? I can't even work as a contractor with all the issues I'm still dealing with.” I had to change everything because my original plan was to work for the agency, but that wasn't even an option anymore.
I remember getting a call from my command while I was outside, and I was so exhausted that I took a nap in my truck. The command asked, “Hey, dude. I heard you're retiring soon. I really would like to fast-track your packet. What do you think? Is this something you want to do?” I couldn't express how much that call meant to me. I had been waiting for it for 15 years of my life. I woke up with drool on my face, feeling pretty messed up. I was falling off motorcycles and was a completely different person. It was tough to say no to everything I wanted to do and to give up the identity I had built. My wife asked me, “What do you want to do?” and I didn't have an answer. Thankfully, I had resources from the Special Operations community that offered to help me with my resume and set up appointments with phone calls.
I was like, “I don't know. I never thought about anything else for 15 years.” Why would I? I was focused on my job. The only thing I did in the meantime was drink beer, chase chicks, and ride motorcycles. That's what I did in between doing what I did for the job. Then, my wife asked me, “Hey, if you only had four weeks left to live, what would you want to do?” And I was like, “I don't know. I guess just take pictures and travel around.” That's what led us to sell all of our stuff and buy a conversion van, downsizing our life and moving into it. I realized that this was probably the best chance I was going to get at figuring out who I am. I didn't even know who I was. I didn't know anything. All I knew was that I was a veteran. I was angry. I was sad. I was empty. I hated other veterans. I hated the military. I hated seeing people. I hated people that I knew that sucked portraying that they don't suck. I was just really toxic. I was hurt and lost about my own existence. Moving into the van gave us an opportunity to figure things out.
How important was it for you psychologically to take those experiences and use them to build upon your identity, but also develop a sense of self that wasn't solely tied to the Marine Corps?
Cody: It made me who I am today. I sold all my military stuff. I mean, I kept a few things here and there, but I unloaded so many things - years of things. I remember holding on, hoarding those things, thinking, “Oh, one day I'm going to have this and that,” but then I realized, “Bro, you're just holding on to shit.” Obviously, I kept things that were sentimental to me but I realized I only needed one, not necessarily six of those things. I did this because I knew that if I didn't change my environment, what I was doing, and the things that were comfortable to me, I was never going to change myself. Downsizing and becoming a minimalist made me very uncomfortable. In the military, I was a collector and very materialistic. I lived a very high-speed life and liked high-end living. It was a fantasy to justify the emptiness I felt inside, so I had four motorcycles, two classic vehicles, and all these toys and things I identified with. I was known for things like, “Oh, Cody is that guy with that classic blue truck.”
Cody was that guy for every story it seems like. I was either in someone's talking shit story or someone's hyping me up story. I realized I had to rewrite all my stories and change everything about me. If I went back to what was comfortable, I was never going to evolve. I rejected the comfort of being in the past. I saw that with other people, and I wasn't inspired by the life they were living. Most SOF guys, most military guys, and girls too, are pieces of meat, especially depending on their background. They're whored out which is the new entertainment. I didn't want to be another circus clown. Not calling everyone clowns who do that kind of thing, but obviously, some people will still get butt hurt no matter what.
I didn't want to be that person who was just in that system again, where I couldn’t ever grow and evolve. Some guys in the medical board process for my unit said they were done with it, hated it, and were so ready to get out of there. Well, those guys were contractors for my unit before they even went on terminal leave. They already signed a contract because of money. I didn't want to be that guy. There were so many guys I saw who were fake and had no power. They were great dudes in uniform, but they lacked belief. They weren't even understanding the shit they were saying. How do you go talking about hating the job, saying you're done with it, that it stressed you out, but you're wearing a polo shirt the next day and doing the same thing? Do you not even remember the things that you said? Do you really want to live, bro? Or do you want to be that same story of the guy who's mowing lawns, drinking Miller Lite, and then he dies one day because all he has is hanging onto the past? I didn't want to be that guy. So I did everything I could to not do that, and that's why I went the most extreme route.”
What was the process with buying the van and getting out on the road? Did your wife fully buy into that?
Cody: She was super down, man. She was extremely supportive. She was the one asking me all these questions and as soon as I said 'yes', she started taking massive action steps to get it done. Meanwhile, I was trying to find a van source and had to do research to see what the best option was. We had just gotten back home from Florida, and she was already downsizing her life and encouraging me to do the same. But I was putting up a fight, not really helping. I was in this victim mindset, feeling lost, depressed, still drooling on myself, always tired, and brain foggy. It was easy to feel sorry for myself and slow down. But she made everything happen, man. She was definitely on board."
What was it like taking those first steps out there in the van?
