Interview: Be Unstoppable with Alden Mills

You're listening to Optimize with Brian Johnson. More wisdom in less time. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to the Optimal Living Interview series. Today I'm thrilled to be chatting with Alden Mills. Alden Mills is a former Navy SEAL who created the Perfect Push up and Perfect Fitness, which was Inc 500's fastest growing company, I think of 2009. And he also wrote a great book called Be Unstoppable. The subtitle for that is the eight Essential Actions to Succeed at Anything. It's a fable and I had a number of our members recommend it. I love Navy seals and their wisdom and their intensity. And I like to describe this book as kind of like if a Navy SEAL was wrote the Alchemist or the way of the Peaceful warrior or the monk who sold his Ferrari. That's from my perspective, what this book is. Alden wrote it for his four sons and obviously for us and kind of weaves the fable with some really practical lessons and has a code that we can follow to crush it. I absolutely loved it, immediately sent a copy to my right hand guy who absolutely loves it as well, and just throw the chat on. Appreciate you taking the time.

Honored to be here, Brian.

Well, let's jump in. Be Unstoppable. It's fable. Give us kind of the basic setting, the framework for it if you can.

So at the highest level, you have to remember I was writing it for my four boys. And when you're in SEAL team, they don't tell you about this when you go through training. But when it comes time to go off on your first mission, you, you have to write a letter. And the letter is called a Justin Case letter. And it doesn't really hit you. I was 25 when I did my first deployment as a platoon commander. And my commanding officer said, mills, no, this is the last piece of written communication that your family will ever receive. If you come back on your shield and you're like, ah, yeah, that's not going to happen. I'm bulletproof. I'm 25. And you know, at the time I was writing letters to my mom, my dad, and my brother, so there really wasn't a lot to talk about other than to thank them for giving me the opportunity to do what I was doing and tell my brother, hey, I'm sorry for throwing rocks at your head in third grade and stuff like that. But as I went along, I ended up writing three of those letters. I didn't think anything about it. And then in 2003, while I was in the reserves and I was, I can still distinctly remember it. I'm sitting at my desk. I was working for the Office of Naval Intelligence. A message came across my desk and it said one of my good buddies had come back on his shield. He was the first SEAL to die overseas in Afghanistan. Neil Roberts. And I knew Neil had to write a letter to an 18 month old son. And that was what the original trigger was for me. And by the way, Henry had just been born about four months prior to Neil's passing. And that was the trigger that started me down this path of like, okay, well, what would I say to my boys? And I stumbled around from 2003, and then Charlie came in 2005, and then John came 2007, and then William came in 2009, and then I was like, okay, I gotta come to grips with this. And at the end of all of it, when you look back on anyone's success, it comes down to persistence. So I knew I wanted to write something that was engaging other than to say, hey guys, don't give up. It's just about persistence, right? And that's where I started looking at it like, you know, I think I could write a fun, interesting fable that uses the metaphor of an individual's boat as their modicum for life and that over time you can make improvements to your boat from the seaside fictitious village called up to you, where so many people in life never leave the harbor. They don't want to leave the safety of it. But because leaving a harbor and leaving land and having no horizon other than I have no idea where I'm going is a lot of kind of what it feels like when you're starting a business for the first time. Are you going off and doing something you've never done before? So that is a long winded answer to how I came about the original idea of starting the fable in the book and around the acronym. I wanted everything to be about persistence. And that's how I came up with you. Persist, which is any of anybody's successes, is about figuring out how to get up and keep going every day when other people are not cheering for you and you're getting frustrated and you're thinking that it's time to give up. And I wanted that to be a message for my boys and anybody else who read it that said, you know, guys, it's darkest before dawn, dig in, and if you're really fired up about this, don't you dare give up. Figure out another way to get over the obstacle.

Amazing. That was far from long winded. That was a beautiful and touching overview. I really literally had goosebumps as you're describing your friend and and your sons. And I created something called optimal living 101 with my son, who was then 3 months old, in mind of. Okay, if I can only share this wisdom, what would it be? And again, I think he just did such a great job of capturing it in a fun way, yet really, really practical. That's great for mom and dad and for the kids. So let's talk about you. Persist. I love the the master and commander. We meet P2P squared. Yeah, so good. Double P. So funny. But you know, we've got you. Persist. Can you walk us through that acronym really quickly? And then we'll kind of drill into a few of my favorite aspects.

