Resilience Required: A Navy SEAL's Experience Featuring Commander Denver

Welcome to the Conscious Pivot Podcast with international speaker, business mentor, best selling author of Pivot, and your host, Adam Markell. The Conscious Pivot shares the stories and wisdom of people who have successfully reinvented some area of their business and personal life. You'll gain powerful insights into how you can fully embrace new opportunities, increase your performance, and master the art and science of innovation and resilience. So please join Adam as he guides you on your Conscious Pivot.

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Conscious Pivot Podcast. I'm your host, Adam Markell, and I am just. I'm loving life today. As I like to say in the morning, I love my life. Well, you know, that's not a guarantee that every day is going to be simple or easy. In fact, most days are not. Most days are challenging. And so this time of the day, sort of middle of the afternoon, I'm, you know, if you asked me in a moment of weakness, I might say I'm not so happy right now. But most of the time, I have this wonderful. My wife, Randy, who is just a wonderful mirror for me. She will come up to me and she'll say, so you loving your life right now? You loving it no matter what? All that kind of stuff? Well, I am absolutely full on just thrilled to be here in this moment. And I know part of it is because I've got a great guest on the show today, so I'm gonna. I already know that his energy and mine will blend really well. He's a guy with a lot of good energy, not just energy, but a lot of really good energy. He's done amazing things in his life, and I'm gonna read a bit of his bio and then we're gonna dig right in and talk about some things that are going on in all of your lives right now. So. Commander Roark t. Denver has run every phase of training for the U.S. navy SEALs and LED special Forces missions in the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and other international hotspots. He starred in the hit film act of Valor, which is based on True SEAL Adventures. His New York Times bestseller, Damn. Making the Modern SEAL Warrior, takes you inside his personal story and the fascinating, demanding SEAL training program. In his second book, Worth dying a Navy SEAL's call to a Nation, Rourke tackles the questions that have emerged about America's past decade at war, from what makes a hero to why we fight, what it does for us. Roark was most recently seen on Fox's American Grit. The series followed 16 of the country's toughest men and Women as they faced a variety of military grade and survival themed challenges set in the wilderness. Commander Roark, it is a pleasure to have you on the show today. Thank you so much for being with us.

No, thank you brother, I appreciate it.

I just so funny. Just at that moment where I was finishing up your bio, Siri for some reason decided that something I said triggered her. Siri got triggered, decided to speak out loud. I wonder who else is listening. But that's a conversation for another day. What is, you know, your cv, your curriculum, viche, your bio is incredibly impressive and very diverse. What is not a part of that introduction that you would love for people to know about you?

I'm a big reader. Being a reader has been an unbelievable kind of gift from early in life. I did not like the confines of kind of the four walls of a classroom. It's not a place I thrived or flourished. But my dad might be the most well read person I've ever met. I mean, I'm sure I've inadvertently met somebody that's read more than him, but not many. And if you have and committed as much of that to memory as he has, you're an impressive human human being. But he instilled that in my brother and I. And so being a big reader I think has led to thinking, I think it's led to a framework of the way I looked at every adventure I kind of went into because I could connect it to, you know, historical readings and even the, you know, fictional characters that would, that would motivate and inspire. And so being a big reader is probably not something I highlighted as much in that. But that and being just a tremendously devoted husband, father, family, that's definitely the base of my pyramid. And yeah, those things are hugely important as well.

Yeah, it's interesting. These are back to back podcast sessions for me today and right before you and I started, I was just had just finished up a podcast with Jack Canfield and the author of the Success Principles and Chicken Soup for the Soul, et cetera. And he was telling me he's read about a thousand books and only reason he knows that because somebody had asked him. So he had to do the research and figure out somehow how many books he's read. So I think he and your dad are like neck and neck when it comes to that. We gotta get those guys introduced. Why don't we dig in and let's start with a bit of your history. So I'm here in San Diego, you were based in San Diego and for folks that don't know, I think the seals, there are kind of two sets of team. Now, if I get this, if I botch this, you just correct me right on this.

Yep.

Because I had met a Navy SEAL instructor whose name is. I'm just drawing a blank on it at the moment. Hopefully you'll come back. But he basically told me there's sort of two sets of teams as the odd, odd and even, and I forget which. Which. But let's call it 1, 3, 5, 7. I don't know if there's a 9. And then 2, 4, 6, 8. Yep. And. And we got one team that's based here in, in Coronado. Right. In San Diego. And you got another team based on the East Coast. I don't know if it's Virginia or something like that.

Yeah, exactly. In Virginia Beach. And, and the team quoted 1, 3, 5, and 7. Those are all individual teams. So all those teams are on the West Coast. Odd numbers, even are on the east coast, and those are the two primary centers of gravity. And San Diego has a lot of extra, I guess, intensity based on our basic course. So buds the course that you would see if you're on the beach in Coronado or staying at the Hotel Dell, those crazy buggers running up and down the beach with boats on their head. That's where our basic course is to include our Admiral and our senior leadership are housed there as well. So the west coast has a real power base, the east coast, equal number of teams. Then also has Seal Team 6, which is like our All Star team that's made tremendous headlines. And then the rest of leadership is spread out through, as you can imagine, the Pentagon, D.C. area Special Operations Command is down in Florida. So those are the, those are the major spots you're going to find yourself if you're a seal.