Cody: It was scary. We embarked on a two-month journey, and I packed way too much stuff. I packed as if I was going on a trip, rather than living in the van. I had two of everything, thinking that if we got attacked, I'd be prepared. I had a huge medical pack times two, just in case. It was overkill, and I was still holding on to any resemblance of the life I had before. Going from a huge house to 75 square feet was a big change, and it was challenging, especially since I was depressed and uncomfortable. We didn't really do much research; we just pulled the trigger, and within months, it was all happening. I remember staying at Walmart parking lots as we traveled because they were convenient and had a bathroom. But it was sketchy. It was hard for me to sleep inside my van. I couldn't see out any windows, and it felt weird to let my guard down and just be present. I was always thinking of worst-case scenarios and being negative. I was battling so many things - belief systems, who I am, what I want, and the reflection I see in the mirror. There was just a war going on in my mind. I wasn't suicidal, but I was struggling to make it.
What is We Defy The Norm? Where does that idea come from? What’s that about as a whole?
Cody: We Defy The Norm is the company that I started back in 2018. I realized that as I was sharing my message on social media, it was gaining a lot of traction. As an SOF guy talking about feelings, emotions, anxiety, and depression, I realized these were taboo topics. This brought on the shit-talkers and naysayers, but I also started to realize that people were saying, “Oh my god, I feel this too,” or “I never looked at it that way,” or “What did you do for this? What did you do for that?” I realized that I was able to help all these people by sharing my own misery and pain points. That's when I came up with the idea for We Defy The Norm. I wanted to change the world, make a ripple, leave my mark, and show people that they don't have to be what they were yesterday. They don't have to fall in line with what society or their parents tell them, or what the sequence of events dictates. As an SOF guy, the norm is to get out and make a minimum of six figures and work for corporate or other places. But that wasn't what I wanted for myself. I wanted to figure out who I am and see if I could make it on my own.
“Who am I to go get in the van and sell my shit and tell people how I feel?” And then I realized, “That's who I am. I'm that guy.” There are other people out there too, and they don't need permission to step up and have a say in how they want to live their life. Dude, I had this four-and-a-half-year head start to live and be free, and I was on this mission to spread that word. As I built my following by sharing my story, I created We Defy The Norm to share my feelings and emotions through art and design. That was hard too because, “Oh, another veteran t-shirt company guy,” but none of my stuff was about killing or “No Dirt Naps” or “Warheads and Foreheads” or “Come and Take This.” I thought it was challenging. I believe it challenges perspectives. It was not the cliche, easiest thing. I definitely could have pulled a lot of other triggers that would have financially, at the time, made me way more money, probably had more impact, but I was really just looking forward to step up and be a leader and take on entrepreneurship. I have this feeling inside that says, “I'm not basic.” I'm not wanting to just follow people. I just felt that I didn't go through all those things that I went through to hold them all inside. I didn't meet all those guys that never came back home, or I never was part of these things and had great mentors and leaders that took care of me and held me accountable and did those things for me to give up on myself at that point in life. So, I took my pain and I turned it into my passion. I took all the hell I was going through and turned that into a business. We Defy The Norm is simply that dude; we're taking ownership of our own lives.
We're defined, conforming, and investing in ourselves, and I realize those aren't terms that are sexy and poppin’. We live in a veteran world those terms "boy" and "goon" and "squad" and the repetitive perpetuating hate and discontent around the battle space on social media seems all the same, right? There isn’t much elevation and leveling up in the mindsets and people space. And I didn't want to just be around veterans. At the time, I tried to do my best to stay away from veterans because I felt there were a lot of victim mentalities. It’s like the same thing they tell you on the airplane, “Put your oxygen mask on first. Then go help someone else out.” But you ain't helping nobody if you aren’t taking care of yourself. I realized that I had already started when I was in the military. It was already uncomfortable then, so I'm not stopping now. I'm just going to keep on taking care of myself and exploring different modalities to help heal and answer the questions I deemed important in my life. That's what We Defy The Norm is, and that's what it still is today. It's an evolving community where you don't have to be military, you don't have to be in combat. I just use my experience, and I know I have a great historical Rolodex of experience, and I'm so blessed to have it because I have more skin in the game. You can't challenge my DD 214. I know what's on there.
You can't challenge those things, so it gives me even more ability to challenge the status quo. I'm like, “Bro, you can be a tough guy. You don't have to go to combat to get 100% from the VA. Get your head out of your butt and go submit for it.” Someone says, “Oh, I wanted to be SOF, but I was too…” I'm like, “Shut up, bro. You did something that nine out of ten homies didn't do. Why aren't you proud of that?” I'm helping people see that what they're going through in life is actually something to be truly proud of. We Defy The Norm is me and my wife rejecting mediocrity, rejecting this average way of living. It comes down to “don't talk about it, be about it.” Put your money where your mouth is. I wanted to heal and I knew if I didn't start We Defy The Norm, if I didn't start listening to the voice inside my mind, in my heart, and following this new level of thinking, I knew that I was just going to end up wasting an opportunity. All these things, all those lessons of hardships would have been wasted.
