Navy Seal Thom Shea: How To Become Unbreakable- You Winning Life Podcast

Today I'm with Tom Shea. He's a retired, highly decorated Navy SEAL senior chief. He's the author of Unbreakable: A Navy SEAL Way of Life and Three Simple Things: Leading During Chaos. And he's also the founder of Adamantine Alliance, where he's a leadership instructor, speaker, executive coach, and also host of both the Unbreakable and Solving the Gap podcast, in addition to being a husband and father. Tom, first of all, thank you for being here. Second of all, thank you for your service to our country.

I listened to that introduction and I think, man, that was complicated. I need to make that simple.

So make it simple. Let's— where should we start off? I mean, I'm— I have so many questions for you. One, as a therapist who's been seeing military families pretty much since I graduated in 2005, I'm a TRICARE provider, which is the military military-based insurance. So I would venture to say at least 10 to 20% on average a year of my, of my clients are military service people, their families, their children. Um, so there's so much we can unpack about that. But right off the bat, I'm curious, like, how did you end up from childhood? Like, did you always know you wanted to be in the military? And then how did you make that decision?

That's a good question.

Uh, I grew up in a military family.

My dad was a graduate of West Point. And, uh, it seemed like all of our family friends, and even from my mom's family, were military—

from Navy to Air Force to Army.

All her brothers and sisters were.

And I had a really close, what I call mentor now, but I would call it a family friend then, who was an older guy who was on the first wave of attack on Iwo Jima. And he was a—

what they now call SEALs, but he was one of the that, you know, wearing a pair of shorts and a fin and a demo sack, he went on Iwo Jima 3 hours before the first wave hit.

And I grew up with guys like that.

And I thought I knew I wanted to be in the military, and I had struck out to go to West Point. And I went to West Point for 3 years, and I had the greatest thing that ever could happen to anybody.

Is I failed out.

And I say that because I tell you what, the bottom produces more successful people than the normal pathways. And during that time of, you know, walking home with my tail between my legs, I went back and reconnected with that guy who was on EWO. And he said, if you don't pursue something that you are wild about, you're wasting your life. And The problem was I wanted to be a SEAL and I couldn't swim. And he said, all that shit doesn't matter. You go do that until you die. That's the deal. And so that's what I did.

That's what got me into the SEAL teams.

So you had this thing where you tried something, it didn't work out. The average person would give up. And I relate to kind of what you were saying because my— I talk a lot about— I talk about a lot on my experiences, especially with my clients and on the podcast is I barely graduated high school. And I had a 1.8 GPA. It wasn't that I was a bad kid, I just didn't have the care of like— I didn't know what I was going to be doing next, so there wasn't that motivation of you need to get these things figured out. Um, parents going through divorce, all that stuff. What was your mentality? Do you think how much of this was inherited as family psychology, that you're going to keep going and you're going to accomplish this no matter what? And how much was your own, uh, organic personal philosophy? At that point to keep going with the inspiration of your mentor? Where does that break down?

Wow. So as a therapist, I could spend hours trying to unpack what goes on inside my head. People have tried and they failed. So, uh, yeah, I've not seen genetics play a big part in anything from a SEAL trainer to teaching people to shoot. 1500 yards when they couldn't even see the target, and the math doesn't work out. So did genetics play a part in it? I, I don't know. I think it may, but I've not seen any—

I wouldn't invest in genetics.

Uh, and at the same time, I grew up at a time in this, you know, the '70s, where my parents literally said, you can do anything you want to do, you just got to go do it. And I think that's a different time than now. The poor kids grow up in a different society. I call it the victim society. I may be wrong, but, you know, maybe I am. I never thought I couldn't do anything. Well, that never occurred to me. It just didn't occur to me I couldn't do anything. Was I willing to do it? That was the, that was the key. And so I grew up with that and I had had, I'd had a trap line, literally trapping animals for money when I was 9. And so I grew up with that thought process, work your butt off, overcome whatever it need, you need to do to attain something. And something doesn't work out, who cares? Keep hammering. And so that was the mindset that I grew up with. And I didn't have anything to tell me that it wasn't going to work except failure. And I had learned early on that it takes 1,000 times to be successful at anything. So I didn't look at failure as it was a reflection of me. It was a reflection that it didn't work. So figure out another solution to it. So my first attempt at the Army or the military didn't work. It's not because, you know, I was genetically predisposed to be something else. It's, uh, okay, that didn't work. Reset, find out what are you going to do and get back to it. And so I tried the SEAL Teams.

So what do you think is that differentiation in your mindset, right? Right. Of what you just said between what you're seeing out there, like we can call it a victim mentality. We can call, you know, maybe giving up too easily, But from that perspective that you just shared, I think it's a really powerful thing. And I know that usually when people try to solve a problem, they solve it from the place of only the logic and the data that they know versus let me go outside of myself, get help. Let me get a trainer. Let me get a therapist. Let me get a coach. Let me get a, um, a mentor. How can we inspire people today given the circumstances, especially right now where we're quarantined and we're socially isolating from everything? Um, How can we implement that attitude specifically right now? Don't give up. Maybe you're suffering, your relationships might be challenged. Right. How can we now pivot that to an actionable mentality? And I know it's a big step, but I think you're uniquely positioned because you've been in times of war. And I know from your bio that you have done rescue missions where people are shooting at, right? Right now we're being shot at in all different directions and we don't know if it's safe to go outside or not. And I'm viewing this virus from that.

There's like 4 questions you asked, even though you asked 1.

And I like your mind because it's complicated. So, and I don't know if I'm saying I have the answer to it.