Yeah. So the acronym is made up of five actions, and you'll notice that all of them begin with verbs. I'm a big believer in focusing in on the verb, the action of each thing and not a noun, because this is about taking action and continually trying to improve. So the first one is understand, and the understand is about understanding your why. Why are you doing this? What do you really care about why? Is this worth focusing your time and energy on? And if the answer is a shallow answer, then you, you need to go back to the drawing board because it really does all start with focusing in on what you are insanely caring about. I talk of understanding your why and understanding what it is you were willing to die for at that point. And in my case of going to SEAL team, and that sounds like an extreme, but you'd rather try and fail than never try and just sit there a hundred years from now going, God, I would have, should have, coulda. So it is all about understanding your why. And then it goes with P with plan in 3D. And then it's exercise to execute. R is recognize your reason to believe. S is survey your habits. I is improvise to overcome. The next S is seek experts. And the T is team up.

That's awesome. And all of which of course get a chapter with both the kind of fable side of it and then the practical wisdom side of it before we jump into the why, because you have a really cool way to help us understand the why. The outcome accounts. I want to talk about the two limitations in life. Can you describe that for us?

Yes. The most abbreviated way to talk about the two limitations in life are your imagination and your determination. I've abbreviated it since I've written the book. I know that in the book I talk more about Your creativity and your courage. And it's all about understanding that the only limits you have in life is your ability to dream up great ideas and your ability to go after them. So that comes down to imagination and determination.

I love it. And now let's get to that. That kind of the why aspect. The you and you persist. Understand your why. Starting with a verb, you talk about outcome accounts. And when you set milestone goals, you create this. I thought this was awesome. Can you share that with us?

Yeah. So an outcome account is. I'm plagiarizing from accounting 101, where there are T accounts where you had credit and debits, but at the top of it is defining your goal. And I think your idea of actually circling your goal is even better than just outlining it. I mean, highlight it, put it in bold. But, you know, as an example, graduate from the Naval Academy on June 5, 1991. That would have been a milestone goal for me. And notice I said June 5th. There are people that graduate late. That's because they didn't get all their grades done. But so you really pick and focus in on exactly what it is that you're going after. And then on the left side, which would be the positive side, you write down all the positive things that will happen in your life for you, achieving the milestone account or the milestone goal. And on. On the minus side, you write down all the negative things if you don't achieve it. And, you know, it's interesting, people will talk about, you know, humans avoid pain, pursue pleasure. Many times the negatives are bigger drivers for me than the positives. Certainly in the case of when those demons of doubt come knocking, the idea of having to suffer through people telling me, you couldn't have made it. We knew you couldn't have, or foolish to try, you know, those things pop into your head. And it's good to know about those things in advance because when you get into that dark cavern of doubt that goes inside your head and everybody has it, everybody has these demons of doubt that come knocking. The way you knock back is by understanding the positives and the negatives of deciding if you want to listen to those demons.

I love it. And I did this exercise and, you know, wrote down my most important goal. And like, you, you know, there's positive. You get fired up. And of course, there's things I'm really inspired by, but it was a negative one that just jumped out at me of, that's just not okay. Like that. That is not okay. And then what needs to happen in order to make that the positive result happen, kind of holding both that negative energy and alchemizing into this is the constructive action I'm going to take was awesome. So I just love that if you're sitting there with the goal, we'll figure out your goal and go through this chart of accounts process. What are the positive things you'll get? What are the negative things you're going to experience if you don't hit it? Huge. Really powerful way to understand our why. Which leads us to the P, which I loved as well, which was plan in 3D. I thought that was one of the coolest, simplest ways to break down how to go about getting things done. Can you walk us through that?