Yeah. This show is about conscious pivots and I wrote a book called Pivot on that topic. So I would imagine as you know, as seal, you know a little thing or two about pivoting. So just for I don't know, my own curiosity, I hope other people would feel the same way. I'd love it if you had a pivot story you're permitted to tell. I hadn't talked about this beforehand, but if there is some great sort of delineation or an example of what pivoting looked like in the seals, or even what your definition of that is, and relate it back to a story from those days in your career.

Yeah, you know, there's a couple pivots I can think of that relate to Kind of the SEAL experience for me. And then I can think of one pretty major, you know, within my time, the SEAL teams. I'd say the first pivot I'd tell you about, which is sort of a strange, you know, dotted line over to my kind of life experience. But I grew up in the Bay Area, California. This is right in the heart of Silicon Valley, before it had exploded into a place where if you haven't sold a dot com, you ain't living in the street I grew up in. I mean, the house I grew up in was like my dad bought for like 100 grand, something like that. In the 70s. They thought it was the worst decision of life. It was on sale last year for $4.6 million. It's not, it has not changed. It's the same paint, same basketball goal. So when I was there, we thought it was a normal place to grow up. It was, you know, apricot orchards and, you know, good schools, good people, upper middle class, very, very upper class in the hills above us. But being an athlete and being a successful athlete in high school, I probably had a good kind of easy entrance into the popular group of kids. That being said, the controlling power of the popular kids were wealthier kids and kids that, I don't know, just maybe could flash a little bit more and kind of ran the school. But sometime around middle school to high school is when I think most people start dabbling with drinking, drug and things like that. For whatever reason, I had some level of self possession and my brother's the same where we just didn't start. I never touched a drop of it. I didn't drink. I've never done any drugs besides, you know, the occasional Motrin or something I needed from a doc. And that choice to not drink was just. I think it's one of the true game changers in my life. And I don't, I'm not an evangelical about this. Most people can drink just fine. I think it's a great thing to have with a steak. Social lubricant. It seems like a healthy thing. End of, of the day, you have a, you have a, you know, dark bourbon or something like that. I got nothing against you. I just was aware that it was not the right thing for me. And so then I leave high school, I go to play college sports in a very, very kind of drinking centric party type sport. Did not drink. I go to the seal teams. For sure you're gonna have to drink.

That's like, you're like a lax player, right?

A Lacrosse. Yeah, exactly. Lacrosse player, which is a big, you know, big kind of aggressive guys, party type sport. And then I end up with the SEAL teams. Whereas, like back then, pre 9 11, it was just, you know, the hairy chested, bar drinking, brawling frogman and you're gonna drink there. And I just never have it. And there's something about that path. Both the fact that I think I have a personality that can go to excess and a lot of things I like to pursue, it just really proved to be an unbelievable kind of choice in my life. And particularly as a leader, I found myself in a unique spot where I never really compromised myself. I mean, I saw other SEAL officers get carried out of the bar by their guys because they'd overdone it. You're like, look, man, those guys have you now from here on out, it's like you're gonna tell them tomorrow to show up on time and they're like, hey, sir, we had to drag you home last night, so we'll be a little bit late if we want to. You know, there's that level of what you kind of give up as a leader. So I think that was kind of one of the first big pivots in my life. The second big pivot I think would be deciding to serve, just deciding to join the military and pursue much more a life path and a passion than a job. I mean, nobody does the Navy as well. Somebody probably does the Navy as a job. You don't. In the SEAL teams, you go into a program where there's, you know, 80%, some odd attrition just to get in the front. Do you have to be pretty committed? And you and I mentioned earlier, resiliency is something we'll talk about. But those things, it's far greater than any job. So those are two big pivots that kind of started, you know, probably you're in my conversation right here. I'd say a pivot within the SEAL teams is you have a career progression that most folks serving the military are going to follow. Whether you're enlisted officer, whatever it is, there's a career path, a line that you're going to basically follow, or a car course you're going to chart through your career. You can control some part of it, a whole lot of it you can't control. What I figured out very, very early is just work your tail off to the point that no matter where you show up, you're going to be of such high value that they're keeping you, are going to promote you to the next round. But in the SEAL teams, you know, you go there to be a war fighter. I mean, that's, that's why you're joining that organization. Nobody's going that organization to learn a particular skill craft or, oh, if I do this, I'll become a United pilot later. And I'm not saying that's why JetPots do it, but, you know, there's not a. There's a real, okay, we did this. Now here's a perfect one for one exchange in your next life. And you kind of want to go see the bear. You want to go put yourself in harm's way and, you know, put your hand up when it says, hey, here's the harshest mission, the worst dragon we got to go slay. You guys are going to go. And the funny thing is, my first three years in the Seal teams, about two and a half, three years, was pre 9 11, and all the guys that were in the Seal teams, even with full career, 30 years career, had really not done anything for real on the battlefield. They had not gone to war because there wasn't a war. If you weren't in Vietnam, you know, a couple little incursions, Grenada, Panama, maybe some of the events happening in Bosnia and some of those spots, but there weren't open engagement. Folks that had really done this massive pursuit in their life never got to actually see the job they came to do. My peer group, my age class, was thrust into now the longest standing war this country's ever seen. And that was just a tremendous pivot. It was going from the preparation for all the work you need to do to be ready to go do that job to doing that job. The lessons that come out of that, the heartbreak that comes out of that, the passion that goes into that, the commitment to it, and the peaks and valleys of that adventure are otherworldly. So I'd say that the dividing line is when open kind of conflict on multiple fronts took place and what that meant to those of us that served in that window and those that continue to serve that it's just a completely different world for a warrior when you're at war.

