BTM68 Transcription

Welcome to Episode 68 of Behind The Mission, a show that sparks conversations with PsychArmor trusted partners and educational experts. 

My name is Duane France, and each week I'll be having conversations with podcast guests that will equip you with tools and resources to effectively engage with and support military service members, Veterans and their families. Find the show on all the podcast players by going to www.psycharmor.org/podcast.

Thanks again for joining us on Behind The Mission. Our work and mission are supported by generous partnerships and sponsors, who also believe that education changes lives. This episode is brought to you by PsychArmor, the premier education and learning ecosystem, specializing in military cultural content. PsychArmor offers an online e-learning laboratory that's free to individual learners as well as custom training options for organizations. You can find more PsychArmor at www.psycharmor.org. 

On today's episode, I'm having a conversation with Paul Fukuma, chairman and CEO of Taji 100, a nonprofit that hosts a virtual fitness challenge in February of every year. Paul is a fourth generation Army Veteran who served in Iraq and took part in the first Taji 100 and Camp Taji, Iraq in 2010. Paul is a Sunnyvale, California native, and currently serves the city of Sunnyvale as a public safety officer, in addition to his support for the Taji 100. 

A quick note before we get started, the audio in this episode is probably not what you're typically used to hearing on the Behind The Mission podcast. Even your friendly neighborhood podcast host has to get away sometimes. And when I recorded this episode with Paul, I was in Delaware for the Coastal Delaware Running Festival. So I was on a remote setup, but apparently not a very good network. So bear with the audio quality because the content of the conversation is really great. You can find out more about Paul by checking out his bio on our show notes. So let's get into my conversation with him and come back afterwards to talk about some of the key points. 

 DUANE: Paul, you're the executive director of Taji 100, which we'll talk about in a minute, but before that, it'd be great for listeners to hear more about your military service and how you became involved with the Taji 110.

PAUL: Oh, let's see. My military chapter in my life started back in 2002. That's when I enlisted, it was much like a lot of vets of that era. It was born from 9/11. Interestingly enough, after I enlisted, I started to learn more about my own family, military history. It's interesting that a lot of my family didn't talk about their lineage or military involvement. I always knew it was there, but I never really dug deep. And then it wasn't till after I enlisted, I found out that I was fourth generation Army. It went all the way back to my great-grandfather in World War One as an Army artillery guy. And then my grandfather was, one of them was an Army Air Force Pilot. Then on my Japanese side, he actually got interned in the Japanese Concentration Camps or German Camps, and then volunteered to translate Japanese code while in turn. Once he was released, he enlisted and served in the Army until I became a Staff Sergeant, my father volunteered for service in Vietnam. He was in college. So he had a way out. He didn't have to go, but he felt no. If everybody else is going on. So he served in The Army as a Communications Specialist and served overseas there. And then here I was enlisting and became a medic. So I did my stint, four years as a medic stationed on wonderful Fort Stewart, Georgia. If anybody hasn't had time in Georgia, they can relate when I say wonderful. Then I got out and went back to the civilian side and I thought, here I go, I've closed that chapter. Let's start my civilian life as best as I could. And then got a wonderful FedEx package from the DOD in 2009, saying, “Hey, remember when you signed that little clause about inactive reserve and we always told you don't worry about it, it never happens. Well, it happened.” And I got pulled back in and sent overseas activated for 14 months and landed myself in Taji, Iraq. A wonderful little hole, I guess you'd call it just Northwest of Baghdad. I served with a medical company and was supportive 1st Scab and their mission out there.

And that's where Taji 100 began. I remember when I first landed in the country, our Sergeant Major had a briefing and he said, when you leave the country, you're either going weigh 500 pounds or bench press 500 pounds. And I had no idea how true that really was. And I always thought one of the biggest threats to our service members overseas would be obviously DME. But that being so few and far between the greatest threat was the downtime. What do we do when we're bored? We find things to entertain ourselves, or we get into negative or bad habits that become self destructive because we need that stimulus. Or we just are eating. So fortunately, a lot of us found ourselves in fitness and a captain I was working with said, “What’s the military's answer to boredom or low morale?” Alex said I'm on a run. Really what does one 5k one Sunday morning really do? It doesn't really solve a long-term problem. Just that morning. So Taji 100 was born. It was a challenge to complete 100 miles over the course of 28 days, February, and many of us were voluntold to do it grudgingly. But it quickly grew on us because we're all obviously competitive. We wanted to be our own best and beat each other. It gave us something to look forward to every day and it quickly found its way to become my escape. I found myself zoning out because we had this small hardened structures for a gym over there that we can actually finally take our armor off and feel a bit of  relief.