I can. And plan in 3D was an intentional kind of innuendo of two different things. One was kind of a double entendre of. I wanted people to understand that there are three axes of thinking about something. There is the two dimensions and then the third dimension of dealing with plans and understanding that the plan, when you do a plan, it is a two dimensional plan. And what you have to be prepared for is what you can't be prepared for. And that's the unknown. Every time you'd go on a SEAL mission, the plan only got you to getting out the helicopter or jumping off the boat or diving out of the submarine. And after that, the plan was in a totally new dimension because it was the now of dealing with whatever happens. So the plan is great in thinking about contingencies and everything, but at the end of the day, when you're dealing with long term, big milestone things in your life, there are three basic things you're going to have to do. The first thing is you got to define the goal like we talk about and understand your why. The next thing is you got to divide it into small little bite sized chunks. That's called divide it. And then the third one is doing it daily. And for me, I got to do something daily, even if it is like, you know, I'm writing a book right now. Sometimes I can't even write 100 words. Sometimes all I can do is say, all right, well, today I'm gonna, I'm gonna write a phrase of a new chapter. That's gonna be the essence of what I want it to do. But the idea, if it's constantly front sight focused, thinking about it and you define it, you divide it, you do it daily.

That's awesome. And I love the metaphor you had of, you know, you define it. So you've got your big goal that you're inspired by. And then you divide it. And the way you described it, I thought was just so cool. If you take a sledgehammer to it, right? And you hammer that huge milestone goal into tiny little pebbles, right?

That's right.

You can carry away. And I actually talked about this idea. I taught a class called Conquering Perfectionism 101 yesterday. And this is one of the big ideas. Because as a perfection recovering perfectionist, you got to do it all at once, you know, versus just take a sledgehammer to it. Find that tiniest little phrase for a potential chapter, right? And do that.

That's right.

Single day. Keep that momentum. I thought that was such a cool frame sledgehammer.

And if anybody's ever used a sledgehammer, they know how to therapeutic. It can feel smashing that sledgehammer against.

And then you take that tiny little pebble, right? Do it every single day. Move it.

That's right.

So good. Okay, so yeah, in your background, obviously, as a seal, and then with perfect fitness and perfect push up fitness and exercise is such a big aspect of who you are and what you're about. Talk to us about the magic pill.

So when I go out and give public speeches about the book, I will start off with talking about this section with the magic pill and saying, hey, and I'll pull out, you know, an Advil or something out of my pocket and say, see this pill right here? Now imagine that this pillow could get you the body you want. How much would you pay for it? What if I told you this pill could help you live five years longer on your life? It could help you live maybe even 10 years longer. Now what if I told you that this pill could help you find the love of your life? What if I told you it could help you earn all the money you ever really wanted to earn? How much would you pay for it? You know, and people start putting their hands up in the audience. And then when I say, okay, there's a problem with this pill, there's a catch. And they go, well, what's the catch? And the catch is you have to dedicate 30 minutes of your day for this pill to work. Now, for a lot of people who actually do take a pill every day, that's not a lot of time. There are lots of people who have to be sedentary for an hour or more just to let the medicine get into their system. Like, oh yeah, no problem, I could take that pill. And then they go, okay. And then there's another problem with the pill, is that for the first 30 days, you have no idea if it's working or not. But the next 30 days, you will start to feel the difference. And after the next 30 days, you'll start seeing a difference. So you got to commit to taking this pill for 90 days. Who's in? How much would you pay? And you know, of course, all the hands in the audience go up and they're like, oh, I pay a lot of money for that thing. And I'm like, I got a great concept for you. It's essentially free. You can have it free of charge. And of course, the pill becomes exercise. And you start telling them about how many unbelievably important elements come out of exercise from improving your brain. I mean, the brain science is unequivocally powerful today. Like, you know, if you ever talk to your members, one of the great things about today's neuroscience is that they've proven that exercise helps build, helps build new brain cells. When they thought, when we were born, brain cells continued to die off throughout our entire life. But if you continue to exercise, you actually can build new neurotransmitters and new cells. So I could go on and on, but if you are going after a big important goal in your life, you need the energy to stand up to whatever the challenges are every day, to get out of bed and keep swinging for that fence or keep using that sledgehammer to smash the rock. And you can't do it if you're out of shape, because when you're out of shape, naturally you get depressed. And when you're out of shape, you don't have the stamina. And the beautiful thing is there are days where you're like, I don't even know what I'm going to do. And there are days like that for me. And I'll just get up and be like, okay, well, I'm going to drop down and push him out. I'm going to do some push ups. And seal team, we would talk about, if guys saw that we couldn't make a decision, they'd be like, drop down, push them out. They just totally stop you and go, drop down, push them out. And then, and then you're like, it kind of breaks your state. And you're like, okay, I guess we're going to go left. Let's get out of here. And that's the same thing of exercise. The beauty of exercise. Again, another double entendre is by exercising, you are executing. If you specially put exercise in the beginning of your day, you've already done.

