PNTV: Unbeatable Mind by Mark Divine (#127​)

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Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today we've got another great book, Unbeatable Mind by Mark Devine. Check him out. Staring down that wolf, which we're going to talk about in this note. Unbeatable Mind, Mark Divine, Philosopher's Note, where I go through a bunch of big ideas. We're going to cover five of them right now. First, let's just get this out there. Mark Divine, I think is a superhero. Living, breathing superhero, former Navy seal, all around super strong, virtuous, good dude. And this book is great. Unbeatable Mind. I've been going off on mental training. Yesterday we did a video on the art of mental training. Last week we did mind gym. We've got more coming up. And they all say a lot of the same things in different ways. Mark's book is fantastic. Let's look at five of my favorite big ideas now, starting with the first one, the first premise. So the first premise of having an unbeatable mind is the idea that we need to win first in our mind. Navy SEALs, any successful warrior wins first in their mind and then on the battlefield. So it doesn't matter what our battle is, whether it's the war of art or an actual war or anything that we're striving to create and become the highest version of ourselves. We need to win first in our minds and then out in the arena. We talked about this yesterday in the Art of Mental Training. The final idea we had there was the most important one, which was self belief. This is what this is, self belief. Do you think you can win? Do you know you can win? Well, if you want to have an unbeatable mind, you need to discipline yourself to live from that perspective. That's the first premise. The next premise is we need to starve and feed. Starve and feed what? Well, the COVID of the book, we have that wolf looking at us. Mark tells the great story of the Wolf of Fear and the Wolf of Courage. They're battling one another. Which one wins? The one you feed. So you need to starve the fear wolf. We need to feed the courage wolf. How do you do that? Well, you do that by first starving all your negativity. Anytime you find a negative thought bubbling up in your mind, if you want to have an unbeatable mind, you need to starve that fear, starve the negativity. Mark has a great way to describe it. You need to stop it immediately. You need to interdict it. We talk about this in the note. Interdict is a military term that basically means to intercept or to stop. Basically to bomb enemy lines or communication channels or whatever you need to interdict. You need to bomb the negative thoughts, stop them immediately and then feed the courage wolf. Create positive statements that you can use instead of the negative stuff. Starve the fear wolf and feed the courage wolf. Awesome idea. Again, he goes off on in the book. We can obviously talk about that a lot longer, but for now we'll move on to the third big idea.

Breath.

We talked about this yesterday too.

Breath.

It's huge. Mark says it would not be an overstatement to say that breath is the most important aspect of creating an unbeatable mind. If you are in a crunch situation, the pressure is high. Breath is the most powerful way. Breathing is the most powerful way to stabilize your mind and to get calm. As we talked about, your breath tends to get shorter, which creates anxiety. So we need to bring it down, bring ourselves back into the present moment. And Mark has a great practice. He calls box breathing. Goes something like this. You inhale. How do I introduce you? Inhale to a count of five, kind of inhale to five, hold it for five and then exhale for five.

Then.

