The Heart of a Warrior: Navigating Stress, Leadership, and Purpose with Karl Gustavson

Karl Gustavson, a retired Navy SEAL with a 20-year career of extraordinary service, combines a wealth of experience from his time as a missionary in Brazil, his elite military training, and his leadership within SEAL Team Six. A Colorado native, Karl has navigated challenges ranging from teaching faith in a foreign language to surviving the rigors of BUD/S and the chaos of combat. Now, he dedicates himself to giving back by training law enforcement, mentoring others on resilience and courage, and fostering growth through shared lessons from his remarkable journey.

In this episode of The Courageous Crossroads, Karl delves into the intricate interplay between stress, resilience, and courage, sharing gripping anecdotes from his SEAL career and insights on leadership under pressure. He reflects on moments of intense self-doubt, the role of faith and purpose in his decisions, and the enduring impact of choosing the hard right over the easy wrong. A compelling
conversation with host Jeff Johnson, this episode challenges listeners to embrace discomfort, build resilience, and pursue lives of authentic courage.

Thank you for listening! We hope you feel inspired and encouraged by our conversation today. If you did, be sure to share this episode with others.

Let’s stay in touch:

• Follow us on Instagram @crossroadsapologetics
• Email us at info@crossroadsapologetics.org
• Visit our website www.crossroadsapologetics.org

See you in the next episode! Be blessed!

Full Transcript

Intro:
Welcome to Courageous by Crossroads Apologetics, a look into what motivates us to step out in courage and the everyday bravery of men and women like you. In each episode, we hear a personal story of bravery centered around this question. What’s the most courageous thing you’ve ever done? And now your host, founder of Crossroads Apologetics, Jeff Johnson. 

Jeff Johnson:
Well, the podcast is growing. What a blessing that is. So a big thank you to the people that have been listening and downloading for a long time. And another big thank you to our new listeners and people that have just found us. Please make sure you share the podcast. I’ve had a lot of good feedback from people that have listened to this episode and that episode and been inspired, and it just brings joy to my heart. So, so grateful. And along those lines, I am going to solicit right now, so brace yourself. If you are interested in seeing a conference or some other content through the Courageous Crossroads podcast, if you could go to our mothership, which is found@crossroads apologetics.org that’s Crossroads apologetics.org and look in the upper right hand corner, there’s a little green button that says donate. 

Jeff Johnson:
If you’d push on that and donate whatever the Lord lays on your heart. If you’re interested in seeing more content be developed through the Courageous Crossroads, maybe we can get some of the people that have already been on the show come and present and talk about their journey and how they define courage and go a little bit deeper. Maybe we can find some experts in the field and that sort of thing. Maybe we can put on some webinars potentially. But if you’d like to see a little bit more and are interested in supporting Courageous Crossroads, please go to Crossroads apologetics.org and donate. Okay, enough of that. I am excited for you to hear our next guest, Carl Gustafson. Carl’s a retired Navy SEAL and such an inspirational guy. I had such a wonderful time talking to him. 

Jeff Johnson:
And you’re going to absolutely love this episode. He talks about how resilience is built and not necessarily born. He talks about how courage and stress go hand in hand. He talks about growth requiring discomfort. And he talks about the importance of purpose and giving back and a whole lot more. So you’re going to absolutely love hearing from our next guest, Carl Gustafson. And we started off the episode, I was curious how Navy SEALs deal with stress. I’d gone through a little stressful situation right before the call, and I thought, I want to know how Carl would handle this. So I start off by asking him, how do you and how do Navy SEALs learn to deal with stress so well? 

Karl Gustavson:
So there’s a couple ways. You know, when I first came in 20 odd years ago, they kind of just said, you know, you’re seals, you’re here, figure it out. Like going through the train, when I went and I went through Bud’s training, they were like, hey, either you’re resilient or you’re not. And if you’re not, then you’re not meant to be here. So, you know, obviously the psychology and the science has come a long way, or they started adopting the science and saying, hey, we want to get more quality guys through, we need to give these guys some resiliency mechanisms or some stress coping mechanisms. 

Karl Gustavson:
So they started doing things like positive self talk, box breathing, sort of that autonomic sympathetic nervous system regulation where you’re able to kind of like scale down your stress level, sit back, talk yourself through the situation, maybe even just take a couple of deep breaths. If you don’t have a lot of time to deal with it, just sort of step off to the side and then get yourself back in the right mindset and continue forward. Because a lot of times, you know, in like a situation where you’re on target or you’re dealing with something stressful and you don’t have a lot of time to be like, hey, I need a 30 minute, like mental health break here. 

Karl Gustavson:
You’ve only got a few seconds to be like, okay, you know, I just had to do whatever it was, clear a room or do something that’s super high stress. Now I need to get myself back down to where I can, you know, be an effective leader on target, tell the guys where they need to go and sort of like manage the chaos of what’s going on there. 

Jeff Johnson:
That’s, that’s interesting. Did you find that those techniques were effective? 

Karl Gustavson:
It’s, it’s funny because for me it kind of came after the fact, you know, since it was like I made it all the way through buds and training and my first couple of platoons and, you know, I didn’t get over to Dev group until 2008. So I sort of had come up with ideas on my own of how I wanted to manage that stress, like tactics and techniques that I would use, you know, for myself. And so it was like, when those things came along, I was like, yeah, these are great, they’re helpful, but it’s sort of like I had already just sort of learned to cope with being in those situations, I guess. 

Jeff Johnson:
Yeah, so you brought that to the table already? Well, a long time ago. I’m 57, I’ve say 25 years ago, I did a bunch of flight training. I got a certified flight instructor’s license, you know, for single engine instruments and that kind of thing. And the thing that I noticed is when you put people in a stall or in a difficult situation or they were under the hood, you know, that sort of thing where they can only see the instruments, they would respond in one of two different ways. 

Jeff Johnson:
Either their senses would become very heightened and they would become focused and tuned in on what it is that they’re doing and their reactions were a lot quicker, or they would be like in La land and just completely detached from, you know, they’d be like waving at the lakes, you know, out the window or something like that. Did you find the same thing to be true when you were in stressful situations? I mean, with people? Did you have that? Maybe you didn’t ever have that in the seals because they were at a level already? 

