Mitchell is a career military man first enlisting in the Marines and later being commissioned in the Army. He has multiple combat tours as an Infantry Platoon Leader in Iraq, and later, as an Infantry Company Commander leading the last fighting force out of Iraq in 2011. He has been awarded numerous medals and badges for his service and even after his military career has continued to serve, as a Financial Planner, helping hundreds of soldiers (and others) to improve their financial well being.

Mitchell started us off with "life time learning" as his most important value because he believes learning from the experience, wisdom, and mistakes of those that came before us is an amazing gift. It was really interesting to hear Mitchell's own story and how he didn't follow this value for much of his life. He was raised to believe you have to figure things out for yourself. Despite appreciating some of the benefits this brought him, this is not the approach he takes with his own daughter. He tries to teach her as much as he can, so she won't have to go through the same struggles that he did. 

This led to a fundamental discussion about why we value grit, resiliency, and mental toughness so much; yet many of us strive so hard to try to make our kids' lives easier. How do we make sense of that contradiction, that we are happy we went through struggles in life, but we don't want our kids to go through the same thing? Is it that we really believe it is better for them or do we just think they're not able to handle the suffering we've been through? We got into all of these questions and many more including topics like vulnerability, gratitude, enlightenment, and the unfairness of life.

A big thanks to Mitchell, firstly for his service, but also for being so open about his military experience and how it shaped the way he sees the world today.