Episode 261 Clinton Dye Combat Veteran Finds Positive Path Out Of PTSD And Early Childhood Trauma Transcript

This transcript is from episode 261 with guest Clinton Dye.

Scott DeLuzio: [00:00:00] Thanks for tuning in to the Drive On Podcast where we are focused on giving hope and strength to the entire military community. Whether you’re a veteran, active duty, guard, reserve, or a family member, this podcast will share inspirational stories and resources that are useful to you. I’m your host, Scott DeLuzio, and now let’s get on with the show.

Scott DeLuzio: Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Drive On Podcast. Today my guest is Clinton Die. Clinton is a four tour Marine Corps combat veteran. He struggled with P T S D from not only his deployments, but also his early childhood. And while he coped with that in some not so healthy ways, he’s now on a mission of positivity to help others drop those destructive habits and recover their higher purpose in life.

Scott DeLuzio: So welcome to the show, Clinton. I’m glad to have you.

Clinton Dye: Yeah. Thank you, Scott. You hit the nail on the head 100%. So if we go all the way back into my [00:01:00] childhood, the audience doesn’t know. I was present as a five-year-old when my mother shot my father in self-defense in a drunken rage. He was high drunk looking for money in the house.

Clinton Dye: And she did that, you know, right in front of. You know, so I grew up super poor, a child of the trailer park in inner Houston. And this was my life throughout all my young childhood until my father got clean. And I had to deal with that trauma over time. And this was just one of many events that any child in a situation with domestic violence would have to deal with.

Clinton Dye: And over the years I struggled. With segregating my mind, body, and spirit from, you know, the lure of, you know, crime addiction. You know, they used drugs, you know, heroin cocaine alcohol continually. These were just common places in the environment and it took a lot of work and struggle over my life to kind of move past this early [00:02:00] childhood drama into adulthood.

Clinton Dye: You know, and ended up enlisting in the Marine Corps, which, you know, started my journey of a different type of trauma, if you will. But I attribute those young years of trauma is the only reason one of the only reasons I survived for combat tours and retain some mental capacity post-war where a lot of.

Clinton Dye: You know, colleagues struggled with P T S D end up taking their lives. I think the audience is pretty wide here and understands the struggles of just minimum exposure to combat and how they struggled mentally as a functioning adult later. I was no different.

Scott DeLuzio: But So when you were When you were talking about how the Chi childhood trauma kind of was in a way a benefit for you in your time.

Scott DeLuzio: I don’t wanna say a benefit, right, but it helped you in your time later on in the Marine Corps. Was that because you felt like you’ve already learned how to process some of the trauma and kind of cope with it from an [00:03:00] early age and that is what helped you later on when you’re in the marine?

Clinton Dye: Yeah, 100%. I view trauma as a mechanism for evolution, right, as an individual. So you must harden yourself to survive. The mind and the body just can’t deal with the stress. So over time, your ability to handle different stressors increases, right? Obviously the Marine Corps is full throttle stressed all the time, and then you couple that.

Clinton Dye: Combat veteran, right? Four tours where it’s 15, 17, 18 hour days, seven days a week for six to 10 months at a time. You know, limited food, limited water, no outlet. You know, you just have each other and execution. Right. Maybe you’re throwing around some weights from time to time, but there is very little psychological outlet in combat and I attribute that those young years of really difficult and horrible times as sort of the mechanism that [00:04:00] preserved what little was left of a functioning human during combat.

Clinton Dye: Right? It hardened me,

Scott DeLuzio: right? And so that early on, that hardening early on helped to. Basically deflect some of the trauma that you experienced later on in life, right? That’s kind of what it seems like, right?

Clinton Dye: Yeah, 100%. So I had the ability to put up, you know, psychological walls and then just push through the trauma.

Clinton Dye: Those things didn’t bother me and affect me in the moment, like it affected other people. My, my troops used to really hate me in a function because I was the first one. And then the last one into the tent or the sleeping area, and the first one asleep. My conscience was 100% clear in combat.

Clinton Dye: So, so sleep and those kinds of things. I was not very well affected by combat stress in the moment later in life, right? I had to put the pieces back to Humpty [00:05:00] Dumpty, but in the moment, I executed rather efficiently in combat, right?

Scott DeLuzio: During the, in that moment you’re at that point where you’re able to kind of deal with things.

Scott DeLuzio: You’re seemingly unaffected by a lot of the stuff that other people were probably way more affected by. But later on it all kind of caught up to you, didn’t it?

Clinton Dye: Yeah, 100%. So, like anything, there’s scars, right? So combat and all those trauma produced scars, and those were unmanaged wounds that, that I had in life.

Clinton Dye: And, you know, I focused on execution and I didn’t deal with, I didn’t have the tools necessary to deal with those traumas in the moment before or ever until later in life. And, Yeah, those things caught up to me in a pretty horrible way later in life. And that’s where my next struggle started.

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah, I was just gonna say, so let’s talk about that and how you struggled and what that all looked like. So kind of when did you realize that [00:06:00] there’s this thing, p PTs d that maybe was affecting.

Clinton Dye: Oh gosh. It took me, I was a decade behind the curve, you know, so after I got on the Marine Corps in 2009 I attended college, bachelor’s in software engineering, masters in software engineering.

Clinton Dye: Then a year of PhD before I just burnt out with higher education. But I started to notice a trend in my life if I wasn’t hyper focused on success or the next bigger goal. Those emotions caught up. , right? So I was using personal excellence and some larger goal to really not have to deal with all those problems, right?

Clinton Dye: So they started to manifest their way as you could imagine, as competitive adult drinking, right? That’s a very typical Matra on the Marine Corps. You know, it’s like a giant fraternity at the time. This is two decades ago, so there was a lot of drinking post 60 minutes, silent drill, team scandal, you know, in the nineties, et cetera.