Yeah, indeed. And you cover this in two books, is that right?

I do, I do, yeah.

What was the inspiration to write the books? And that in and of itself is a major pivot. I mean, think about going from the work you were doing to authorship.

Yeah, I wrestle. Yeah, go ahead.

No, I was just gonna say, not the easiest thing in the world to transition from one to the other.

Yeah. You know, it was a pivot. For sure. And I was early in the SEAL books. I mean, besides Marcus Luttrell's book, maybe Chris Kyle, who's a sniper on my team, not my specific assault team, but at the same team with me on the west coast, maybe one other in the modern era book. So I was in that first few rounds of books. I think all of us wrestle with a little bit the kind of dichotomy of one of our real monikers is the Quiet Professional. And then now we're out talking about some of things we learned. My books, if you read them, are very much more higher ideals as opposed to chest thumping. This is what I did. And look at this amazing event. It's much more these higher ideals that are important to me and those things I learned and gleaned from my time on the battlefield, off the battlefield, running, training. But as I described earlier, I was a huge reader. And frankly, reading a book, an autobiography by Winston Churchill, my senior year of college is the reason I walked into a recruiter's office. It's the catalyst. And I don't think you'd have a hard time finding a lot of people that read something that proved as a pivot or a spark into some other thing they're going to do in their life. And so there was a component where I've always been much more a literature and art guy as opposed to a math and science. And I like to write that when I had an opportunity, a point where I felt like there was something to say that committing it on paper would be a good thing. And I figured if it proved as a spark or a fire for somebody else to serve. And I've lost count of the number of young, young alliance that have reached out to me, like, hey, I read your book. I'm going to the military, I want to serve. And that's. That's a gift. And I also think some of the things we learned on the battlefield are so unique to kind of our global experience that if we completely circle the wagons and don't talk about them, we're losing a tremendous amount of information that would be of value to our culture, our leadership, our country.

Yeah, indeed. So the. Let's talk about the time that we're in right now, because we are certainly in pivot times. I mean, things really, really kind of caught a lot of people off guard. And what I'd love is to. To the extent it's even possible for people to imagine this, I want them to imagine if their mission was as critical as many of the missions that were. So Critical to our country that you were involved in and the mindset of somebody that's going into something that is mission critical. You know, how would you, how would you take care of yourself? How would you show up? How would you create resilience in the face of threat? Because there are people who are under threat right now, and I don't mean just physical, you know, in terms of their health, but financially, in terms of their business, in terms of their livelihood, in terms of taking care of their families, for sure. So draw the parallel there. I'd be thrilled to help people get a little bit of a sort of a Navy SEAL recipe for resilience, if you will, in the kind of mission critical times we're living in right this moment.

Yeah, yeah, no, I get it. I think it makes me think of two things. I think it makes me think of the work you do before things get hard and the work you'll do after. So in my mind, if you haven't in some ways prepped by testing yourself, pushing yourself, suffering, leaning into pain, and doing things that kind of inoculate you to hard times, you are not going to be as armed for those harm times as those of us that have. I mean, the fact of the matter is I haven't called too many SEAL teammates to ask them if they're okay, because I know the answer. They're okay. I mean, they might have, you know, had to adjust their job or, you know, hold tight a little more than they normally would. But I know, I mean, we could go down to the full zombie apocalypse and our guys probably have some perverse desire to see how that would play out if it was just a gun on your back and some water and how long you. You'd survive. The worst case scenario, it's some part of, I think probably our strange fantasies in the way we look at the world. But consequently, since we've gone through these very, very difficult times, when difficult times hit, I think we're really armed for that fight. So I'm an introvert. I mean, I do a lot of speaking, a lot of big stage events and I love to interact with folks and talk, but at my core I'm highly introverted, which I'm sure you've done a lot of research and you know, these kind personality traits. Well, it's not so much that it makes me shy or anything. It just means when I, when I do a lot of talking, a lot of those things that I need to shut down and be very quiet and insular, do some reading, go fishing, get out in the woods. So when you self impose or nationally impose me just sitting in my house with my girls who I care about more than anybody else and a whole bunch of books I haven't read. It's almost like my ideal social scenario other than I'm not sure when the next convention is going to come up, which is where I make my money. It kind of suits my personality well. So the first phase is kind of the preparation for tough times. And I'll tell a resilient story in there. The other thing I'll say to your listeners who maybe haven't done that work or just have not had a crucible hit their life, and this is by far the greatest they'll ever see, what I would offer to them is it is also a gift. It's a gift to go through tough times because it 100% we're going to come out of it. We know we have that as a country, as a race, as a species, we're going to come out of this. And unbelievable respect that those that won't and those whose family members that won't. I can't tell you how much I understand that. I stopped counting at 40 funerals and I've seen double or triple that in my time in the military. So I know about loss and that hardship. But tough times are a gift because we get tremendous lessons out of them. You pull resilience and toughness moving forward from them. And I think in many ways it's one of those when you come out the back end, if this was the first hard thing that hit you, particularly for young folks, it's gonna be good for you because you're going to come out of this thing and when the next lump or the next hit comes, you're going to be more prepared for it. So I think there's always a gift in hardship when it comes to resilience. In the SEAL teams, when I ran the course of instruction, one of the things I coined this phrase that I think was one of my greatest understandings of how we build resilience. And it's this concept that I call random acts of instructor violence. Random acts of instructor violence. So your buddy that you talked to, that was a SEAL instructor. These are some of the scariest.

