Heroic Chat with Mark Divine (Recorded at Areté: Activate Your Heroic Potential—The Live Experience)

All right, we've got Mark Divine joining us. There he is, there he is.

Brian Johnson.

What's up brother?

Oh man, all sorts of things are up. Yeah, what's Veterans are up. Huya veterans. All you vets, thank you for your sacrifice and for your courage. May we honor that with heroic wisdom and courage and faith. Hoo ya.

Oh, bless you, brother. I love you, brother.

I love you too.

Man, oh man. Such a good human being. So much I want to talk about, but let's start at the top. Burpees for Vets. Talk to us about why that's so important for you and I'll share why we're so committed to supporting you.

Yeah, thank you for that support. I mean that means so much to us. I started Burpees for Vets as part of Our Courage Foundation 2019 when I learned that 22 veterans a day on average were committing suicide and my heart was just torn wide open. I was like, this can't be. But it was true and it's gotten worse. And so I said, well, we can suffer a little bit and everybody can do burpees. And so let's enlist a whole bunch of people to do 22 million burpees. And we did 22 million freaking burpees 2019 and we raised a quarter million dollars to help vets. And that launched something we call the Veteran Integration Program, which is what we're supporting in this initiative. And that's a year long process of reintegration of bringing vets who are on the downward end of suffering, meaning they're really suffering from post traumatic stress and TBI and suicidal. And so we run this program, it starts off with a weekend immersion where we teach them our unbeatable mind tools and practices which are not dissimilar to what you do at heroic. And then we hold them in an embrace for an entire year. You know, boat crew coached boat crew. So so they get their team back or a team back, they get a swim buddy to hold them accountable. So like when they're in their deepest darkest moments, they've got someone to reach out to haul them up by their bootstraps and then they practice the tools, right? So we get them breathing again and we get them to find a new mission purpose. And the program's got close to a 90% success rate. So it's so important. I wish we could, you know, reach more vets. I mean it's honestly, it's the ones that aren't looking that need the most help. Right? And so that's why part of the initiative is like to shout out loud, hey, vets, there's communities like heroic here to help you. Right. Don't hide in the cellar when you're feeling down or don't turn to the bottle or whatever. So that's what we're doing. We changed the model where we've now got communities like yours doing burpees together to raise money. In fact, we just had a corporate. You, you'll get a kick out of this and this will, this will be a target for next year, Brian. But we had a single corporation named Paycom last week do 136,000 burpees and they raised $136,000 for the foundation. That's incredible, isn't it?

Bless you.

I mean that I, obviously we all, we all love our vets. You know, someone asked me yesterday, it's like, man, do I, is it okay to say thank you for your service? And I said, you know what, I would actually appreciate if someone says thank you for your sacrifice. Right. Because that's really, you know, service as a veteran, especially through these, you know, the period of conflict and war torn strife that we find ourselves in, It's a real sacrifice for the veteran and their family. And then to follow that and say the least I can do is, is sacrifice a little bit to show my support and my love for you. And so that's one way to sacrifice, is to suffer. And we know that we challenge ourselves through hard physical training and through, you know, through doing the work to make the world a better place. We have to sacrifice too. So to do, you know, to add veterans kind of to your little checklist of who you're suffering for and who you're sacrificing for and who you're grateful for, I think it goes a long way.

Beautiful. Perfect. The joke here, Mark, is that we used to run a tech company. Perfect. You can still hear me though, Mark.

I can.

Perfect. Bless you. And we're so excited to support with not just the burpees, but the financial contribution. We're going to be following up with our team here and the live streaming team to continue to support, but have so much respect and admiration for you and what you represent and, and of course all the work you're doing for our vets. What's the number one thing that you think one going through that needs to have in mind and practice to navigate those tough times?