Something.

You know Admiral McRaven, one of our four star Admirals who gave a commencement speech at University of Texas. He basically boiled it all down to making your bed every day. And if you did nothing else, at least you made your bed. I would say if you do nothing else all day, at least you got a good workout in and you did something great from your body because your brain will get stronger and start thinking and helping you.

It's all so good. I love the magic pill. And I'm actually prepping for my next class, which is going to be on Movement 101. And I love your. When in doubt, push him out. Yeah, I'm into burpees, so I've gotten even more into it since. Since reading your book. And then it's funny because I interviewed John Rady, who's one of the world's leading thinkers, psychiatrists, neuroscientists on the science of exercise, who shares everything you just shared. And I actually interviewed him on two books. I did his Spark, then Go Wild and we did them back to back. But in between we took a break to bust out. I did my burpees. I think you did some Hindu squats or something. It just gets you in there.

It's awesome.

Yeah, it's pretty.

It absolutely does. Without question.

Yeah, it's. It's unbelievably cool. So much more we can talk.

And his, his book Spark. The, that the, the subtitle is the link to aerobic exercise and brain. Brain function or something. Is. Is that the spark you're referring to?

Yeah, his. I'll actually pull up right now. Yeah, it's the revolutionary new science of Exercising the brain.

Yeah. Fantastic book. Yeah, Great book. And what they did in Chicago outside that school district, I mean, I, I brought it to my school district because I'm very involved in our public school. I'm like, you know what, pay attention to this. We need to be doing this with all our kids.

Let's talk, let's talk about that for a moment longer because that's actually one of the ideas I'm going to talk about in that class. It was Naperville was the school.

Yes.

So they were, you know, like a normal school. Right. Not particularly healthy. Then they got them to the point where they were literally, if not the one of the fittest schools in the country. 3% of the student body, only 3% were overweight. But not only were they the fittest, they were one of the smartest. And they, I think, placed first in the world in whatever that science test is. That The US Usually lags behind.

Yeah. First or second. I think they came right behind Singapore. But they tested individually. It is such proven science. And being the guy that was in Fitness for 14 years, it was wildly frustrating for me. We try and build these great products and we build products that you wanted people to use. Like, we never did an infomercial showing, oh, this is where you could hide it under your bed. Like, I want my products out on display to let people know, like, hey, I use this every day. And it's hard. It's hard to get people to take control of their body.

Yeah. And it's, it's literally insane that we don't have this installed at every school and in every office. I mean, why, why are we sitting there in our suits and ties and rather than our workout clothes? Right. And being able to move throughout the day and, and have all that, whether it's perfect push up, set up, or whatever. Visible so we can bang out the. When in doubt, push them out.

Amen.

We've talked about a lot, yet we've obviously barely scratched the surface. Is there anything that we haven't talked about, do you think would be important.

To highlight up to this point? You know, I would just kind of constantly remind people that there are three basic things we can control. Our mental, our physical, and our emotional. There is a fourth, and that control is more of a personal control with a higher authority called your spiritual side. I don't talk as much about the spiritual side, although I'm quite a spiritual person. But when you remind people that if you can focus in on what you can control, the rest will take care of itself and you go, okay, well, what can I really control? You say your actions and your attitudes. Your actions, the ability for you to take action. That is also your ability to have the stamina because you continually take action. And your attitude. And where do attitudes come from? Attitudes come from how you think and how you feel.

Right.