At that point in time, I know I’d been playing small. Everything I've ever done in my life has been scary and unknown, and if I apply any common sense to the way forward, it's going to be scary and unknown. So I just kept that momentum going. Years later, I've built something pretty big that I'm really stoked about. We Defy The Norm touches lives, whether they're veterans, elderly, or youth. I've got everyone from kids up to 70-year-old people messaging me saying, “thank you.” To be able to have that impact and know that there are civilians out there who really care about the troops, even if we don't see eye to eye, is truly inspiring. They show support, and they're open. But it's not easy, and I struggled a ton of times. It wasn't perfect. When I was struggling, I'd tell people about it. I'd say, “Hey, I just drew this new design, and it reminded me of that one time I was trapped inside my head. The shirt's called “It's a Trap,” and it's a visual depiction of how I felt trying to maneuver forward but feeling like I couldn't go anywhere. When I'm feeling depressed, I just remember to live it up daily.
When I realized that people are going to judge me no matter what I do, whether I win or whether I lose, I made the shirt “Doing My Thing” because I love DMT, I love doing my thing. And this is what I remind myself of as I'm pushing forward and creating something that I'm going to wear and creating something that actually means something to me. On top of that, I spin it in a way where people can understand, not make it so one-sided where you have to have a certain lifestyle. Dude, you can literally stand up for yourself in school to a bully and defy the norm. You can be 80 years old and realize that today, you're going to forgive yourself for all the shit that you didn't like through your life, and you're going to change your life today. That's defying the norm, right? It's never too late until we're dead. Seeing how my out-of-body experience when I got shot in the helmet caused cognitive degeneration to where I was going to almost live like a walking vegetable and then realizing that I was able to just kind of get past all these hardships at the time and push forward... All those inches I'm making are inspiring hundreds and thousands of people.
I have to do more because this is bigger than me now. And so, We Defy The Norm is us collectively. It's not “I” defy the norm. You defy the norm. That's something to be proud of because if you can do that, you can change your life. I just realized that even for all those years living in this van, going through hell, not knowing anything, losing friends, getting mad shit talked about to me, when I wasn't even putting that back out there in return, it sucked. And it challenged me a lot. It made me really ask myself, “Is this what I want to do?” Because, if you show up in this world, people are ready to knock you down. If you don't show up in this world, people are still ready to knock you down. It's a matter of what hardship do you want? I'm not going to be living a hard life sitting on the sidelines. I'm going to be living that hard life making forward progression on the field.
Anything else, I'm not actively participating in. Why would I, when I have a badass life? Why wouldn't I want to overcome the things that don't serve me anymore? Why wouldn't I want to help as many people as I possibly could with the idea that “wait a second, I can change my life.” Because that's what it's all about. And that's literally all I did - I just changed my life. By believing in myself and allowing myself to be scared, experience things, and let go of old stories and environments to bring in new opportunities, that's what set me free. Man, it's as simple as that. But I have to remind myself that I haven't made it anywhere; I'm still going. I'm never stopping. If I stop, everything I've worked for, everything that I've ever learned on the battlefield, everything I've ever learned from these brave men and women who aren't here today, what's it all for then? How can I ever live on that message? How can I ever live on that wisdom if I'm not pushing the fight myself? Life is hard, but I don't want an easy life.
And if it were easy, I wouldn't want it. If there were a perfect button or hack, I wouldn't want perfection because what would be left to strive for then? I'm always evolving, always open to new things and perspectives because I've realized that a narrow-minded person lives in constant hell as they don't believe in other possibilities. Having been that person before and changing my perspective, I know that anything is possible. I can subscribe to anything I want and create anything I want, and that's what I'm doing. Along the way, I encourage others to do the same. That's what led me to create my coaching group, Defy Tribe. I love it when we allow fear to exit our bodies and embrace who we are, whether we're goofy, smart, or anything else, and say, “this is who I am, and I'm not stopping for anybody.” That's when we regain our power and change our lives. When we change our lives, we give someone else permission to do the same. That's what really shifted for me and showed me that it was bigger than just me. Crying on my phone has saved hundreds of lives, and I'm grateful for that.
“I realized that I was able to help all these people by sharing my own misery and pain points. That’s when I came up with the idea for We Defy The Norm. I wanted to change the world, make a ripple, leave my mark, and show people that they don’t have to be what they were yesterday. ”
That’s incredible, man. You’ve got these active core classes you talked about, Defy Tribe. I noticed another name, R3? What is that?