It's hard to pinpoint, but I think it's purpose, Brian, and this applies to everybody. If you're not aligned with your purpose, and you don't have a mission in life, then you are, in a sense suffering in some way. You're going to be in some sort of existential crisis, searching for, like, what's wrong? Why am I off track? Why is my inner guidance system telling me that I'm not doing the right thing or I'm not whole? And so it's particularly acute with veterans because they have such a purpose and a mission, and then literally one day it's done, either become an injury or because they leave the service or they retire. And unfortunately, the military is like, don't let the door hit you in the ass. They don't have good transition programs. They're getting better. And the VA's go to is to slap a drug into them if they've got depression, anxiety and whatnot. And of course, we know that's not the answer. So I really think it is helping the veteran find meaning again and purpose and also to do that with a team. This is why communities like heroic are so important. Like, human beings thrive. It's a tribe, right? And we suffer when we're alone. And this whole idea the Western world has of being the staunch individualist and the solo entrepreneur. Nah, it's never that way. Right. We all need a team. And so veterans have this feeling of teamwork. Like, for me and the SEALs, and I know spec ops are maybe a little bit different, but we love our teammates to the point we are literally, we'll lay down our lives and we'll take the bullet for our team. I mean, that's true love. And folks don't necessarily appreciate that if they haven't experienced it. And so when you leave service and suddenly you're kind of out there alone with a bunch of sharks in the business world or, or trying to find your way in a really confusing economy without a mission, then it's pretty traumatic for them. And then on top of that, Brian, this is kind of my opinion, not based on science yet, but a lot of vets are drawn to service because they had a little bit of chaos in their childhood. And I'll put myself right there. You know, I had a chaotic upbringing, a lot of, you know, anger and other things going on in the house. And so the allure of the order, right, and the discipline of the military was appealing. And I know most of my friends actually find that. And I think that that's kind of part of the warrior archetype. Like, the warriors, you know, they. They either through choice, karma, whatever, they come into this world readily accepting the most extreme Challenges. And that starts in childhood, and then that prepares them for their service so that they can go out and, you know, like, in my case, find Navy SEAL training buds. Yeah, fun. Which is kind of insane, but I actually had fun. And so where I'm going with this, Bri, is that they have a lot of unresolved trauma. We've talked about that before, and unresolved childhood trauma will always catch up with you. But in the case of the veteran, when they go to combat, now you're layering on the trauma of people trying to kill you or you killing others or having your friends blown up before your face or having survivor's guilt. And so what happens is the veteran's actually fairly well prepared to deal with that trauma because we're trained for it. But what it does is it activates and magnifies all that other earlier childhood trauma. And so you add that to the loss of purpose and the loss of your team, and you get a triple whammy. And then the fourth thing, and this is really the hidden problem that's leading to a lot of the suicides these days, is tbi, traumatic brain injury. And they just didn't really know much about it, just like they did in football, until all of a sudden they're like, oh, my God, these guys are starting to go off the rails in their 50s and 60s, because at TBI, that constant trauma to the brain from just firing thousands and thousands of rounds every year and blowing things up and all that trauma of parachute jumps every time, practically every day, you do something that conks your head in the SEALs in the military. So I think that's another one that we really need to investigate and figure out how to get on top of.

So much we can talk about there. I want to step back, and I want to hear your thoughts on Arete and what it means for you. I've never asked you that question. I'll talk about it tangentially, but would love to hear your reflections.

Absolutely. Well, living life virtuously, to me is, you know, people kind of expect, you know, Navy SEAL to be all kind of like, chest beating hardcore. And I'm kind of the opposite, as you know. I can do that. I can bring it hard, but I've learned that it's the positive energies, love. And so love is expressed in a lot of different ways. And I think Arete is kind of like the sum total of love being expressed in a life of excellence. So you think about the wisdom, the courage, temperance, all of the cardinal virtues. They are all just different. Expressions of love, love being the ultimate source of all life in the universe. So to me, Arete is love. And yet it's love being lived in its various forms, life of excellence lived with love. So that's how I would define Arete.

