Working Through Learning Disabilities and Fighting for Truth with Jason Pike

Magic Barclay interviews Lieutenant Colonel Jason Pike, a decorated combat veteran with 31 years of service in the United States Army. Jason shares his challenging journey of multiple overseas deployments, surviving intense military training, and facing numerous investigations and arrests. He talks about his memoir, 'A Soldier Against All Odds,' which captures his unique and inspiring life story from age 17 to 48. Jason also discusses how he maintains physical, emotional, and spiritual health, and offers tips on achieving personal and financial wealth. Tune in to hear about his resilience, coping strategies, and the lessons he learned from his dark and transformative experiences.

Get your copy of "A Soldier Against All Odds" on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Soldier-Against-All-Odds-Memoir
Learn more about Jason and his other books at https://www.jasonpike.org/

Transcript

Magic Barclay: 0:43

Welcome back to A Magical Life. I'm your host Magic Barclay and today Jason Pike joins us. A decorated combat veteran with multiple deployments, Lieutenant Colonel Jason Pike served 31 years in the United States Army as both an enlisted and officer. Including nine years overseas in five countries. Jason earned over 30 service awards and badges and survived a wicked amount of military training. Thrown under the bus and gaslighted by his own superiors, arrests and investigations are big stories here. His book, A Soldier Against All Odds, compiles all his life events in an inspiring storytelling format with the ups and downs of a life in uniform. His diversity of army jobs, assignments and schools from age 17 to 48 sets this military memoir up differently than most. Jason's brutal honesty on how he did it While disclosing many sacred secrets, but how he survived is unique. With a straightforward account of one man's journey, he inspires audiences nationwide at speaking events and shows how to be resilient and resilient. And to persevere no matter what disadvantages and life struggles may happen. Welcome Jason.

Jason Pike: 2:10

Hey, I'm very honored, Magic, to be on your show. I'm very honored about that. And, uh, so yeah, I'm ready. I'm ready to go for it. And I can answer about any question you got me. You want, you want to answer really.

Magic Barclay: 2:24

Great. Well, I will fire them off, but people are probably listening to that bio going, I need a copy of this book. So it is on amazon. com. If people look up Soldier Against All Odds Memoir, they should find it there.

Jason Pike: 2:39

Yes, yesterday and today it hit number one. I think technically right now it's number two. This is according to US Army Biographies Memoirs. So, uh, But of course, maybe yes. So that's what it is today. It ranges between number two to number 40, 50, but, uh, I'm happy with all the reviews and I love reviews and, uh, yes, it's all good. It's all good. Yeah.

Magic Barclay: 3:08

Terrific. So Jason, I ask all of my guests the same three questions to start our podcast, and everyone gives me different answers, but I've never had a man of service answer them. So here comes your first one, and that is, what can your expertise do to accelerate health? Not just physical, but also emotional and spiritual health.

Jason Pike: 3:30

Yes. Oh, every day, I have to go to a, oh, I don't have to, but it makes me so refreshed. Overseas, I lived nine years overseas, and when you go to a sauna, and you sweat out toxins, I guess, or you sweat anywhere, and, uh, and then you go to a cold shower, and then you go back into a sauna. Do it two or three times. Drink lots of water, drink, but not just water, but also drink some, uh, you know, some, whatever your favorite, uh, drink is to replenish the electrolytes. Do that as well. I exercise out daily. It doesn't matter what it is. Right now I'm in mostly cardio, but, uh, I'm 57 years old, but I can probably do better than most 57 year olds just because I've had a lifetime of fitness. I really have. And it's, uh, it served me well, but I had to do fitness in the military over 31 years. So, but that became a part of my fitness and, uh, but sauna and then a cold bath. Sometimes in, uh, in, uh, in Germany and Korea and all these other countries that have coal baths, go from switches out, switch out, you know. I love that stuff. I did it today. I do, I try to do it every day.

Magic Barclay: 4:48

I love that and, uh, it's certainly something very healthful and health building. Are there other things that you learned in the army on how you could keep your mental health aligned?

Jason Pike: 5:02

Well, one, in my, in the beginning of my life, failure and pain just became a part of it. I think kids are resilient. Yeah, and I think. It just became a part of my life, that I failed, I had a learning problem, and that I wasn't smart as other folks, and that was a label I put on myself. Uh, reading and writing, uh, has been a difficult chore for me, and it, following instructions, uh, yeah, I, I understand you're thinking, well, you're a high ranking officer in the military, how can, and I'm an author of a book, but I just worked through these things, I compensated around them, Mental health, for me, really, is just getting out into nature, and, uh, you could have dogs, or you can animals, or you can go for a walk out in the park, or whatever you have to do, and, um, and getting alone a little bit, not always, not isolating yourself, but, uh, you know, hearing the birds and the things, the chirping, and then maybe doing exercise out there with them, and, uh, There's just something to that, it's hard to explain, but I think, I think that's a really good part of mental health.

