Discover the timeless principles of Stoic philosophy as Air Force veteran and law enforcement professional Bryce Lee joins us to unveil the nexus between ancient wisdom and modern courage. Through the lens of his own experiences and the discipline of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Bryce illuminates the virtues of humility and emotional discipline – essential tools in the arsenal of any leader facing the high-pressure demands of police work. His insights challenge us to rethink leadership, infusing it with deeper introspection and a pivot towards the noble attributes of courage, wisdom, self-control, and justice.
Bryce extends an invitation to probe the storied teachings of Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus, and their profound applicability to those in the trenches of public service. As the conversation unfolds, the focus sharpens on the necessary transformation within law enforcement leadership – from secretive art forms to an open embrace of initiative and contribution.
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Discover the timeless principles of Stoic philosophy as Air Force veteran and law enforcement professional Bryce Lee joins us to unveil the nexus between ancient wisdom and modern courage. Through the lens of his own experiences and the discipline of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Bryce illuminates the virtues of humility and emotional discipline – essential tools in the arsenal of any leader facing the high-pressure demands of police work. His insights challenge us to rethink leadership, infusing it with deeper introspection and a pivot towards the noble attributes of courage, wisdom, self-control, and justice.
Bryce extends an invitation to probe the storied teachings of Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus, and their profound applicability to those in the trenches of public service. As the conversation unfolds, the focus sharpens on the necessary transformation within law enforcement leadership – from secretive art forms to an open embrace of initiative and contribution.
Today’s episode is brought to you by Officer Privacy! OfficerPrivacy.com is an LEO-owned company that scrubs your private information from the internet so you and your family don't have to worry about crazies or criminals showing up at your front door. The best way to reclaim your privacy going into 2024 is to use Officer Privacy. You won’t regret it!
Join Our Tribe of Courageous Leaders:
Get The Book
Get Weekly Articles by Travis Yates
Join Us At Our Website
Get Our 'Courageous Leadership' Training
Join The Courageous Police Leadership Alliance
Welcome to Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates, where leaders find the insights, advice and encouragement they need to lead courageously.
Travis Yates:We are honored to have Bryce Lee on the show today. Bryce is a 20-year Air Force veteran. He's a nine-year police officer and he's the creator of the Stoic Sentinel podcast, an excellent podcast. That's where I found him and I can't recommend it enough. Throughout his two careers, he's held multiple leadership positions, including patrol corporal, field training officer, honor guard coordinator, and obtained the rank of E-7 in the Air Force. He's the creator and the host of the Stoic Sentinel podcast, which applies the philosophy of stoicism to improve the lives and careers of law enforcement officers. Bryce, how are you doing today, sir?
Bryce Lee:I'm doing fantastic. I appreciate you having me on.
Travis Yates:Man, I was fired up when I found your podcast because I have dabbled in the Stoic philosophy for a number of years. I'm sitting in my office right now and right in front of me is a book called the Daily Stoic. I'm sure you're familiar with that. I know I have my story on how I found this philosophy, but nobody cares about my story. Bryce, you're the sort of the expert out there that's really pushing this to law enforcement. I agree with you. It can help tremendously in a number of areas, specifically leadership, which is what this podcast is about. I'm just curious how did you discover this?
Bryce Lee:About two and a half years ago I finally worked up the courage to go try out Brazilian Jiu Jitsu completely humbled me and made me realize that there's a whole lot out there that I hadn't figured out yet. If anybody gets anything new. I started watching videos and listening to podcasts and stuff. One podcast and YouTube guy in particular goes by a Jiu Jitsu. He was talking about philosophy. Ryan Holiday's books I picked up they had a three-pack. I don't know what was it. Ego is the enemy. Someone listened to the key and the obstacle was the way. Had never heard of this before the philosophy of stoicism and it just blew me away. Especially ego is the enemy. It kicked me square in the gut. I tried to read that one at least once a year just to remind me.
Travis Yates:Isn't that interesting. This philosophy's been around for thousands of years and it applies probably better today than ever. But just like you didn't know about it at one time and I didn't know about it at one time, you had a military career and never knew about it. Much of these guys were warriors back in the day, and that's what his philosophy was born out of. We had no clue. Why do you think that is?
Bryce Lee:I honestly don't know. I think it's funny that the only reason I'd heard of Marcus Aurelius was for the movie Gladiator. You hear of all the things that the Caesars did, but you don't hear about the one that no-transcript, basically just flipped it on its head and did everything he could to be.
