PNTV: Be Unstoppable by Alden Mills (#311)

You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in less time. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another episode of Philosopher's Notes. Tv. Today we've got another great book, Be Unstoppable by Alden Mills. Be Unstoppable. Subtitled the eight Essential Actions. The to succeed at anything. It's a surprisingly awesome little book. It is a fable, a fictional account of a young captain's encounter with a master and commander. An older, wiser captain who become a master and commander, teaching his young protege how he could do the same. It's written by a former Navy seal. Alden Mills, who's a fascinating guy, created the perfect push up and his business went on to become the number one fastest growing business according to Inc. 500. In 2009, they went from $500,000 of revenue to $63 million of revenue in three years. And Alden basically unpacks the wisdom he gained from his life, including being a SEAL, an entrepreneur, etc. Into eight actions that make up this code. And he tells the story of how to go about doing that in a great, great little fable. It's kind of like a Navy SEAL riding the alchemist or the way of the peaceful warrior or the monk who sold his Ferrari, Right. About a sea captain and how they can rock it. I really enjoyed it. I also jokingly said it's almost like Angela Duckworth, the science scientific researcher on grit, teamed up with the Navy SEAL to write a book, a fable on grit. He wrote this for his four sons. It has a sweetness to it and a power to it. And at the end of every chapter, after he tells the story, he tells a bit of his own story and helps us apply the wisdom. Philosopher's note. Bunch of big ideas. Five of them here. So the book is organized around this acronym. The eight actions that make up the code of the master and commander make up this. You persist. Let's walk through that really quickly. So, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Eight codes or eight actions that make up the code. The first one is to understand. We need to understand. What do we need to understand? We need to understand the why. It all starts with the why, right? If you don't know why you're doing something, you're never going to be unstoppable. We're going to talk about that more in a moment and we're going to talk about how to go about discovering it. Alden has a really cool exercise on that front. And then the P is the plan. You've gotten clarity on Your why? Now you need to create a plan. And again, each one of these has its own chapter where they unpack it. We're going to talk about how to plan in 3D3 dimensions. It's a really cool idea. The third action is exercise to execute. He makes a point that if you want to execute your plan, you need a high level of energy. Right? Well, the way you get that is via a magic pill called exercise. So we've got our U, R, P, our E, and then we've got our R, which is to recognize your reason to believe. He says that you need to build small wins. You need to recognize your reason to believe that you can achieve your big goal, your big dream. If you can't see all the successes you've had in your life and how they contribute to your future success, you're going to be in trouble. And then you need to create little wins as often as you can, such that you can see more and more reasons why you. You have reasons to believe in your ultimate success. Then we have S, which is for survey. Survey what? Survey our habits. Right? You've got your why, your plan, you're exercising. You're recognizing your reasons to believe. Then you need to survey what you're doing in your life. What are you doing that's working? What are you doing that's not working? Identify and do more of the good stuff. Identify and do less of the bad stuff. It's not complicated, but. But we need to survey our lives and our habits and then work on it. We obviously talk about that a ton in Habits 101. And then we have our I, which is for improvising. We have a plan, but we're never going to create a perfect plan. Things are going to go wrong, period. That's just how it works. Then we need to improvise. We need to figure out how we're going to get through the inevitable obstacles. Then we're going to have the next square, which is to seek expert advice. Seek experts. You got to recognize the fact that you won't know everything as you go after your dreams. You need experts who can support you in the process. Which also leads us to our final eighth action, which is team up. You want to know your strengths, know your weaknesses. And then the essence of leadership is inspiring a group of people with a strong why then finding people whose strengths, whose geniuses are your weaknesses? You're in your genius zone. Your strengths. And then your team members are doing what they are best at. You need to team up. Nothing great was ever created alone that's up. E, R, S, I S T. You persist. Super cool theme throughout the book. I didn't mention our character's name. Right? The young captain is Tim, and then the master and commander is Pete. And in the beginning, one of Pete's friends keeps on calling him all these funny nicknames. He calls him like 2P. Hey double P. Hey P squared. And Tim's sitting there saying, what's up with this? Why is he calling him all these funny things? Pete, our master and commander. The guy who had it figured out his nickname was Persistent Pete. P squared. We want to be persistent. And the master and commander's ship he called persistence. You may notice a theme here. If you want to be unstoppable, you need to persist. That was a long first big idea, but there you go. The second one is our why. So, as I said, it starts with a dream. We're going to talk about the two limitations in life in a moment, but you got to start with a dream. And then you need to identify what you want to do and why you want to do it. If you don't have a strong why, the moment something challenging happens, which is inevitable in anything, let alone a big goal, you're going to have roadblocks. If you don't have a really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really big why, you're going to give up. So he says again and again throughout the book, discover your why, know your why, and you'll figure out your way. And there's a very cool, practical way of figuring out our why. Here it is. Identify your goal. Right? So what's your goal? Right. Write it down. That's your number one dream. What would you do if you could not fail? Is a great way to get clarity on your number one goal. What would you do if you knew you could not fail? Write it down. Underline it. I put a box around mine. And then on this piece of paper, write a line down the middle. Put a plus on the left and a minus on the right. And now write all the awesome things that would happen in your life if you achieved that goal. If you persisted and you brought that vision to fruition, you actualized your goal. What would be awesome in your life? Think about it. Reflect on it. Write it down. And then let's imagine that you didn't persist and you failed to achieve your goal. Write down all the negative things that you're going