I've learned to break complex situations into simplicity. And so one of your earlier questions was, uh, having grown up in a very non-restrictive environment where you were, hey, go out and get tired and get dirty and poke your finger with a knife and, you know, and chop a tree down and, and, you know, have animals chase you, and that, that complex environment that has gone from the normal kid growing up is one of the big factors that we face. And I have a little experience in, you know, how the frontal cortex and how the amygdala, if it's never experienced anything, it becomes very traumatic. Shit, I grew up at 10 with living through very difficult things that I didn't make them influence who I was, that conversation of who I was. So, and they've done scans on me. My amygdala doesn't fire and my frontal cortex isn't making right and wrong decisions all the time. So what I have done now is, and I, I tried my best to write it in the book that now launches, I think April 28th called Three Simple Things Leading During Chaos is You have to have a, what I call, a non-negotiable life. So, and your third question was, what could we do during these complex times? Well, here's the issue. Complexity and chaos, it was always going on all the time. It's just people weren't aware of it. Now their kind of head has popped out of the ground and they're like, oh my gosh, this is weird. Now I'm restricted. Now this is, could, all the weird futures that I thought were going to happen ain't going to happen now. And the past is literally gone. What can I do right now? Which is, I'm really enthralled with what is the right now that people live. And I've trained over 200 people in the past 6 years to have a 6-hour day. 6 hours. And it takes a year for people to have a 6-hour day. Like they'd rather have a 20-hour day. I said, I tell you what, 6 hours non-negotiable. You got to do this every day for the rest of your life. And I break it down into 5 areas, not to make it more complex, but 5 areas. Your health, everybody has it. And very few people address it on point. And everybody has that thing in them called learning. I call it intellectual capacity. And the third area is the, you know, wealth or, or their job or where they seek value and try to get compensated for it. And the fourth one is an interesting— it's probably in your neck of the woods— called relationships. Everybody has them, but few people are on point with them. Like, they have acquaintances. And then the fourth and the fifth one is spiritual. So whether you're agnostic or not, there's a spiritual value that you are. So boiling those down into very simple things that are not negotiable. And it takes 6 hours a day to have that life. And so that is what you do during chaos situations, is you don't negotiate. You still have to be healthy. You still have to— like, one of the 3 simple things in relationship are so simple, it's astounding. I'm more interested to see what you think about them. The first thing that you do in your relationships, like at home And this is the first one: 10 minutes listening to your spouse. The first 10 minutes, my friend, are listening to who they are and what they're doing. You cannot convince them to do it differently. All you get to do is listen. The second 10 minutes are sharing who you are and what you're going to do. It's not negotiable. You have to do it. And they can't tell you, oh, that's a bad idea. And then the third 10 minutes are 10 minutes of intimacy. Touch, kiss, say something that's intimate, but be in that intimate space. The difference that it's made for CEOs is astounding.

Astounding.

And I try to get them to do that 30 minutes a day for— you have to do it for 21 days. And I've not seen a CEO do it. It takes them 6 months to be able to attain 21 days straight. I'm like, okay, that's simple shit. And it only is 30 minutes. It's not, you know, nuclear fusion reactors and having a deuterium core and holding it with a mitt and all that crap. You don't have to have a PhD for it. But it doesn't save marriages. It accelerates who you are the rest of your day. That you listen to somebody and that you were listened to by somebody. And oh my God, touch the people in your life. HR, who cares about HR? They're not there. And I didn't intend that be what I do with clients. But they were on the verge of divorces. Your $20 million, you're going to cut that shit in half right now. Give them, give them 30 minutes or they demand 3 days. So, you know, and so what I found to do through terrible experiences are make 3 non-negotiable things per those 5 categories. I didn't mean to overwhelm the conversation, but oh my God, it's so simple. You want to be profound in your life? Listen every day to the people that count in your life. And oh my God, it was unbelievable what happened.

Well, the simplicity of all of that is when you're talking about brain neurology, I can tie those two together because you're talking about people who have momentum. Whoever we are, right? We have momentum doing patterns for whatever age that we've been alive. And we also have patterns and beliefs about how things should be or how things should run. So especially when you're talking about corporations and CEOs and people who are typically having delegation or having people handle things for them or what they say goes and everybody else kind of has to follow in line. But it's different being able to put someone else at the same level as you and say, okay, I'm going to put your needs at equal importance. To what my needs are, but let's also talk about what your needs are first, which is a big challenge for a lot of people, especially in that environment. But I know that exactly with what you're saying, as far as the pattern of repetition, doing something for 28 days. I know Andy Frisella, right, the MFCEO Podcast, has this whole thing called 75 Hard, where it's 2 workouts a day, it's water, it's reading 5 minutes a day. It's this whole thing, taking a picture of yourself through your development for 75 days. And if you miss one, you start from scratch. And there is that mentality of people who are proactively making that a priority. Like you said, these are the categories that you should pick from. And I'm a big fan of having 5 fingers, 5 priorities, right? And you only do those 5 priorities. So if you're saying, I want to work on my business, I want to work on my relationship, I want to work on my health, then why are you Netflixing and chilling all day and playing video games?

Exactly.

So it's incongruent to what you say you want with the lifestyle you have. And my job as a therapist and as a coach personally and for businesses is to help people identify and align with that. I also take it back to what are your core values, right? If you're also telling me that like relationships are a core value, good healthy relationships, what are you doing contributing to that by the activities, by your learning, by your spirituality, whatever that means. So you and I are very much in alignment about all of that. Is this stuff that when you were learning like to swim, when you were learning, right? I know when you're going through Hell Week and I would love for you to give a few minute example of Hell Week for people who have no clue except maybe what they might've seen on TV or in a movie or, you know, in the social media sphere of like, right? The David Goggins, when he's talked about it, what is that mentality like to single-mindedly be focused on a goal, break it down bit by bit, because I know that's kind of one of the ways of being simple, and say, okay, I want to focus on this mechanic. I want to focus on being able to do this muscle movement and breathe for 20 seconds and now breathe for 30 seconds. That mindset of what you're saying when it comes to CEOs and relationships and business and family and health. And then can you then take it back to what that was like for you? Going through Hell Week?