Cody: R3 is what I started out with: “Raw, Real, Ready,” and rebranded it to “Defy Tribe.” Basically, I help people level up in their mindset and belief systems. I was extremely successful in the military, and it wasn't by luck or chance. I put in massive action plans to get where I'm at today. The same goes for my healing journey and the life I live now on a homestead. I lean into it and just do it. It's not perfect, but I build a plan as I go. That's what I bring to my coaching group, helping people get out of their own way so they can level up in life. We're a sum of the people we hang out with. If you hang out with losers or toxic, negative people who get wasted and talk crap about someone else, you won't elevate or change your perspective. Your perspective will stay the same. Or maybe you want to change, but you're too scared to change your environment. It really comes down to how bad you want it. Every change is scary, but you either do it or don't.
That's why I let people know, “Hey, I'm a real person too. These are the courses and things that I've been exposed to, and this is what I've learned from them. And hey, this is what I learned from the military. This is what I learned here. And this is what's helped me get through X, Y, and Z.” I love serving people. I love it. I mean, I served people continuously on my phone for three years, not getting paid anything, not even creating anything. Just providing value to people suffering on a lot of wakes and having to learn, “Hey, I can't pour from an empty cup.” I'm really learning all these different ways to live life and kind of build this life that I'm living out now. And I never would have been where I'm at today if I just didn't keep on going. I never would have thought that this is where I'd be today.
My civilian life has been very foggy but as I keep on walking more into the unknown, into that darkness, and getting out of my own way and comfort zone, I'm able to restart building my vision for my future and how I see things going. It’s the same deal with my apparel brand, coaching group, media team, and content that I'm working on right now. Who am I going to show up as today, and how am I going to provide the most value? Because at the end of the day, we're all figuring out this life. I can sit on the sideline, or I can be the star in my own movie, so why wouldn't I want to live my best life? Why wouldn't I want to make the most impact? Why wouldn’t I want to be the most uncomfortable that I can be? That's where I'm going to grow and if I don't grow, I'm not going to impact anything.
I noticed that your environment seems to be both smooth and stable, yet frenetic due to the constant go, go, go. Do you find enjoyment in that constant movement?
Cody: I like the challenge because I look at everything in my life differently now. For example, if I need to come up with money for something, I think about how I can earn that money. I have a problem to solve, and that makes it interesting because it keeps me on my toes and honest. As you know, I just had a son who is six and a half months old. Some people might say, “Oh, I have a kid. I can't do that. I can’t start a new way of life.” But my wife and I don't believe in limiting ourselves with those kinds of stories. We have the ability to change our story and rewrite our story. For instance, we talked about homesteading a year ago. I was at my mom's house in Texas, and I staged this photo for social media. She likes collecting rooster sculptures and statues, and she had them on her kitchen counter. I wore this Indiana Jones hat and said, “Oh, I'm just getting ready for homesteading.”
And sure enough, a year later, I have 21 chickens and four goats. I never grew up this way, and I knew nothing about it. But I just know that I want to be able to provide for my family and have something that's mine. I don't like big cities. I've lived that life. I realized that I want to learn what it's like to be self-sufficient, and continue to defy the norm so I can impact other people. If I don't know this stuff, there are a lot of people who don't know it either. And who knows where this world is going? None of my moves are made out of fear, they're just made out of growth. Putting food on my table that I grew or processed myself feels amazing. We have this grow tower inside our house, and we're eating salad that comes from it. My wife planted that, and it's feeding my family and friends. I never even started fires until I came out here this past winter. I think I started a fire in SERE school and in sniper school, and that was it. You know, half of my career, I was in the bush, but there were no fires there. No jet boils, no sleeping bags, just cammie paint, a soggy butt because you're sitting in a pile of water, a hungry stomach, and a lot of tobacco.
What’s next? You’ve done the van thing. I’m sure you didn’t see that going to homesteading. What’s after this? Is homesteading the way of life? Is Sandpoint the destination?
Cody: We're in the process of trying to build out a community. I ended up wanting my own retreat center and that's why we bought this property, to do that. I want to serve but I want to serve at the highest level. I have a team that backs me up and just makes me a better person. They believe in me, believe in the message. That's pretty powerful. I've been wanting a team for years now. I've been in this whole process, getting in my own way and trying to do everything myself, but I’d had enough finally. I just thought, “Dude, this is so stupid.” That's what I tell people too, “Why are you trying to figure this out yourself? You don't have as much time as you think you do. None of us do.” You might be able to get out of this situation right now by yourself in a couple of years, maybe a few months, who knows. But then what happens when you hit the next bump, right? I want to provide this service where I can help people get out of their own way. I'm building a huge media marketing team.