Really good on these really ancient, archaic treadmills jump on it. And for an hour I would escape. I wouldn't be there anymore. I wouldn't be in a location halfway around a world away from my loved ones away from my family. I wouldn't think about work and all the stressors or all of my soldiers issues I had to deal with as a Sergeant. It was my release and that was such a huge mental break for many of us. We became like, bear I say, addicted to it. Once the event was over, we found ourselves, wow, look, we've accomplished, ever thought in the wildest dreams, I can crush a hundred miles and a meer four weeks. So that built a huge amount of comradery. 

And then I came home and I desperately missed it. I definitely missed that, that bond that was born in the military and a yearn for it. And the event Taji 100 was created. 

DUANE: No hearing that obviously understanding the story. Yes, I was One Iraq, Two Afghanistans, multiple other, like, you know the boredom is real. And you have to figure out different ways of doing it. But your specific story, you are recalled to active duty. When I was in Afghanistan and one of my crew was a platoon Sergeant, he was stopped last. Like in, you didn't have to be there like you did have to be there obviously, but it was one of these things where was it a little different for you having been in the individual ready reserve and recall back to active duty? Like you thought your time in the military was over.  

PAUL: Oh, it turned my life upside down. I thought at that point, before that package, I had a game plan. I had a plan for my life. I was setting things in motion. I was three years into a law enforcement career. I was starting to test for units. But things fall in place. I was actually looking to buy my first home and then here comes this nice packet, watching my dad calls me up and says, “Hey, Paul got this weird packet for you.” And he said, it's from the DOD. And I immediately realized my first response was, “Dad. Did you sign for that? Yes. Yes, I did.” They got me right. Interesting enough, that one of my counterparts and that's working with says, you know what? I know people have gotten out of that.And they explained her story and I was taken back. I thought that never crossed my mind. And it crossed my mind of getting out of this, that almost appalled that someone would suggest that, but it was definitely a shock. I had to put my life on hold. I had to move out of the apartment. I had to put everything in storage. Find someone to take care of people, take care of bills back home and so on.

But looking back on it, it was one of the greatest, obviously there were a lot of negatives that came with it. I said a ripple, a pause. It was able to turn the event to so many positives moving forward. I would not have been able to become the man I am today and have a life I have now. And the opportunities I have now had I not honored that a minute and followed through with it.

So yeah, to answer your question. It did create a lot of turmoil for me. It's like anything in life, any type of challenge or adversity or we're adults, it's how we react with it and how we're able to use it, turn it to our advantage that counts. And I feel I'll be able to capitalize on that over the course of years. At the time it took me years to truly reap the benefits I should say, or find ways to better myself.

DUANE: No, I absolutely recognize and hear a lot of that from, again, some of my troops. Again, we're stop-loss and the same thing, like some of them, we're on active duty at the time, but it doesn't. It takes some to try to get out of the deployment, so to speak. And there were people that said that to him and some of the others, and he was the same thing. He was like, absolutely not like, why would I? I'm going to be stuck in the Army anyway, for this stop-loss time, I might as well go deploy again. And at that point, Jeremy, the guy ran my crew,  he'd already been to Iraq twice. So he was on his third deployment at that time. So it seemed, but also to me, it sounds a lot like what you said about your father's service too, is like, others are going, why would I not go?

And so then also you said it really captured that comradery piece. And especially that deployment, the shared trauma of it. And you talked a little bit about the Taji 100. A hundred miles. It's changed over time. I'd like to hear a little bit of that, but originally it was run, rucker hike, and you've done some other things. So what can you tell us about the Taji 100?

 PAUL: I came home, I really want it to happen again and it was just a handful of us. I think it was no more than 12 people participating in what would be the 2011 event because the first one, I was overseas and we just kept track of each other's models with paper and pen, nothing more than that.