Yeah, so I have a little experience with Hell Week. I'm the only one that has gone into Hell Week 5 times. They don't allow it anymore 'cause they say it does damage to you. So, and it's true. So I was a student in 5 Hell Weeks. They only allow you to take it once now, or 2, so to speak. And I was an instructor for 3.5 years, put 15 classes through Hell Week. So coming from some relative, you know, expertise in it, I will jump to the end of that conversation. The design of Hell Week is to create in the student one thing, not toughness. 'Cause you take away in the first 2 hours, however tough you are, however strong you are, the first 2 hours beat you down where you can't even hardly function. So, go to the end of the Hell Week, the top trainer comes out and says, "Now we have somebody that can do this one simple thing. You can say you're gonna do it and you're gonna do it." Now we're going to train you. So what I call that is the premise— the real value of human beings is that you honor your word, that you give a lot of credence to when I say something, or when my spouse says something, or my kids say something, that it becomes true for them. So the All Hell Week is designed around finding inside of you that you're going to say what you're going to do and then you're going to go do it. And then, so now go back to beginning Hell Week. We're going to find every reason for you to quit. And you're going to experience every bad thing in 6 days that you could possibly ever experience. From pain at, you know, there's a level of pain to 10 and then there's a 100 scale. So most humans exist in the 10 scale, and then you experience that in the first 10 minutes. You're like, oh my God, that hurts. It can't hurt any worse. Yeah, it will. We're going to show you what real pain is going to feel like. If you don't quit, you will find a way through it. So I've seen people with terrible injuries make it through. And so Pain is the first excuse of life that, you know, you want somebody to overcome. Then the other terrible consideration is what I call the future. So they take the future away from you. Future is a terrible consideration for human beings because they think things are going to play out a certain way. They never do. So what the instructor staff does by design is keep threatening that it's going to get worse. It's going to get worse, and it's going to get worse than you thought it was going to get worse. So eventually you only learn to live in this next step. All I have to do is two more steps, two more steps. We're going to take you somewhere and drown you and kill you. I mean, they tell you that, and eventually you stop worrying about the future and get really good at this moment, which isn't like an existential SEAL conversation, and you hear it in different practices. This is all you get right now. Do the best you can right now. But I could die. Okay, do better at right now. So the SEALs become an element of society that is rarely functioning in the moment better than anybody else. That's how they win battles. And then the, the hardest thing in SEAL training to overcome, and the reason why most people fail, is the relationship with each other. Because in Hell Week, all your buddies quit. Like, dude, they're gone, and nobody's here to help you. Like, your mom ain't here to help you. So you find that most people get pulled into being isolated and which is an interesting conversation now in our society. In isolation, if you find yourself in isolation, find somebody who's committed to you and you're committed to them and do it quickly. And they hammer it into you genetically in SEAL training by telling you, here's the rule. If you're 6 feet away from somebody during dangerous events, you get punished. So even though you want to isolate yourself during dangerous, chaotic situations, they tell you do the opposite. So don't let yourself be isolated, because in isolation the demons come. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

And you probably see that in your practice, is when people isolate themselves, you're like, okay, the countdown begins right now.

Right. And this really evokes a strong memory for history buffs of like anybody who's ever gone through or like you learn about like the Holocaust or any of the wars when you have people in DP camps and how quickly people connect in relationships and get married, right? Through that. And I know like especially after the Holocaust, when my grandfather survived the Holocaust, and then came here. But how many people we've heard stories about that met, right? The whole world was basically done. Families were killed, spouses were killed, children, parents were killed, and you had to immediately start the world over.

Yep.

And who, right? If you connected with someone in that moment, not staying isolated, then you had a chance of recreating some type of a semblance of a world. So that very much hits home for me as a grandchild of a Holocaust survivor. But even more so now when we're talking about social isolation, where I'm finding depending on people's personality types, what they may be doing in order to work their way through this. Some people are, like you said before, going into complete victim mode, total isolation. No one gets me. No one understands me. I have the worst case scenario of it all. And then you have people who are, I'm okay, I'm going to get through this. It sucks. And then you have people who are like, oh my gosh, I'm thriving. All the chaos. Like, I'm realizing that going out to eat 3 times a week doesn't matter, and going to the mall 4 times a week doesn't matter, and this doesn't matter, and that doesn't matter. The simplicity, which you've used that word a lot, which I'm a big fan of, is coming through. And people are creating a life that if all this chaos and noise and distraction went away, what would be— what would you be accomplishing and tackling right now in your life? What are the highest priorities? And I think that's—

yeah, it's, uh, I, I look at it simply because I had to be responsible for outcome teaching, uh, to break it down to the fundamental level that I could find through both research and experience. And the human condition cannot endure isolation. It's not possible. And that's how, that's how you actually defeat an enemy, is to isolate them. Because they don't function well. It was my easiest way to get somebody to quit as an instructor is isolate them from difficulty. It's not make it easy on them, take them out of the equation. So I would pull people that I wanted to get to quit out of the problem that they were trying to solve with their brothers. And within 30 minutes, they would quit.

Wow.

I'm like, oh, wow. That was— so I'm like, I did it by accident. By rewarding a guy for doing more than he should, pulled him out of the equation, he goes, "I didn't feel like I was a part of it anymore." So it was an interesting phenomenon of that base coding that is required for humans. Isolation, not so good.

And, you know, how most people survive isolation is by thinking of other people.

