“In these pages, I’ve gone out of my way to tell you the unfiltered truth. A lot of it was embarrassing to write. A lot of it doesn’t paint me in the best light. Sometimes, I’m simply not the good guy. And as painful as it was to put on paper it needed to happen this way. My public life tells a story of great, inspiring success. No one’s public life is real. Life’s messy. It’s hard. And sometimes, even the best of us are total pieces of shit. I need to show it all to you in order for you to value any of it. I want you to know, to understand, to feel it in your bones, that no matter where you are in life right now, there is a pathway to get better. You can be more than you ever thought possible, but it will not be easy, and the pathway to success is not a straight line. …
I’m going to tell the story a little differently than most memoirs. I decided to write the whole thing in the first-person present tense. I don’t want to tell you what happened to me. I want to immerse you in the crazy journey I have lived so you can feel each moment and each decision as I felt them. I want you to feel all the fear, failure, sadness, happiness, and success right along with me. That’s the only way you can truly understand my journey and apply it to your own.
I hope my story inspires you. I hope it changes your life.
It’s been one wild ride thus far.
Hop in and let me show what I’ve seen.”
~ Tim Kennedy from Scars and Stripes
Tim Kennedy is a FASCINATING, inspiring human being.
As per the back cover: “Tim Kennedy has a problem; he feels alive only right before he’s about to die. Kennedy, a Green Beret, decorated Army sniper, and UFC headliner, has tackled a bull with his bare hands, jumped out of airplanes, dived to the depths of the ocean, and traveled the world hunting poachers, human traffickers, and the Taliban.
But he’s also the same man who got kicked out of the police department, fire department, and as an EMT, before getting two women pregnant four days apart, and finally, been beaten up by his Special Forces colleagues for, quite simply, ‘being a selfish asshole.”
Imagine blending David Goggins and Jocko Willink and Nims Purja together then throwing them into a UFC ring and reading about their lives with a BRUTALLY honest magnifying glass on ALL the good, the bad and the ugly.
It’s hard to put into words how compelling the book is but it’s REALLY good. Laugh-out-loud funny. Humbling. Inspiring. If you (or a loved one) enjoy great military and/or sports biographies, I think you’ll love it as much as I did.
Get a copy here. (Thanks for the rec, MB/Dan!)
Although it’s a memoir, not a self-development book, it’s packed with Big Ideas and I’m excited to share some of my favorites so let’s jump straight in.
P.S. Before we get going, I have to say that another guy Tim/this book reminds me of is Adam Brown. Check out our Notes on Eric Blehm’s GREAT book called Fearless: The Undaunted Courage and Ultimate Sacrifice of Navy SEAL Team Six Operator Adam Brown.
It’s a similar Heroic redemption story of another truly great, imperfectly perfect man committed to living for something bigger than himself. If you like this book, you’ll love that one too.
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