And then, I was dating my now wife at the time and I said, “Hey, honey, what do you think about me putting this out to the public?” See if anybody else wants to join this kind of thing. And I would go, and like amazing partner she is, she pushed me and said, “Yeah, do it. Create a godaddy.com website and a Facebook page. See what happens.

 And before I knew it, I had several hundred people from all across the country sign up. They would email me every day, their runs or their walks or hikes. And I would sit there for four hours a day, creating a spreadsheet of everybody's entries. And then I’d responded to each and every person. “Hey, Norma, that was strong work.Hey Doug, you crushed today. I know it's only a mile, every mile counts.”

 And I would do this every day and update this little spreadsheet and this website and screw and grew. And as a result of that, I met friends who I consider family. It really tied people together. And one person who I met, she said, “Cause I knew I was emailing person. I knew if I didn't do it today, Paul would know. He wouldn't see my, you know, I couldn't do that. Seriously, that was a massive motivating horse for me.”

And then I started hearing success stories. After that I had one woman tell me she suffered from debilitating migraines. We're talking two, three days a week. She couldn't get the right type of medication. The pharmaceutical stuff. And she said, this gave me motivation to get out of bed and do things. And the more active I became, the less I found I’d have less migraines. And she said, now I continue to be active the way Taji 100 taught me. And I'm down to one migraine a month maybe.  And to hear that something I started has such a positive impact on people's lives is literally changing the way they see their day-to-day life.

It's very humbling. I feel very proud of it. And I told people before, if this whole event goes bottom up and it goes bankrupt and I can't get into anymore, I still consider it a massive success because I know help change people for the positive in ways that even I couldn't comprehend. 

It grew and grew and grew and grew. And eventually I got more and more people on the board. We became a nonprofit, which I gotta tell you, it was a headache who did it to get it put in place. That was a massive hurdle overcome. But once we got that done, then we thought, how can we make this even more impact on our community?

And we start collecting donations for any military charity. And that’s when we got in touch with Team Red, White and Blue and their mission rang true to me. Because one of the hardest parts of coming home was transitioning back to civilian life. Honestly thinking like a civilian and, just go to the grocery store and having an idea that I have 500 cereals to choose from. Now it's a cold shock. How are these tankers know what they can do? How do I transition the tank of life into a productive member of society? They give leadership training and mental health counseling, and they do it in an athletic forum.

And I thought, wow, that's us bond together and camaraderie under a flag of activity and physical activities, which is where they fit. So we got in touch with them and we've been raising money for them for the last few years. And the last two years, including this one, we've raised over a hundred thousand dollars each year and donation checks for them. This year alone, we raised almost a hundred eight hundred dollars for them. And that's staggering. When you think about an one month event,  in one month, we were able to collect over a hundred thousand dollars donate to a military and we're going to charity. That's mindblowing. We had 8,200 people across the country, all 50 states and across the world participated. Over 200 of them were deployed military members participated. We’re talking people in the theaters of war participating in this event. That's amazing. We cumulatively cross over 630, 3000 miles. That's like a road race from LA to New York, 230 times. 

And what's very humbling about this is it shows it doesn't matter your background. It doesn't matter where you're born, where your race doesn't matter, your ethnicity or skin color, your economic status, or even your political phishing, your gender. None of it matters. We have proven that we can unite under the red, white, and blue for a common cause of helping others. And everyone can do it, unity is possible. And in a time right now in our country, where we’re seeing such diversity in turmoil, it gives me a ray of hope that look, we can do this.We can unite. We can come peacefully together for a common goal of good and benefit others. It's very humbling. And I am extremely excited to see what we can do in years to come. If we can do this right now, what can we do? 

And I want to throw this out all out there too, because there's a lot of I'm sure you'd know. You've seen it too, nonprofits that aren't really nonprofits, right? They're just companies that fly the 5 0 1 banner, but they're really not nonprofits. Me and everyone on the board get paid absolutely zero. I don't collect a penny for all the efforts that we do. We were absolutely a labor of love. Each and every one of us were volunteering hundreds of hours to make this thing happen because we want all the effort to go towards supporting and helping Veterans and Veteran families in every way we can. 

People can join us for free. You don't even have to pay to participate because we wanna encourage the overall mission of the event, which is to encourage a healthy and active lifestyle. So it's near and dear to my heart. It's definitely become a fan favorite for many people. We have people to participate for the last 10 years and have vowed to keep coming back.So it's really grown beyond my imagination. 