That's how you got to do it. Or by activity. And so that is— it's an interesting phenomenon. But, you know, going back to your answer— answering your question of the Hell Week phenomenon is I think everybody should go through Hell Week. I really do. Because the person that you become after it is actually not hardened. It's super sensitive to what your capabilities are which are actually 10 times more than you thought they were, you know, and sensitive to the fact that be careful what you say to somebody because they'll take it as a truth and you'll take it as a truth. And in the SEAL Teams, it's called excuses. Like, we're not interested in excuses. We need a solution now. We're outnumbered 100 to 1. I don't care. Find a freaking solution. And that comes from within. Like, solutions are never readily available from without. They all come from within.

Agreed.

Like, literally right now, in June when they open this quagmire up, billionaires are going to be made. Billionaires.

Agreed.

It's the greatest opportunity in probably 6 generations. Is not quitting when this thing opens up. There's going to be more opportunity for the alphas. For the sheep, not so many until the alpha decides to move on something and then provide access to the sheep. But the world has changed. I don't see the world— the world has changed. Like, your practice won't go back to what it was. It's going to be different. If you can allow difference, man, the world is at your beck and call, your fingertips, so to speak.

Yeah. So many people have talked about during the last economic downturn how many new businesses, right? Venmo and PayPal. I think PayPal also was already there, but like Venmo, Airbnb, all of those companies came out of the last economic downturn. And thankfully, like, I can't imagine 10 years ago being able to pivot like I've been able to pivot within 24 hours. 3 weeks ago, I was running a retreat for young entrepreneurs in Asheville with a buddy of mine, and that night when I got home on a Sunday, I sent out a mass email to all my clients, and it wasn't giving them the option, and I've discussed this with other therapists who've pivoted, and they're like, well, how did you get 90-something percent of your clients to continue seeing you? I lost so many clients. And I said, the language of what I wrote the email was, my practice is continuing on as we— right? Your session is still happening. We're just doing it online now. And the one person that actually said, I don't want to do it, I'd rather see you in person, I actually had a conversation. I picked up the phone and I called and I said, listen, like, what's your biggest concern? He's like, well, I think it's not going to feel right. I might hate it. I'm like, okay, do your session as assumed, right? Jump online. If you 100% hate it, not if you 70% hate it or 50% hate it, but if you 100% hate it, then I'll see you in 4, 5, 6, 7 months. But if it's anything less than 100% hating it, keep going, because I know what happens when you don't continue your sessions. So I found very much in everybody's language of what they were making as an excuse to not— like, this is their self-care, this is their relationships, this is their personal growth and development. Why am I more invested in your personal growth and development than you are? And I'm very particular with hearing their words about how they describe the excuses. And I'm more concerned with what their goal is. And I'll say, but you told me this is your goal. How would you quitting now or taking a break now hold, you know, get you out from that? So within the same 24 hours.

So what, what, I mean, my question to you, even though you're interviewing me, how, what's the, what's the predisposition to not pivot that you've seen? Because people, a lot of people don't pivot.

Yeah. Yeah.

What's that quagmire that they're in?

So I think that people are so lost in all of the things that got them excited. And a lot of people, as you know, are working in fields or careers that they just slid into versus proactively choosing. And they may have these talents or their passions or things that like really got them excited and felt really authentic to them that they gave up because they had to pay the bills. But not realizing that those things now, 5, 10, 15, 20 years later, can be things that can pay the bills. But they never went back and looked at it. How does it apply to 2020, 2019, 2020 thinking? So, for example, I'm working with a family business and their whole entire industry completely shut down. And they had to pivot to being able now not only doing stuff that they do in person, but try to build an online store quickly, which isn't going to revgen as fast as possible because they're not the only people in that space. And of all the people in their space, they're not in the top, you know, 5% of that. And it's a very micro niche and it's a really cool niche. So I'm helping them create a pattern of what we're doing. OK, so you want to do Zoom chats with people, but how do you make a Facebook Live? How do you do an Instagram? How do you put stuff that you're selling and do stuff stuff like this, right? And engage people more, create a community around what you're doing from your email list, all those things. But I'm finding that there's things that they were passionate about that they like. Oh, well, I've written two children's books. Why didn't you ever tell me that? Now is the perfect time to build that. You have some downtime. How much did you love that? I loved it so much. I really enjoyed it. But I'm not going to make money right away. I'm like, no one makes money right away. It's building momentum. Can you see past 30 seconds?

That's that, that's that future conversation that if you stop reacting to this future conversation, how available you would be to really doing everything that actually matters to you in this moment.

Right. And going back to the neurology conversation, it's that reptilian brain, that fight or flight brain that we are being triggered right now. So we're not able to think, rationally in our neocortex. OK, what makes sense? What's the most important things? OK, I have electricity. That's not going anywhere. We haven't had it— minus that tornado that hit this morning. Right. Unless there's a major act of nature and God. Right. We're not losing electricity. We're not losing our internet. We live in a first world country. It's not getting shut down. It's not going to be taken away by the government. Food delivery is still happening. There's still enough food going around and there's always an infinite amount of canned goods or dry goods that you can do to make. So that's happening. There's precautions you can take in order to protect yourself from this virus that, right, if you follow these steps, you have a high likelihood of being okay. Follow the— you just get through that. Now we can start talking about all the billion and one things that you can do. But I think that the people who go immediately into fight or flight, they catastrophize and they create new problems. Is where I'm feeling those clients that I'm seeing out there are the most stuck. Problems that don't even exist.

And we're back.