Magic Barclay: 6:11

Great. We talk about wealth here as well, Jason, and many people think that's just financial. it can also be Personal and emotional wealth. So what are your top three tips to creating wealth?

Jason Pike: 6:25

Yes. Financial wealth. I've done pretty well in that because I've always, you know, financial wealth, I've always done my dollar cost averaging, the traditional, you know, go into a stock mutual fund. I've done like that. Personal wealth, Oh, each, you know. You want to find the right partner that you want to be with and avoid all the drama of what's associated with it. And I don't know, I don't know the technique of finding that person to help you along. Everybody needs somebody. Um, that's a good song, I guess. But, uh, you, you have to find somebody help to help you out. to partnering with you and, uh, to keep on going, to keep on going and, you know, wealth, yes, you got financial wealth and you said personal and emotional wealth, but, um, for me, I have to get up and for emotional wealth, I have to get up and hear the birds and the bees and hear the dog or hear something. And, uh, I get contacted with nature. That's just me though. That might not be you, but that's just me. And that's kind of what I do. And, uh, I was born out in the country and live out in the country. And that's just, I can, I can hear things and I can see things. I can feel things from just the birds and the bees. So that's kind of what my answer is for that one.

Magic Barclay: 7:48

Great. And our final standard question is around weight. Many people battle their weight. So have you battled yours? If so, how did you win that war? And what can you offer the listeners who might be on this journey?

Jason Pike: 8:02

Oh my gosh. So, um, stay, just stay active. Just move. And don't sit down. Don't, don't sit down so long for hours. Um, I think, and if you have to, have a, you know, a lot of people now are online and at a computer. I'm sitting down right now, but I normally stand up at a desk. So I usually stand up if I'm having to do all this online activity and have it, you know, uh, in the United States, there was a guy who's a secretary of defense and he was in his seventies and he, he worked at the Pentagon in DC. He had a standing deck. He, he didn't sit. He, she stood in other words, he, at his computer or his office, he didn't sit. He stood. And they, I heard, I don't know that, uh, sitting is the new cancer, but you got to get up and move. And, uh, so that's, that's what I do. And I think that's a really, really good, important lesson to learn. Uh, even if you get a little bit older and you can't go out and run five miles, you can stand up and you can walk around. So, uh,

Magic Barclay: 9:11

Okay. So we've already covered a fair bit, Jason. Now I want to open the floor to you. Why the military? What got you into that role? And tell us about. Some of these events that were a little bit life shaking.

Jason Pike: 9:28

Well, I was identified, uh, three different times throughout my adult life. And my young life is a learning challenge person. In other words, I just don't get it. So if you were my. spouse or wife and you ask me to change a light bulb, I just don't understand things. You'll, you'll, sometimes you'll be talking to a rock. And, uh, I know that sounds crazy because I've been 31 years in the military, but it took me a long time to compensate around those things. And it, I, I was identified early and that was, I thought military, college was not an option. And so, military, I felt, was an option, because you can just do what they say, not have to think, and then just do, uh, whatever they want you to do, and even then that was, that was a challenge, and, uh, so I chose the military. But of course, as you can see in my biography, I had, I went through the ranks and I got my college degrees and there is an ironic memoir here where a person who was serious, have some serious issues with learning, but went to a higher rank. And, uh, I think that's the difference, uh, of this memoir compared to other memoirs is how the hell, and that's what they said, how the hell did you do it? And that was the question. So that's why I wrote the memoir, as everyone asked me. How the hell did you do all this? So,

Magic Barclay: 10:59

Okay. Now in your bio, you mentioned arrests and, you know, being finger pointed at. Tell us about some of that. What are we going to see in the memoir?