Team One, I think that's.

So he went to Team One. Yeah. Which is a west coast team. So. So these are scary, scary humans. As you're going through the training. I mean, if you're made for the training, you love it, but they're still sinister. They rule your life. They can they can hang in the balance. Your fitness, your health, your well being and your future. So, so they're pretty much all powerful. But SEAL training is hard. No matter what you do every single day, it's hard. But if you're performing at a high level, it won't be as hard. And if you screw up as a class, you can imagine it gets a whole lot harder. So as instructors, at the end of every day, one of our instructors would talk to a class. Let's say there's you know, 100 guys that are in the class at this point. We say, hey, you know, if I were talking to you, I'd be like, hey, tomorrow you're going to be on the pool deck at 6am sharp. You're going to be in perfect ranks, standing in perfect lines and ranks. You're going to have your fins in front of you. You're going to have your dive mask on top of your fins. You're going to have a razor sharp dive knife on your hip belt. Do you have any questions? No? Okay, beat it. And off they go for their night to prepare for the next day. If we the instructors show up at let's say 5:50, or let's say we show up late, let's say we show up at like 6:05 and the class who we said should have been done, what we asked to do at six is still fumbling around with their gear, trying to get in line, trying to get themselves squared away five minutes after we told them to be there. You can imagine what that day of training is going to be like. You might as well just pack your bags. We're going to beat you mercilessly until somebody quits or multiple people quit. It's going to be Armageddon because you failed to meet the standard we set for you. But every once in a while we'll show up as instructors at like 5:55, five minutes early. And they will already be in perfect ranks. I mean they were there clearly a half hour before that. They did what we asked them to do. Laser light ranks, fins in front of them, dive mask on top, razor blades for knives. And they'll have a little bit of a grin on their face because we walk in and they'll be like, yeah, we did it right. And we'll beat them worse than the day they showed up late. And what'll happen is inevitably two or three will be like, this is unfair, this is total bs, I'm out of here. And they'll quit. And for those that stay will be like, hey, the reason you're gonna do right by this job is what you're gonna recognize is the acts of violence on the actual battlefield. They are random. And while they can feel personal, they're not. It's just the way that that construct unfolds. So if you're not the type of person that can do everything right, have it go horrifically wrong and be fine with that and come back fighting the next day, you're not long for this job. It's not for you. So those random acts of instructor violence, I think, are one of the true secrets of our training, compound our training kind of methodology. That you could do everything perfectly right and it can go catastrophically wrong. That's what you're going to see in the balance. It's what we're seeing right now. I don't think anybody did anything wrong for the current event. I think people will armchair quarterback that we could have been prepared. We didn't know it's coming. Nobody knows when it's coming and how much you do to prepare for things like this. You just got to take action and keep working the problem when it happens. But those are kind of a couple resilience concepts I have for the current events, I guess.

Yeah, just the idea. I'm taking that in myself because, you know, from the time that we're really, really young, a lot of people are. Are programmed to see mistakes as the thing you have to avoid and that somehow there's this even maybe an assumption if you just avoid mistakes, that things will work out that, you know, you get a chance of, let's say, not. Not. Not having it go horribly wrong if you could just figure out how to make the fewest mistakes possible. And what I think is really sinister, diabolical, but. But incredibly valuable about what you just described is the fact that you could plan your life to the nth degree, plan your business, plan everything out to the nth degree and do everything according to the books and buy the numbers and the shit will still hit the fan at times. And what will.

Really, the worst time.

Yeah, imagine the worst possible time. And for you to be able to be the. The eye of the storm. I mean, that to be the calm in the middle of a storm is incredibly valuable. So maybe, maybe let's talk about that for just a second. Because the, The. The value of being able to think clearly, be alert, and what it takes to be alert while other people are losing their freaking minds all around you is a very important skill in the work that you used to do. And it's A hugely important skill in business for sure right now. Can you think of a time where that was tested more than, you know, more than normal, let's say?