So, right, so, right, so does that make sense? Right, the ones that are creating new problems, the ones that are catastrophizing, the ones that aren't able to get through those basic things. Do you have electricity? Yes. Do you have internet? Yes. Do you have food? Yes. Do you have access to be able to get food? Right? All of those, those things are taken care of. Is your roof— you have a roof overhead? Yes. None of those things will be taken away from you. Now that we got rid of that, right, those basic instincts, fight or flight survival things. Now, are you creating new problems in your head that don't even exist? Okay, now let's handle that. But the people I think that are—

you know, we had to go back to that here because we My family lives in a place of abundance. They don't know how difficult it was to get here, you know? And all of a sudden they became uniquely aware because I said, all right, here's the deal. We have to go back to the basics right now. Yeah, we got to boost up on food. The toilet paper thing was annoying as hell, but you know, you get it. And I said, we have to learn to protect ourselves. And you know, I, I'm a big gun advocate anyway. And, If you don't like that, that's fine too. And, uh, but so Democrat, I said, we're gonna look, we're gonna load all the guns because I don't know what's gonna happen. Because I know if it does happen, it's better to be protected than to be, you know, the one in the corner. And, uh, they're like, wow. So I didn't make a big deal about it. I just said, this is, we got to handle the basics first. And They just got on board with it because it wasn't, oh my gosh, we're going to die. We got to make sure we have enough food and water, get some extra containers because you don't know if power is going to go out.

It could.

And so that wasn't a crisis mode. That was just handle these, make sure we always have these stable, not from a crisis mode standpoint, because a lot of people stay in that crisis mode. The world's going to come to an end. Okay. Solve it and move to the next problem. And most people are stuck there. And that mind, I had learned to move through quickly, whether you call it mindset or not. Solve that, move to the next one. Solve that, move to the next one. The quicker you get stuck, the worse the problems are. And then I am a big advocate of what I said, that 6-hour non-negotiable day. And I said, now we're going to all do it together. And they just got on board with it. Like the whole family, we do an hour-long workout that either my choice or my daughter's. Now she's a senior at West Point. So she's living with us, going through school, which is well-spent money, thank God. You know? So, uh, and we just adjusted and we do those, you know, the 6-hour day together. And my son wanted to— is graduating from high school and is wanting to get into business. Good. So we're going to do our studies. We're going to think about strategically where you want to be, which is one of the 3 simple things. And now we're having time to do that. And he's like, wow, I wish we'd have been doing this for 4 years. I'm like, dude, I've been telling you, you're the one that's been fighting me with it. So let's— we got back to simple And it's making things so much easier for everybody. And I, like you, had to pivot my business. My business was based on the intimacy of interaction. And I saw it coming. I'm like, what, that bullet has left the gun and it's never going to come back in the way that I thought. I was doing keynotes, you know, 2, 3 a month. That's gone. So what's another way to do a keynote? Do one of these in front of a crowd. And I had to talk myself into that. I'm like, man, it's just not the same. It doesn't matter anymore. It's gone. And corporations were dying to do them in any method they could to bring in, you know, people like me or you to talk about a subject. They just didn't know if anybody would want to get involved. So it went from a— one went from a 200-person supposed to be in, you know, in a coliseum type thing or in an event to 1,000 people checked on. So if you're not emotionally a midget about pivoting, just pivot and be responsible for it. And everybody pivoted. Not everybody, but some businesses, like, it's not discretionary spending. This is what we have to do. We have to bring in experts, otherwise we're going to get stuck because we don't know the solution. What's these guys' solution? And it actually worked out better the quicker I let go of my own insignificance, you know, the quicker, like, wow, I didn't think this would be possible.

And it goes back to that whole thing of like the non-fear of failure. Okay, that didn't work this time. Now what? And it's interesting that as we were getting our talk set up today, as I was fumbling through getting the Facebook Live set up, and it's certain in my head was not, oh my gosh, I hope this works was, oh my gosh, what is this guy on the other side who's just meeting me thinking about me not being able to handle my technology the right way? And meanwhile, we had all the technology on your side, right? That wasn't— so I created a story in my head in that 30 seconds, or maybe it was even 15 seconds, right, that made me one down myself, who I know I carry expertise, I know I carry success, I know I carry positivity and what to share in the world. And then I diminish my value in front of you without you even saying a word to me. Right. And how many of us are doing that?

That's an authentic conversation. And, uh, you know, I think the older I heard somebody say this, now that I'm older, I'm like, man, I understood what he was saying.

But here's what he said.

The older I get, the dumber I get. Like, I was really smart when I was a kid. And I had proof that I was more right than the other person. And they— I, I love— he, the guy said, I loved perfection. Now I loathe perfection because it's like the enemy of real success. And he goes, I love to see things fall apart, fall apart. And what I saw on the SEAL teams is nothing ever doesn't fall apart.— it always falls apart. And it happens quicker than your 15-second thing. Like, it happens in a millisecond. Like, every battle that I was in wasn't what we planned for. Like, the mission didn't go the way you had it planned. And if that guy falls apart, somebody forgets to do something— but I can tell you for sure, especially from—

interesting—

from your vantage point, The moment you get down on yourself or you get down on somebody, their actions really respond to that. Like if I say, ah man, I'm not going to be good at it, I will agree with that. My actions will go, yep, you're no longer good at this. As opposed to, ah shit, I didn't do that right. And then somebody goes, just do it again. Ah, it's going to hurt. Do it again, uh, the 10th time. And they're patiently yelling at you, say, do it again, do it again, because it's still— you got to get that thing in that hole. And that mentality in the SEAL Teams was brilliant. And everything's designed around failing in the SEAL Teams. Like, you never win, ever. They never give you the complex that you're good at anything, which is a terrible phenomenon to present to the business community because everybody wants to win. Efficiency, you know, like Lean Six Sigma, we're going to bring in efficiency. It ain't going to work anyway. It's the people that are going to make it a disaster. And so since we could never win in training, by the time you go to combat, you know everything's going to fall apart. And in combat was the only experience I ever had of winning.

Ever.

And I hate to say it this way, especially in front of an audience or you, you're going to pull this apart. Killing somebody is so finite that it's over.