In five years, I'm going to have multiple coaches all around the world impacting people's lives, helping them build blueprints to create the life they want. Then from there, watch out Tony Robbins (laughs). We'll be sharing the stage together and crushing it. I'm really into the mind, belief systems, and the power of humans. We're so strong, yet many of us live in fear and scarcity. I've been there before, and it affected my life. I don't know what tomorrow brings, but if I can impact one life, and that person can change their life, and they can impact one life, that's how we can change the world. Instead of trying to do it all by myself, I just need to show up, do my part, and let the puzzle come together. People are going to judge you whether you win or lose, so why stop? To me, leveling up is about not stopping because I'm scared. This is part of the process. Catch me on the flip side because I ain't staying where I'm at. I think that's inspiring. Many people say, “Dude, my life has changed just watching your stuff.” And I say, “That's dope, don't stop.” And when they ask me how they can repay me, I say, “Keep on winning. Let your friends know that you're winning.” When you do that, you encourage others to do the same thing.
You have a passion to change lives. That passion comes from very genuine place. You've seen how you can impact lives. What do you want people to remember? How do you want people to remember Cody Alford? What's your legacy on this earth? And does that matter to you that much?
Cody: Initially, I would have said no, but now it does matter to me. People have shared messages with me like, “Hey, Cody, I know we haven't met, but I was at the gym today and I really didn't feel like working out. But then I thought, what would Cody say to me?” That's what I want people to remember because it's not about me. It's about the fact that someone who doesn't even know me personally, at some point in their life, was about to give up on themselves. And they thought about this guy named Cody Alford that they follow on Instagram. They don't even know if I'm a douche in real life, but they know that if I were with them in that gym at that moment, what would I say to them? And that was enough for that person to keep going. We all need a hero. We all need someone to remind us that it doesn't end here. You're never out of the game. It's just a matter of what you believe in. If you believe you're out, you're done. But some people don't even know that they can change their lives. So, when someone says to me, “Dude, I just think about you and what you would say, and it reminds me not to quit and to keep going,” that really matters to me.
That's awesome, and it makes me feel good because all those times I wanted to quit on myself, I now have exactly what I asked for right in front of me. I wanted to change lives, and although I don't know the exact number, these messages keep pouring in. And I'm like, “Alright, dude. That was definitely worth the 20 comments that told me I was a piece of shit.” It was definitely worth the shit talking that I got from people who think whatever because I'm not talking like another veteran or telling cool ninja stories all the time. I want to be me, and I don't want to be whored out and used for things that people exploit. I have a voice and a conscience, and I'm here to do my part. I'm here to rise to the calling that most people avoid because it looks like work, requires commitment, and demands that you evolve. Evolving as a human is absolutely scary. People will believe in the process of evolution, the fucking story. But asking them to believe that they're capable of doing it themselves is almost like asking them to walk on water. They think it's impossible. The thing is, people just don't believe that they can change their environment and their situations.
We want to change this world, we want to do better. We have to be our best selves, take action, have belief, have a voice. And if we don't, how is everyone else going to? Some people need to see someone else do it before they take that leap of faith, not because they're just scared, but because they don't even know it's possible. Instead of assuming that people are just scared and wondering why they're not standing up for what they believe in, we should realize that they don't even know they can. They’ve never been shown that in their life. Their parents are pushovers, their friends are pushovers, their environment is full of losers. I use my background as a calling card that I don't even utilize, but I have some experience and historical knowledge about different things. I've had leadership experiences and different ways to interact with things, problem solve, and frame problems. To be able to bring all of that and talk about the stuff that I do, such as finding happiness, peace, and forgiveness, and changing your life, is epic. I used to downplay it a lot, but I'm stoked on the fact that this is what I do. I'm excited about where I'm going because it's only getting better. I'm only bringing in more people who are enhancing their lives around me, and when I do that, my life is going to enhance. When my life enhances, I get to provide more value to people because I'm learning new things. It's a constant cycle, and I love life.
I go back to the parts where I was struggling so hard, and I remember that someone out there is struggling hard right now. So, I go and live that life. I tell people that I'm having a hard time today because I'm human, and shit's going to happen. Social media makes people think that there are so many perfect lives out there, even for the wealthiest or most motivational guy, but it's simply not true. One of my life coaches, who is also my mentor, talks about it all the time. He goes through all sorts of shit and is a prick half the time, but he's evolving, and he's not afraid to say those things. That's what freedom is, to have a voice and pulse in your own life and not be a slave to your mind or fear what other people will think about you.
I find it fascinating that people like you, who have been in the military, experienced combat and have been in those dark places, recognize the situation and understand that they need to find a way to step away from it. It's okay to be in those places for a little bit, but you can't just stay there. I heard something very interesting from a friend of mine. He said, "Sometimes, when you're feeling down, you feel like you need to be happy, but in those moments, you just need to recognize depression for what it is. You need to be there for it, and that's okay."