Clinton Dye: So drinking was just a way that the warriors [00:07:00] managed their stress, you know, they’re oppressed. All the services are very similar in how they treat individuals. It’s very harsh life to, to manage young adult. And whole some services manage it better. Air Force, maybe the Coast Guard, but Navy, the Marines and the Army.

Clinton Dye: Specifically the combat arms. The ones that have the little bit rougher life, alcohol is their weapon of choice to manage those stresses, right? So I was no different. I would drink, you know, a. It started easy. You know, one drink a day would turn into two, three, then, you know, it’s drinking a bottle or two of wine with the wife and then, you know, it’s drinking with the boys on Friday, Saturday and Sunday and binge watching football all day and drinking beer.

Clinton Dye: And then it’s hard liquor and then it turns into smoking weed and then it’s, oh, let’s do some coke. And then it’s, you know, it never stops it. There’s no getting that demonn off your back until you manage, figure out a way to release the emotions and just deal with [00:08:00] it.

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah. So all of these emotions and you’re absolutely right.

Scott DeLuzio: I just kinda wanna go back for a sec talking about the way that especially like combat arms and the Marines, army Navy, They all kind of deal with things with drinking and it’s almost encouraged in a way. Like it’s you just get people going out and drinking, doing stupid stuff and coming back.

Scott DeLuzio: And that just becomes the way that you deal with things and you, you sort of learn to deal with things. Through the military by repetition, just like you do with anything else. Yeah. You go out drinking all the time. It’s like, oh, okay. Well now I don’t feel quite as stressed anymore or whatever, you know, and then Right.

Scott DeLuzio: It helps in that way. But it’s, again, it’s not a healthy way to deal with these things. So you’re. Drinking, you’re drinking more and more. That’s really how you’re dealing with your stress. You’re getting into some other things too, not just the drinking. When did you have that moment when you realize that something needed [00:09:00] to change?

Scott DeLuzio: Some people call it a rock bottom moment. I don’t know if that was kind of your situation or, but everyone really has, when they decide that, that they’re done with this lifestyle, they realize something’s gotta change. When did you have that kind of moment?

Clinton Dye: Sure. So that moment for. The final moment.

Clinton Dye: There were times where I was able to limit that but towards, I’d say about maybe 12 months ago. When is, yeah, January-ish. So coming out of, I was working as a defense defense contractor for a large defense contractor organization, and we’re providing services to combat troops in combat zones.

Clinton Dye: So Afghanistan, Iraq. Saudi Arabia, others communications assets, and coming out of one of those site visits, you know, none of, I hadn’t fixed all those problems post covid. I was drinking more and more during every day to just not my best self. Managing the covid stress and life stress and my workload professionally, [00:10:00] I would say double or tripled during covid, we.

Clinton Dye: Lost due to attrition and funding, my professional workload just went through the roof. I hadn’t worked these kind of hours selflessly since I was in combat. Right. So, so just dealing with that, once again, pull out the bottle to manage that. Right. Coming out of that I started the turn into, You know, not my best self a person.

Clinton Dye: I’d rather be, well, I’m proud. I’m proud that I turned it around. But who I turned into as, you know, an embarrassing, an adult, you know, I put on a lot of weight. I wasn’t physically fit. I wasn’t keeping my word to myself and my people. I was embarrassing to my children. I actually lost my girlfriend of a year and a half.

Clinton Dye: We were discussing about next steps, moving in, and Progressing onto marriage. I returned from Saudi Arabia to an empty house. My girlfriend of a year and a half didn’t even call me to let me know. She broke up with me, right? She just left, [00:11:00] right? So I had to go through that. Obviously, I caught covid, boohoo, poor me, right?

Clinton Dye: So I had all these things that I was dealing with coming out of the combat zone, losing your girlfriend that you love, and then, you know, being sick on top of it, had a. 10 days of self-reflection. I was like, I am fucked up. Like I need to get it together. This isn’t the man that I want raising my own children.

Clinton Dye: This isn’t a man that I want to do business with. This isn’t a man that I could respect and all aspects of what I define a positive male role model and a man I was in violation of, I was in a violation of. Entire moral ethics internally, though a friend of mine, Eric, he’s out there somewhere, if he ever sees this, he drives a Lamborghini.

Clinton Dye: He’s a dope dude, beautiful woman, great relationship. He turned me onto a mentor, you know, coming in February. You know, I tried to follow the mentor and not pay the price. Whatever it took a few months before I figured out, like, you know what? I do need [00:12:00] help. I need someone. An alpha male that’s rough around the corners, that’s killing it in the way that I can respect.

Clinton Dye: So he has everything that I ever desired in life. He’s living that life. And I picked up a mentor and we started to have some of those conversations and he put me onto a path very rapidly on how to fix my shit and return myself back. My best self. That was really the journey. So it was about a year ago to six months in between that zone to where I started to devote a hundred percent of my effort into rebuilding the man I could respect.

Clinton Dye: So

Scott DeLuzio: what did that process look like? I mean, I obviously you, you went you were talking to this guy you’re. Wrap your head around what’s going on in my life and how do I get this better? But what did the overall process look like that got you to the point where you [00:13:00] are today?

Scott DeLuzio: Sure. The,

Clinton Dye: the process is very straightforward and it sounds too simple to be real, but it is. So first things first, we have a meeting, right? He sets it up, we have a call. He’s like, Hey, we’re gonna get you on this team. This is what you’re gonna. You need to do these things and these are non-negotiable.

Clinton Dye: If you can’t do these things, it’s not gonna work. And you need to do something different with yourself. The old G’s just gonna stay. So first thing happens is we get up early. So early Rise is a cornerstone of my program and the program he taught me. So we get up early, way early than everybody. He gets up at three, I think it’s right around 3:00 AM That’s the time he gets up every day.