Bang.

Oh my gosh, we just won. What normally was going to be a 5-hour training session is now 20 seconds into it, the battle's over. You're like, oh my gosh, the finality of combat was brilliant. Oh my gosh, that was my experience. It wasn't scary getting shot at. It was how quickly things were in the win category. I've never experienced winning. Oh my gosh, we won. And we'd look at each other going, what are we going to do now? This is usually a 6-hour thing.

But it's a binary.

I couldn't fathom how winning was so weird to experience because we'd never experienced it, which is a weird, unsolicited conversation.

Yeah.

Well, it also makes me think a lot about like that you had such a clear definition of what winning is in that context. And one of the things that I want to put out to the listeners of this and people that you and I are going to talk to in the future is what is the binary black and white win for them? Because I feel like I'm a story person, I'm a narrative person. I feel like I need to sometimes share a story for people to understand. Me so that I can then explain something to them. But I wonder, like, for people out there, if they redefine what a win is for them as a very black and white, tangible thing— it's binary, it's this or it's not that, right? If I do this, this, and this, I will win. Because I hear commonly from people, and I'm sure you've heard this over, when I do this, I'll get to the next level, but then I have to do that, that, and that to get to the next level. But there's never really a true win in their life. They're always working towards something else that will finally make them feel better about themselves, whether it's internally or get the accolades or the acceptance from someone else. But even when they get there, that's still not good enough because that's not a black and white binary. This is a win, this is a, so to speak, a loss, and let's do it over. So I really do appreciate that point of like the finality of that moment that you shared. Like, I won in that moment because it was very clear and it's very tactical.

Yeah, boy, you closed down 3 domains that I wouldn't— I don't close them down the way that you did, but I'm interested in how you did it. Winning is not to make yourself feel good. I am always hesitant for somebody to ever say, this is going to make— this is going to define you. Just because you get a million dollars, just because it's just a lot of dollars, it doesn't make you better at anything. And the human condition, here's the reality of it, is there's no ultimate peak that you'll ever arrive at. Like your Everest, the moment you get there, you have to have another Everest. It's, you know, you'll never arrive. So if you derive success on your potential to get to that one place to arrive at, you know, use the F word. You're effed. You're never— it's never going to happen. And emotionally, you're going to be distraught forever. So to me, tying emotions to victory or winning is a terrible consideration. I would use a different term now. I would call it metric. How are we measuring what our success in this temporary moment? So, you know, in the SEAL Teams, it was the easy metric. And one of the metrics is kill the bad guy or kill the 10 bad guys. That's a metric. So you come back and measure who you are against that. Well, we killed 4. Okay, doesn't mean you're good and bad. We tried for 10, we got 4, or we tried for 10, we got 10. And the other metric is that you brought your ass back. You know, you either got injured or you didn't. It's a very clear, concise, black and white metric of not how— it's just a metric. It's not a defining moment of who you are. And to tie an emotion to that is terrible because does it mean, okay, we killed 4. It's not good or bad. We just, we did 4. And like a football team, it's the same metric. A metric of success in football isn't how you felt at the end of the game. Because you can win the Super Bowl and feel lousy about, you know, you didn't make as many tackles.

But you won.

So the metric of emotion, and it's a terrible metric. Like I can tell you, I would always feel horrible at the end of a mission. Psychologically and physically, you're tapped. Like, you're— you have nothing left. So if a metric is how you feel, it may not be the right way to tie that to something. And in a chaos situation, how you feel doesn't matter. Are you moving forward? Are you— what's this one? Why it doesn't feel good. And I run ultra marathons, and I can tell you They don't feel good. You don't feel euphoric like you're this great moving like a perfect engine. Oh my gosh, it's so great. And the week after a 100-miler, you're sick. Like your liver function test is— the doctors think you're going to die. Your kidneys are shutting down. So it's a— to me, it's a not relative way to communicate success is how you feel. Maybe I've had a lot of training in, you know, what emotions are and what their outcomes are. They're hard to control. So if they pop up at the wrong time, it's not a metric. Like sometimes you feel sad when you're with your lover. It's not a metric of the relationship. It's a great relationship. We have all this and God, I feel terrible today, like I want to leave. Okay, that emotion is going to come and go with the weather. You know, the tornado is going to whip it through. Sometimes you feel good, sometimes you feel bad. It is just, I wish that it was not tied to the conversation of success.

Yeah, I just had this conversation with someone yesterday about their relationship and the words that they used And commonly people use this, well, when I'm happy, right? Or I'll be happy when. And I challenge them to reframe that perspective of happiness is no different of an emotion than resentment or anger or fear or worried or right. And it's a, it's a, it's a reaction to an experience versus a state of being. So if you're aiming for happiness in anything, then you're already screwing yourself over.

Yeah.

Right. You'll be let down constantly and consistently. So I really like, and one of the things that you were talking about a while ago, um, when it talked about belief about when you say X, you're going to get that is in the law of attraction world, um, which is really truly based on neurology and quantum mechanics where they were, one of the thought leaders says, um, you'll never get anything differently from that which you believe. So if you believe X, you are correct. But if you believe X is, I'm going to succeed and I'm going to put my effort into it and it's going to hurt and I'm going to suffer, but I'm going to work my way through it, you'll work your way through it. But if you are the person who says, I'm going to work my way through it until it causes me to suffer, then, right, that's your give up point. That's your fail, your fail point. So I really do think that that mentality is huge. And I just started reading some of John Maxwell's stuff. I've been a fan of John Maxwell as far as speaking and hearing quotes from him. But I just started reading some of his books and, you know, some of his stuff on mindset is just that pivot, right? That I start here. And if I keep thinking this way, what will be the outcome, right? As it goes out in that direction that I only have so much of a variation of where it can end up. But if I completely pivot, change the orientation of what my foundational beliefs are, not just do something different, but what do I believe differently? Because I can't get anything differently from that which I believe. How do I pivot my beliefs, my core fundamental beliefs? Then the outcome could be potentially different. And I think that's very—

it's actually a true statement. Uh, belief, as most people— God, this is a heady conversation. I don't get an opportunity to be heady with many people. So belief is a disease. As people notice belief, like, people would rather And people may be offended by it. People would rather believe in God than know God.