Cody: I absolutely agree. We want to avoid resistance, but resistance helps shape and pave the way to where you're supposed to be today. People are afraid of the hard stuff. It's funny, man. People will martyr themselves, sacrifice themselves for many causes and belief systems out there, but when it comes to freeing themselves, standing up for themselves, speaking their truth, they're petrified. It's crazy to think that you can have power elsewhere, but possess none for yourself. That's why I always challenge people. “Dude, then how the hell do you have a belief system? If you don't even believe in yourself, how can you believe in anything else?” You need that “why” inside you to move forward. Otherwise, you'll become that person with "suicide in my back pocket" as the worst-case scenario. How many more stories of heroes, badass dads, husbands, great team players need to happen before we ask the hard questions? How great were they if they took their own lives? Why do these men and women think that is the option? These amazing, brave people are still killing themselves. Why? What is going on? This shows that some people don't want to do the fight or the hard work. Nothing worth anything comes easy, and when you're fighting for your life inside your mind, battling depression, and these stigmas, you have to show up committed to the fact that you don't know what's going to happen. You don't even know how you're going to make it through today. All you know is you're going to put one foot forward.
Why should I suppress my feelings? I'm not going to be a statistic. Do I think these men who killed themselves are weak? I think they didn't want to win as badly as they said they did, and that sucks to say, but not everyone wants to live, not everyone wants to free themselves, not everyone wants to find a belief, and not everyone wants to make it out on the other side. That's very apparent in this world, and it's not just veterans who have killed themselves and are struggling. It's also the kids who are being raised by technology and unicorns in classrooms now. There are all sorts of crazy things that are happening that are skewing these kids' perceptions of reality. Their parents are weak because they're slaves to the system, and they're not motivated to change anything. They push off responsibilities because it looks like work, or they think they're too far gone, and they can't salvage anything. What happens when that kid is getting bullied in high school, and they want to kill themselves too?
Or they think it's normal, or they have peer groups that are telling them, “You should just die, no one cares about you.” It's probably going to be really hard to think that your life is worth it when you're feeling that low vibrational state, when you think that no one really cares about you. And these men, literally brave men, dudes you hear stories about like, "Oh my god, they were great leaders, they're great husbands," and then you just hear they killed themselves. You're like, "What the fuck?" Then you have these guys that put these dudes on pedestals that don't see or acknowledge the telltale signs are there. And then one day, these guys kill themselves. Now, they challenge themselves. They're like, "If so-and-so killed themselves, what's going to keep me from doing it?" The system continues until it changes. I've held the gun before; I've had those thoughts before, and I wasn't brave enough to pull the trigger because I wanted to live. Even going through the motions of those things, it was almost like I was programmed - like movies, TV, and history told me that's what I'm supposed to do. Combat vet, military veteran, military active-duty person... I'm supposed to drink alcohol, have a 1911 by my bedside, and wear all the "my friends died" bracelets. But really, what I'm doing is holding onto shit and not moving forward in my personal beliefs. Doing a disservice most of the time because these guys are holding themselves back. They're viewing their deaths as anchors, vice more resemblance to live your life and go all in.
What was the best lesson that your friend, who isn’t here anymore, taught you? Go live that. Go teach that. Go be a disciple of that. Stop being sorry for yourself and living the same story you're telling yourself that you're the victim. But how brave and how much courage you must take to be like, you know what, “I'm checking out.” There's equal yin and yang to life. If there's a shitty rain day, guess what? There's a beautiful sunny day just around the corner, and every storm passes. But some people aren't brave enough to just weather the storm. Instead, they find this extreme amount of courage to do the ultimate deed. There are no tag backs after that. But to be like, “I can't change my life. I just can feel myself in these thought processes that are going on, and this hurts and it’s heavy.”
Why do these guys and girls feel like they can't change their life? They survived all the things they survived. What makes them think, “I can't do this?” We live in a society where it's about the greater good, not the individual, and the greater good is a bunch of individuals. It's not a community-based construct. It's these individual personalities that are forming these fake societies. We live in a society where people come home, turn on Netflix, don't know who their neighbor is, don't even see sunlight and they veg out, then they go work a job they complain about for a car they can’t afford just to spend 45 minutes a day driving and not even driving 12 miles. They dream about the picket fence, they pray about their 401k to hopefully be able to retire at 65 and finally be able to do the shit they want to do. Then they realize that they're too old or they're broken because they eat unhealthy. They don't take care of themselves, and they realize the money they invested in these 401ks has completely depreciated, and they don't have enough money to survive. Now they're spending the rest of their years being stressed in low vibrational states, filling themselves with regret. That does not sound like a fun life to me.
What do you do to move the needle?
Cody: My dad passed away one year later, after 42 years in law enforcement. He literally died one year later. For a year, he wasn't really doing much. 42 years, that's a long chapter of life. But then, if you can look at your life as chapters and not the finite end-all-be-all, but chapters, not a book. If you can look at your life that way, then you can make a new chapter. I picked up a banjo at 36 years old. I told myself for years that I could never learn it and that I could never learn music. So, the day I bought it, I got a damn lesson, and I've been doing it ever since. We don't have to live out these stigmas. We don't have to be who we were yesterday. If we're a depressive, suicidal, turd nugget today because we just hate everybody and we don't think that we can change our lives, and we just can't catch a break, and we think the best thing to do is to throw away our one in four trillion chances to even be alive and smoke ourselves and we really think that we're going to make society a better place that way, then we are just the epitome of a victim.