DUANE: Yeah, it was. I'm thinking of when you started out and it's you and your spreadsheet and that it got pretty big, pretty quick. And some of those things can get away from you. This idea that of it being a unifying event, but it's also a challenge. 

Like you said, even back in 2010 with Taji, you chose the shortest month of the year to be able to do a hundred miles. In this, most recently, you gave some alternate events. So we could talk about that, but it's something, I think that appeals to service members, Veterans, those who care for, because it's a big challenge, but it's not out of reach. You're not asking to do 500 miles in a month. It's something that's just one of these stretch challenges. There's just enough for people to think that, man, I don't know if I can do this. And when they realize that they can, then it's really uplifting for them. 

PAUL: Absolutely many people think a hundred miles, there's just no way. A hundred miles physically based on that's a long distance, but what's truly challenging is how do I incorporate that into my already pack daily schedule? How do I allocate time in my day to do this? That's actually when the real challenge comes into play. I've got kids and a job and a house and spouse and hobbies and friends.

And where do I find time? My friend, if anything I've learned from Taji is to truly appreciate the value of time. Time is the fairest, most unbiased, yet most ruthless and unforgiving thing and existence. It doesn't matter. How much you have to do, or how stressed or how rich or whatever. We all get 86,400 seconds in a day.

And it's going to be spent at the same rate for all of us. It's just what we choose to do for each of those seconds that is different, right? So we can spend 30 minutes watching soap opera, or we can spend 30 minutes taking a walk. Oh, we spent 30 minutes learning a new language or finishing a degree, playing with our kids. We can choose to be stagnant with those seconds, or we can choose to change the quality of our life and prepare for the better.

So once we start realizing, wow, I actually do have the time in the day, I was just coding other things as a priority that shouldn't be there. I didn't really need to sit on that app for that long. I didn't need to do this activity so much because a lot of people, when Taji 100 is over, they find themselves sitting there going, wow, I'm done with work. And now I have a subject is free hour. What do I do? It's hey, you've always had that time. This challenge has shown you always at that time. So what do you choose to do with it now? Are you going to go back to your century detrimental habits? Where are you going to use this opportunity to put it towards other things productive and healthy?

So it really is a life changing thing. It changes habits the way we look at it. 

DUANE: And what I really like is it's motivating. It's not just intrinsically motivated, it's extrinsically motivating. Your badges. What do they say? Napoleon says that a man will do anything for a little bit of colored ribbon, right?

It's like Pokemon's right. You gotta catch them all. Like my wife's like, what are you doing up at two in the morning? I got to get the midnight one. I got to get to one with the owl. Just the whole way that it's sorta thought through,was really valuable.And it's all about motivating people to do what they didn't think they could do before. 

PAUL: Absolutely. It's small goals. If you're always looking to say, I want to climb that mountain, but all you do is focus on the peak of the mountain. It'll seem daunting. But if you take each step as the goal and you keep looking for smaller goals, eventually you'll look back and realize, wow, I just accomplished a lot.

So we thought these little achievements badges and little mini goals, you're going to accomplish along the way. And they're a huge success. And we keep trying to add more and more every year. And then this year we thought, we've got a lot of people who physically can't run or walk. They can't either due to injury or what have you. And that doesn't seem right. It doesn't seem right that they can't participate in this event and gain influence as well. 

So we opened it up. Now you can swim. Now you can bike. And that was massively successful because a huge beta test this year to see if they liked it, and it was overwhelmingly positive. So we're looking for more ways to expand, maybe rowing next year.

DUANE: I was going to say cause I stopped rowing for the month of February just to be able to get the miles in. but if there would have been rowing, I probably would have done both rowing in the running.

PAUL:  Oh. And that's another thing. Many people wanted to mix and match activities.

So they wanted to do this and that. So unfortunately, while I have all these visions and stuff, ultimately it falls on my programmer's shoulders. Make sure it's blue magic. He can do things on a computer that I have no clue and understand. But he's a wizard at it. He's an artist and he does a really good job with our website and building the back and infrastructure.

So I keep coming up with these crazy ideas that he keeps looking at me like how much are you going to make me do because we use volunteers. 