You know what I'm saying?

Whether you believe in God or not, whether you think—

experience, right?

Or whatever. So, uh, belief doesn't allow for knowledge. People will— if you can be convinced of something without experience, you're, you're in a tragic state. So The law of attraction is the law of knowledge. So you will create the knowing, but if you believe in it, you're going to limit it. Like, if I, I can only— I tell myself, boy, I can only run a 10-minute mile. Yes, that's, that's true for you. You have to kill that belief because as you go out and run, you may find that you can run a 7-minute mile. But you're the one that's going to stop yourself from it unconsciously. You believe you're going to die in combat, you will die in combat. Like when things go south in combat, your— your brain starts going, it tells you what's going to happen. We're dead. And then your actions start being correlate to creating deadness. And I've never seen anybody get injured who or people I've seen die or get injured get stuck in their belief system and they get rooted in it and they can't be convinced otherwise. And I've seen people do things in combat, you're like, there's— that's not possible. He goes, I had to make it possible for about 30 seconds. Like, it's not physically possible that you did that and there's no way that bullet missed your head. There's no stinking way. But they knew. They didn't believe it. They knew that it wasn't going to happen. Later, when they look back, they're like, I have no idea what happened. But in that moment, if they were to flesh out their brain and how their thought pattern worked, they were in full knowledge that this is what's going to happen. And it's temporary as well, right?

That mindset of I work in the place of miracles, or I work in a place of I don't have to understand how it's happening in order for me to make it happen. I just believe it's possible. Yeah. And I find that changing the language again, and I'm a big, big, big language people with, with my clients to help them. Like the most of the problems that they have is how they describe the problem or their belief around the problem where, you know, I remember one of my, one of my friends and mentors, American born, moved to Israel, served as a company commander for the Israeli Defense Force, Benny Friedman. He's also a rabbi now. And years ago, he actually— if you remember the Sbarro's Pizza bombing in 2001? So he actually survived that because there was some crazy story that happened where he was sitting up front. And he was the type of guy, when he would go into a restaurant— and he would tell this— that his wife would always make fun of him that if the food came back warm or not what he wanted, he would never send it back. He just didn't want to, like, you know, it's like, whatever, it was fine. But on that day, for whatever reason, the pizza came to him and it was cold. And in that old Sbarro's Pizza in downtown Jerusalem, you walk in and there's a sitting area, and then there's steps up to the back, right, to go into the back section. He's like, oh, this family over here, they're making some noise. The kid's like, I'm going to America for a trip. And he's like, I'm just gonna go sit in the back, bring me the pizza. The first time he said he ever really asked for someone to go out of their way to do something for him when it comes to like a restaurant and food. And him doing that, him changing the realm of his possibilities, fortunately saved his life. Wow. In that moment. Now, is that intuition? I'm not going to get into like those other people who didn't survive weren't meritorious of living, right? I'm not going to get into all that esoteric stuff right now, but What I want to point out, pinpoint on, is the same way I brought to you that 15-second doubt that I had when I was fumbling with the technology to get us on live. How can we overcome that? And I think this is the mindset that you and I have been talking about since we started talking today about pivoting, shifting, quelling, quashing that doubt and doing it anyway.

Yeah, so the first lesson that I teach clients, I'd written about in the book Unbreakable, 21 Days of Doing 3 Simple Things, even though the second book is 3 Simple Things, to overcome your excuses. Because until you learn how powerful your excuses are, you're not going to accomplish anything other than what the excuse is allowing. The profound nature of identifying excuses should be taught every week in school.

And every—

as a leader, you have to have people overcome their excuses. That's the deal. And oddly, what I have found— so this is the mindset is until excuses are unraveled, there cannot be any, any possibility. And now that there's 2,700 people that have taken Lesson 1, and literally it's just 3, 3 weeks long, you have to do it for 3 weeks, morning and night, things that you have to do, simple things, but you have to write down all your excuses that were going to stop you. So out of all those people, there are 4 prominent excuses which I didn't— I'm like, I just want to see how this plays out. And I thought the other excuses would be more paramount. The first excuse that literally excuses everybody from success in every aspect of their life is the excuse called this hurts. You're right, it hurts. My arm hurts, therefore I can't. I've now excused myself from my own potential. And I can write a book about it. A certain level of pain, you shouldn't get into a sport if you feel this pain. Or if you feel this pain, don't do it. And now there's a volume of people over here that allow pain to excuse themselves from their own success. The second one And I predicted pain would be a big excuse. It hurts, I can't continue. The second excuse was the one that I thought was weird. But it, oh my God, it affects everybody. It's, I forgot. Oh my God, I forgot. Like, I forgot to, like, this is what you and I were experiencing. Oh, it's not working. I forgot to plug that in. Oh, I forgot to change that setting. I forgot. Oh, since I forgot, there's no use. Why do we have to have this meeting? And it happens in a millisecond. You know how many business deals that I've been on where people have forgotten something? You forgot. It doesn't mean that you're not good at it. It's just, oh my God, I forgot. How many people forgot to go to a business meeting? So that 'I forgot' excuse shows up every day, all the time for Pretty much everybody. I forgot. I forgot to turn right, so I'm late. And I can come in and tell you, oh dude, I forgot. I forgot the bullets. I forgot to tell my wife I loved her. I forgot this. I forgot that. And everybody's like, oh, okay. I guess it's not going to work then. And we as a society have used I forgot so much, we don't even know how powerful it is. It's like the preeminent destructor of everything. It destroys everything. The third one is support as an excuse. So you don't support me, therefore I don't have to do it. My parents don't support me, therefore I don't have to do it. Society says I shouldn't. I don't get enough support, therefore I don't have to do it. So that element of my success is killed off by the excuse called support. The fourth one, as it became to unravel itself, I'm like, now I invest in this one. This is most of my training falls upon helping people understand this one. And it is this one. So it sounds like this to people. And I'm going to cuss because it's more apparent.