Travis Yates:You know that's interesting, bryce. You say that you found stoicism in jiu-jitsu and frankly, I have a similar story. I found jiu-jitsu based out of stoicism when I ran across that philosophy. It obviously talks about humility and doing hard things and, you know, sometimes, depending on where, what position you are in the agency, happen to be in a higher administrative role, you have to be very careful about your ego and about being humble and all those things, because, to be honest, there are people that pretty much do what I say and they're at my feet, at my back, and call if I choose. So I don't believe in leading like that, but I knew I needed something like jiu-jitsu to sort of ground me, because it is probably, as you know and you've been on that journey one of the most difficult things you can do, because you're literally being beaten by little kids right? I mean people that have been doing this longer than you can just tear you up.
Bryce Lee:Yeah, that was my very first experience was having a 13-year-old tap me out multiple times and one want to roll, yeah, yeah man there's just.
Travis Yates:I've heard a lot.
Bryce Lee:But there's two times people there's some that will experience that and say I'm never doing this again, my ego can't handle it. And then there's the guy that says I have to know more of this, I have to be able to do this, and luckily we fell into that second camp.
Travis Yates:And I'm interesting to get your take on this, because do you find yourself having to force yourself sometimes to go?
Bryce Lee:Oh, absolutely. Oh. Yeah, that's the hardest part of jiu-jitsu. Sometimes I'm a night shifter and I make it a point to go classes on my days off just because it's the harder thing to do. There's less people, so I get. Yeah, getting up at 5 am to drive to the gym when it's dark and cold, yeah, it's miserable, but there's no better feeling than getting it done and the first thing you do is have a few rolls and rest of your day is set.
Travis Yates:Yeah, it certainly has been very helpful because it does so much more. Obviously, it's self-defense for law enforcement, but it gives you so much more. I can't really think of anything that is even better. So I highly recommend that for the folks out there, and so that's exciting. So you're two and a half years in, so you know more than day one, but compared to many other people, you don't know a lot, right? That's pretty humbling. Oh, absolutely Absolutely. So you find the stoic philosophy just like you, and I did know about this a few years ago, bryce. A lot of our readers don't have any clue what we're talking about. Give us a quick summary form of what stoicism is.
Bryce Lee:Basically deals with I'll sum it up pretty shortly is controlling what we are able to control.
Bryce Lee:There's some life that we just have absolutely no control over, and due control are our affectives, our attitudes and our actions. Pretty much everything that's internal comes from inside. Everything outside we may have some influence over, but all we don't control the income of it. So that's pretty much the first lesson, being that out and basically just using the principles and the virtue of stoicism to kind of become the best possible person that you can be, the stoic had what was called the sage, so it was basically the perfect stoic who doesn't exist, but it's somebody that we can all aspire to, and just trying to become that person in our lives and, unlike a lot of philosophies, just kind of question what will? That kind of stuff is an actual. It's a philosophy that you have to practice and you have to actually apply to your life to get anything out of it, and it's basically making everybody around you and the world a better place by making yourself the best possible human being that you can.
Travis Yates:Yeah, you're so right. There's so many things that we think we control, we think that we're in charge of, but stoicism sort of brings that down to to really. It speaks really. I would say to the common man, right, like you don't necessarily control when you die, so live today and there's so many other things out there, and do you have a certain philosopher that's kind of your go to.
Bryce Lee:Marcus Aurelius is kind of the top one. I really like Seneca and Epictetus to they both. They just all come from backgrounds and he just was a slave. And Marcus Aurelius was on the other end of the spectrum. He was the most powerful man in the world, he was a Roman emperor, and they just showed that no matter where you come from in life, you can be a good person and you can make a difference around you, and it's really all about just knowing who you are, what you're capable of and making sure that you put that into action.
Travis Yates:Yeah, and just to give our audience just some example, you know I'll pick up this daily Stoic book and any page you turn to you know less is more. The mind is all yours. There's nothing wrong with being wrong. A productive use for contempt, washing away the dust of life. What makes you a servant? I mean it just gives you these ideas and concepts. That kind of makes the world makes sense in a very chaotic time, does it not?
Bryce Lee:It does they really? And especially in age where society is so comfortable which is where I think auto problems come it goes to Yourself making yourself the hard things, like you said that you did see, really digging into why we act the way we do, and I call it the emotional, call it emotional trigger discipline. So basically, yourself figuring out why you act, you know what triggers you, what causes you to get upset, and Basically, once you figure those things out, you can kind of see those, just call it the emotional trigger discipline. So you're basically able to index that finger off, that that emotional trigger. So you're not walking around just pulling it at everything that happens throughout the day. You're able to kind of open it up, see what's out there, recognize things, and then you can choose what you respond to rather than just reacting to everything.
Bryce Lee:I think every, yeah, I said them has really helped with that.
Travis Yates:I think every police officer listening knows how Gut-wrenching typical in-service training is right, and obviously there's some of it it's good, but so much of it is not. But how powerful could this be if someone spent five, ten minutes a day studying these virtues? Compared to that typical in-service training, highly beneficial right.