Jason Pike: 11:12

You're going to see multiple arrests that I've had with law enforcement in the United States. Oh, and this is a very, uh, I had to vomit this out. It's very difficult to get out. You're going to see investigations of the federal government with me being thrown, I like what you said in the very beginning, thrown under the bus and ghostlighted, and that's where the meat of it goes. towards the end of the memoir and I come out of that. I had a lot of issues. Uh, I was both. Everything started from the bottom. So private education wise, I had to go to community college, but like you said, um, investigations and arrests. I've got multiple arrests, but I worked through them. most people would give up, but I didn't. I just kept on going and I got through them. Now, I like the, what you said about ghost lighting and throwing under the bus. That was a federal investigation of the United States government involving criminal investigation and the military intelligence, uh, to sort of throw me under the bus. Now, in this memoir, The reason I'm so brutally honest is because when I go to these dark, deep chapters, I want to be also honest with people. I accuse of my perpetrators. So, uh, I had to change names. So I tell you what's my fault. You know, in multiple events that I had in my life, which we all have our failures, but what pisses me off a lot is what I was not at fault at. And that's what pisses me off at. And I was not at fault, and I was charged with subversion and espionage against the US. government, which means I was, they thought I was selling secrets, selling information, giving information for my benefit. And that pissed me off a lot. In that chapter that I have, there's also multiple charges of different things, pedophilia and things of that nature. And I, I almost lost my fricking mind. I really did because I, I knew that that was false and you start charging me with espionage. We'll see what they do sometimes in organizations. They, it could be a church, it could be a school, it could be anything. They might want to create rumors to get you out. They might want to give you false information to get you out. This was over 10 years ago. So I'm speaking to you from some, uh, so, and I had changed, but I'm speaking to you from, but I'm trying to learn, I want to teach a lesson in false allegations that can screw not only you up, but your family up and, and, and really hurt you. And so, uh, I went through all that. I went through all these false allegations. And it was really a, it was really a lot of people say, what the hell happened? And, you know, I just pissed some people off because I was, you know, I was not agreeing to the professional job, the job that I thought that I should do. When I was in South Korea, this was in South Korea. Uh, soldiers are stationed in South Korea, and I was, that was just one of my assignments of many assignments overseas, and I just happened to not get along with some particular people that had a power, and I was a senior guy at the time, believe it or not. I was, I was, I had to rose up to a lieutenant colonel rank, and I pissed some people off. Um, I, I'm sorry for that. I really am. I know they threw shit, they threw everything they could at me to get me out of the military, but that's just, I mean, there was just disagreements, and it wasn't, but I went under the bus, I went under the bus, I went, go sliding, I love that term when you say go sliding and under the bus, but that was the way it was, and I never have experienced that. And it still sometimes haunts me today, even though it's been many years, probably 13 years, I guess, like in so 14 years. So I, I wanted to speak about that. That's where the dark deep spark, the part goes to. And, um, I think that I can help other people out and how To get around this, or how to just show what I went through that maybe you might be going through. And I did this as a senior person, so, no, I've had my challenges. And what I'm saying is, like, I want to be honest with this whole memoir, and give you everything I've got. And, ah, that's, that's kind of That's kind of where it went to, and uh, I went on to a federal investigation, and uh, but, you know, when I look back at it, uh, what pisses me off also is no one said they were sorry, and no one said there was nothing there, and no one told me that it was all bullshit. And I just, it just went away. And that's what I don't like. I don't like them saying that's okay. You're going to charge me with something. You're going to say you did this, you did that, or maybe you need to get a defense attorney. But, but nobody said all this people following me around with boom cameras, people trying to call me and check me out and my family out. I thought that was a bunch of, and you know, what I'm saying is, okay, maybe you think that, but. And that pissed me off, but then like, why don't you come back and say, this was all bullshit. And that's what I don't like. That's what pisses me off a lot. So if it's okay, I mean, what I'm saying is it's not okay if I, if I didn't, but they didn't say it was okay. And what I'm saying, that's what I got pissed off about. Yeah. So yeah, I'm over with it. You can ask more questions about that if you need to.

Magic Barclay: 16:55

I think that's quite reflective of society. You know, it's a lot of finger pointing, a lot of the blame game But no one ever really comes and says, sorry, we were wrong. We had it wrong, or we made an assumption. And I think that is quite reflective of what a lot of people are going through. So that was the dark times. How did you reach the light? How did you crawl out of this? And what can the listeners learn from the positive steps that you took to get out of this place that was quite intrusive to you?

Jason Pike: 17:33

You gotta, you gotta hold on to your family and your friends, whoever that might be, and you gotta talk to them. You gotta talk to them. You got to hold on to them. Whoever has faith in you to get this through. The damn attorneys, they're just going to be bullshitters. But, you know, I mean, he was just, and so, you know, You just got to hold on to the trusted people. And then I went into another dark time directly after this. It was sort of a one, two, three punch. So that was a dark time. That was probably my darkest time. I feel that my post traumatic stress occurred during that time. Now, right after that time, I come from South Korea, back to America to go to another station. We move around in the military. My dad dies, my dad dies. That's a really big, big deal. And then at the same time, my dad's dying, they saying, Oh, by the way, You're going to go to Afghanistan and go to war.