Clinton Dye: I get up at four. Right, and at 4:00 AM I reflect for the day all the things that I didn’t do correct yesterday. These are the things that I put on my list that I need to nail today. Doesn’t really matter what those things are, if you weren’t true to yourself on your. You know, [00:14:00] physical delivery or your nutrition or how you were thinking, or an argument with your girlfriend or professionalism, or you got angry with a stranger.

Clinton Dye: These are the things that you write down like today at the forefront of my mind, I need to nail being respectful to other humans and I just can’t be mean to someone. I need to control my emotions today in this aspect, cuz y. I didn’t maintain frame and I lost my cool on a stranger, right? This is a very difficult thing, but you must align yourself every day.

Clinton Dye: So every day when I wake up, as soon as I wake up, I have a morning routine and I provide a post that the things that I’m reflecting on as adult and as a mentor to other people in this space, these are the things that I need to do. So it’s reflection. You can meditate. Then we go straight from reflect.

Clinton Dye: To physical activity, right? So our weapon of choice is burpees. My, I’m a little bit older. I don’t move too [00:15:00] much, so I do burp. I rotate between burpees and pushups, right? So every day, every morning I do four sets of 50 pushups, four sets of 50 burpees, something like that to start my day, which helps align my energy.

Clinton Dye: Basically what’s referred to as high vibration. You have a high vibration, which is basically enlightenment, right? Your purest self, and then low vibration, which is essentially toxic behavior and thoughts, right? So basically it resets you. You get a good pump, you get that adrenaline pushing through the body, the euphoria, et cetera, reset your day.

Clinton Dye: And then I go to the gym. So straight from there, it’s right into the gym. And then we start the business day. It’s an hour in the. Done. And then, you know, I’m online, so I’m running a business. So I have all the necessary things that I do. So before all of society’s even awake, it’s 7:00 AM I’ve put in several hours of self work just in the [00:16:00] morning, just so I can approach.

Clinton Dye: The day is my best self, right? So when I’m at work at 7:00 AM I am operating at full. Right. Optimal, optimal me. My nutrition is aligned. I’m never, I don’t drink anymore at all. Not a drop. I don’t smoke, I don’t do any drugs in the morning. I am at a hundred percent capacity to execute business cuz I deal with a lot of people that have a lot of personal issues.

Clinton Dye: So people that suffered in the way I suffered, they’re calling me with their own problems. Right. And you have to be operating in a really high position to, to handle their own pain and suffer. That’s how I start my day. That’s the routine there. Right. And

Scott DeLuzio: I found in my own life, the days that I skip an exercise or I, you know, I just, you know, I’m gonna take an extra hour of sleep or something like that.

Scott DeLuzio: The whole rest of the day. I’m, I just feel off I’m not the most efficient, most effective [00:17:00] version of myself. Mine’s a little bit more cloudy. You know, I need something in the morning especially to shake out the cobwebs and get myself up and moving, and it’s not, The answer isn’t, you know, drink more coffee or, you know, any of that kind of stuff, right?

Scott DeLuzio: It’s go do something, go. And it could be simple, like you said. It could just be something as simple as, you know, doing some pushups, doing some sit-ups, doing some burpees or something along those lines just to get you moving, get you going you know, go for a jog or something like that.

Scott DeLuzio: Just something to. The blood flowing and get your day started, right? 100%. I find that is the best way to start your day off, right? And I think like anybody, I mean, we’re all human. There’s gonna be days when you’re just like, you know, I don’t feel like doing this today, but, you know, screw it, kick yourself out of bed and get into it.

Scott DeLuzio: You you owe it to yourself.

Clinton Dye: Yeah, 100%. These are non-negotiable things, so I don’t negotiate with my inner bitch, if you will, for the audience. It’s that voice that’s, you [00:18:00] know, the devil, if you will, is on one shoulder and the angel’s on the other. Right? I don’t listen to the devil anymore.

Clinton Dye: Cause it, it’s never going away. Right. That temptation to relax, that temptation to put your feet up and watch Netflix all day, that temptation to drink, that temptation to not be truthful to yourself is always present and never goes away. It’s a monster that has latched on to your spirit and it’s just there forever, right?

Clinton Dye: So you can’t negotiate with yourself. You have things that you’ve committed to, to do every single. And they just are non-negotiable. Now, life will throw in a curve ball. I’m not saying that I won’t miss a day at gym, right? I have children and a life and a personal life, and you know, I own homes, et cetera.

Clinton Dye: So there’s things that life throws you automatically that gives you a day off, right? There’ll be times where, you know, you get that call at five in the morning where one of your parents didn’t wake up something crazy. That’s obviously, I’m not doing burpees that morning, right? I’m going to handle business as an.

Clinton Dye: [00:19:00] Because life throws you your own days off. You don’t have to build days off and mental clarity days into your schedule. Those are already present. The reason why my routines are difficult, because there’s a link to, you know, that spirituality link of, you know, you look back in time, monks, Jesus Mohammed, they all controlled what they put in their.

Clinton Dye: They ate a certain way. They fasted fasting, present through all of history. Right? So that’s controlling what you put into your body. Gluttony, which is how we live in modern society, is the exact opposite of enlightenment. Right? And that’s a key factor to the declining health of our entire country. You know, at least 50% of the people suffer from being overweight or morbidly obese in our country.

Clinton Dye: That’s. So when you look around anywhere, it depends on the part of the country, but in most parts of the country, look around, the people are rather large and they’re not controlling what they put in their body, and they look exactly how they feel on the inside. [00:20:00] So if they look like that on the outside, they’re feeling like that on the inside, right?