Bryce Lee:Oh, absolutely yeah, and the virtues that we're referring to are the cardinal virtues are called cardinal, just like the cardinal directions on. So their courage, wisdom, self-control and Justice, and when I heard those the first time, I like what could possibly up to by a two law enforcement, more than those four Choose. I think they just exemplify what a cop is and should be.
Travis Yates:Yeah, I Completely agree. That was the first thing I thought of is why I was so attracted to is. It seemed to apply so much to law enforcement. So if we have people in our audience that are interested in that I know you've already said a lot, but what immediate benefit will they get if they start studying these philosophers?
Bryce Lee:basic application for how you should act today. Today, and, and they focus very much on the, on the moment, not getting too worried about what's to come, because that's not promised to us. Not worrying too much about what's behind it it's it's really about being in the moment where, and just really basing all of your decisions and actions on was for virtues. If you're having an issue with patients, then Self-control part of it comes in, the wisdom comes in and Pretty much all of them rely on the courage to go out and actually apply these things because it's it's honestly not easy to look at yourself, dig into why you are and what you. So many of us are just kind of floating through life and I think this really grounds us and gives us that foundation to build Just our principles and things that we want to use to help make our decisions.
Bryce Lee:I think it was James clear, the best folks that I heard about that atomic habits yeah yeah, where I got it from it's that every vision you make is action or decision that does not have an impact on you know down the road, right, I think that I thought that meshed really with stoicism now Bryce, you come from a military background into law enforcement.
Travis Yates:Thank you for that. A lot of some of the best cops I know have done that, and I was involved in our Academies and recruiting for many, many years and that was the first place I would always look because it's well proven. You've already proven yourself out there and so I think it's amazing when, when our military folks do that. But when it comes to leadership and of course this is about leadership, courageous leadership I hear the same thing from everybody. So I'm just curious for you. So give us a stark contrast to the leadership you saw in the military side Versus when you enter law enforcement.
Bryce Lee:Well, I think one of the benefits of having the military is just how many leaders that would come across, because I mean it's from here that's over somebody. So every tier we touch the wide spectrum of most evil possible manager you can find to the guy that would follow into hell. And I think law enforcement kind of suffers a little bit from that. Your department, you've only got a set number of people that you follow or that lead, and so I think a lot of what I was able to do in the military was, unfortunately, say I'm never going to be like that guy and go off the negative side of it building myself up to be who I didn't want to be led by. And then I had a few just in guys that, like I said I would, I would walk through hell for, and it was basically and I mean it transfers over the same, the same characteristics that that worked in the military, work in the police force. It's always the humble guy that's willing to do what his people are doing Just when he's wrong, show that they're always learning and just being able or being willing to help out. And the guy like I just actually just told a story in my podcast because I just did one on field training officers and the leadership there.
Bryce Lee:I had guys that would go hey, how do I do this job in the F16? I've never done it before. And they would scream at me and call me an idiot and embarrass me and tell me to go look it up. I'd go ask them they also. Yeah, man, let's go figure it out. You know I haven't done it in a while, but let's you know, this is where you look at us and do it.
Bryce Lee:I quickly realized the guy that was screaming and didn't know how to do it either. It was easier for him to save face and make the new guy embarrassed instead of embarrassed himself. And I transferred that over into into corporal where I'm jumping calls for guys on Fridays at the end of the day so that they get to go home on time. And you know I'm there doing paper for a little bit longer. I have to approve it anyway, so why not just write it too? But that meant so much and it's just giving yourself back and unfortunately I didn't see that full on the military. I have seen it a few times in the police force, but that's that's what I try to try to emulate as far as what I do.
Travis Yates:Yeah, I think we overcomplicate it right. I mean we have, especially in law enforcement, we have all these schools and all these certifications and all this stuff we talk about, but very little of it is practical where you're going to literally change leadership the next day because we may have a lot of head knowledge, we don't have a lot of heart knowledge. And the other thing that I see as a stark difference is I ask all my military folks is I'm sure your answer is the same as when was the first time the military taught you about leadership? And they generally say the first day you know basic training, first day leadership.
Travis Yates:Well, in law enforcement it's like this behind the curtain secret, super secret thing that you have to pass a test and make a rank and all of a sudden you're in the club and it's all them versus us and it's just wacky doodle. And so it leads to a culture to where many officers given the most power, bryce, then they've given more power than the president, the power to take life on American soil. They have extreme power and authority. That we then go.
Travis Yates:Okay, welcome to the job but shut up, you know, you just need to shut up and do your, do your job and let us lead or let us manage, or whatever they say.