Yeah, well, the real beauty of SEAL training, as I'm kind of mentioning with that random acts of instructor violence, is the unbelievable level of preparation we put in and how intense and visceral we make that training. So there's almost nothing I saw on the battlefield. While we certainly had curve balls and challenges of things that I didn't expect in the moment moment, I don't remember many times where I was like, holy shit. I never thought about that unfolding like, you know, we had kind of done the work to be prepared to what we would bring to bear in any given fight. Then it just comes down to creativity and confidence and your ability to kind of keep your head. As you said, if people haven't read Rudyard Kipling's if you know that poem, they should read that if they want to talk about keeping their heads when others are losing theirs around them. One of the great, great stories ever about that concept. People ask me a lot, what's the number one thing I ever learned in SEAL training? And this is often like a young man that wants to learn some, you know, fighting tactic or, you know, a way to kill somebody with a spoon or something like that, which I. Which I can. Which I can actually talk to. But it's not. Not the number one thing I learned. The number one thing I learned was from a Master Chief right before we graduated from the basic course of instruction. So a SEAL Master Chief is the senior ranking enlisted person of the United States Navy. You can go no further. And at a basic training command, they are, like, all powerful. And I remember we were planning for a mission, practice mission, and this. We're behind in our timeline. The instructors know that. So like I was saying on that pool deck with the random acts of instructor violence, we know we're going to get beaten horribly for being behind. And the senior officer in the class is running around knowing we're behind, just screaming like the Tasmanian devil, trying to get us caught up the timeline. And this Master Chief walked out. He could kind of see the panic and chaos unfolding. He called all the officers over and I'll truncate the story so we can talk about more things. But he basically, in the end, gave us all this advice. He's like, let me tell you one of the best things I ever learned from a Master Chief from Vietnam that shared this with me. And he said, calm is contagious. Calm is contagious. And I mean, he told me that in that moment, you know, this is 23 years ago now, 22 years ago now. And I don't think anything ever served me better. My entire time in the military, I mean, I never saw a mission or a gunfight going so perfectly that if a senior leader or the officer in charge or the senior list in charge lost their head that everybody, it didn't fall apart or go off the tracks. And I never saw anything going off the track so bad if the folks in charge kept their head, that it didn't at least stay the same or get better. And it really is true. Calm is contagious, particularly as a leader. If you keep it together, others will keep it together. If you lose it, they will lose it for sure.

Indeed. Yeah. You know, you and I, right before we turn on the record here, we're just chatting about Jones beach and you know, that beach and they're just as a, a, I guess a disclaimer here. I'm not comparing our service at Jones beach to your service, sir, and thank you for your service. And everyone else is out there doing, doing the work that they're doing. I'll say this, however, about the work we did. It was, we were, we were outmanned every, pretty much every day unless, unless the ocean was like a lake. And we had those days for sure. And we could just look at girls that day. I mean we could just be, you know, be lifeguards in the, in the best sense of what that was like. But most days there were rip currents and the ocean was, can be a really cruel taskmaster. I mean, without, you know, no controlling mother nature and that can be, can be a beast. And when you got a hundred thousand people on, on a half a mile square piece of sand and there's 20 lifeguards to, to at 10 at a time protecting the people who are in the water. It's, you know, the odds are not exactly in our favor. But we, when I was 19 years old, we had somebody go down and had to do a full on search and rescue to find this person. You know, dark, cold, Atlantic water. You're in the water 90 minutes and you're, you know, you're blue, you're shivering, you're, you know, there's no, you know, we got no gear. We're just diving down 10ft into the dark, trying to, you know, find something. Kind of hoping you find and hoping you don't, you know, it was really scary as shit at 19, but when we were, when that Whole thing happened, unfolded. It was devastating to sit with a captain of our field and find that, you know, this guy was gone. They found him days later on the jetty at field one, and. And he said, look, we've gotta. We've gotta learn. We have gotta be able to come back from this. Everybody's gonna get up in the stand because the. The people that are on this beach are going to be here tomorrow again, and we've got to be impeccable. So he said, look, we got to learn our lesson from this first. And secondly, well, we've got to commit to a higher standard for sure. And that standard for us became. It was actually something I talk about in my TED Talk, that we committed that no one would ever go down on our watch again. He actually made it pretty clear when he said, look, you either make the save or you die trying. So it was just. That was the. That was the mantra. You didn't go in the watering and not come out with somebody. And he said, we've got to have each other's backs to do this. To be so outnumbered as we were, and Mother Nature being such. So, no, completely oblivious to us is so insignificant, but we had to have each other's backs. And actually, for those of you watching on YouTube, I'm wearing a shirt right now that says, got your back. So I want to get a sense of how important that principle has been for you in your career as a SEAL. And then leaving the SEALs, getting, you know, coming out of the military, what's, you know, how important is it that you are maintaining some of those same. Those same philosophies and bringing them to life in the work that you do as an author, as a speaker, et cetera.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, the premium on trust and taking care of one another is, you know, I think it'd be hard to put any stakes higher than in combat. One of the reasons we push training to that such, you know, far, far limit and extreme, and frankly to the breaking point is that we make sure the one thing that's a guarantee is that the person on the right and left you in front of you, behind you, are, at a minimum, gonna never give up. And we drill that in from day one. I mean, you drill that in from boot camp, and then at SEAL training, even the most simple tasks, like if you have to run, like if you're running the chow hall, you're going to the bathroom, you need to go get a piece of gear that you forgot or you needed, you do not run alone. You will never See a singular person, candidate student running through training. At a minimum, you will be in what we call a swim pair or a swim buddy. So it's like, look, hey, I just got in trouble. I'm going to go get beat mercilessly. Like a buddy will just jump up and start running with you. Be like, it's probably going to happen to me too. But you cannot go anywhere without a buddy on a swim. If you're further than six feet apart, you can fail the swim because you left your swim buddy. You did not keep that two person integrity. Then it builds up to, you know, four guys, eight guys, a squad, a platoon, an assault force, whatever that might be.