Clinton Dye: So they’re not operating at their optimal position. My workouts are difficult. Once again, inducing difficulty suffering. And pain, self-induced pain to grow, right? None of these things are hurting my body. I’m actually, this is the best shape I’ve ever been in since I was in the Marine Corps. I’ve lost 25 pounds with, I don’t do cardio, just the burpees, just the pushups and a regular workout.

Clinton Dye: I work out six hours a week. That’s it. That’s it. I read every day for 30 minutes. Right. And I treat people with as much respect as I possibly can. It doesn’t mean I’m their bitch but I’m purposefully trying to avoid conflict. I. Exercise that, you know, that beast, when I have to, I’ll break the shell and let ’em out.

Clinton Dye: But that’s only when necessary Right. In defense of my people. Right. A friend of mine or something, we’re gonna, we’re gonna do it when we have to, but if I can avoid it I’ll avoid conflict the [00:21:00] best I can. Yeah.

Scott DeLuzio: And I think anybody who’s been to combat, they recognize what you’re talking about there.

Scott DeLuzio: It’s that ability to. Reign in that inner beast that can definitely be unleashed when it’s needed. But yeah you keep that beast at bay. You keep them locked up until he is needed because cuz I mean, you’ll totally. Ruin relationships and probably get yourself into some trouble if you let that thing out too often, right?

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah,

Clinton Dye: 100%. I come from a hyper violent family though. You know, my dad was no stranger to the law, you know, as a kid I got into trouble. You know, drugs, alcohol, all those things, right? I played sports, like I never got in trouble. I actually never got caught. And even when I got caught, I got out of ga being in trouble, I was always very crafty.

Clinton Dye: You know, so I see systems naturally. And I find a way to exploit the systems. Well, I found a way to exploit the systems in my own body and mind, and that’s exactly what I teach. People do like these things work, right? So, well, [00:22:00] yeah. Let’s

Scott DeLuzio: talk about more about what you’re doing now. You’re on a mission now to basically help people become the best versions of themselves.

Scott DeLuzio: And so let’s talk about what it is that you’re doing now and how you’re helping people.

Clinton Dye: 100%. In recent months, I’ve left the defense industry. So I started a couple businesses. I knew I was very unhappy like I said, with a mentor. Got me onto the right path and I started putting in a lot of self-work.

Clinton Dye: I started two businesses in the background while I was working as an employee and different industry, right? It’s not in violation of my nda. So those companies don’t worry about coming after me. So I started two businesses. One of them is helping people, another one’s in real estate investment. So my.

Clinton Dye: Component of my business is really where all my passion lies, and I push a hundred percent of my effort into helping people be better versions of themselves. So the exact systems and processes that I use in my own life that turn me around from, you know, a degenerate alcoholic [00:23:00] suffering from drug use.

Clinton Dye: And all the vices, you know, I chased girls for fun in sport, right? I don’t hunt animals. I would hunt people, if you will, right? It was what I would do to entertain myself, to keep me busy. I changed all those things and the same processes that changed me. That’s what I teach people to do. So we get up, they get up at the same time.

Clinton Dye: I get up, they eat the same way I put them on their, so I’m their life coach. We look at their life, I create them a custom workout plan, dial in their macros, and then put them on my mindset program. We have a weekly call, which keeps them in line. There’s some reading, there’s some book readings for different people, right?

Clinton Dye: Some people are suffering from depression. They have unique books. Other people are suffering from alcohol, drug use, addiction. Those are entirely different vices. And there’s a large group of just men finding. They’re masculine calling again. You know, in the last five, 10 years, I think the male population has been really demasculated as [00:24:00] a whole.

Clinton Dye: I think we’ve seen a consistent maybe media push cultural change regardless. It doesn’t matter the root cause, but men are suffering for being men, right? It’s not cool anymore to be. And we’re seeing a lot of challenges in my male groups specifically when their relationships are suffering.

Clinton Dye: Their bodies are suffering. They’re embarrassed to be masculine. You know, that toxic masculinity component to have tattoos. They have muscles to drive, a nice car to date, an attractive woman to be successful. These things have been interpreted as somewhat toxic by some personalities in the world.

Clinton Dye: And I’m the counter. These things are okay. And I teach these men in the world, it is okay to have these values. Be an ethical man. Of course. Do not be horrible. There’s nothing wrong with teaching a man. It is okay to, you know, train your body, you know, do jiu-jitsu, be a boxer. Get some muscles, get a six-pack abs, you know, up their game [00:25:00] professionally with their health and their wealth.

Clinton Dye: This treats your woman with respect to be the man. You know, your children look up to you. They’re superhero. They’re living superhero. That’s really my passion. Cause I see huge change in people from, you know, being depressed, anxious, you know, suffering just horrible life where they’re considering suicide.

Clinton Dye: Two in just, you know, three months, six months, some years, take transformation. An entirely different man or woman. It’s not just about men, but it’s the men specifically are suffering in a unique way. And obviously I resonate very well with that suffering for the male population. So that’s, that is my entire passion.

Scott DeLuzio: And you’re absolutely right. I mean, there is. I don’t know where this came from, but this mindset that masculinity being a strong man is not an okay thing to be anymore. [00:26:00] And you know, it’s really given the rise to a weaker, softer population and. Men, I don’t think men are wired to be that way.

Scott DeLuzio: I mean, maybe there, yeah, there are some, but I think in general, men are more wired to be the stronger, the protector, the not, and not to say that women are weak or anything like that. I don’t want to get people all riled up a about that but I think that’s just what men are wired. To do is to be the protectors, to be the providers to like, that just tends to be the way, I mean, look throughout history, that’s just the way people have Sure.

Scott DeLuzio: Existed. Right? And now when you tell people that doing all of these things is bad, society doesn’t want this. And it’s like, okay, well, it’s no wonder that so many people are out there taking their lives because they don’t know where they even fit into the world.