When you find yourself in a victim mindset, it's important to take a step back and ask yourself, “Do I really want to give up just because it's hard? I may not know how to overcome this challenge and it may seem overwhelming, but am I willing to be courageous and find a way, even if it's not clear yet?” It's okay to acknowledge that you don't have all the answers or resources, but it's important to have the courage and determination to keep pushing forward and find a way. You don't eat an elephant all at once. You eat it one bite at a time. When you're going to Mecca, you can't even see your destination. You go one step in front of the other, and you keep walking, no matter what storm comes your way, no matter how hot it is, no matter how distracted, or what your mind plays on you, you just keep on walking. People have this thing that someone's going to come save them. But no matter how much I tell my story, people are still killing themselves. No matter how much I encourage my friends to go big in life, they still hold themselves back. As it stands, the reality is that no one is going to come and magically fix your problems for you. It's up to you to take charge of your life and make the necessary changes, and that's where the power of free will and self-belief comes into play. It breaks my heart to see so many people who have overcome challenges in their lives, only to find themselves struggling again. What's different this time? Maybe it's the fear of the unknown, the fear of sailing into uncharted waters. It's tempting to give up and run your ship ashore, but true growth and prosperity come from pushing through those fears and taking risks. You have to be willing to step outside your comfort zone and explore new territory, even if it feels scary or unfamiliar.
Unfortunately, too many people keep their struggles bottled up inside, becoming just another statistic. It's a cycle that's hard to break, and while I appreciate the efforts of nonprofits to help with suicide prevention, we need to ask ourselves if we're really making a difference. The sad truth is that people are still taking their own lives. We need to shift the conversation and start addressing things in a different way. We need to stop relying on GoFundMe campaigns and start taking care of people in a more meaningful way. We owe it to our families, our friends, and ourselves to make real changes. We need to reach out to people who are struggling and let them know that they're not alone. We need to say, "I understand that life is tough right now, but what are you doing to make things better?" It's time to start taking action and creating real solutions.
And when you give people back their power, they find permission within to go change their life. But when you just tell them how their life's messed up or say “I know you're going through some hard stuff, but uh, you know if you need to talk, I'm here,” that's not direction. Instead, try saying something like, “Hey, dude. I know you're going through some hard stuff. I know you're probably not going to talk to me. But listen, you either want to live or you don't want to live. Those are really your two options. I went through this shit myself too. And I'm still here because I'm not giving up on myself like that. I owe it to myself, to the people that believed in me, and to my friends that aren't here today, whether they killed themselves or died on the battlefield. I owe it to live on and push the fight. And if you don't want to do that, at least understand and acknowledge the terms of the shit you're telling yourself.” Sometimes when you hear the fact that “I am giving up. I'm choosing not to put in the hard work. I'm choosing to do that,” it doesn't mean they're not going to kill themselves. But now they have to buy into the fact that if they are going to do this, they must believe in it. Don't just say, “Oh, it's going to be the easiest thing.” Believe in the fact that you are choosing to be a victim. You're choosing to quit on yourself.
You're choosing to be so selfish that you're willing to break the hearts of all the people you say you love, crush their souls, and possibly make them follow you because of your selfishness. You're too scared to beg, cry, and plead for help. That hurts me because that's what it took for me to get help in with a command that wasn't really in tune with what was going on at the time. That's what it took for me and that's what it takes for other people. You hear all these success stories about people who were once drug addicts or dealers, and they finally said to themselves, “I need to change my life now, or I'm going to end up dead in the streets. How many more overdoses do I need?” So, it's not a matter of being stuck. You're never too far gone. I just want more people to know that they have so much power. But no one's going to give it to them; they have to claim it, accept it, and put in the work. Life is a gift, but it's the only freebie you get. Everything else you have to work for. You have to work for your belief system, your family, and the things that are important to you. There are no handouts in life. Some people are just willing to give 90% because the other 10% is really hard, and they think they really don't need to because things are good. But they want the glory without putting in the work. They want this a golden castle at the end of the day, but what stones are they setting in place to even pave the path to get to that point? Why would you want to know personally that you're not even committing to your own life? Everyone has that one thing they're being called upon to do inside themselves. When they close their eyes, they see the message, they hear the voice, they feel the thing inside their chest, and they're being called upon to rise in some capacity. They might not have complete clarity on what their "why" is, but there's that repeating system. There's that repeating thing inside, “Hey, go try this.” Pick up the camera. Just raise your hand. Break up with that person. There's one thing they're avoiding right now. What if it does change your life? Can you afford to not try something different?