You leave nobody behind, leave no one behind.

And we've made a very conscious decision also on the battlefield though, that there's, you know, there was, I think, a pre 911 romance of we mean so much, leave no man behind, that, you know, 20 of us would die just to pull, you know, a dead teammate out of the fight. You also recognize in real war, and that was, you know, kind of a pre war convention, that yes, we're never gonna leave somebody behind. We're never gonna not keep go searching for them or go find them. There are times when we had teammates die on the battlefield and more people are gonna die if we try and throw you on our shoulder or do something else to get out of there. And every one of us would be like, hey, if I've turned into a piece of meat, you better go. I don't need. You can have a headstone at Arlington. You don't need to have my body in it. I'd much rather see you guys see the end of the day. But that is, we're talking the most extreme possible case in our line of work. If somebody is in the fight and still fighting, nobody's leaving that person's side until we get everybody out of there. And so it's a remarkable thing when your foundation is knowing that the people you're around at a minimum, will never fail you or never quit you. And it's very hard to replicate, as you mentioned, or it's much harder, I guess, to replicate post my time in the military. I know those guys would do the exact same thing in our post military life when I'm around them. And I can feel that. And it's a special, special thing to be around. I come from a family that my brother, my dad, my mom, all those people, I think are very much the same way. We have that kind of commitment to each other. And so that's real special. But those are bonds that, like I said, are exceptionally hard to replicate your next life. And I think it's why a lot of guys and gals that come out of elite units in the military do struggle sometimes in their next life because they just don't feel the same level of purpose and commitment of those around them than the whole block of time they spent doing what we did. It's special.

Yeah, that's one of those enigmas, I suppose. And maybe it's, I don't know, not an enigma, but the idea that somebody that's given so much of themselves on behalf of their country and put in that service that they could be lost at the alarming rate that we see military service people are kind of lost when they leave. I mean, then the suicide rates and other issues are pretty, you know, they're unacceptable. I don't even know what to say. It breaks. Breaks anybody's heart to just see that.

It's one thing that we do exceptionally well in the military is build everybody up to the point of performance. We don't have an excellent on ramp. I heard one of my buddies talking about. It's like you're going over a bridge. The military builds you up to this bridge. The bridge doesn't go down the other side to land you back into your next life. I mean, we're much more cognizant of now. Tremendous programs. Yeah, the off ramp. Both within the military and then amazing post military civilian or nonprofit veterans service organizations that are trying to figure out how to get employment. Enjoyable activities and connective activities for veterans so they don't feel lost, they don't feel rudderless when they leave. I was very lucky in my departure. I mean, I don't think I've ever defined myself by any one chapter in my life. I feel real lucky that I love history, but I don't live in the past, I live in the present as how I'm moving forward. And so I'm just as excited about what's coming next as what I've done up to this point. So I think my personality was made to kind of do that transition. But I'd be lying if I said I don't miss. I don't miss being around those guys. And I mean, I'm real purposeful every year to pick a surf trip out your window and hunting trip with buddies and spots where we can get together and really reconnect and, you know, have those unbelievable kind of campfires of catching up on our. On our times and tell a bunch of Lies and spend time together.

I think reinvention is one of those skills that if you. We've got four kids and we always wanted them to be independent thinking of that, that was like our early parenting. Yeah, that was the only thing we really had to go on, which we wanted, you know, not a whole lot of blueprint for what to do as a new parent, but we wanted our kids to be independent thinking. And now I would add to that that I want our kids from our example to be able to pivot in a way that is, you know, not seamless, but is just doesn't involve suffering. I mean, reinvention is something that. Where I think is a thing we do sometimes because we're forced to do it, and other times it's simply because we're able to recognize that we're not. The seasons, the seasons to everything. Like you had a season as a seal, now, now you are seasoned as an author and a speaker and other things. So. Yeah. And it also sounds to me like resilience, as you were defining it, is something that you, you create before you need it. That's part of that preparation. Right. You got prepared to be resilient before the shit would hit the fan for sure. Yeah.

I mean, there's no team, no high functioning, high performing team that, you know, doesn't play and kind of rise the occasion. I had this idea that, and it's not, you know, I didn't coin this phrase, but that people don't usually rise the occasion. We certainly don't see it on the battlefield. People rise the occasion. What we see is them degrading to their level of training. So if your level of training was exceptional, then you're probably gonna have exceptional performance even if it's going south. If you had piss poor training, you're probably gonna have piss poor training or performance. You're not gonna be able to like fake it. And I would imagine when you look at, you know, any of the great dynasties in sports, I mean, you look at the current, you know, or most recent Patriots, you look at the Bulls with, you know, Jordan and Pippin and all those guys. I would bet if you went in there. Well, we know it from the reading of knowing how they did things. But you go into their practices and their practices are different. They prepare harder, more focused, more driven, more dialed into what the culture and the commitment to the goal is. And so the performance matches that they perform based on the way they prepare for the event. I was at that Super Bowl a few years ago in Houston when it was The Pats against the, the Falcons, Atlanta.