Karl Gustavson:
No, we did actually have it. You know, we had when I was a green team instructor. So when I was putting guys through selection to come from the regular teams to seal team 6, part of the instruction was at least two of the years that I was down there was we would make the students, the candidates, wear heart rate monitors and then we could see their heart rates on a screen. It would be displayed on screen that the instructors could look up and see as they’re going through the shoot house or as they’re making movement to the door, what is their heart rate doing? A lot of guys, it spiked. And what we found was if guys were spiking up to the 170s or 180s, so their stress level, their internal stress level is going way up. 

Karl Gustavson:
Even before, it’s not really even athletically induced stress at that point. It’s all the mental stress of being like, oh no, I’m about to go into this situation where I’m going to be judged and I need to do everything perfectly and I have to execute the tactics that they’ve taught me. We found that if certain guys got beyond that red line of 175 to 180 beats per minute, they would go in and they might even perform some of the actions correctly, but they couldn’t remember what they did. Like they would come out of the shoot house after going through their run, whatever they did, right or wrong. And we would say, okay, you went into this room and you went into this room. Walk us through what you did. 

Karl Gustavson:
And a lot of times they couldn’t remember anything more than I went through the main threshold and turned left and then I think I saw target and then I turned and then I think I gave someone. But they couldn’t really remember what they had done. And so for us, that’s number one. It’s an indicator of, okay, you’re way overstressed. You’re going from like tunnel vision to like, you don’t even remember what happened. And then number two, because we saw other people go up into the 150s and 160s and then as soon as they started moving through the door and doing the actions on, their heart rate actually came back down. So whatever they’re doing, they have some internal self regulation that they’re maybe consciously or subconsciously they’re taking themselves through. 

Karl Gustavson:
So when their heart rate gets elevated, rather than going to that red line and just their mind switches on autopilot and is just like, hey, let me take over, I’m going to do what you need to do here. They would actually be self regulate, bring themselves down into a less sympathetic arousal and they would be able to come back and say, yeah, this is, I went in, this is what I did. I was stressed coming to the door, but once I got in and started going through the motions, I remembered, engage the target, go unsafe, sweep to my next target, engage that target. This was an unknown. So instead of engaging, I told them, hands up. We found that there was definitely that line between people who, it’s just like you said, la land. 

Karl Gustavson:
Their brain just takes over and is like, hey, you’re on autopilot now and I’m driving, right? And then other people who were able to sort of control themselves and get back into a mindset where they’re like, okay, I know what I need to do here and I need to be thinking dynamically. 

Jeff Johnson:
That’s very interesting. I don’t know if I can make this distinction yet. And Carl, we’re here. I’m going to ask you in a minute. Give me some of your background so our listeners can get to know you a little bit. But. And I give myself license because I only ask super smart people on this podcast. So I give myself license to ask really tough questions. So here comes. How does stress then, that we’re talking about right now and your response to that relate to courage? How are those two interrelated? Because, you know, this is the courageous crossroads and we’ll get to the question here in a little bit. What’s the most courageous thing you’ve ever done. But how does stress and courage relate to each other? 

Karl Gustavson:
Well, I mean, I don’t know if it’s a. If it’s a direct correlation. I’m sure that there is a certain amount of. Anytime you’re doing something that I think we, as normal people would think of as courageous, there is a certain amount of stress. And whether that’s going into combat or making a tough decision at work, that you have to come to the boss and say, hey, I got some bad news for you, boss. It takes courage to step forward. And rather than hiding whatever it is that’s going on, to go to the boss or go to the head shed or go to whoever it is and say, hey, I’m the bearer of bad news here, but you need to know about this. I think those decisions take courage. 

Karl Gustavson:
And I think anytime that you’re engaged in something like that, there’s going to be a certain amount of stress. Yeah, there’s going to be some. Now, I think people who, and this is just me speaking from my own sort of empirical or self evidence, people who are able to manage that stress and regulate it and not catastrophize in their minds the outcomes, the potential outcomes, and say, hey, yeah, this sucks, but this is going to be okay. I’m going to come through this. I have the tools to navigate this situation. I can regulate that stress. Those are the people, I think that we tend to think of as, like, being courageous because they engage in those situations, they continue moving forward. 

Karl Gustavson:
I know there’s a great quote that says courage isn’t the absence of fear, it’s the presence of fear and continuing to move forward anyway. Yeah, yeah, it’s that idea that it’s like if you have to be able to regulate that stress to do the things that we would consider courageous, I think. 

Jeff Johnson:
Well, this podcast isn’t about me, but I’ve had a day full of stressful stress and I sure hope, please, Lord, I pray that there was some courage mixed in there. You know, as long as I’m committing all of it to him. So, anyway, Carl, so wonderful to meet you. So grateful to have you on the podcast. You come highly recommended and I want to know much about you. So I know that you’re a team guy. I know that you’re a Navy seal. That’s the extent that I know about your story. So can you tell us where you are, what it is that you’re doing right now, and give us a little bit of your background? How you came to be a Navy SEAL and what you’re doing now. 

Karl Gustavson:
Yeah, so I’ll start pre Navy SEAL career. I grew up in Colorado, a small town called Grand Junction. I was raised lds, Mormon, and right out of high school I went to Brazil for two years and I was a missionary in Rio de Janeiro. Returning from that, you know, I kind of had this trajectory of what I imagined life was going to be. I was going to come back, go to school, you know, I enrolled in college courses and I kind of had this idea that I’ll pursue this course of study. I wanted to study kinesiology, get into physical therapy, speed and strength coaching and those kind of things and get married, settle down, have kids. Well, I was home for about a year, 2011 or 2001. 

Karl Gustavson:
I’m sorry happened 911 and so immediately I disenrolled from my fall classes, quit the job that I was working at and within about two weeks post 911 I was in the Navy recruiter’s office. There was a fellow that I had gone to high school with who had gone into the SEAL teams right out of high school. And so I was able to reach out and contact him and contact one other friend of a friend and say, hey, I’m, you know, post 9 11, I really want to join up. I’m looking for the right sort of team, the right set of circumstances, the right community to affiliate myself with. I really want to put myself at the forefront of the fight. And so what do you guys think about, Tell me what you can tell me about the SEAL teams. 