Wow. One of the things that strikes me as we connect, and I look around the room at some friends that have served, much like you. I'm reminded of the research on virtue, particularly within those who go to the academies and serve in the Special Forces and the General Forces. The number one virtue of these members, men and women, is love. I mean, the true, as you said, love in action, of commitment to something bigger than themselves. You know, and we've talked about the fact that in ancient Greece, the word hero didn't mean tough guy or a killer of bad guy. It meant protector. And a hero's secret weapon was love. So to hear you describe that and to feel your love for your team, for those with whom you've served, for those who are struggling, who have served, and for humanity is just so incredibly inspiring for me and just appreciate your embodiment of that. We've talked about it a lot. You know, when we did our masterchat not too long ago, was just struck by your incredible integration of the. He says humbly, I can bring it. Mark was known as Cyborg. When he went through Bud's training, he just was locked in. Unbeatable mind. I read Mark's unbeatable mind. I didn't give you a proper introduction, in part because I took for granted that a lot of people here know Mark. But Mark's a former Navy SEAL commander who left a successful career on Wall street to serve his country to become. To enlist in the Navy, to become a seal, served as a commander, and has since done a ton of stuff spiritually and entrepreneurially. And your integration of these ideas is such a deep, deep inspiration for me and just who you are. Yeah, unbeatable mind, that Cyborg. But the thing that I was most struck by and perhaps most admire and I hesitate and qualify are so many things I admire in you. But when Mark went through buds, he was an officer. So the officers lead different boat crews. So you're assigned to teams. Everything within all armed services is going to involve teams. And of course, within the Naval Special Warfare and the BUDS training, you have buddies, and then you have these boat crews. So what was the attrition rate? Don't give us the punchline. I want to give the punchline. But how many people started and how many people ended up in my class.

185 pretty badass warriors started and we had 19 graduate.

And how many people were on your boat crew?

Seven total.

How many of them finished?

All of us.

All of us. Mark gives me tears. Mark was their leader. So no, you think about that. You think about. For me, you know, I was always inspired by that. I'm like, how does that happen? You know, everybody drops out but 19 people but not one of your dudes. Let's go. You know, and what struck me as you were sharing what arete means for you and why you're serving our vets so profoundly is it was love. You love them, dude. You saw their potential, you knew they could do it and you were willing to lay it out for them, you know, and they felt your. You know, we talk a lot about soul force. We talk a lot about moral charisma. We talk about that ineffable power in someone that's committed to something bigger than themselves. And to see the younger version of you so clearly demonstrating that and modeling it and not letting anyone fall short, man, is such a. A wonderful demonstration of what you've committed your life to for decades now. So just wanted to celebrate you and that and your decades long embodiment of those ideas.

Thank you. I mean, that's the essence of a really highly functioning or elite team is when all the teammates really are putting their teammates in front of their own interests. It's so rare in the, in the business world or anywhere actually. And it's such like the simplest path to like 20, what we say, 20x performances. To take your eyes off yourself and put them on your teammates if you do that. In the case of like my little boat crew, I had six others who were watching my back. And so oftentimes, you know, we're, we get tasked with another thing and all the other boat crews are kind of running around like chickens with their head cut off. And what I see is my teammates taking care of my gear because I'm taking care of someone else's gear. And we're all calmly getting ready and we're just like making sure that we're all together as a team. And then we set forth to conquer the task. So I modeled that with my team and I do to this day. It's about the team and the mission and you'll be taken care of. So learn to take your eyes off yourself. I want to say something else about this idea of love. Like warriors embody courage. And courage means heart. It means acting with heart. So, you know, my love of the Courage wolf and fear wolf kind of story. Fear is acting from pure logic or ration. And anytime you act just with your head or just from logic, you're going to be operating out of some element of fear and uncertainty or thud and doubt. And we've got a lot of Vuca, you know, got a lot of FUD in the Vuca world these days. Whereas when you act with courage, you're basically leading with heart right now. You don't leave reason behind, but you don't lead with reason. Does that make sense? And so, like in our training at Silpha, we use the term kokoro, which means to merge your heart, courage and your mind reason into your actions. And that's also what we mean when we talk about developing whole mind or the fully integrated human being has their heart mind merged in action. And it also corresponds to the three developmental paths of the Eastern traditions that you're well aware of. The head, the heart, and the hands. In other words, Jnana yoga, Yana Yoga, which is the yoga of wisdom, Bhakti Yoga, which is the yoga of the heart, and Karma Yoga, which is the yoga of service. Any one of those done to the exclusion of the others is incomplete. They all are meant to be done together or merged together in a singular practice. It's powerful.