Magic Barclay: 18:31

Now,

Jason Pike: 18:32

I was trained for war. I've been prepared for war. I know how to deal with that, but it was, was one, two, three punch. It was like the investigation. My dad died. Come back. Dad's dying. I'm talking to him. And then while he's dying, you're going to have to go away. and go to war. So, um, that was word one, two, three punches. Now how I dealt with it, pretty much like, like I, I exercised, uh, I'll, um, and I talked to family members and I went to counseling. And um, I don't like the medications. I don't care what the medications. That's just me though. Maybe other people like it, but that's not me. I went into depression. I could, I could have gotten out because of mental health from Afghanistan if I wanted to. That's how bad I was at that time. But I started talking to an uncle who said, what would your dad think? Choke me up here. What would your dad think if you got out of it? Afghanistan because of your mental health. And I said, well, he wouldn't like it. And so, uh, that's what sort of, that's what kind of, uh, told me to keep on going, which was hard to do. So I went into a war zone, which I was completely, uh, trained to do with the mental, with the mental health really going downhill because of all this other stuff that I was dealing with, with my father's death and the investigation. Now, how did I get through that? Yeah. What I did was I had visions of all my mother's, my father, well, every all my life. And I just developed these photographs in my mind. And I went on to an elliptical and I did this processing where I cried and then I laughed. And then I just, whatever my emotion was, I don't care who was around me. They probably thought I was psychotic at the time, but I just I don't care. I'm just going to cry on this machine. I'm going to laugh and I'm going to whatever it might be on the machine. And I just allow this stuff to process out of me, sweat and memories and crying and everything at the same time, whether it be in a gym or around people or anything else. I did that over and over. Of course, I did see some counselors and, uh, did that and then, uh, that's how I made it through Afghanistan. Afghanistan, I was with my soldiers. Um, I didn't have my wife and, of course, my daughter in the war, but I had some soldiers that took care of me that they knew that my father died. I never told them about being thrown under the bus because that was sort of a. a big, big secret that was sort of an investigation. And I just, I didn't know how to even explain it to anybody at that time, even to myself. I didn't know how to explain it. So I just said, my dad died and they said, okay, we understand. And, uh, they took care of me and, uh, I took care of them and, uh, we made it out very successfully from Afghanistan and the war zone. And, uh, that was, uh, that was a pretty dark time. It was like a one, two, three punch.

Magic Barclay: 21:38

So. You rose to quite a high rank, um. I'm not a hundred percent familiar with the ranking structure, but being of high rank and then coming back, retiring, you know, moving into civilian life, what did that feel like?

Jason Pike: 21:57

The transition is always difficult for a lot of soldiers because. with soldiers were kind of looked at as a team. Um, we have a rank. I never held rank on my shoulder. In other words, I don't really care if you call me a lieutenant colonel. So a lieutenant colonel is considered a senior executive person in the United States military. And, um, but to me, I, I, I didn't hold my rank. But we all, if you've done 30 something years or whatever, like me, you all have like, this is your, this is what you have. And now you're going somewhere else. So it was a transitional experience. I didn't really know what to do except get health. I really wanted to get my mental health together before I did anything else. Cause my mental health was pretty bad. Bad, really bad. And so, um, so I just went through various counselors and various techniques. I don't like the medicines. It's just me, but I had tried the medicines. I don't like the medicines and I had to go through post traumatic stress counseling and various techniques with that. And I, I learned a whole lot about how to manage it. It's always going to be there. But you can manage it. And, um, I don't, I'm not an expert. I'm not certified, but I kind of understand post traumatic stress syndrome pretty well. And I've learned to manage it in my own way. Yeah.

Magic Barclay: 23:22

Right. Before we wrap up this interview, is there something that we haven't discussed that you feel the listeners need to hear?

Jason Pike: 23:31

Well, this whole memoir, my book, uh, jasonpike. org, the memoir is really, uh, it's, it's a down to earth heart, heart to heart conversation, uh, with my 31 years in uniform. I'm not going to bullshit you about anything. I'm not lying. I'm not going to tell you I conquered half of Afghanistan. What I'm doing is I'm trying to tell you about my failures and the fiascos of my life. Even though I was successful, I want to try to impart some sort of inspiration and, uh, you know, hope. And success, and future success, as long as you just don't give up. I know, you just don't give up, and I know that might be hard for people to do. Uh, and, but, I really come from a background that, uh, might help inspire people. That's what I'm wanting to put out. jasonpike. org, it's on Amazon, Jason Pike on Amazon. It's on, I'm on Facebook and everywhere else, so, uh, Uh, I'm on audio. jasonpike. org I've done the audio. A year ago today, I would not be expressing myself like I am to you today. There's no, I did, I could not express myself on a camera, on an audio like I'm doing right now. I've worked on this for about a year or so. Uh, and so everything I did is struggle and everything I do is from the bottom and you may be, you can learn something or have inspiration for myself. Yeah.

Magic Barclay: 25:03

Great. Thank you so much for your time, Jason. I've loved having a chat with you and I know the listeners will have enjoyed this episode as well.

Jason Pike: 25:13

Thank you very much, Magic. I appreciate it. I'm honored to be on this show.

Magic Barclay: 25:17

Thank you. And listeners, I'm honored to have you listening. Please like, subscribe, review, and share this podcast with everyone that you care about. And for now, go forth and create your magical life.