Karl Gustavson:
And I got really positive feedback. They said, you know, it’s a great community. It’s a great group of guys, like minded individuals. The training is hard, but for the guys that make it through this is the part of, you know, this is the community that you want to be a part of. And that to me was really compelling. I think both the idea that it wasn’t just coming in and being part of a regular grunt unit that was just anybody could do. Right. It was like the exclusive, you know, kind of the elite I guess, best of the best, you know, that kind of idea that you want to be part of that team and then having people that I knew who were vouching for. Yeah, the training is hard, but it’s worth it on the other side. 

Karl Gustavson:
And I talked to the army recruiter about potentially, you know, going Army Ranger. That was another thing that was compelling. And I think one of ultimately one of the things that drove my decision Toward the SEAL teams was that I had been a swimmer in high school, and I just thought that sort of, in my mind, made me a better fit for the maritime component or something. But, yeah, so that’s how I landed on it. So 2002, I’m in the Navy, go through buds. Graduated buds in 2003. And I was at SDV team 2 for six years. And following that, I screened for dev group and was there for the last 16 years of my career. 

Jeff Johnson:
Wow. And so what are you doing now? 

Karl Gustavson:
So I retired in June, and now I sort of do a number of different things. I. I work with a couple of different groups that train law enforcement, and we do tactical training, sort of the active shooter response scenario for patrol level officers. It’s a. It’s a nonprofit called Community First Project. You know, and then we. So we do a bunch of. A bunch of other stuff with them. I do some work as a translator for Brazilian bull riders in the pbr. I really lived in Brazil. I speak Portuguese. Spoke Portuguese my whole time in the Navy. Actually got to go down to the Olympics in 2016 in Rio and help out as a liaison down there. So just a really interesting opportunity, you know, if there’s sometimes these opportunities present themselves with a guy, you know, Sean Murphy. 

Jeff Johnson:
Yeah. 

Karl Gustavson:
Who. We went and did a team building exercise for one of the PBR teams, and when we got to the team building exercise, the team owner and general manager, they said, well, hey, we have this team. We’re anxious to do the team building exercise, but five of these guys are Brazilian and they don’t speak English. And I said, well, you know, I got you covered. I speak Portuguese. And they were like, why do you speak Portuguese? I told them, gave him a brief explanation. I think they kind of thought, you know, well, we’ll see how this goes. He says he speaks Portuguese, but, you know, it was great. I was able to translate and kind of bring them on board. And I think that really was. 

Karl Gustavson:
Helped them be a cohesive part of that team and get a lot more out of the training than they would have otherwise. And then that sort of parlayed itself into me continuing in that capacity with the teams for the last three years or so. 

Jeff Johnson:
So you said you did mission work through lds? 

Karl Gustavson:
I did. 

Jeff Johnson:
And how. Say again, how long you were there? 

Karl Gustavson:
Two years. 

Jeff Johnson:
Two years. 

Karl Gustavson:
Yep. So I was 1998 to 2000. 

Jeff Johnson:
And is that your faith, your Mormon faith? 

Karl Gustavson:
Yep. 

Jeff Johnson:
So where are you located now? 

Karl Gustavson:
I’m still in Virginia Beach. 

Jeff Johnson:
Okay. 

Karl Gustavson:
Yep. I just retired in June. 

Jeff Johnson:
Well, congratulations. 

Karl Gustavson:
Thank you. I’m still trying to figure out my post Navy life and where there’s a lot of. A lot of irons and a lot of different fires, so. But it’s good. And family, no immediate family, no wife and kids. The job is sort of its own thing. But my, the rest of my family, my extended family, siblings and stuff, they all live out in Colorado still in the town I grew up in. 

Jeff Johnson:
Wonderful. Well, I’m curious, did your definition of courage or did your understanding of courage change from your mission work to your time with the Navy SEALs? 

Karl Gustavson:
So I think if you were to look at just case by case examples, you would say, yeah, the way that I quantify what’s courageous in the SEAL teams is different than what I would have quantified, courage as a missionary. But I think if you’re looking at the broad overarching definition of courage, I think there were things that I had to do as a missionary that took every bit as much courage and self regulation and talking myself through stressful situations, you know, to include the first three or four months of my missionary work in Brazil. I didn’t speak the language all that well. And so you’re going into these situations where you’re, you know, trying to teach people and, you know, preach and proselytize and do service projects, and it’s hard for you to communicate, but you’re really trying to be, you know, as. 

Karl Gustavson:
As I think you’re really trying to do as best you possibly can to get your message across. These people with a very limited vocabulary in a place that you’ve never been with people who sometimes aren’t very receptive to the message that you have. And so, yeah, it’s in that sense, just getting up and going out day after day to continue doing the work. It takes a certain amount of courage because you’re, you know, it’s. It’s tough and there’s, you know, you. There’s a lot of rejection with it. There’s a lot of, you know, difficult days where you’re like, I’m not good at this. My message isn’t getting across. People aren’t receptive. You know, I’m getting laughed at because my Portuguese is so bad. I do think it takes a certain amount of courage to continue. Continue doing that. 

Karl Gustavson:
But I do think that laid the groundwork for me to be able to, you know, sort of engage in those situations later on that I knew were going to be stressful. I had already sort of built stress regulation mechanisms into myself from the stressful situations, although they weren’t sort of like lethally stressful in Brazil most of the time, but they were, you know, it was those coping mechanisms and I had to build those up over time. And then when you get into the teams, it’s a completely different scenario. But the stress and that self regulation, I think is, is very. 

Jeff Johnson:
Similar as a novice. Okay. And I’m not a, I don’t want to say I’m the farthest thing from a Navy seal, but Carl, I’m a long ways from a Navy seal. Okay. I like too many pizzas and anyway like to play golf. So I think that’s a far cry. But my sense of Navy seals is that there’s a, there’s a tempo that you operate at that is just different than a normal person. So I’m curious, are you finding it just recently retired, are you able to ratchet it down and be able to relax? I shouldn’t even ask this question because I don’t even know what I’m talking about, but I’m just compelled to ask it. 