Yeah, dude. Yes. I want to walk you through the seven objectives, and I want to hear you frame up how you think about each of them and how you would encourage us to think about them. So we're. Today we're walking through the seven objectives that form the base of our coach program, the book, et cetera. The first objective is to know the ultimate game. How would you frame that up? What do you think is the ultimate game of life?

So just like Ramana Maharshi said to always be asking the question, who am I? Or, you know, the Oracle said, know thyself, or Emerson said, an unexamined life is not worth living. The ultimate game is to gain clarity on the nature of your own reality. And there is a universal reality of sameness for all of us, but then an individuated sense of reality as to why this unique embodiment is happening in this time space continuum that we call our lifetime. So that's the ultimate game, in my opinion, is to gain clarity on who am I and why am I here? And then what am I going to do about that? In service.

With love. Wisdom.

With love, exactly. Truth, wisdom and love.

Yeah. Antifragile confidence. Forging it is our second objective. And I timed our as we Were figuring out the exact programming, and you were flexible. I'm like, ah, I got to bring Mark in right after antifragile confidence. You gave me that. You know, I went through some challenges. Shoot, 10, 11 years ago. Time flies when you're having fun. That set of challenges, and I found your unbeatable mind, and it was how I first connected with you, as you know, and just transformed my life. Boom. Oh. That's how it's done. Antifragile confidence, where you're not fragile, you're not resilient, you get stronger when you face challenges and that intense trust. Tell us what you think about that and how you think we can best forge that level of antifragile confidence. What arises for you?

My grandmaster Nakamura, who taught me Zen meditation, he had a couple coons that he liked to share. One of them was, and I laugh about this today, Brian. It was fall down seven times, get up eight. And it took a much younger person to say, hey, that math doesn't add up. If you fall down seven times, you get up seven. I'm like, huh? I think you're right. But the point was delivered. Is that the point?

I never made that connection. I'm a little slow sometimes. I wasn't a math major, you know, There we go.

It would work if you started down anyways, but. So he would go on and give a little talk. And the point was not just about getting up, Brian. It was how you got up. Right? So every time you get up, when you fall down, when you get kicked and you deal with the next crisis or the next challenge, you develop this attitude that, yeah, that sucked, but, man, did I learn something important there. And you get up with a smile and no regrets, and you drive forward with new wisdom, new knowledge, and new skills. So it's basically activating the hero's journey. Every time you have that. That crisis moment, like you did seven years ago or whenever it was, you know, you got up, dusted yourself off, learned your lessons, and then drove forward with courage. Right. The other thing that I really loved that he taught me was the same one day, one lifetime. So what this meant or means is that, especially from a warrior's perspective, is that treat today with the utmost respect and honor, because it could be your last. And we know many people over the past few years who had their last day without any knowledge that it was the last day. But what if you went into each day expecting that it could be your last? Now, how would that affect your decision making? And I don't mean, like, how you would act if someone said, you've got three months left, you know, that's a. That's a whole different mental kind of construction. I'm saying everything's going. You're not going to make any changes. Except today you're going to treat it with that level of intense awareness, right? That level of intense presence with every individual you meet. That level of intense acceptance and love for what is. And appreciation, right? That's an incredibly powerful way to develop resilience. Because if it was your last, like, there's not a darn thing that is going to get you down or that's going to ruffle your feathers like you are just going to be green light, go, let's make this one count. You know, the other kind of way to look at that is every day provides a lifetime of learning. You think about it like, how is tomorrow going to be different from today? To be able to get you closer to your whatever wisdom or knowledge or learning that you want to achieve in your life. It's not now. What tomorrow will bring is another opportunity to practice. But it's the same exact moment, just in a different timeline, right? And so truly, every day is your opportunity to find what you're looking for, to find that wholeness, that peace, that contentment, the true measures of success. The Buddha said you can find enlightenment in a single breath if you pay close enough attention. I think that's what Nakamura was saying. So these two ideas from the warrior tradition really point toward that antifragile idea. It's like true resiliency comes from meeting life head on with no regrets, living life forward and treating every day with, and ultimately every moment with that kind of grace, as if it could be your last.