DUANE:Once we hit your limit, we'll cut. Stop coming up with ideas. Now, I think, obviously as a participant myself, it was great this past year. I really appreciate not just the effort, but also the program itself. So if people wanted to find out more about Taji 100. Like you said, this was a one month event, but it probably sucks up a good portion of your year. But the next event will be coming up in February of 2023, but you've got the websites out there. People wanted to find out more about what you're doing, how can they do that?

PAUL: They just visit our website www.taji100.com. We're on Facebook too. We put a lot of information out via our facebook page as well. For registration, we typically try to shoot for Veteran's day around that time. So mid November, we'll open it up and  just to encourage and to try to get people to commit to that activity early. We usually do it at early bird discount. I want to say why that is. Yes, you can register and participate for free, but you can also essentially buy into it. And when you buy into it, you get a shirt, you get a really nice race metal that happens. BR our trademark. We really go over the top and our race medals. You get better swag too. Part of that participation fee goes towards the donation. That's how we raised the money for charity through that proceeds. And that's about it. Just kind of word of mouth, really pay nothing for advertising. We'd actually, I try not to. I just like it to be organic because having you tell your wife, tell your spouse, your friends, hey, check us out is far more impactful and engaging than seeing some facebook ad or some flier. 

So I looked everybody who's listening and everybody participated, spread the word, tell them about your experience, tell them how it affected you and how it's meaningful to you. And I promise that'll be far more engaging and impactful and gripping to others then simply seeing the colorful ad. 

DUANE: Again, I think it was a word of mouth that I heard about it. And if a word of mouth fitness focus campaign can raise over a hundred thousand dollars for military charity, I'd say you're doing pretty good. You don't need to have any advertising other than just the event itself. So I think you're doing great.

Paul, glad to have been able to highlight you on the podcast and thanks for coming on. 

PAUL: Thank you very much. If I can leave with one final note for people listening,  mental health for Veterans it's something that's very close to my heart and me. It's only reared its ugly head in my life. Admit like acknowledging it say in the last few years. And in that time since becoming accepting of this and essentially embracing it. And being open with discussing about it and talking with friends, have I truly understood how many people out there are invisible to everyone else that are suffering from it.

And the more we talk about it, the more we normalize it, the less of the stigma, the more of a sudden we destroy more opportunities out of people to come forward and talk to someone and get help. I'd say in the last few years of just being open and just randomly talking to friends and loved ones and neighbors, the more and more people open up to me and say, I didn't know who to go to.

I didn't know who had judged me. And it's really opened my eyes, how prolific this is, especially amongst the Veteran community, because you often hear a lot of people say, you know what? I don't need help. Cause I'm not as bad as so-and-so, he's one of these. Every bit of damage is damage and we can see a broken bone.We can see a cut, we can see a bruise. You can't see that scarring, that damage, that bleeding on the soul and on the emotion that's hidden. So please, if you have somebody out there, just talk about it. Even if you don't believe they are suffering, just make an opening known that you are essentially a safe person to talk to your judgment, free you to love them.

You want to help people. It's important that we look out for each other every day, all the time. 

DUANE: Absolutely. that's the goal here. We're just trying to educate more people about,not just those things you're talking about those concerns, but also the strengths, the inherent strengths that we have, and some of that inherent strength is about sharing the vulnerabilities. Really appreciate it. Thank you. 

 Once again, this show is brought to you by PsychArmor, the premier education and learning ecosystem, specializing in military culture content. PsychArmor offers an online e-learning laboratory. That's free to individual learners As well as custom training options for organizations, you can find out more about what they're doing www.psycharmor.org. 

So I appreciate you taking the time to listen to the conversation. As I mentioned before we started it, I know the audio wasn't the greatest, but the content was really, really good. 

The first point that I'd like to share is I know that we have some listeners who don't have a military background. And some of the early stuff that Paul and I were talking about, might've been a bit confusing if you haven't served in the military, especially in the most recent eras. And that was about being stopped-lost and recalled to active duty. When someone joins the military, they may join for three years or four years or whatever. But every service member, when they enlist, incurs an eight year obligation. The obligation can be done in a number of ways. You can do the entire eight years on active duty as I did, you can do some of that time on active duty. And some of that time in the reserve component of a branch in the military,my younger brother did that. He did six years active duty, two deployments. And then did some time in the reserves fulfilling his eight year obligation. Or you can go into what's called the individual ready reserve or IRR, which is what Paul did. He did his four years and still owed four years. In the IRR, you're basically a civilian. You don't wear a uniform. You don't have to adhere to military standards. You're moving on with your life. Until like Paul, you get a packet in the mail saying we need you back and you still owe with some time. Like some of my platoon in Afghanistan around the same time they were about to get out, but the Army put what is called a stop loss in place. If someone's due to get out of the military, their time is in voluntarily extended. I say involuntarily, because way back when they joined, that was when the commitment was made. 