Your emotions and your mental thought process and how you think is all about the experiences that come into your brain. Because we don't come pre programmed with, well, I should not like this person and I should like that person. It's all about making sure you understand you're in control of what you think about and you're in control of your emotions. It's attitudes and actions.

Yep. And exercising the control that we have rather than complaining about all the things that we, we can't control or even influence the way we want. One of the things we didn't talk about is the T and team I know your next book is about being unstoppable within the context of a team, which I can't wait to read. Can you give us kind of the high level overview of what you think is most important to think about in that context?

Yeah. So T is team up. And the next book basically begins where this leaves off around building unstoppable teams. And the framework that I refer to is based off of. I think the best way to sum it up is based off of Teddy Roosevelt's quotation. Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care. The rub is how do you show people how you care? And every team that I've ever been successful with has been what I call a care based team. So I build an acronym. I kind of like acronyms as memory aids on care. And we go through the four essential actions to constantly repeat and build care based teams.

That's awesome. And is that a fable as well? Kind of the mix of fable and.

You know, Brian, I, I'm torn on that. I get some feedback where people are like, you know, I like the fable, but I really just want more of Alden and that and your experiences. I have the fable outlined and I don't know. You got some feedback for me on that?

Well, you pulled it off. I mean, it's hard. I think it's hard to pull off the fable. I think there's, there's a small number of really good quality stories that are fun, you know. Yeah. So I think you. I couldn't see myself ever doing that. For example, it's not screenwriting 101. The two unit class at UCLA was the hardest class I ever took. So that's not in my genius zone, but I think it is in yours. So I think that's what comes to mind. And then obviously whatever's going to most inspire you. But I'm eager to read either version.

Hey, I'd be honored for you to read it and I'd love feedback.

Right on. Well, keep me in the loop for sure. And again, be unstoppable. Eight essential actions to succeed at anything. I'm really proud that our show is a family show and I get a lot of feedback from families that they, that they listen to this and the philosopher's notes and everything else. This is a great book for the family. Our son Emerson's only three and a half now, but I can't wait for him to read it. It was letter to your sons and to my son, you know, so highly recommend it for families. Check it out. Moms and dads and anyone looking to take it up to the next level. Alden. Oh, actually, I'd like to wrap up these chats. I was going to thank you and I'm going to thank you again. But if you had to share one piece of wisdom with our audience, an individual passionate about optimizing their lives, what would that one piece of wisdom be?

Your life is up to you, not up to somebody else. There are no excuses. It's up to you. You decide the courses you take, the dreams you come up with, and the courage to go after them. It's up to you.

Right on. Which is the name of our fabled city. Up to you.

That's right.

Brilliant. So people can find you. Where's the best place these days?

They can find me at all-mills.com.

Okay. A L D E N-M I L L S.com. check out the book. Check out Alden's work. Alden, thank you so much for taking the time. And thank you so much for living your life with such integrity and virtue and passion and persistence.

And Brian, thank you for all the inspiring you do for everybody else. Keep them fired up out there.

Right on. Let's do this. Isn't it a bit odd we went from math to science to history but somehow missed the class on how to live? For some wacky reason, optimal living 101 never made the schedule. Of course, it's too late to go back and change that and you're too busy to read full time to catch up yet. If you're like us, you're all about optimizing your life and actualizing your potential. So imagine this. Imagine having someone read the best books on optimal living and pulling out the big ideas that can truly change your life. You know those sections you asterisk and underline and mark all up. Then imagine that guy me, connecting those ideas to other great books and helping you apply them to your life today. Well, that's. That's what I do is something we call Philosopher's Notes where I break down each great book into a simple 6 page PDF, 20 minute MP3 and 10 minute Philosopher's Notes TV episode. Then imagine me taking the absolute best big ideas from those great books and sharing them with you in fun, inspiring, super practical optimal living 101 classes on stuff like purpose one 101, confidence 101, business 101, meditation 101, that sort of thing. You've got a personal trainer? I'm kind of like your personal philosopher. Ancient Wisdom plus modern science plus common sense plus virtue plus mastery plus fun. That's what our optimized membership program is all about. We'd love to have you join us. Check us out at BrianJohnson. Me join?