Beautiful again. And so coherent with. You know, I moved from objective. You got to know the game, you got to forge antifragile confidence. Then we of course go into the big three, which we'll skip now, but energy, work and love. And then it's today. Make today a masterpiece. I love your one day, one lifetime. Beautiful. That palpable urgency. Mags and Wyman, two mutual friends of ours, sent me some stuff from Naval Special Warfare's training kind of thing. And that phrase, palpable urgency just struck me of. Boom. Show up with that intensity that this moment today matters. Get it done. Objective 5 in our kind of approach is self mastery. So the discipline, the ability to do what needs to get done, whether you feel like it or not. What do you think are the most important things to have in mind when one is looking to cultivate that deep level of self mastery.

Well, my perspective on self mastery is it's crucial, but it's half the equation. Self mastery to aggrandize the self is not self mastery. So self mastery must be done in tandem with service to others. So we master ourselves so that we can serve more powerfully, more in alignment with our calling, with more love, with more courage. So self mastery and service are like hand and gloves. They're the yin and yang. And so let me kind of ping on that Yang or outward energy, the masculine energy. Activity is all about service, right? That's our doing. That's what we do in the world. We serve. But in order to serve well, we have to know ourselves. And knowing ourselves, to know ourselves, we have to master ourselves, Ourselves, right, Our ourselves to really, really plumb the depths of our soul's yearnings and to, to align with that and then to bring that out into our, our, you know, into our lives, to activate our full potential, our arete potential. So in order to achieve that level of self mastery, we have to integrate because we've kind of become disintegrated human beings like we, we are born into separation through language and our experiences and traumas. We build these barriers. And we also, especially with our educational system, we begin to particularize meaning when we start to look at ourselves as the biggest one is my body and my mind are separate. Well, that's not true. But most people think they live from neck up and they're completely disconnected or disembodied. And so they're missing the biggest component of their mind system which is coming from their heart, mind and their biome, their entire nervous system, their whole body as a mind. So this is why with unbelievable mind, I developed the five mountain training. I said, okay, we're going to bring everything back together in a process of reintegration. I call it integrated development. And so we train and practice and training and practice, as you know, are just a. Just subtle difference, right? Training is the long term kind of plan. And then practice is what you do every day on basic certain skills. Like skills. So we have physical, physical training and practices, mental training and practices, emotional, intuitional and then spiritual. And what's unique about this type of integration development is when you, you practice those all together, Brian. It's not like, oh, you know, we just go to the gym to do our physical and then you go to church on Sunday to do your spiritual and maybe you do some emotional work when things aren't going so well with your spouse or whatever. Now we work on them all as different aspects of your very being. And what happens is it unlocks accelerated development. We also call that vertical development. So you, as we develop this integration towards self mastery, you access more and more of that whole mind I was talking about. And then you're able to bring that into the world in service. And then you're getting. Because you're putting out so much good, you're receiving more back, which then goes back into your energy system to increase your energy and your life and your love force, which then accelerates the journey even more. So I use like an infinity loop to kind of describe the activity between self mastery and service, or developing your raw potential as a human being and then bringing it forth in performance in the world. And interesting thing about the infinity loop is if you kind of collapse it on itself, it becomes the yin Yang symbol. So I'm very passionate about self mastery, obviously, as you are, and I love how we can bring different perspectives to it. But ultimately we're all seeking the same thing. We're seeking to really live, discover the best version of ourselves in this lifetime and then live it in service.