But think about that. Someone thinks my time in the military has done. And then all of a sudden they get reminded that guess what? No, it's not. Think about that in the context of your life. If you had a previous employer that you no longer worked for that called you up and said, hey, you agreed that you'd come back to work for us for a year or so. Or previous relationship that ended, or you moved out of a community, but you were required to go back for a period of time. You think you've moved on and now you have to put yourself back in that mindset. It's replaying a chapter of your life that you thought was past. And even so, as Paul said, he wouldn't have had it any other way. It was 14 months. Most of which was spent on a deployment to a combat zone was an important part of his life. I have huge respect for those who experienced involuntary recall to active duty or were stopped last. And still did their job still fulfilled their obligation, even though it costs them a lot and could have potentially cost them their lives. 

So just something unique about that part of military service and much respect for Paul for going through that. 

The other point that I'd like to make is how simple the premise of the Taji 100 is, but also how there's a lot of value packed into Taji100. There's elegance in its simplicity. To start off with a brief diversion into smart goals. 

If you've been to any corporate training program, leadership development program or life improvement seminar, the past 30 years, you may be familiar with this term. There are a lot of twists and turns and spins on the acronym. Smart S M A R T. But this is how I think of it. For a goal to be effective, it must be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time limited. 

So let's look at the providers of the Taji 100 from a smart goal standpoint. Run, walk, or hike 100 miles during the month of February. It's a very specific run, walk or hike. Like we mentioned, they will open it up. That includes using an elliptical. There are options for swimming and biking, but what you hear is what it is. Measurable 100 miles. It doesn't say run, walk or hike as far as you can, or run, walk and hike a lot. You can measure how far you go, because there's a measurable goal. 100 miles. Achievable. 100 miles may sound like a lot. And it is at something like 3.4 miles a day. And the Taji 100 team doesn't recommend that you do that every day. But even though it's a stretch, it's still doable. Like I said, in our conversation, it's not out of reach. It takes effort and it can be challenging, but it's still within the realm of possibility. It's not too easy as in run, walk or hike 10 miles in a month. And it's not outside the realm of possibility for anyone who isn't a dedicated athlete, like run, walk or hike, 500 miles a month. 

It's something that's achievable. Next relevant. The goal has to be something that's relevant and important to the person setting the goal. Hence the addition of the alternative events because run, walk or hike isn't relevant to everyone. And finally time limited, there has to be an end point to the goal, meaning do X for X distance within X amount of time. So as a smart goal, you can see that all the boxes are checked as well as the effort that the Taji 100 team has gone through to build a community around the event, the unique and fun way that they reward users individually with recognition of both small and large achievements and the benevolent external pressure that a participant experiences to help them accomplish something that they didn't think they could do. 

So be on the lookout for when the Taji 100 registration opens up again, follow them on Facebook, which we'll put a link in the show notes and put in some hard work for a great cause with a cool organization. So I appreciate being able to bring the story of the Taji 100. 

If you appreciated as much as I did, we'd like to hear about it. If your podcast player allows you to leave reviews for shows our episodes, you can do that. You can drop us an info@psycharmor.org. Or you can reach out to us over social media. Linked to all of that is in the show notes of course, but reach out to us and let us know what you think about the show and what suggestions you may have about future guests. 

For this week, PsychArmor Resource of The Week, I'd like to share the PsychArmor course, Social Isolation and Loneliness. Along with the fitness aspect of the Taji 100, Paul and his team's mission is to increase social connectedness, amongst service members, Veterans, and those who support them. At PsychArmor, we know that social connections are vital to your health. In this course, you'll learn about new ways to achieve social connection, learn about resources and develop a plan to engage and connect in a safe way. You can find the link to the course in our show notes.