Clinton Dye: 100, 100%. It’s a delicate road.

Clinton Dye: And I’m not suggesting that women are weak in any way. There’s, I work with some [00:27:00] badass women, be very clear gentlemen. I work with badass women. These women are in special zones of the government with three letters. They. They’re physically fit. They do pull-ups, they do squats, they do dead lifts, they run families.

Clinton Dye: Girls are badass too. Men in general, I think we’ve seen a dramatic change socially in the last five, 10 years. So one of the areas that I get complaints from my female group is my hyper successful females. I will just call that group of any woman that makes over a hundred. Right. Doesn’t matter. Just that’s an anomaly in society.

Clinton Dye: They’re the highest percentile earners for females. So any woman making over a hundred k, they all have the same complaint. Where are all the good men at all of them, right? The ones that I coach on their relationships and how men think they’re hyper interested in understanding. Alpha, what’s inside alpha ish male minds, you know?

Clinton Dye: And I give them some [00:28:00] insight as to what interests been so they can better manage their own lives, right? And what I see is the statistics is that the world’s moving into online dating. This is been happening for several years, while 85% of all the women are only interested in the top 15% of men means that on the scale of zero to 10, Right.

Clinton Dye: 10 being the highest caliber man that you could possibly imagine for a female, tall, dark, handsome, has money, all that good stuff that whatever women are interested in, 85% of all the women are only swiping on the top 15% of men. So the very premium part of society, 85% of all men are scrambling and pawing for the attention of the bottom 15.

Clinton Dye: Of all female energy, it means that most of the men on that entire platform get almost no attention from any females at all while the top tier [00:29:00] males like me, get all the attention from all the women, right? So women are hyper selective. This alienates the majority of men. Right. So I teach men say it, this is the way culture is and the way humans are involved.

Clinton Dye: And I’m not saying a hundred percent of all women, but if we take a hole in a statistic, the majority of women, if given an option, are gonna choose the best possible option for theirselves. That’s human nature. I’m not bagging girls for how that works, right? I, if I had the choice between an ugly woman or attractive woman, I want an ugly woman that’s, you know, fits into my life.

Clinton Dye: So I have a choice, right? And so do they. So they’re picking the cream and the crop, all the women, not just the top tier. So I help men to become the best version of ourselves so that, so they themselves, Statistical advantage, at least in the dating market, they have a advantage everywhere in life if they’re their best selves, they don’t have to worry about anything when they’re continually working on themselves.

Clinton Dye: I always tell them what I was told, [00:30:00] my mentor says create the man or the woman you wanna be. That deserves the life worth living. So really what that essentially means is all the things in the life. You wish you were living right? If you’re seeing someone driving around a Ferrari, well, you need to be doing the things that men and women that drive Ferrari do, or you’ll never have one.

Clinton Dye: Right? The habits and the behaviors that those people do. If you want a person that is gonna get into a marriage, right? You don’t say, look, I found a good woman and now I’ll become a great husband. That’s stupid, right? You’re like, oh, I’m gonna change. When I’ve already got the prize in life, no, that’s not the way the world works.

Clinton Dye: You must give before you receive, so you become a great husband first. Then you’ll automatically get a good wife. You don’t have to worry about getting the good wife. You just do all the things that a good husband would do. And what I think a good husband would do is he provides for his family. He’s willing to protect his family.

Clinton Dye: He’s [00:31:00] honest and communicates well with his partner. And that nails the majority of the problems in all relationships, right? He provides, he has money, he works, he’s a professional. You can provide for a good family if you nail those four things alone, right? Same with a woman. If she wants to be married and have kids, well, you need to be doing the things a good wife would do.

Clinton Dye: Whatever. You write down what a good wife is, you should start doing those things now instead of later. When you found a good man, he won’t wanna stay around. He knows you’re. He knows you’re not a good woman and worth keeping around. He’s like, oh, you’re gonna change who you are. When once you found a good man, that is, even that sounds ridiculous to say it out loud, right?

Clinton Dye: So that’s

Scott DeLuzio: my philosophy. When you start doing these things that, that make you this better version of yourself and it just becomes part of who you are, becomes a habit. This is now who you are. You can actually change. Your actions and your behaviors, and you can now [00:32:00] make this a part of your d n a this is now you, and then it’s not acting right.

Scott DeLuzio: It, this is maybe a shift in what you normally were doing, but you’re working to create a better version of yourself. And so all of that, Does require some change. Cause you keep doing the same thing that you’ve always done. You’re gonna keep getting the same thing that you’ve always gotten.

Scott DeLuzio: So yeah you’re gonna have to change. But like you said, if you change at the wrong time, if you change too late like, oh, I found this person. Well, that person’s gonna see right through it and be like, okay, well how long is that really gonna last? Right? Like, yeah.

Clinton Dye: Particularly for. Yeah, particularly for men.

Clinton Dye: I mean, women hold the sexual marketplace advantage, the a, any woman, it never has to live alone. They don’t, they really don’t. They have the choice. They’re the gatekeepers to intimacy, right? A woman never has to be alone. Now, men though, men have to work and earn their position in the dating market a little bit differently than females.[00:33:00]

Clinton Dye: I mean, I date a lot of, dated, a lot of attractive women in my life. They ha they have a list of dudes in their phone, right? That they can pull from it any time and say, Hey, look I just had some issues with Clinton. You know, we got a big fight. Like, why don’t you come over and, you know, let’s have a glass of wine and talk about how horrible that was there.

Clinton Dye: He would probably have like a 90 percentile kill rate and the first 10 people she hit on our phone to come over and have a glass of wine. Whereas me, I might do the same thing. I might get like a five. 5% like, oh yeah, that sounds like a good idea, Clint. Let me come over here and get drunk with you.