Karl Gustavson:
I mean, it’s funny because a lot of the advice that I got when I was getting ready to retire, as I was retiring, people said, you know, you want to take six months and give yourself an off ramp and allow yourself some time to breathe. And I thought, you know, that sounds great in principle, but it was really hard for me to do in practice. 

Karl Gustavson:
I felt like, you know, ever since the time that I was, from 1998 when I went to do missionary work, the two years that I was down there, the year that I came back and was in school and working to coming into the teams, and then like you said, the very high op tempo that we have as SEALs, you’re constantly training, you’re constantly preparing for the deployment, then you’re deploying, you’re out on deployment, you’re busy every night you come back, you’re right back into training. So, so coming off for me, I think it was almost cathartic to find things to do that I felt like were mission centered. They were, you know, causes that I felt like were helping the community. 

Karl Gustavson:
Whether it’s training law enforcement or, you know, doing team building exercises or, you know, doing speaking engagements for different corporate companies and trying to tell them about some of the principles that we learned in the teams and stuff like that. I felt like those things keeping me engaged, I felt like that was more helpful for me than it would have been to just be like, hey, I’m going to take Three or six months and take a vacation and not do anything. I wanted to continue feeling engaged. And you feel like there’s a certain amount of knowledge and experience and professionalism that is fresh in your mind right as you’re coming out of the teams and you want to get that out there and keep it fresh. I want to continue training. I want to keep my shooting up. 

Karl Gustavson:
I want to keep doing mixed martial arts. I want to keep doing those things so that I don’t get to a point in six months where I’m like, wow, I haven’t done anything for six months. And I was like, how do I restart myself? I kind of wanted to, you know, let myself continue being engaged pretty consistently. 

Jeff Johnson:
Yeah. Wow. Well, maybe one other question before I get right down to what’s the most courageous thing you’ve ever done. Who represents courage to you? Somebody with skin on them. And it can be a historical figure. It can be somebody in your close proximity or whatever, but who represents courage to you and describe it. 

Karl Gustavson:
So I think there’s a number of people who represent courage. Obviously, being in the military, I’m a little bit of a student of military history and world history and those kind of things. And I think you, when you’re coming up through the teams, or at least this was my experience, and you’re looking to take on leadership roles, you look at historical leadership figures and you say, who would I like to emulate? Obviously there’s people who are. Who I worked in close proximity with. You know, I could in. In a generality, point my finger to any of the guys at the command that I worked with who. Who were examples of courage, because most of them signed up around 911 or just pre 9 11, most of them had been engaged in heavy combat and done very heroic things. 

Karl Gustavson:
And it was great to be surrounded by those guys. But when I think back to, you know, what I think embodies courage, I think a lot of it is not just the courage to, you know, confront something that might be physically harmful to you, which certainly there’s amount of courage in that, but I think also sort of going against the flow. I think maybe sometimes not necessarily for the sake of fighting the narrative, but going against the narrative that’s popular and doing things that maybe at the time are unpopular but that you believe are right. And I would say, you know, a couple examples of that might be, you know, Lincoln with the Emancipation Proclamation and the Gettysburg Address and those kind of things. 

Karl Gustavson:
And I think you’re taking a position that is extremely divisive, but that, you know, is right and you’re, you know, willing to stake a lot on that. Another example might be Winston Churchill. He sort of was ascended to this position of power basically because of the failure of the popular policy in Great Britain and Neville Chamberlain and then they’re discovering like, hey, this policy of appeasement to Hitler and this idea that Chamberlain had that Hitler didn’t want to go to war was an abject failure. And so you have this guy who otherwise had been reviled for things that had happened to him politically and militarily during Post World War I, and now he’s ascended to the, you know, the Prime Ministry and is not particularly well liked by the King at the time and has a position within the government that is very divisive. 

Karl Gustavson:
And he has to make some really tough decisions right out of the gate, potentially at the cost of his entire country falling. And so I think the amount of courage involved there, you know, in both of those instances, I think those are things that you have to look at and you have to say, hey, here’s a guy who had to make a hard line decision that was at great cost beyond his own personal cost. And I think those things embody courage. And I think there are leaders, you know, throughout history, even recent history, you know, who have to make those kind of decisions. And I think that takes a lot. 

Karl Gustavson:
It’s the decisions that you make that, you know you’re going to be risking popularity, you might be risking money, you might be risking friendships, you might be risking, you know, some of these actors and stuff who give up Hollywood careers because there’s certain things they’re unwilling to do. I just had an opportunity to go to a PBR event and I met a guy named Neil McDonough. I don’t know if you know him, the actor. 

Jeff Johnson:
That name sounds familiar. What’s he been in? 

Karl Gustavson:
He’s been in a bunch of stuff. He was in a. Part of the, part of one of the seasons of Yellowstone. He was in Minority Report. He was in a. Yeah. Movie called Ravenous. Blonde haired guy, pretty fit. He was in Walking Tall with Dwayne Johnson. 

Jeff Johnson:
Okay. 

Karl Gustavson:
Anyway, fantastic actor. Have liked him for a long time. But he really almost lost his career in Hollywood because he’s a married guy. He’s extremely faithful to his wife, good Christian values and he refused to kiss or do, you know, love scenes with other women on camera. He just wouldn’t do it. He said, that’s, you know, it’s not something that I’m willing to do and compromise my relationship with my wife. And I just don’t want to cross that line. And it almost got him blacklisted from Hollywood for a number of years. He was convinced that they weren’t going to give him acting parts. And now he’s had sort of this resurgence. But you think for so many people, the easy button there is just to say, okay, yeah, I’ll do some kissing scenes or I’ll do some simulated lovemaking scenes or something. 

Karl Gustavson:
But it takes a certain amount of courage to say, hey, million dollar contracts and movies and fame and popularity, you know, it’s. This is the courageous decision. This is what I think is right, and this is the route that I’m gonna go. And I think a lot of times those things that are not necessarily, you know, mortal danger, mortal peril type situations, but that takes a lot of courage. 

