Former Navy Seal Brent Gleeson Recap: How to Embrace the Suck

I'd like to ship you a free copy of my book Habits of High Performers. If you come and join the 2026 goal setting workshop, I will ship you one of these today. The link is in the notes. Please come and join me to set up the very best 2026 you could imagine. If you've set up goals in the past or New Year's resolutions and they haven't substantiated, I'm here to help you across all the key pillars of your life nail your goals. I'll see you there. Wow. So in our last episode we had the incredible Brent Gleason. Brent is a former US Navy seal. He's also a best selling author of two incredible books and an award winning entrepreneur. We had the most incredible conversation. As you will know if you've listened to the show for quite a while. I've got a lot of respect for people who have fought for their countries, have been members of elite forces. It takes quite a special character to really make it into those forces and then secondly to stay in there for any length of time. And you know, Brent, I would say is just an inspirational human all around. In our conversation he opened up about the pain and suffering he experienced in the Navy and how he learned to welcome that pain and almost celebrate it. That life lesson inspired him to write his best selling book, Embrace the Suck and Look. He shared some amazing leadership and high performance insights. During our conversation. I wanted to share a couple of those absolute golden nuggets. You will love these takeaways. They're going to be so applicable in probably a few different areas of your life. Before I do that, I want to ask you for one favor. As you know, the team and I have decided there's no ads on the show anymore. So we've said no to all that. So for us to keep growing, I'm going to fully rely on organic referrals. What do I mean by that? Someone amazing like you who enjoys the show or enjoys an episode and goes, you know what, I'm going to let two other people in my life know about this show. I'm going to pass on and copy the link and send Lead on Purpose with James Lachlan to them. Look, I would greatly, greatly appreciate it. So please, if you can do that right now, it's going to help me to grow the show, get in front of more people. Recently we've been we were number one ranked on Apple podcasts in Estonia, we were number two all of last week in New Zealand. We just made it into the top 20 on Apple Podcasts in the United Arab Emirates this week. We charted in Great Britain, South Africa, several countries this week. So I just want to say thank you for all of you incredible listeners, but I cannot grow the show and continue to bring on great guests without your help. So, please, I would love that. Now let's get into it. Let's have a bit of fun. So Brent spoke about buds. So BUDS is an acronym for Basic Underwater Demolition SEAL Training. And he spoke about during this training, how the commander, the captain, actually died during Hell Week. Hell Week's one of the toughest weeks that they go through in training. But this, this captain died from pneumonia. He drowned and died in the pool. And he mentioned that the officer in charge came in and confirmed that he was dead and then told them to move forward. And they would have to get used to this as this was normal, as a SEAL death was a normal part of it. And he says this was just months before 911 hit. And so things got real, real quick. Brent spoke about the things he learned in that leadership sphere within the seals team, and he said these were some of the main things. Firstly, watching leaders learn was really powerful for Brent to witness. And look, leaders learn relentlessly and persistently. They're continually asking questions, continually reading, continually refining. So I think that's a huge takeaway is, you know, what are you doing right now? Well, you're listening to a podcast and you're investing in your mindset. What are you going to do over the next 24 hours with what you learn on the podcast? Because the leaders are not just taking information in. They're applying it in small and not so small ways in their life. Number two that he shared was be a lifelong leader and be able to take feedback from everyone, even from people who report to you. And so that, to me, takes a lot of awareness. Takes high EQ to be able to take feedback and not get your backup. As a Navy seal, obviously you had to take that feedback because it could mean life or death. In everyday life, it might not mean life or death, but it could be the death of an opportunity, could be the death of a promotion. It could be the death of a new client or keeping a client. So taking feedback, receiving it, and just saying thank you rather than a rebuttal, that is such a leadership skill to develop. He also shared that watching the leadership take the blame was just so refreshing and that they would push any successes back to the team. The team got the credit for the successes. You know, I've heard other seals like Jocko talk about it as extreme ownership. I was keynote speaker at a four Foursquare conference here in New Zealand recently and I was just talking to them about the whole idea of extreme ownership and how it's putting your hand up, taking responsibility, saying, that was me. I didn't communicate that well. I need to, you know, invest in my people, invest in myself, and I need to actually walk the walk. So that was a big takeaway for him. The other takeaway said, look, it comes back to purpose and communicating the vision to the team. How simple is that? And how many times have you heard me say that? If this is your first podcast? Well, this is the first time you've heard me say it. But if you've listened to the podcast for a few months now, or maybe some of you a few years, I talk a lot about the fact that you've got to understand the purpose of your team or yourself and be able to communicate that vision to all of the stakeholders. That could be family members, team members, investors, depends what kind of team we're talking about here. People have got to know where you're headed. If you want people to support you, they've got to understand where you're headed. So who do you need to communicate your vision to? Or do you need to get clearer on your vision?

Brent believes that a culture must be designed to achieve specific results. It's not all about having a lovely culture, it's about where you're heading and how you'll get there and then developing a culture around that. And that's why when people say, I'm reading a book on culture, I'm like, that's awesome. You're going to learn something. But how are you going to use that to design a specific culture that's going to help you reach a specific outcome? Your culture is going to be different than your competitors culture. Their culture is going to be different than Manchester United's culture. That's going to be different from Team Mercedes in Formula one. That's going to be different than the President and the Oval Office. Every culture needs to be designed bespokely for the direction that that team or organization is, is headed. So critically important.

Brent spoke about how he watched some of the best leaders never focusing on their own struggle, but building up the people around them. They would forget about their own pain and look after other people and that gave them more purpose and meaning. How often do you find yourself doing that where you're maybe having a bad day or a bad moment or a bad month, but actually instead of sulking, you get into helping other people who are suffering. And that allows you to take your focus off yourself. And when you look at people like Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa, those people were constantly giving to others. So if they had personal pain, they were able to look to others and support them. It took their mind off it. Quite incredible, people.

Last but not least, Brent said mindset is all about channeling how you think, act and behave. Channeling all of those thoughts, those actions and those behaviors into achieving a specific goal. Brent says. So like many organizations speak about achieving specific goals and things they're going to do, but they never put the routines and practices in place for it. So if you're going to do anything off the back of this episode, I want you to think about what is my specific goal? What are the measurable behaviors that are going to help me get there and then let me schedule them As I always repeat, what gets scheduled gets done. So I hope you'll get that phone out soon and schedule some self reflection, schedule some journaling, schedule some time to create a very clear, specific outcome. Those behaviors that are going to drive you towards that outcome. But for now folks, I want you to get out there and lead your life on purpose.

Thanks for tuning in today and investing in your own personal leadership. Please hit that subscribe button and I'd love if you'd leave me a rating and review. I've got some amazing guests lined up for you in the coming weeks and leaders, it's not time to get out there and lead your life on purpose.