Hold it for five. Box breathing. Inhale to five, hold it for five, Exhale for five, Hold it for another five. And repeat. Mark tells a great story. When he was training as a seal, he was underwater doing something crazy. And on this multiple hour expedition with one of his teammates and his goggles broke and just didn't have his backup. He was gnarly, can't even imagine it. And he had two hours to basically be underwater blinded, that he needed to relax himself in and just kind of be present while his partner got him back to where they needed to go. And he did this practice box breathing. And he said that the two or three hours felt like 40 minutes. He just got present and he was grounded. Super big, big practice again. Notice when you're starting to feel stress, notice that your breath is going up and bring it back down. Get yourself into the present moment. This is a really cool way to do it. Box breathing. Fourth big idea here is what's your number one thing and your three P's what's your one thing in your three P's? So we'll start with the one thing, your one thing. Your one thing. What were you born to do? What are you here to do? What's the one thing you need to do before you die that you're here to do. It's just the work you're here to do. Your life's purpose, what is it? When I was working on the note, I had done this exercise before and as I was working on the note that morning, I just went through. He's got some amazing journaling exercises in the book which I found amazing. I highly recommend. Just went through it and just got really, really clear. What is my one thing? And then is your one thing for your life connected to your one thing for this year? Connected to your one thing for today? We want that coherence in our goals. What's your one thing? If you don't know about it, then your one thing is to figure out what that is. And of course we have different nuances and I've got my creative one thing and I'm also committed to being a great husband and father. But what's your one thing that you really feel called to do? Think about that. Then we've got our three P's. Are three P's? Well, what are those? Well, purpose, First P passion, the second P and the third P principles. So our purpose is tied to that one thing. What's yours? Our passion. What are you passionate about? What do you just love to do? Just fires you up. The idea that you could do this. What are you passionate about? What are your principles? What are the values you're committed to living? A big part of an unbeatable mind is self awareness. You're going to have a hard time getting your mind right and keeping it right if you aren't living on purpose. You might have noticed different times in your life. When you're most on is when you're most aligned with your one thing and your three Ps. So take the time, turn off the TV, turn off the Internet, open a journal and figure it out. Do the hard work, the heavy lifting it takes to figure out who you are and as David Data says, penetrate the concentric circles of your own truth. You've got to be willing to go out and experiment with different things and get a little bit closer to your truth each step of the way such that you can more clearly identify for you right now. It will evolve. Good lives are many heroes journeys. We go back into the force of the unknown and we go do our hero's journey. But what's your one thing right now? Identify that. Live in integrity with it. Big asset for you in creating an unbeatable mind. And then the final idea here is uncommon resolve. Uncommon resolve. The way Mark describes it is super inspiring in the Context he wrote three books in 2013. This book, Unbeatable Mind, the Way of the Seal, which is also fantastic. I listened to that one. I've got to reread it and look at doing a note on it and, and then I think eight weeks to seal fit or something like that. He wrote three books in one year that required uncommon resolve. Uncommon resolve. I just love that phrase. What are the elements of uncommon resolve? Well, I wrote these up here for us. We can walk through them really quickly. First of all, you need to have an incredibly strong desire. You need to want something. Your hair needs to be on fire about it. That's intense desire. What are you intensely passionate about? Creating desire. It. Number two, you got to believe you can have it. This goes back to our first premise. You got to win. First, you got to know you can have it. You got to believe you can create whatever it is that you desire. That's number two. Number three. One, two. Number three. You got to have a positive attitude. You got to maintain that positive attitude. Starving the fear wolf and feeding the courage. 1. 4. You got to have discipline. You got to be clear on what it's going to take for you to achieve the goal that you want to achieve. Then discipline yourself to do it. And number five, you got to be determined.

Guess what?

Things aren't going to go as planned.

Awesome.

You have uncommon resolve. You have strong desire, a strong belief.

You can do it.

Your attitude is positive. You're disciplined and you're determined. You're going to persevere. You're going to go through that obstacle and that one and that one and that one. Because you have uncommon result. That's just awesome. So there you go. Super quick look at unbeatable mind. Five of my favorite big ideas. We could have done 50 of them. The book is just awesome. First premise, win first in your mind. Second, starve the fear. Feed the courage. Breathe. We looked at box Breathing. Inhaling to five. Holding, exhaling, holding again. Repeating. Super cool. Practice one thing in three P's what are yours? One thing. What are you here to do? Your purpose, your passion. What are your principles? And then uncommon resolve. Desire, Belief, attitude. Discipline, Determination. Hope you dug it. What did you get most? What landed what? One idea. Just you heard it and you're like, wow, that's pretty cool. Just a reminder of what you already knew. How do you take that idea and make it a part of your day to day life? Embody it. Move from theory to practice. Get on it. Hope you enjoy. Look forward to sharing more with you soon. Have another awesome day.

See you.

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