Jeff Johnson:
Yeah. One of the hallmarks that I found in doing these interviews, I’ve been so blessed to be able to talk to people like you, Carl, is that I’ve noticed that courageous most of the time comes with standing alone. I mean, it’s not completely isolated. You know, maybe there’s a support structure, whatever. But the decision and the event or the thing is standing alone. Even a. Even a mother that I interviewed that came out of corporate America to homeschool her kids, she had a litany of people going, what is your problem? You’ve got a lucrative career here. And she just knew that. She knew that she knew, and so she did it. And just exactly what you’re talking about. Yeah. You’re oftentimes standing alone. Wow. Okay, Carl, I’m going to get down to the point. What is the most courageous thing you’ve ever done? 

Karl Gustavson:
So it’s hard. As I read that question earlier when you sent me the email, I thought to myself, it’s really hard to quantify and nail down. Here is a specific example. But I think in that vein of thinking, what we just talked about, the standing alone and making decisions that risk a lot, I think maybe to me, the most courageous decision I made was the one I made when I decided that I was going to leave behind the life that I had mentally mapped out for myself and that I was going to join the Navy. And I think there was a tremendous amount of risk, first of all, because I did have. And I wasn’t standing completely alone. 

Karl Gustavson:
Obviously people supported me in the decision, but there were a lot of people on the outside who kind of, you know, quizzically looked at me and said, why? You know, that’s like a thing other people do, you know, you. I never had really military service on my radar. It wasn’t a thing that I was like coming out of high school thinking, oh, I’m going to join the military. And I always respected it a lot. But again, I thought, you know, that’s something other people do. Post 9 11, I sort of felt driven. I felt this compulsion, almost like a calling, that if I didn’t sign up and if I didn’t serve that I would always regret not having done that. And so, you know, I had everything from people saying, well, hey, you know, there’s not a lot of money in it. 

Karl Gustavson:
You’re on this trajectory where you want to, you know, go through and get a master’s degree or a doctorate, work in a lucrative profession. I had a good job at the time. I was working as a personal trainer. I was making good money. And you know, it was like, my father is a doctor, my mother was a teacher. We didn’t have particularly, like at least in my immediate family, a long history of military service. So it was kind of one of these things that I did feel a little bit like, hey, I’m standing alone here. And I knew a lot of people who said, you know, post 9 11, I thought about signing up. 

Karl Gustavson:
I wanted to sign up, or, you know, I looked into signing up, but then I didn’t do it because I had this job or had this girlfriend or I had this other thing. And for me, it really was about, you know, leaving behind both the job that I was at the school that I was going to, the relationship that I was in and sort of leaving all of that behind, and then having a bunch of people say, you know, on top of everything, this is about an 80% attrition selection course to go through SEAL training. You know, it’s about 20% of people who sign up and show up on day one of SEAL training, about 20% make it through. 

Karl Gustavson:
So even best case scenario, there’s a good chance you’re not going to make it through the training and you’re just going to end up some Joe Navy sailor on a ship somewhere. And so I think there was, you know, there were some questions internally and there was some, I think, some reflection that I had to do. I think about, number one, do I want to give up the pretty comfortable life that I have to go, you know, go through this extremely difficult training? Which at the end of this extremely difficult training, the end goal is that I’m going to go overseas and Night after night I’m going to go get into firefights with people who want to kill me. And it’s like, do I want to give this up for that? 

Karl Gustavson:
And you know, that was in an era when you didn’t have so much publicity, I think around the SEAL teams. There was one book and one movie that I knew of at the time, you know, the Charlie Sheen 1986 movie with Navy Seals. And then there was a book by Richard Marcinko that I had read. So there wasn’t a lot of like me thinking, oh, this is going to turn into books and movie deals and speaking engagements or any really concept of that. There could be anything on the other side other than me going and serving in this capacity that drove me to this decision. 

Karl Gustavson:
So there was a lot of reflection and I think, you know, as I think back now, I think that’s one of the things that took the most courage and I think the most like, ability for me to look inside and say, this is a thing I need to do and I’m going to do it for no other reason than it’s the right thing to do right now. 

Jeff Johnson:
That’s, that’s wonderful. Did you have a time after you made that decision and you committed, did you have a time where you said, oh, wrong decision, big mistake. 

Karl Gustavson:
Yeah, there was about six months when I was at Bud’s that I thought, oh, you know, they’re the first. So you go through like a pre BUDS type training that they used to call PTR&R. And it’s basically just to get you ready for day one of BUDS hit the ground running. BUDS is broken up into three phases. Each phase is about eight and a half weeks. So total about 26 weeks. And first phase is the sort of attrition phase. It’s the really difficult. It’s the two mile ocean swims, it’s the long morning runs, it’s the fourth week is hell week where you don’t sleep for five days. And it’s really where they’re kind of weeding everybody out. And, and there were some extremely hard days, long days, cold days, cold nights, you know, and that I think is designed to test everybody’s mental fortitude. 

Karl Gustavson:
And not only are you self regulating in those moments and saying, hey, how am I coping with this stress right now? 

Jeff Johnson:
Can you give me a particular example? 

Karl Gustavson:
Yeah. So for example, there was a night during our hell week, our hell week was in April and there was, you know, we had gone into, were going into the evening, so the sun is sort of going down. And we have a chow, right. The first couple of days of hell week, you don’t eat in the chow hall. You eat outside. You eat cold MREs in the cold, sitting outside. And so we’re out in this concrete bunker that’s sort of way down by the end of the training grounds, the training facility there in Coronado, and we’re sitting there eating, and as we’re eating our cold MREs, and it’s miserable, and, you know, you have another about four and a half days of this. It started hailing outside, and we could hear the hail pelting the rubber. 

Karl Gustavson:
You know, the rubber inflatable boats that we have that we’re carrying down the beach. And it’s cold. Guys are, you know, sitting there in their wet cammies eating cold MREs and shivering, and you hear this hail start, and you know the night is just beginning. Like, the sun has just gone down. And guys started lining up at the bell to ring out. 

Jeff Johnson:
Wow. 

