Regulate.
Notice the early signals: a tightening jaw, a change in your breathing, the urge to react. Practice pausing and grounding yourself before the familiar response takes over.
Recognize what’s happening.
The mission / Operation Stillness
A way back
to yourself.
You learned to survive the hard things.
Now comes learning to live in the quiet.
Operation Stillness exists to help veterans, first responders, and anyone caught in survival mode recognize their patterns, make room for choice, and show up for the people and life in front of them.
Regulate. (Re)Connect. Remember.Why I’m doing this
01 / What drives me
Being home.
Actually being there.
I know what it’s like to be physically present and somewhere else entirely. To keep functioning, keep moving, and still feel far away from the people right in front of you.
My family gave this work its clearest purpose. My wife’s steadiness helped make it possible to face myself honestly. My children made showing up differently matter in a way that another idea or another book never could.
That’s what drives Operation Stillness. I want to share what I’ve learned with people who know how to survive hard things but find themselves lost when life gets quiet. People who are tired of the fight and unsure how to put the armor down.
More moments where you’re actually here.
More of your life that you get to live.
How I got here
I began searching for inner peace in 1993, through Zen Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta, Christian mysticism, Gnosticism, and Nonduality. In 2013, the chase stopped. The work of meeting myself was just beginning.
Learning about my nervous system gave me a way to connect that inward understanding with my body, my reactions, and my relationships. Accepting my past helped me stop spending so much of the present fighting it.
I’m still learning. What I share comes from that ongoing work, and from the veterans, first responders, and others who have trusted me with their stories.
02 / Who this is for
When the pressure
follows you home.
You can handle a crisis and still struggle at the dinner table. You can care deeply about your family and find yourself snapping, shutting down, or staying busy because stopping feels harder.
This work speaks especially to veterans and first responders who were taught to push through fear, pain, and exhaustion. It also welcomes anyone who recognizes the same loops in their own life.
The aim is to understand what happens between a trigger and your response, and practice finding a little more choice there. That choice matters in the moments you share with other people.
03 / How the mission takes shape
Notice the pattern. Find the choice.
(Re)Connect.
Come back into contact with your body and the people around you. Listen to your partner. Be there with your children. Let an ordinary moment reach you.
Show up for your life.
Remember.
Learn to recognize a protective pattern without making it your whole identity. Meet the person underneath the armor, including the parts you’ve spent years pushing away.
You are more than the pattern.
04 / What this work is for
The ordinary moments
are the point.
A conversation where you stay available. An evening when you walk through the door and can be with your family. A quiet moment that you don’t have to fill or escape.
Those are the moments I’m working toward, too. Old reactions still show up. The practice is noticing them, taking responsibility, and returning. Again and again.
My books carry this work in two directions. UNSTUCK: How Warriors Can Stop Living in Combat Mode focuses on recognizing your state and practicing ways to respond. Field Guide: The Cycle That Keeps You Stuck maps the repeating chain of reactions and the places where you can pause.
Both come back to the same purpose: being present enough to live the life that’s already here.
This is education and personal experience, not therapy or a substitute for professional care.