Clinton Dye: Like, just since you broke up with your girl. Like, no, that doesn’t work like that. So we have inverse statistics when it comes to romance and dating, and it’s not all about girls. It’s simply what we’re doing is forcing some adversity in a world, in a person’s world, right, through nutrition restrictive nutri.

Clinton Dye: And fitness, which is developing discipline habits [00:34:00] and then delayed gratification. All successful people possess delayed gratification. Right? Which means that I’ll forego temporary comfort for compounding reward later. Right? So we’re teaching that It’s really hard to teach that as an adult or even as a child, they either have it or they don’t.

Clinton Dye: And then to learn that behavior is really difficult to learn. But once they learn, The discipline habits, delayed gratification. They can apply those simple pillars to every aspect in their life, and they’ve now become unstoppable cuz they have confidence, they mastered their body. I mean, there’s only, I think, 25,000 people running around the United States with six pack abs.

Clinton Dye: There’s 25 million people that are millionaires, right? So, so mastering your body culturally in the United States is way more difficult than becoming a millionaire, statistically. So when you nail that, now that opens up a whole can of worms of [00:35:00] opportunity in your life, right? If you had to choose between being having six pack abs or.

Clinton Dye: Man or woman, you’d say, oh yeah, I’d love to get into that bikini and have a great six pack ab, right? You’d be so confident, so powerful, right? That opens up opportunities everywhere because now you’ve mastered your mind and your body to do something way harder. You just build on it, right? Our next goal will be even more difficult, like, Hey look, I want to go get these skills from Grant Cardone or Andy Fra.

Clinton Dye: I wanna pick Tim at Got, pick one of those masterminds, west Watson, it doesn’t matter. I’m gonna pick this person to be my new mentor and whatever they say to get me to the next level of society. Like I’m going to do those things and they have the discipline to, to go anywhere they so.

Scott DeLuzio: And I think discipline is key to all of this.

Scott DeLuzio: You know, even with respect, to take it back a little bit here to dealing with the P T S D and. Conquering [00:36:00] that. I mean, I know there are people who I’ve talked to who have gone through, you know, various therapies and other things like that, but they didn’t stick with it. They didn’t have that discipline built into stick with it.

Scott DeLuzio: It’s like, oh, well I’m not seeing the results right now. We, you know, we’re very much in a on demand society. We want wanna see the results now, just like, you know, you turn. Netflix and you, boom, you got the show that you wanna watch right now, or you order something from Amazon and boom, it’s at your door.

Scott DeLuzio: Stop step you know, a few hours later, very much on demand. And when you’re not seeing the results from the baby counseling or therapy sessions that you might be going to in the first, you know, week or two, people’s attention starts to wonder and like, okay, well maybe this isn’t working for me. But also maybe you just didn’t give it enough time and have a discipline to just focus on on that particular task to get that area of your right life situated and get that right before you.[00:37:00]

Scott DeLuzio: You just bite off a bigger piece of something else, right? So yeah, you know, I, there’s a lot of benefits coming from living a well-disciplined life and through the stuff that you’re talking about here you know, I think that will give people the opportunity to experience that. You know, many people listening to this have been in the military.

Scott DeLuzio: They know about discipline, but when you don’t have somebody standing over you, making sure that you’re being discipl, Sometimes, right? We let that slip, right? So, so having a, you know, somebody in your corner like yourself to help keep you on that track, to make sure that you’re doing the things that you’re supposed to do not slipping and doing the wrong things that are gonna just lead you in the wrong direction could be a huge help, right?

Clinton Dye: Yeah, 100%. The reason why is that you can’t see the problem when you. Yeah, right. So there’s an old saying, you know, you gotta step outside of the problem to see it. Like, look at it, the problem from a different angle. [00:38:00] So when you’re doing things there’s such micro incremental change in self-improvement with the human body.

Clinton Dye: It doesn’t matter. Like, like a you use a pregnant woman, for example. Like you don’t know, she doesn’t look pregnant. Like she could be a week pregnant, two weeks pregnant, month, two, three. Like, you might not even notice if you saw her every day. Like at some point you’d be like, wow, like that Billy’s getting big girl.

Clinton Dye: Good job. Like, but over time, since you’re in the moment, you don’t see the change. Now, that one woman that hasn’t seen a friend in 30 days that didn’t know she was pregnant, right when she saw someone, they’d be like, Hey, what’s going on here? You’re glowing. She’s like, oh yeah, I’m pregnant. Like I’m been pregnant for 30 days.

Clinton Dye: We’re so happy. Right. In the moment you can’t see it, but everybody external to you can, that’s the power of a mentor cuz they’re looking at your life from not objective, outside way. So they’re the best, they’re in the best position to help you change because you don’t see the change, you don’t see how far you’ve come.

Clinton Dye: You know, you [00:39:00] won’t notice that you’ve lost any weight until you have to change. Right. Or get a new belt, you just won’t notice you, you see yourself every day in the mirror. It’s, you know, there’s, I can’t remember what the com the medical term is it for, you know, you not seeing your body the way it is.

Clinton Dye: You see it a different way. Right. When I go to the gym, since I see this body all the time, I don’t actually feel like I’m the biggest guy in the gym. Right. Other people tell me like, dude, you’re jacked, or, you know, your transformation has been, is crazy in the last six months. I don’t. I live like this, so I’m just trying to be better today than I was yesterday.

Clinton Dye: I just focus on 24 hour day. I’m going in the right direction. I know the direction I’m heading, right? Sitting on top of the mountain, you know, the, you know, giving, helping as many people as humanly possible. That’s what I wanna do. But I can’t see it in the moment cuz this is where I’m at. So the mentor I have, I’m not gonna not have a mentor.