Karl Gustavson:
I think we had 15 or 17 guys ring out in that one. That one chow guys just started getting up, and then they would see their buddy get up, and they’d get up, they’d put their cold MRE away. And you have the instructors going around saying, hey, this can all be over. Can all be over. 

Jeff Johnson:
You go, right, encouraging it. 

Karl Gustavson:
We got donuts and coffee. We’ll take you back to the barracks. You can sleep in a warm bed tonight. You don’t have to go back out there. First thing we’re going to do when you get done with chow is we’re going to go put you in the water. And, you know, so, you know it’s going to be cold, you know you’re going to be wet. And so they’re encouraging it and guys. And that breaks people mentally. Even while you’re not doing the physical stuff, you’re just sitting there. But that, like, that affective forecasting of, like, this is going to be so terrible. I don’t want to have to do this. And, you know, you’re already in a little bit of discomfort. You already got some chafing and stuff going on. Your joints are already a little bit sore. 

Karl Gustavson:
And so I’m sitting next to my roommate, and I look over at him, and I was like, man, I don’t know. You know, I was like, what do you think? I was like, this is. This is tough. And I’m watching good friends of mine who I’ve been through all the training up to that point get up and quit. My buddy turns to me, his name’s Mark, and he said, just go until something breaks. Okay, yeah, that makes sense to me. Or just go until something breaks. Basically. Like, run until the wheels fall off, but don’t quit because you think it’s gonna suck. Go until your body can’t go anymore. Like, essentially. That was the message that I took away from it. That was really one of my most trying moments. 

Karl Gustavson:
I think, through all of buds was sitting there and watching the guys that I had built these friendships with and cared about, and they’re lining up to quit. These guys are tough. These guys have said things like, I’ll never quit. Never quit anything in my life. And you’re watching these guys line up and you’re saying, man, I don’t know. Do I have what it takes? These guys are quitting. Do I have what it takes? And that one little sort of. I don’t even know. To this day, I don’t even know if that guy could tell you if he even remembers that he said that. But I remembered, and that stuck with me. You know, him saying, just go until something breaks. And that was. That was all it needed. 

Jeff Johnson:
That’s brilliant. That’s actually a brilliant motivation, something simple like that, because you can easily apply it. Okay. Until my leg breaks. All right, Then I can quit. 

Karl Gustavson:
Yep. 

Jeff Johnson:
Wow. 

Karl Gustavson:
Run it until the wheels fall off. Go until you can’t go anymore. And I think there were definitely, you know, situations in combat or scenarios where you’re going through a particularly difficult block of training or something like that, or, you know, a different selection course, a training course like tandem and bundle jumping or something, which is extremely hard. And a lot of guys aren’t able to make it through that course. And that. That saying comes back to me, and you’re like, hey, when it’s tough days, you just think to yourself, hey, just go until something breaks. 

Jeff Johnson:
Yeah. So courage is not absent from second guessing. In a moment, you take. You take a step of courage, you sign up to become a Navy seal, and you commit yourself to that. But that’s not. That courageous act is not separate from the fact of going, man, did I make a mistake? So, yeah, that’s it. That’s. That’s teachable, too, because I would imagine that carries you through the next time you’re confronted with something courageous. 

Karl Gustavson:
And I think as you go through. And I’ll take this all the way back to my work as a missionary, as you go through these challenging times that you feel like you have to exercise courage, you think of courage like a muscle, right? It Builds. It’s sort of this hypertrophic effort where your courage builds as you exercise it. So why exercise courage? I have a successful outcome that gives me that positive dopamine feedback that tells me, hey, having courage has positive outcomes. Exercising courage gives you the desired result. 

Karl Gustavson:
You go out and stumble through a bad lesson with some broken Portuguese, but at the end of it, you see that the person was a little bit receptive, and that gives you the impetus to maybe go and exercise that a little bit more and get out there and be a little bit more courageous and talk a little bit more, open up a little bit more. Or you have the courage to sign up and sign on the dotted line and say, here’s my contract. And then you make it through boot camp and you do your physical screening. That’s the preliminary test for you to get a spot at buds. And you pass that, and, okay, I’ve jumped over that courage hurdle. I’ve screened and selected, and now I’m in, bud. So that’s already a little bit of positivity. 

Karl Gustavson:
I’m at the first step of this objective that I was aiming for little by little. And then I have that moment where my buddy says, hey, go until something breaks. And I’m like, all right, it’s going to take some courage for me to get up. And instead of ringing the bell and going back to my warm barracks room, I’m going to go get in the water and freeze my butt off for another two hours, but I’m going to exercise that courage. And then you make it through that, and you make it through the first day or two of hell week, and you see the numbers dwindling, but the guys that are there, you know, they’re rock solid. And that sort of gives you that, like, hey, I’m getting the desired result when I exercise this courage, I’m getting the right thing. And it’s tough. 

Karl Gustavson:
It is tough, for sure, yeah. 

Jeff Johnson:
Was your experience in the Navy seals, everything that you thought it would be, or were you surprised? 

Karl Gustavson:
Honestly, it was more than I thought it would be, I think, because there was a limited amount of information that was out there about the SEAL teams and really what you had. I think the most. The greatest source of information that we had was just about the training. And you had, like, the Buds Class 234 videos, the discovery Channel series, and those were out. And so you had this sort of knowledge about what the training looked like, but you didn’t really have anything telling you. Here’s what the SEALs is going to be like, right so you sort of had this imagination of like, well, I imagine going overseas would be a little bit like this and combat will be a little bit like this. And. 

Karl Gustavson:
But without really, like anybody telling you this is what the SEAL experience is going to be like, you only have your imagination. So I came in thinking, you know, I’m going to go forward, I’m going to have combat, it’s going to be this, it’s going to be that. We’re, you know, thinking that maybe it was going to be a little bit Vietnamish kind of, you know, and I had a cousin who served in Desert Storm who told me a little bit about that stuff. But I think, like, the group that I got to work with, the training that I got to be a part of, the people that I got to meet, the deployments and the work, the operations that went on, all of that kind of stuff really exceeded my expectation of what I thought it was going to be like. 