to experience in your life. And he does this. I forget what he calls it, but he basically. Outcome account, I think he says, Right. My Outcome account plus and minus. An extraordinary way to tap into your why do this? I did it takes a matter of minutes and you'll probably identify one reason. Mine was a negative thing. He had a negative thing as well. That became a positive thing. If I don't want this to happen, that's just not acceptable in my big number one thing, right? So think about your most important goal. Do the plus and minus. And then look for and feel that energetic hit of what really motivates you. And then capture it and be driven by that. Write it down, put it somewhere. You're going to see it all the time and go embody that and bring your dream to life. A third big idea is 3D planning. So action one was to understand our why. Action two is to plan in three dimensions. What are the three dimensions? The three dimensions are these. One, you need to define your goal. Two, you need to divide it. And three, you need to do something about it daily. Do it daily. So you define, you divide, and you do it daily. Defining is very straightforward. You need to be specific about what you want to achieve. This is rule number one of what science says makes successful people successful. Heidi Grant Halvorson, who wrote the most popular blog post in Harvard Business Reviews history about the I think it was the nine things successful people do differently. The number one thing is they're specific in their goals. They define their goals. So what are you going to do specifically by. When are you going to do that? Define it. Then you divide it and he's got this really cool metaphor for it. Imagine you've got this huge goal, you're fired up about it, you got your why, etc. But then you need to take. Imagine it's a huge rock, right? And you take a sledgehammer to it and you just pound away at that rock. And then the little things that fall off, the little pebbles that fall off of the rock, you carry those away. So you have a big milestone goal, which he describes as something that will take months or years to achieve. Huge rock. Hammer it, divide it into small, tiny little increments and then go do those things daily. You define, you divide, and then you do something every single day. You carry away one of those little pebbles. You don't get overwhelmed by the huge rock. You break it down. I talk about it in terms of dominoes and proximal goals, etc. How? However you want to describe it. But do something simple every day. Progress is what researchers say is most important in maintaining motivation. Doesn't need to be huge progress. Little things Moving toward a meaningful goal give you a feeling of inspiration and motivation to keep on crushing it. So that's how you plan in 3D. Define, divide and do it daily. Which leads to our fourth big idea, which is the third action exercise. He kicks this chapter off with an awesome story about the fact that if I told you there was a magic pill, if you could take a pill that would make you smarter, it would make you healthier, would help you lose weight while building muscle, it would do everything you want to do it, make you less depressed and really energized and feel great, Would you take that pill? Right. And how much would you pay for that pill? The answer is, of course, if that pill existed, that would do all the things that that exercise does. We take it. He says you need to take a 30 minute pill of exercise every day. And he said, look, I almost wrote a book entirely on exercise because that's how important I think it is. Why is exercise so important? Why is it the third action here? Well, you can't put a plan into place if you don't have energy. We talk about this all the time. Tony Schwartz says, don't be worried about time management. How are you going to organize your day? Be be interested in energy management. How do you dial in your energy so you can sustain hard work over the long term to execute your plan to reach your goals. Energy is where it's at. Check in on your exercise and be willing to pop the pill 30 minutes a day and get on it. He's got a great line in here too about Navy seals. There's a line apparently, that when in doubt, push it out or push them out. When in doubt, push them out. If you're ever feeling stressed or anxious or doubtful or unclear, go bang out some push ups. That'll clear up your mind. And again, the science is clear on this. Exercising is like taking a little bit of Prozac, boosts your mood and a little bit of Ritalin, it focuses your mind. So get your exercise on, do an inventory, survey your habits and see if you're doing a good job on that. Fifth big idea are the two limitations in life. Alden tells us that there are two limitations in life and only two limitations in life. One, our ability to dream, and two, our courage to pursue those dreams. Only two limitations, right? So what are your dreams? What do you want to see come to fruition in your life? If you could wave a magic wand and create your ideal life, what would that look like? What would you dare to dream if you knew you could not fail. Whereas Brene Brown says, even if you were going to fail, what would be worth doing? You can dedicate your life to noble purpose style. What is it? Step one, if you don't have that ability, well, you're going to be limited dramatically in your ability to optimize and actualize. Then the second one, of course, is your courage to follow those dreams. It's not going to be easy, which is why we need to persist via these eight guys. Understand your why. Plan in three dimensions, exercise to execute, recognize your reason to believe, survey your habits, improvise when you hit obstacles, seek expert help and team up with people that can support you in the process of crushing it. There you go. Hope you enjoyed. Thank you, Alden. Awesome book. I can't wait to have Emerson, three and a half years old now read this book. It's that good. And if you're looking for fiction and just kind of enjoy getting better without having to study something, that's just hardcore self development. This is awesome. That's why I read it. I'm like, you know what? I want something a little lighter today. And then just jumped into it and got into it. It was fantastic. What was your favorite big idea? Which one of these are you rocking and what do you need to work on? Get on that. Have another awesome day. Here's to being unstoppable. See you. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Optimize with Brian Johnson. To find out more, go to Optimize. Hi, this is Brian. Hope you enjoyed that. Me. The team has set up a free two week trial where you can get instant access to all 600 plus Philosopher's Notes, all the PDFs, the MP3s, get it on the app, etc. And 50 Optimal Living 101 classes on a range of subjects and of course the thousand plus optimized plus ones. And then if you want to go all in, check out Optimize. Coach. Optimize me for the free trial for the core wisdom. Optimize Me Coach if you want to go all in and master yourself, serve heroically and empower others to do the same. Have a great day. See you tomorrow.