Bryce Lee:Yeah, and we're able to take away people's Fourth Amendment rights in certain circumstances. You're required to know what the call is. With your first day on the job or your 10th year, if you get on the first on scene on a hot call, it's your call, you're in charge, you're the leader until other people get there and we do. We kind of treat it like if you speak up you know there's a leader on the shift or there's a sergeant, whoever, and you speak up with an idea and it's not their idea, so they're not going to have anything to do with it. Unfortunately it's been that quite a bit, whereas we know everything is yours, we never will, and so any input we can get, we still get the final decision. But we don't forget our ideas, always best idea and, like you said, that was ingrained more early on.
Travis Yates:Yeah, it's really one of the dirty little secrets in law enforcement very toxic where Officers are made to believe that they can't have input, they can't be empowered, they can't lead. And our take here at courageous leadership is if every officer was a leader, every officer was treated as a leader, you'd have a leader on every call, in every city, in every state in America, at all times. You know you wouldn't necessarily need to call the sergeant all the time. You have leaders there. But you're right, it's territorial.
Travis Yates:There's a lot of stuff going on. We're trying to change that. We have some of the finest street officers on the planet that work on the American streets with what they face, and some of the sariest leaders I've ever seen in my life, to be honest with you. So it's time to change that, and so I certainly Appreciate the philosophy from the military that teaches that we need more of that in law enforcement. We guys we talk about leaders, bryce, I know it's helped me a lot, but kind of explained to our audience the power of what stoic philosophy can do for a leader.
Bryce Lee:Yeah, and so that's what I've been to with the. The title of my show, the stoic sentinel, is of the idea of the sentinel that's always watching, always on the wall, has themselves under complete control, knows their emotion, knows their triggers and Knows who they want to be and what they want to do. Kind of like this, the sage for the stoics, the scent of that ideal philosophy. Police officer. So for me, because I was a corporal when I, when I found it Was Kind of just leading by example, I called it being the lighthouse and not the rocks.
Bryce Lee:So, without you see me doing hard things, they see me going out and doing jobs that some other leaders wouldn't do.
Bryce Lee:I'm not going to ask my guys to do anything that I'm not going to do myself. I'm just keeping that link with them as well as Just following those virtues, making sure that my ego is not me, me, my emotions aren't the one, the one making decisions for me, that everything is a intentional response and not just you know something conscious. That that's leading me in a certain way and it, like said, it leads to humility, it leads to knowing that I don't know everything and constantly educating myself, constantly taking classes and trying to increase my own skills and if you do that and you take care of your people, then they're going to follow you through her, because that's the that I I in the military and some of the leaders that I've had in the police force and Say what it all comes down to your own personal philosophy, their virtues, values and Principles, and if you had got those short up and this makes it, it's a, it's a cheat code, it really is.
Travis Yates:Yeah, man, I couldn't have said it better myself Very, very solid stuff. So if our listening audience wants to find out more about the stoke philosophy, obviously go to the Sentinel podcast. A stoke Sentinel, is it stoke Sentinel? Yeah, stoke Sentinel podcast. Check that out. All the main platforms have that. What else can they grab on to so they can get up to speed? Because I do believe I think you're onto something here, bryce. Every Law enforcement officer, no matter your rank, can benefit from this.
Bryce Lee:Yeah, I don't recommend those books by Ryan holiday. He was the enemy especially, and obstacles the way Without me into it. I Try not with stuff like that, just that overwhelming, to jump right into the, the ancient philosopher. But Meditations by Marcus Aurelius has changed a lot of lives that one's pretty easy to get into the newer version. If you get one of the old ones it's all in the old English and really hard to understand.
Travis Yates:Yeah, Amazon's got a bunch of different versions. Just make sure you get a current language one new the new translation by Gregory Hayes.
Bryce Lee:This is my preferred one, and Donald Robertson is a Leading thinker on it. That's really good, but there's a there's a book out called the stoic cop by Bill Maurer yeah, which is awesome. He's the first one I found when I started into this, and then you can reach me on Instagram at the stoic sentinel. Deem me there if you got questions. You can email me at the stoic sentinel at gmailcom. I'm always happy to have a conversation or answer questions and I'm gonna keep putting out as many up interviewing as many people as I can and Try to keep it going.
Travis Yates:Well, Bryce, you're a prime example of what we refer to here as the power of one. Everyone's got God-given talents, that an interest that can help the profession. You've Taken yours in this interest and you're trying to help other people. I can't thank you enough for being here. I can't thank you for all the efforts and dedication that you put out. People don't realize that being a content creator is Extremely difficult, extremely time-consuming, and you're working full-time. I'm sure you got all kinds of other people You're supposed to be taken care of as well, with your family. So thank you so much for what you do. You're making a difference guaranteed.
Bryce Lee:I approve it and won't do. I think it's the the prime proving ground for the philosophy so happy. Appreciate the kind words.
Travis Yates:Yes, sir Bryce Lee, Thank you for joining us and if you've been listening, thank you and just remember lead on and stay courageous.
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