Karl Gustavson:
And yeah, there were a ton of moments that to get to that point of exceeding my expectation required a little bit of a leap of faith. You know, I think if I had stayed in my position. 

Jeff Johnson:
Talk about that a little bit. Yeah. 

Karl Gustavson:
So if I had stayed at my first team for the entirety of my, or rather if I had stayed in the regular teams rather than screening to go get selected for development group, I think I wouldn’t have had the same experience. So I think getting to do my last 16 years in the teams at dev group, I think that was pretty pivotal in me having the experience that I had. And again, there’s a, you know, there’s a leap of faith there. I had come off a pretty serious injury in 2008 and had to do some rehab for most of that year. And so. And I had screened and got picked up for selection for green team. And prior to this injury, and so I went through, I had this injury, I had to do my rehab and then I had to go re screen. 

Karl Gustavson:
And so I thought, you know, am I, after this injury was an injury to my lower leg? I thought, after this injury, am I going to have what it takes here? Am I still going to be physically capable to meet the standard? Am I still going to be able to, like, run and shoot and jump and swim and do all the things that they’re going to require me to do or, you know, am I going to fall short? Am I going to make a fool out of myself if I go screen for this selection process? And I’m just not up to it because of this injury. So I Think there was a certain amount of courage involved in that, you know, going and re. 

Karl Gustavson:
Screening and getting selected and having to go through that whole process and the whole time thinking, you know, I really hope my leg holds up through this because I’m not sure how this is going to be. And so I think that was sort of, you know, that was one of those things that was a challenging moment for me because I, you know, it was like I could have just stayed at the regular teams and just said, hey, because of this injury, I’m not going to risk it. I’m not going to risk my ego, I’m not going to risk a possible injury. I’m just going to stay here and continue doing the stuff that I was doing here. 

Karl Gustavson:
But then, you know, getting, being able to go over to Seal Team 6 and work there and work with the guys that I got to work with there was pivotal in me having, I think, the kind of career that I had imagined that I wanted were you. 

Jeff Johnson:
Again, I don’t need to probe on anything salacious. So push back on me. Of course, Carl, if I’m going someplace I shouldn’t. But did you get into any dust ups as far as in this as an active SEAL when you were deployed or did you have some difficult situations? Some. 

Karl Gustavson:
Oh yeah, yeah. So that was actually the injury was I, I got shot in combat in 2008. I got. Took a round through the leg and got to the plate that I was wearing and on and off where we actually lost a couple of guys. And so, you know, then that raises some serious questions too because you think, okay, do I want to do this for another. Potentially I was at about the seven year mark in my career. Do I want to do this for another 13 years until I’m able to retire? Do I want to do this for another. However many operations do I want to do this for? You know, am I. And that, and that’s sort of a courage moment is saying like, am I able to. Am I going to be able to. 

Karl Gustavson:
To mentally go back on target knowing that the last time I was out on target, I, you know, this close to getting killed. Am I going to be able to go back and do the job effectively or am I going to be, you know, pardon the pun. Gunshot? 

Jeff Johnson:
Yeah. Wow. Can I ask how old you are? So you’re a young man, so. 

Karl Gustavson:
Thank you. 

Jeff Johnson:
What do you think? You know, you talk about LDs going on mission and feeling purpose in that and then you feel like it’s a sense of calling, to join the SEALs and pursue that. I’m just. I’m going to ask you a bold question, Carl. What do you think God’s purpose is for you here? 

Karl Gustavson:
You know, I think I asked that. 

Jeff Johnson:
Because you’re the only. Here’s why I asked that. 

Karl Gustavson:
Yeah. 

Jeff Johnson:
Because. And I want to get to Dr. Seuss today. You are, you know, the Uestu that you’ve ever been, whatever, but you’re the only Carl Gustafson that God ever made in all of human history. You’re the original article. I’m the only Jeff Johnson that God ever made in all of human history. And I am blessed to be able to talk to you. It’s like a diamond, you know, it’s shiny. And you were sent here. This is my Christian faith telling me this. But you were sent here with a purpose and with something to do. Now, it might be like the movie, Dustin Hoffman movie, Little Big man, where you’ve got an Indian phase and you got a gun shooter phase and you got a drunk phase and you got a whatever phase, businessman phase. 

Jeff Johnson:
I think sometimes we migrate through things throughout the course of our life, but I still think it’s fair to ask the question, what do you think God put you here for? 

Karl Gustavson:
Yeah, I think, you know, I thought about that. Obviously, you. You do go through phases. And there’s a phase as a missionary where you think, you know, I’m here to teach and to proselytize these people and to, you know, bring people to the gospel and to do those kind of things. Then there’s the. Pretty immediately after that, there’s the war fighting phase where I’m here to defend my country and defend freedom and defend values. And I think now, you know, it’s. It’s sort of this phase in my life where I feel like I’ve been through so many things and I’ve learned so much that. Hold on just a second. I’m gonna. I think I’m getting a little bit of reflection off me. Sun’s coming through my. They’re at a different angles. I’m getting a little smudge on my camera. 

Jeff Johnson:
This is audio only for our listeners, but if you could see Carl the way I’m seeing him. He’s sitting in the sunlight of the spirit right now. There are sun rays that are bathing him. 

Karl Gustavson:
Halo of sun coming in around me. 

Jeff Johnson:
Right? 

Karl Gustavson:
So, yeah, I think, you know, I think there’s. It’s a. I feel like it’s a period now. And I think this is reflected in some of the Things, opportunities that have been put in front of me and opportunities that I’ve chosen to say yes to that. There are so many lessons and life skills and whether that’s like physical skills or mentality, resiliency, courage. I think there’s this idea, and I think this resonates with a lot of, like, former SEALs, that it’s a time to give back. And I think generationally, when I think about, I have 14 nieces and nephews, so big family. 

Jeff Johnson:
Wow. 

Karl Gustavson:
And I think there are generationally, you see sort of some of these gaps in. They’re not being taught these resiliency mechanisms and they’re not being given a lot of these opportunities or encouragement to be courageous or, you know, a lot of the things that we grew up doing are, you know, now, you know, I grew up in Boy Scouts and stuff like that, and those are entities that have sort of fallen by the wayside, or many of them no longer exist at all or not in the form that they did when we were kids. 