Beautiful. Again, being our best selves in service to something bigger than ourselves is a phrase that I and we use a lot. And then I think back to the. As you described that beautiful. Well, self mastery by itself becomes the selfie on Instagram. You know, check out my six pack. And I just did another Ironman and aren't I impressive and all these things. When we combine it with the service. What arose for me was the beauty and elegance of that. And then I thought of the bodhisattvic ideal of no, no, you're not going for your own enlightenment for the sake of it. You're going for it, such that you can come back to the world with your gifts, your transformed consciousness. And this is the hero. The hero is the protector who does the hard work to forge the strength for two who. Whose secret weapon is love. It's not a narcissistic pursuit of check me out, it's no, I'm willing to sacrifice everything, literally everything, to protect that which I cherish. And then I think of Maslow. I mean, you look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the end point wasn't self actualization. It was self transcendence. The individual who has done the hard work to forge that level of wisdom and discipline and love and courage naturally has that effervescent expression of service as the real target and endpoint. And again, your embodiment of that is just beautiful. And you said something, I think you used the phrase love force as you were describing. Kind of the qualities that one has when they are in that infinite loop of doing the work and being their best self in service to something bigger than themselves. There's a love force which perfectly brings us. We're going to skip objective six, which is dominating the fundamentals. We can talk about that, but we won't. Eating, moving, sleeping, breathing, focusing.

That was the basics.

Yeah, yeah, we got that done. Objective seven is to activate your superpower, which, as you know, I've leaned on Gandhi's satyagraha, which we translate as nonviolent resistance, which is another one of those terrible translations of a true powerful word. Satyagraha, as he conceived it was truth force, virtue force, love force or soul force, that power that is activated within one when they are living in integrity with their highest ideals that you are so beautifully articulating right now and demonstrating right now. And this is of course the culmination of all my work and of everything that we do is how do we activate that within ourselves. But one of the ways that I like to frame it up is I would love to hear your heroes, and we've already done this a little bit. We're going to come back to it at the end of our day together today. But I like to imagine our heroes and the fact that as different as they all are, they have this one quality in common, this fierce commitment to being their best selves in service to something bigger than themselves. And that felt sense of soul force that emanates from one who is doing that. But who are your two favorite heroes and what qualities within them do you most admire? And then I want to connect that to your kind of heroic mission and what you feel called to do as you embody those qualities yourselves. But we've talked about this a little bit, but in this context, I'm really eager to hear who arises for you.

I'm a warrior and I draw great inspiration from King Leonidas, the king of the Spartans, who led his 300 warriors to push back the Persians at the gates of Thermopylae. And what inspires me about Leonidas is that he was a true warrior king. I mean, he loved his men, he trained alongside his men and probably women, but I don't think they had them in the army back then. But he loved his women too. So I don't want to be too masculine here, but there's not a bone in his body that wouldn't have fought with alongside his men. And then of course he died alongside his men. That level of integrity and clarity and discipline is extremely inspiring to me. And I endeavor to kind of live up to that standard every day. The other is another warrior, but he's a warrior peace someone you guys have heard of little fellow named Jesus who lived a couple thousand years ago. And Jesus was also a yogi, you know, he was an ascended master, at least in my view. And Jesus, you know, his heart was exploded wide open with just a limitless love for humanity, for all of humanity, good, bad and the ugly. All sentient beings. And he knew that his main teaching was going to be through his example and also knew that he was going to die for his mission. So both these men were willing to die for love out of love. One love for his country and, and for his teammates. Right. That's Leonidas. And the other love for all of humanity. Wow. Again, even if you just captured a percentage of that level of love and allowed that to flow through your body, mind, experience machine, you'd be a pretty extraordinary person. So I want to kind of bring it back to like, what does it mean to experience more love force, more soul force? What I think it means is essentially is to get out of your own way. Like it's already within us. We, we are already that. We are love, we are source. What's blocking it is the ego. The ego is resistance to love. And so through our practice of self mastery in service, what we're doing is we're scrubbing the ego and getting all the crud and barnacles off of it. And every time you flake another piece off, it lets more love flow through. And so the practice literally is a practice of removing, not gaining. You're not trying to gain more in your life. You're trying to remove obstacles to the love force that's already within you so that it can flow freely and ultimately become a gusher in your life. Who ya to that.