People are just looking at these problems like they're pigeonholed, and I can't change them. My mom is 72 and she's changed all sorts of shit about her life. She's like, “Cody, you motivate me.” Thanks mom, you motivate me. But we can do this if we rise together, if we help each other out, and we can help each other out by just being ourselves. Maybe you're just a dude that you think no one cares about but you're going through a hard time. Let people know it, man. "A quiet mouth doesn't get fed." The quiet cogs don't get the grease; the squeaky ones get it. You've got to fight for your stuff, fight for the things you believe in, fight for this life. You can choose to be a statistic, or you can defy the norm and go completely against the grain. Kick and scream until you get the assistance and help that you need. I promise you that by doing so, you'll impact more lives than you ever thought you would just by betting on yourself. If people would commit to that scary part of life, man, what kind of life could they live? What kind of life could you live if you got out of your own way? Reanalyze your life.
At some point, you definitely believed in yourself, and you did something scary, whether you took the training wheels off a bicycle or jumped off a cliff with your friends at the creek. At some point, you did something completely scary, unknown, and unsure if you were ever going to be able to do it, but you did it. So how is that any different from doing anything else in your life? It might be a different-tasting food; it's complex, but you still have to follow the recipe and put energy into creating it. You still have to show up and say, “You know what, I don't want to cook this meal, but I'm going to do it and see what happens.” You have to not be afraid to fail. People want to give up before they even have a chance to fail at something. Having a chance to fail is a gift because if there's a chance to fail, there's a chance to succeed, but we don't want to look at it that way. People say, "I'm scared to start." But did you know that by starting something, you increase your chances of success by 50%? You don't even have a 50% chance at a lot of things in life. You can create a 50% chance for yourself just by starting that one thing, going to that one thing, and doing that one thing that you're avoiding.
We need to put power back into people and show them through words and actions that whatever they're going through, they can let that be the downfall or the catalyst that catapults them to new heights and new levels. There's enough money for everyone to win, enough abundance for everyone to be successful, and enough land out there for people to create their own homesteads and future. Disregard the fear porn out there that’s designed to keep you small, to keep you inside, to completely destroy your belief system. So, do you want to be a part of that society, or do you want to go create your own? Do you want to be part of the solution or part of the problem? If you want to be part of the solution, you have to invest and double down on yourself. You have to change yourself before you change the world. If you grew up being told all your life that there are only green apples and one day someone tells you there are red apples, your mind is blown. When I found out that a pickle was a cucumber, it blew my mind. It's all about perspective, and I totally get it. You could go talk to a psychiatrist, take Adderall, and still keep your super-secret ninja five clearance. Like, "What? I can do that?" Yeah, you can still work for that one place you want to work, with 100% VA disability pay and rating. We tend to build these scenarios that aren't even based on truth, assuming that we can't instead of assuming that we can.
You're literally writing your own masterpiece in life. How do you want to show up? Do you know that movie, Executive Decision, with Steven Seagal? Great flick. But Seagal dies in, like, the first 10 minutes, maybe a little longer. Whoa, this main character, a big-name guy, just gets killed off in the first 15 minutes. He clearly did not write that script. Because if it was my script? I'm going to go big and I'm the main character. I'm the main act. I'm the star player. Why wouldn't I want to be? I'm writing the story! Why would I want to write a story that says, “I'm a loser. I don't believe in myself and the world is out to get me.” If I literally have this power of creation, where I can take a pen out and write on a sheet of paper the type of life that I want to live, why would I want to write, 'I'm a loser. I'm a victim. Woe is me; my life will never change.' That's crazy, bro! Take out a pen and write it out on paper. That's literally how you change your life. You have to change your story. You have to change the stories that you're telling yourself and the only way you're going to do that is by defying the norm. The norm wants you to stay the same and do what your friends do. Well, reevaluate what your friends are doing. If they're just going out drinking, talking crap, and doing the same old things, and you're really not feeling that anymore, bro, you've got to cut some things off. If everyone's toxic, guess what? Chances are you're going to be toxic.
If all of your friends are poor, then the chances of you breaking out of that cycle and not struggling financially are probably slim to none. Who's there to motivate you? Who's there to inspire you? It's easy to become a product of your environment without even realizing it. Many people don't realize that they have more control over their lives than they give themselves credit for. It can be difficult to be present, look around, and analyze your life, but it's essential. I know it was difficult for me, and I still face some criticism for it, but I don’t care. I'm not the same person I was last week, last month, last year. And where I’m going, I can’t afford to be the same person.
“That’s literally how you change your life. You have to change your story. You have to change the stories that you’re telling yourself and the only way you’re going to do that is by defying the norm.”
Find out more about Cody’s mission at www.wedefythenorm.com. You can also follow him on Instagram: @wedefythenorm and @codyalford. Alford’s podcast, Episode No. 47, will premier next week on all available platforms and at www.thevetsproject.com/podcast.
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