Yes.

And I was with Getty Images, so I'm with the guys taking the photographs. I mean, the only people that are in front of Getty Images is NFL Films, and they're half inch in front. I mean, you're right on the, on the field. And I'm running their little SD cards because they're posting pictures. So I'm just like a little gopher out there. But I get to watch this game standing on the sidelines. And in the pre game, Brady is throwing little out routes, little slant routes to, you know, Edelman and all his receivers. And I remember one where Edelman kind of just went straight out and went to the side like a post or a slant, and he's feet from me. And Brady throws this pass. And I'm telling you, Edelman could have had his eyes closed and had his hands out and that ball was there. But I saw him reach a little bit to grab the ball, but it was right there. And I saw Brady like snap his fingers back, get back here, run it again. I mean, he was off by inches with that pass and he's like, we're running again. I'm not going to have that be the pass I'm practicing throwing. I mean, you're just like these, these folks are playing a different game right now. It's really something. It's really something.

Sports is always a great analogy for those kind of things as well, because the performance is. So you can judge the performance on the day. That's right, clearly. And you know, something like Jerry Rice, I heard stories of how. With, I guess, was it Joe? Joe. That's it. Joe Montana. You're a Bay Area kid, right? So yeah, I mean, he would run these, he would run these routes and every time, you know, like you say like 10 yard, little button hook or something and he take the ball, catch it and then run into the end zone. Every time he would catch, he would run the 80 yard, the 90 yards into the end zone because that's what he was.

Literally that's where it was meant to be.

That's all I'm going to be is in the end zone after every single one. And he just like, I mean, the guys that were on, you know, that he was mentoring by his example as well. He's like, that's the standard.

So that's that like infectious. Like where you say calm is contagious, excellence is contagious, intensity is contagious. Like all these things feed off each other. So I mean, you imagine I Don't know what the NFL season is going to be next year based on the state of the world, but I wouldn't be betting against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers with Tom Brady showing up. I mean, that guy's going to show up in that locker room is going to be instantly transformed. If you think people are going to show up, be like, ah, let's just blow this one off. That isn't going to be the case.

Ain't happening.

Yeah.

All right, so as we wrap up, I would love if you could share one thing that you do currently on a daily basis. A ritual to help you to build your continued resilience. Because now part of your performance has to do with the, the skill with which you communicate both in writing and verbally and in other scenarios as well. So what's it look like for you right now to build resistance?

Yeah, there's a couple things that one thing I'll say which I know will resonate with you because I watched a few of your videos and looked at some of the things you talked about, is I do think a lot of people have separated physical, mental and spiritual, as if those are all not interrelated and connected to everything we do. So if you think your physical fitness doesn't directly relate to your mental and kind of spiritual and emotional health, these are all ecosystems that I don't think they're like a tripod. You're not going to stay up if you don't have one of them. So the massive amount of physical fitness we had in the SEAL teams was one of our pillars. I mean, it just was. We are going to be physically harder and more prepared for the challenges we'll face than anybody else. So consequently we were. I'm in nowhere near the same shape I was when I was a, you know, 26 year old snake eater in the SEAL teams. But like some workout, some athletic push every day, maybe one day off a week, I think is vitally important. And I can tell if I'm not getting cardio exercise, picking heavy things up off the ground and putting them over my head or some type of workout in, I'm much worse for it. So I think the physical connecting your mental is hugely, hugely important. The third part of that tripod is the spiritual. If that's religion, if that's yoga, if that's meditation, you pick it. I'm not going to trouble anybody about that choice. But those three things, you know, mental study and preparing yourself, physical working out and pushing yourself and then that spiritual side, I think those three things keep an Omnipresent in your mind are what make the highest performing people, for sure. And I've got a buddy you should, if you'd be willing to interview him at some point, a guy by the name of Warren Rustad. He's a phenomenal, phenomenal thinker, very successful businessman. He does a lot of work with entrepreneurs. Warren Rustad, and I'll send you his contact info. He's one of those guys that. He's a real mentor of mine, but he's very much about morning routines. So he's very big into. He's got. I will not ever take anything from Warren and not give him credit, but it's kind of this 10-10-10. He does like 10 minutes of basically breathing or prayer or meditation. He does 10 minutes of kind of just thinking, just centering yourselves and thinking on things and. And ten minutes of reading. So there's not a day in the calendar year that Warren doesn't start with those three things and talk about just a discipline that takes place every time in the morning to set yourself on a course of excellence and focus and drive. So I've been trying very much to kind of implement a variant of his with workout and kind of breathing and thinking, and it's pretty good. The first thing you do when you get out of bed is have discipline system to kick the day. Warren knows what he's talking about on that one.