Clinton Dye: Even I have a mentor. Think last year, think in the last two months, what are we in? [00:40:00] December. Between December and January, I spent I think $15,000 on mentorship and personal development, right? Someone else has the knowledge right in, in all of life. There’s someone holds the keys to either knowledge or your next level of advancement.

Clinton Dye: Like if you want to go from a poor kid to a middle class kid, right? What are you supposed to do? You go to college. If you don’t go to college, you don’t even get interviewed for the. Right. Right. So you have to give your money to the institution of higher education to break through that next level.

Clinton Dye: Right. And that takes you from probably lower class up into the middle class zone, depending on the type of job you have, right? And then to go from the upper cla, the middle class to the upper class or higher upper class, doesn’t matter. There’s a pay to play system in all of life. Someone else is holding the keys to your own success.

Clinton Dye: They either have the knowledge or the skills. or they open doors for you. That’s it. Right. So it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. the point of [00:41:00] my life, you know, I’m not 20 anymore. I understand that I’m running out of time. So time’s a commodity. I don’t get back. I just pay for the access to the next level.

Clinton Dye: Right. I don’t need to spend 30 years, 40 years, 50 years trying to figure out what Grant Cardone did. Right. For the last 50 years. Like, fuck that. Like I just called Grant, like, Hey dude, like what’s your business mentorship program like, put me on it. Like how much? He’s like, yeah, you get four calls for a hundred thousand or whatever.

Clinton Dye: Grant charges. I don’t even know. It doesn’t matter. You just write the check because he’s gonna give you the insight to the business. And every lessons he’s learned, he’s saving you a huge chunk of your time. And I don’t have endless time. So that’s how I approach life because it works. And you’ll so many people have their ego in place.

Clinton Dye: They’re like, ah, I don’t need to pay. Right. Well, what you’re saying is you don’t need to pay because you don’t believe investing yourself and you’re gonna get the same results that you’ve always had, likelihood that you can just magically figure out. And a rapid rate is essentially blind [00:42:00] luck,

Scott DeLuzio: right?

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah. And if you. Really just wishing that luck is going to carry you through chances are it’s not gonna happen. Yeah. There are lucky people out there. They catch some great breaks. Yeah. And it happens. It does. Don’t get me wrong, cuz I, I know people probably reach out and be like, oh no, what about this guy who, he was like completely lucky he had, you know what?

Scott DeLuzio: I get it. Yeah. There are lucky people out there. But that luck is not a strategy. And I think what people are missing is that, that strategy piece where, Sit down and take a an informed look at their life and really tackle the problem areas. Identify the hotspots, tackle those things, and get better in those areas so that they can become that bigger, better version of themselves.

Scott DeLuzio: It is really, I think at the end of the day that’s simple that just focus on these areas and you’ll start to see other areas of your life start to improve. And it just has a compounding effect where one [00:43:00] thing makes another thing easier, which makes another thing easier and then right.

Scott DeLuzio: You just get better at these things, right? And you, yeah, and I say easier, but I don’t mean necessarily that you’re gonna now live an easy life. Like you still are gonna go to the gym and you’re still gonna lift those weights. And just because when you first started, you are on the lower level of weights, doesn’t mean that you’re just gonna keep on doing that Same thing.

Scott DeLuzio: You’re gonna add the weight and you’re gonna get better and better. Right? But it the, where you started will be. But you’re gonna keep adding new stuff to make it that much harder. Right?

Clinton Dye: Right. They just become the baseline now. So where, yeah, when you start, you know, getting up early is really difficult.

Clinton Dye: You’re like, shit, I’m gonna be tired all day. So what? Like, that’s great. We want you tired all day, because that’s a new state of execution, right? If you’re entirely comfortable, you’re approaching the. Every single day with low adversity, right? So your ability to handle new stressors is low, [00:44:00] right? So when you, so my wake up is non-negotiable.

Clinton Dye: The things that I do not deviate. And the reason is that if I’m gonna go out late with my girl or my family or whatever, doesn’t matter. I have business endeavors that we’re doing and it runs into the evening. I might get home at four 20 in the. My wake ups at 4:00 AM so I got negative sleep and I’m going right into my day, right under adversity.

Clinton Dye: Now that’s. Most people won’t do that. They’ll go to sleep, they’ll wake up at two, three, and then it throws off their whole day, their productivity’s off, right? Like I said, I’m trying to run down the competition. I’m trying to catch up in life. I’m trying to be a, achieve everything I can achieve down to the last genetic spin of my.

Clinton Dye: Genome, right? That’s my goal, right? So I need as much opportunity as I can to put in as much work as I can. So I don’t negotiate on those things. I just get up and go right into the day. Yeah. I’ll be pissed off. We’ll be, yeah, we’ll be honest. I’ll be really pissed off, but then I have to, Manage life in that [00:45:00] state.

Clinton Dye: Remember, I’ve met my non-negotiables with things that I’m fucked up with yesterday I’m trying to nail today, right? So even though I’m upset, even though I had a low sleep, I’m hungry. I’m, you know, carbohydrate deprived. It doesn’t matter, right? We’re still executing the day, like always. Right? And then there comes the growth because you need to hold back that time.

Clinton Dye: You want to snap on someone. That lady pulls out in front of you, right? You’re tired and cranky and you wanna lose your shit. , you don’t. Right. And that’s the struggle is that now you have a breakthrough in growth because you introduced adversity. Now the next time that I go back to my comfortable day, you’re like, Next time someone pulls out in front of me like, I got this.

Clinton Dye: This is like, yesterday was a really bad day. Right? And today’s sweet. So we just make hard things our baseline, and then we don’t worry about ’em. They’re habits. So going to the gym, waking up early, hitting your macros, those things are all easy. None of those are difficult. Once they’re routine, you know, and you know, it’s like 60 to 90 days you start to develop long-term habits.

