Beyond Your Limits

The Toughest Mission: Surviving Leukemia and Lung Transplants, with Navy SEAL Justin Legg

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Justin Legg is a retired Navy SEAL Officer. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 2000 with a B.S. in Systems Engineering. He was a member of Basic Underwater Demolition / SEAL Training (BUD/S) Class 234 and became a plank owner (founding member) of SEAL Team SEVEN. While with SEAL Team SEVEN he deployed to the Middle East twice and participated in combat operations in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. After returning from Iraq, he transferred to Special Boat Team TWENTY-TWO in Mississippi, where he served as a Task Unit Commander and the Team Training Officer. In early 2006 Justin was diagnosed with a severe form of Leukemia. Over the next 10 years Justin endured over 75 treatments of chemotherapy and radiation, a bone marrow stem cell transplant, an immune disorder respiratory failure, a double-lung transplant. While he was going through his medical adventures, LCDR Legg fought to stay on active duty performing various duties at Naval Special Warfare Group TWO and FOUR, SEAL Team TWO, and even rehabilitated himself well enough to become an operational SEAL Platoon Commander at SEAL Team EIGHT for a short while in between the transplants. Justin medically retired from the Navy in 2012. Justin became the first, and still the only, double lung-transplantee in the world to climb Denali in Alaska. Justin completed his master’s degree in International Relations from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington D.C. He presently works as a Renewable Energy consultant for the Navy’s Resilient Energy Program.

1:43 So we distinguish ourselves at impact with impact coaching, we talk about rather than personal development, we talked about whole person development, the whole person, body, mind, heart and soul. And that fifth power, the done zone, healthy boundaries. 6:59 I did have connections to some members of the royal family and they are a family. That's that's who they are. At the end of the day. And with all of the problems that our family has, with all of the complications and the infighting and all of that just done on a grand scale in the public eye. And it's very, it's a very strange existence to contemplate. 17:24 It's that whole ability to have conversations is a lost art, I think ability to have healthy debate ability to actually enter into conversations with someone with a different opinion or someone who doesn't fit the box.19:06 I do think that the pace that we live is one of the most damaging things for us right now. We live so fast, and we're trying to get to the next conversational, we're listening, just so the person can stop talking. So we can say what we're trying to say. And therefore there's this kind of like, we're not really listening. We just want to get our voice heard. 23:00 And the irony for me is like, all of my work is based on complex systems evolution. And yet to market that, technically speaking, I should like reduce, reduce that into the reductionist philosophy of how to do an Instagram post or a reel or a meme or anything that's like 10 seconds worth of content. And it doesn't work.