Who you oughta that. I think that's exactly how we wrap our time up together. Mark. I appreciate you brother. You are such a. You know, we've talked about this, but I feel like you're the big brother I didn't get, you know, and just your embodiment of these ideals and just your my felt sense of your incredible commitment to embodying those qualities you described in King Leonidas and in Jesus in your representation of your own idiosyncratic, humble yet heroic service to us is profound man. So bless you. I appreciate you. Look forward to seeing you soon. I'll be thinking of you. And we'll be thinking of you as we hammer out our burpees in support of you.

Who you are. Burpees for Vets.

Let's go.

Thank you so much. Heroic community. Thank you, Brian. You guys rock.

Bless you. All right, see you soon, brother.

Bye bye.

That was just absolutely amazing. We've got the Burpees for Vets info.

Learn more.

You can contribute hashtag burpees for vets at Burpees for Vets on.

On Instagram.

And you've got the URL there and a QR code that you can scan.

Wow, Is he just a beautiful human being or what? And again, this is. Every time I look around the room and I see my friends that have served and we've all served in different ways. But the unbelievable depth of love and compassion and just fierce commitment yet from something that's bigger than himself is so inspiring.

I made a couple notes. I like taking notes. You said a line that was new for me from you, which is confidence is humble. And you're talking about that in the context of the warrior in that conference and the way that Mark brought it back to removing the obstacles from that love coming forth. And I gave some hugs, not intentionally during that break to some of those who served, but just feeling that the truth and the power and that confidence is humility. And it's such a powerful.

I had a conversation with one of our mutual friends who's a very high ranking naval special warfare guy, and we had this beautiful connection. But he talked about the humility. And the humility comes from loss. They failed so many times and they've lost their beloved brothers. It's like when you really get how hard this is and each of us have suffered so much. When you really, really get how hard it is to live in integrity with these ideals, you slow down, you soften while simultaneously strengthening from those challenges. And then the work becomes to. It's what Phil's told me. He's like, you've won, dude. Like, declare victory. It's not about you anymore. You know, it's about doing everything you can to help people experience this state. That's us. That's where we are right now. The heroes and I continue to be on my little individual quest, but it's the guide. It's the what. What Mark did for his team. Yeah, yeah, he was there and he was, but he was modeling it. He was the embodiment. He wasn't going to give up on himself and he wasn't going to give up on them, but he was Also believable, because here he is, this guy that's showing up, and boom. And that humility born from suffering with the fierce. Not on my watch. You know, I'm going to do everything I can. And today's the day. That palpable urgency to show up moment to moment to moment for something bigger than ourselves. And he's. That's an impossible thing to articulate his power. But that's what I see in each of you. It's what we talk about. You know, in the faces of men and women, we see God. Walt Whitman says, in the faces of men and women, we see heroes. And it's got to start right there in the mirror. And then that step up of declare victory. Declare victory. Own your power and your commitment to yourself as we go out and forge that strength for two. Repeating myself now. I'm going to wrap it up. But his use of love as many times as he did and the embodiment of it is. It's such an elegantly beautiful demonstration of every single thing we aspire and even arete is love in action. I mean, my God, that's it. What's the power in that gap? It's boom. Get yourself up one more time. Have that. That individual for whom you are committed to having strength for two. Ryan and I are connecting in the break. Oh, my God. It's my kids. That's why I'm here. Me being that dad that I want to be. Exactly. So love each of you, appreciate you all so happy that you are here. That's one way to spend a morning.