Clinton Dye: So then you don’t [00:46:00] think about those things. You just nail ’em. Like for me to measure my food, it might take someone forever because they convince theirself they can’t do it. Like I’m not measuring chicken and rice and vegetables. Like, fuck that. Like I wanna go back to be a fat that’s easy. Like a burger’s easy.

Clinton Dye: I just shoot. Burger right off McDonald’s. I measure my food. I think I’m, I think I clocked it once. It takes me seven minutes to measure all my food in the day, right, and log it. It takes me longer to microwave the food than it fucking does to measure it. So it’s not that long. I cook everything in the crockpot.

Clinton Dye: I order the food, like pre-made meals that I need or whatever. It’s super simple. It’s super simple. Going to gym, it’s an hour. I’m not spending three hours a day like on the treadmill and that bullshit, like, I don’t do that. Like, it’s all efficiency. I’m trying to get in and out and get the results I want with the, with hard effort, but I don’t need it to eat up a lot of time.

Clinton Dye: Right, right. All, all, everything we’re trying to make is just get better and better. Right. Doesn’t matter what it is. Exactly like this podcast took me forever to register to, like, I convinced [00:47:00] myself I wasn’t good enough for the camera. I talked myself out of it. It was like, ah, what do I have to say? No one cares what Clem has to say in the world.

Clinton Dye: Right. Eventually I just did it. And you know, that’s kind of the key to everything. Everything that you’re fearful of, you just need to do more of.

Scott DeLuzio: Rip the bandaid off and just do it right. Just

Clinton Dye: go for it. You’re gonna suck. Make no mistake. You’re gonna suck. You suck the first time you kissed that girl, or boy, you sucked.

Clinton Dye: The first time you bought a house or a car. You got, you know, you got screwed over, right? You sucked. The first time you’re having that deep emotional conversation with someone. You sucked in the gym. You suck all the time. You’re never gonna get better at anything until you just put in the cycles and.

Clinton Dye: That’s the truth. That’s the way it works.

Scott DeLuzio: If anyone wants a great example of you sucked at the beginning, go back and listen to the first few episodes of this podcast. I sucked in the beginning. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing with this podcast, right? I had no experience hosting or producing a podcast at all.

Scott DeLuzio: I st I just said, you know, I’m gonna do it. And I started [00:48:00] and I got better. As time went on, and this is now I think, 260 something or whatever, like, I didn’t give up just because I sucked in the beginning. Right. I kept going and here we are now with hours and hours of content that people, you know, are having their lives improved by listening to the messages that people like yourself and other guests have had to offer.

Scott DeLuzio: And so, you know, I’m just out there trying to put out as many of these types of episodes as I can. Learn along the way there. I’m still not the top podcaster in the world. Like I, I understand . There’s still things I could do better. I know this. Yeah. And as I find new ways of doing things and you know, different ways of making things better, I incorporate that into my workflow and then I end up with a better product.

Scott DeLuzio: Right. Yeah. At the end of the day. So, Before we wrap up this episode, where can people go to get in touch with you and find out more about the mentorships and things that you do? Sure.

Clinton Dye: Okay. So the easiest way [00:49:00] is to just look me up on Instagram. It’s San Diego underscore Clinton, the number one.

Clinton Dye: That’s where you find me. I’m on Facebook, I’m on snap. I’m on everyth. Facebook, Google, it doesn’t matter. Oh, like I’m TikTok. I’m on everything. But the place where you see my insight into my life, my routines and my processes is just find me on Instagram, San Diego underscore Clinton, the number one. You find me there, you’ll automatically just look for the bald, beautiful man.

Clinton Dye: You can’t miss some with tattoo. and then just send me a message. Any, anything that you got going on in your life that you’re struggling with, send a message. Let’s open up a conversation. At the very worst, follow my page and check out my entertaining life. I have a beautiful son. He has six pack abs.

Clinton Dye: I’m so jealous of him cuz I did it when I was a kid. I was a fat kid. So he’s got a great mentor and a dad driving him. My ex-wife, you know, like we discussed, I repaired a relationship with. [00:50:00] Repaired relationship with my children. So I’m living my best life ever. And it’s kind of an interesting show I’ve been to.

Clinton Dye: You know, 30 something countries and it’s, I’ve been all over the place, so, you’ll enjoy the show for sure. I’m try. I’m surrounded by beautiful people, male and female. I’ve amazing mentors. Top-notch life. And I’m always trying to help people do crazy things. So, well, I’ll be breaking into the YouTube space here in the next 30 days, so, you’ll, everybody will see that first episode drop.

Clinton Dye: Probably by the time this episode

Scott DeLuzio: drop. Excellent. Well, I will have links to all of those social media channels in the show notes of this episode. So anyone who wants to get in touch with you or check out what you do and just follow along, they can click through on the show notes and follow from there.

Scott DeLuzio: So, Clinton, it’s been a pleasure speaking with you today. Thank you for sharing your story. You know, how you overcame your P T S D and the struggles that you were having and how you’re now going on and helping other people make [00:51:00] better versions of themselves.

Clinton Dye: Hey, I appreciate it, Scott.

Clinton Dye: Thank you for having me on. And I think you might be the best podcast in the world. So , you know,

Scott DeLuzio: here we go. I’m working towards it. .

Clinton Dye: We’ll see if we can get you on one of those satellite shows, Sirius or Excellent. Whoever’s out there. all man, it was a pleasure. Thank you. Look forward to let’s do this again sometime when you have time.

Scott DeLuzio: Thanks for listening to the Drive On Podcast. If you want to support the show, please check out Scott’s book, Surviving Son on Amazon. All of the sales from that book go directly back into this podcast and work to help veterans in need. You can also follow the Drive On Podcast on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and wherever you listen to podcasts.