Agreed. Yeah, I'm. I will say that the morning ritual for me is everything. It's one thing for the better part of 10 years that has just. It's so dependable, so reliable. I'm going to get. I'm going to get a fruit that looks very much like the seeds that I plant at the start of the day. So Emmett Fox is one of my, my favorite metaphysical teachers. And again, you know, as you said, whether it's meditation or it's stillness or it's just being quiet with yourself. I'm a big prayer guy, but not everybody is. And that's totally cool too. But I love Emmett Fox and this one book around the year with Emmett Fox is a great way for me to begin my day and my, my typical waking ritual, which I think is also really powerful. I'll remind myself of it as often as possible. Do it right now for everybody as well, which is that we get to. If we're, if we're really, really lucky, we get to wake up again tomorrow. If you're listening to this, watching this clearly that happened for you today. And when you went to sleep last night, there was no guarantee that that was going to happen. In fact, we know right now, in the middle of this crisis we're all seeing unfold that there are people who, who are not going to wake up tomorrow. And that's, that's a, you say it's, it's both a tragedy and an opportunity at the same time. And so for us, when we, when we realize we have been given another day, there's a, there's a significant charge to that. There's a responsibility. What are we going to do with that? What's the creative opportunity in that new day? We get. So to me, step one, wake up. Let's all agree to do that. I hope everybody's willing to agree that. Right? Step two, what, what can, what kind of gratitude can you cultivate in that moment? If, if for nothing else, then, then the opportunity of the day that you've been given, whereas other people not, not been given that. And, and lastly, what's the first, what's the first thing you say in the morning? You know, what, what is the, what are the first words you say either to yourself inside, you know, your mind in that cavern, or the things you actually come out of your mouth? So mine are these four simple words. I love my life. Those are, those are the words. I don't even have to think hard about asking you this. Do you love your life?

Oh, man, it's just. I can't believe it's happening. I mean, it's just been. Every turn has been a gift and the hardest parts have been the best parts. The easiest parts have probably been the only boring windows of time, but I still pulled something out of this. It's just an adventure. It's all a gift. I agree totally. And yeah, you're talking about reinvention early. I think it is so key. I think my dad and I were talking about this recently and he had a case as he was a trial attorney for many, many years, but he had a case that was about this guy that made ice skates. He was basically the best. He's an Italian ice skate maker, but he was the best ice skate maker in the world. The lawsuit, it was funny. It was about somebody's feet hurt and he was getting sued literally for not making the right ice skateboard. And I gotta share this because my dad will love it. I guess he's on the stand at some point and the opposing counsel, the opposing attorneys grilling them about now, how do you, how do you measure the foot and how do you do this? And he's, you know, just Shows I just traced the foot on a piece of paper and then I look at the foot and I can make it. I guess the guy's giving him a degree just time about like, well, is that the proper way to, you know, measure a foot? And I guess he says, well, I'm a know of Jesus of Christ, but I'm a pretty good. And so, you know, he's just one of those guys that knew it, I guess. His grandfather was like a boot maker. His father was a boot maker. He's this boot maker. I think those people that have that singular desire in their life, there's some part of me that's a little jealous. Like, if you just knew this is the one thing, the one thing. I'm like, man, if I could just bake bread, that'd be cool. But I don't think most of us are that. I know I'm not that.

So your dad was a trial attorney for a lot of years. Was that his. Was that his wife? One thing?

I would say so. I would say so. I mean, it's. It's perfect for the personality described. He's very disciplined. He's very fit. He's very focused. His brain retains information like nobody I've almost ever seen. So, I mean, going through documents and finding those key points and critical nodes of ideas was probably like reading a Dick and Jane book for him. And then he's just a beautiful, beautiful speaker and a, you know, powerful present guy. So I think. I think the trial room was what was. Was truly his. His arena. His arena. And then I got the. I got the benefit of it as the, you know, the doting son and understanding and learning from him pretty good.

It's good to be able to speak so highly of. Of your dad, of a parent. And I'm blessed that my dad is still around. My mom and dad both just talked to him last night. He. He was a participant. He was on our resilience a thon over the weekend. He was telling me he loved the guy, this guy Dawson Church, who was talking, you know, leading through meditation and we had some other folks on. But really, you know, when you're. When you grow up in a household where learning, lifelong learning is valued, then I think you get. You get even a greater shot at the kind of like you say, the pivots, the reinventions along the way, they take humility. And we've got to be students if we can do that. I think there's nothing that we're not capable of. And I really appreciate your time today. This is a great.

Oh, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. Yeah. Thank you.

Wonderful. So, folks, please go ahead. We love your feedback and feedback. We know how important feedback is in the military, and it's so important to all of us in business. And this show survives and thrives, really, on the comments that we get from all of you. So AdamMarkel.com podcast, you can leave a comment there. You can subscribe, of course, or leave a review on itunes or Stitch or any of that stuff. And I would love it if you'd all just think about how it is. You're going to. You're going to create the first moment of the day when you wake up tomorrow. What's that one thing that you want to cultivate in your mind? What's that one thing you might even say? But for now, anyway, I'll just say ciao. And this has been wonderful, Commander, thank you so much for your time.

Thank you. I appreciate it, brother.

Thanks for listening, everyone. We hope you now have the tools and greater insights to navigate your own Pivot. Help us inspire others by sharing this episode and leaving your comments over@adammarkel.com podcasts for more tips, strategies, and support as you consciously pivot into a new business and lifestyle you love, join our Pivot community on Facebook at pivotfb.

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