Karl Gustavson:
And so it’s sort of this idea that there are a plenitude of opportunities for me to now go out and talk to people both in, you know, I had an opportunity a couple weeks ago to go home to the town I grew up in and talk to the high school, some of the high school kids at the high school that I went to. And I was mostly there to talk to a foreign language class and to talk to them about the benefits of learning a foreign language and maintaining that foreign language and sort of some of these opportunities that you get to travel around the world and go these different places and how those sort of things, they build bridges interculturally. 

Karl Gustavson:
And I’ve always felt very connected with, you know, some of the people that I’ve gotten to see and work with in France, and I speak some French and then the people that I got to serve with in Brazil and speak Portuguese and even now, you know, continue to do that. And I think these lessons are things that are. Were given to me, opportunities that were given to me that I chose to say yes to so that later on down the road I can be a conduit and provide maybe some of those opportunities or insights to people that are looking. And some of that looks like maybe even just tactical training skills that we try to teach law enforcement to make them more effective in their job and save the lives of people maybe in active shooter type situations. 

Karl Gustavson:
And some of them is just me sitting down with my nieces and nephews and saying like, hey, a lot of the Time in life when you have an easy choice and a difficult choice put in front of you, the better thing, the right thing, and maybe the thing that’s going to give you more growth and be more productive for you is the difficult thing maybe just encouraging them to look at those difficulties as opportunities rather, as. Rather than something to be avoided. 

Jeff Johnson:
Wow. Wow. Do you feel like we Just a couple more questions, Carl, and then I’ll leave you alone, I promise. You’ve been so gracious with your time. Do you feel like we live in a courageous time? 

Karl Gustavson:
I feel like we live in a time where there is a lot of opportunity to be courageous. 

Jeff Johnson:
Yeah. 

Karl Gustavson:
I don’t feel like we live in a time when a lot of people choose to be courageous. 

Jeff Johnson:
What do you, what do you think the cause of that is? 

Karl Gustavson:
Comfort, maybe. I think, you know, just like we talked about at the beginning of the podcast, I think there is this idea that if I make a courageous decision, in a lot of these instances, I’m going to lose friends or I’m going to lose influence or I’m going to lo popularity or maybe I’m going to be demonetized or something like that. And we live in such an interconnected world now with, in the age of social media. And it’s like you have kids who, rather than post something about, for example, their Christian faith, which might get them ostracized on Facebook, you know, they would rather post about, you know, going to the party and drinking with the other kids or making bad decisions in order to sort of like, plant themselves in that circle of popularity. 

Karl Gustavson:
So I think there is, you know, there need to be people out there who are saying, like, hey. And I don’t want to frame it as being like, cool or uncool, but like, as far as, like, self growth and development and being able to lay your head on your pillow at night and say, I did the right thing, I made the courageous thing, I held to my values. You know, those are some of the kind of things that, you know, for me now, in the wake of everything that I’ve done, people are like, well, if you could go back, would you be a missionary? Would you join the Navy? Would you go overseas and do these deployments? And I can say emphatically and resoundingly, yes, absolutely, I would. 

Karl Gustavson:
Because I laid my head down every night knowing that in at least those two crossroads moments, I made the right decisions and the right decisions for me. 

Jeff Johnson:
That’s a great aunt that’s inspiring me. When I, when I sobered up back in 1992. I’m a recovering person and so I put the plug in the jug a while ago. And one of the first things that I learned in recovery, because alcohol and drugs were just nothing but a panacea for every single little bit of stress that ever landed on my shoulders. And I promise you, I would happily use to get rid of the tiniest little speck of stress, not even the big ones. But it worked over and over again. And one of the first things I learned in recovery is they said to me, get comfortable being uncomfortable. And I heard you say that very thing. And Carl, I think that’s absolutely, I completely agree with you. 

Jeff Johnson:
People want to be liked, people want to be happy, people don’t want to be fussed with, people don’t want to be. And not that you need to be an irritant, but if you’re living life and following God’s will in any way, shape or form, you’re going to run into resistance. And so embrace that courage and don’t placate and just be soft. Yeah. 

Karl Gustavson:
And the thing about it is, as much as we as a society, and granted, overstressing yourself can be a bad thing because it can cause health issues. You don’t want to be chronically stressed. But stress also equals growth, whether that’s you go to the gym and you stress your muscles in order to get them to grow, or you go pull all night study sessions stressing yourself out to the max so that you can cram all of that information in and you can learn and you can glean that those facts and you can go and pass the test and get the degree or whatever it is, stress equals growth and you have to induce the right kind of stress in order to grow. And I think unfortunately there’s become this mindset of like, well, we just need to avoid all of the stress. 

Karl Gustavson:
And if something stresses you out, like an opposing viewpoint, you should go find yourself a safe space or a cry room rather than have a constructive debate with that person and say, here’s my ideas, here’s your ideas. You know, let’s have a little bit of back and forth and tell me why you think this is the correct idea and let me tell you the virtues of my ideas. But instead of that, we’ve sort of said, hey, well, the easier thing to do is just go silo yourself off in an echo chamber of people who agree with you ardently about everything. Yeah, and that’s the wrong answer. I mean, objectively, that just isn’t the right answer. And not only does it stifle growth, but it creates these very divisive conversations or lack of conversations, I think. 

Jeff Johnson:
Yeah. Carl Gustafson, a missionary, a Navy seal, a team guy. Hopefully I’m. I can call you a new friend. 

Karl Gustavson:
Absolutely. 

Jeff Johnson:
And a man of great courage. Carl, thank you so much for joining us today. 

Karl Gustavson:
Thank you so much for having me. This was a pleasure. 

Outro:

Thank you for joining us today on Courageous. If you’d like to hear more about the work and ministry being done at Crossroads Apologetics, please visit our home on the web at crossroadsapologetics.org Would you or someone you know like to be featured on Courageous? Send us an email at info@crossroadsapologetics.com or info@crossroadsapologetics.org telling us about the most courageous thing you’ve ever done.