Bring it on.

It sounds like this. This is fucking stupid. I've now excused myself from doing it. This is stupid.

Yeah.

It's too far.

This is stupid.

Why? So it unravels into this why conversation. Why are we doing this? It's not going to work out. This is stupid. Why are people here? It's too hard. This— and it sounds like in your head, this is stupid. If you can mitigate this is stupid you win everywhere. Because I've never seen anything that was worth attaining that somewhere along the line you don't question it. Do I really have to put in 5 days with no sleep? Yes. Well, this is stupid. I'm going to do damage to myself. You mean I have to invest $20 million to get $6 million on the margin? That's stupid. Okay, you're done with that problem. You're never going to succeed in that area. It's, do I have to? So I'm a— I'm seeing my first kid get born, and you see your wife go through whatever they go through. You're like, oh my God, it's doing damage to her. This is really stupid. Why are we doing this? And now I have another job that I have to pick up called dad. And in your brain, it's like, man, this is really stupid. And I don't know what to do. And all this questioning that happens, overcoming the excuse called this is stupid. If you can do that, you will win in every area of your life because everything is literally this stupid. This stupid and stupid to be on this conversation, right?

Or I'm stupid, or I'm stupid for wanting this. I'm stupid for doing this. I'm stupid for thinking this, where you now personalize it, is that next— is probably the next deeper level that is out there, right? Where it now becomes an identity thing. And one of my favorite stories that I tell, and I've shared this in a few other episodes, is that when I have a couple that comes in and they're like, okay, so what's your goal? Like, well, we want to, we want to be doing things great. We want to be a great couple. We want to have a great relationship. Okay, so you've been married for how long? Or you've been in a relationship for how long? And they give me the timeframe. And let's say it's been more than newlyweds or they're just newly together in a relationship, average 5, 10, 15 years. And I'm like, okay, so how many therapy sessions have you guys done before?

None.

Okay, fair enough. How many books have you read on relationships and relationship dynamics or love languages or anything? Right. Self-care. None. Okay. YouTube videos, conversations with your spiritual leader, with a friend, with a couple that you think is doing it right. So right there, saying that they want something, but yet they haven't put any, um, until now. And I'm always curious about why now. What made it get so bad now that all of a sudden after 10 years, even though they knew things weren't going in the right direction, that it allowed them to now make that step. But How— why do you believe that you can get to great if you're not willing to put in all this effort along the way to get there? And my job is to now help them learn those skills.

And—

but I also want to know what the philosophy behind everything is. Why did it take you 5, 6, 10, 15, 20 years to now take that first step when you knew that it was— you weren't getting what you wanted and you weren't, uh, I don't know, in a good place with that.

Yeah, that's, uh, yeah, I'm not a therapist, but I do know that inside of the excuse conversation, what resides there is not lack of passion, is they've convinced themselves that there's nothing left. And which is the conversation, this is stupid, why do we want to continue? It's dull. You know who's dull? You are. I can get away with saying that. They're not paying me. You're dull. You're boring and dull, and it's not worth it anymore. So what are you going to add to the flavor? Well, it would be stupid to go on a date like our first date. Yeah, you're right. So go on a first date. Tell her something nice. Well, that's stupid. Again, the excuse, that's stupid. Shows up because, you know, what happens in your head, in the language center of your head, how that word, those words are formed, when they come out, they run the show. This is stupid. It would be stupid to give my— I mean, we've been married 20 years. Why do I have to give her a rose? It's stupid. Really? Give her a rose.

One of my favorite, one of my friends sent me a video of a pastor. A friend of mine who's a rabbi sent me a video of a pastor. His name is Mark Gungor, who does his whole ministry, I believe, is marriage and relationships. And it's a kind of comedy meets, you know, couples counseling presentation. And it's easily found on YouTube for people out there who are listening. And he talks about the difference between men's brains and women's brains, when it comes to neurology and relationships. And he said that—

Is that the one with the two heads up there?

Yes, that one. You've seen that one, right? So for people who haven't heard this and haven't yet checked it out, right? So he's joking around and he's talking about like, you know, women are going to be more with the feminine energy. They're going to be more expressive and I miss you and I love you and that's so nice. And, um, you know, the I love yous and why don't you ever tell me you love me back. And the guy's brain is like, Well, I told you in 1984 that I loved you.

Yeah.

And still, it's still applicable. So I would have let you know if that changed. And right, that's the mindset that like we have to kind of shift our thinking on, is that how can the neurological brain of one type of personality accept the neurological experience of another type of personality? And I was just having this conversation with a friend of mine. This morning about how their, their partner relates them and reacts to them is based on the always of what they've seen about them and the belief that they have. So they're not actually seeing the person in present time reality.

Yeah.

You're seeing them as a projection of all of the beliefs and experiences to that point and staying in that feedback loop. And that's the boringness I think that you were just describing. So The change of patterns, the change of beliefs, the willingness to see your business, your partner, your children, your money beliefs, your health beliefs, not as you've always done in that feedback loop. Well, because of this, I'm here now because I couldn't— I had this experience or I threw up when I, when I did my training last time, I'm going to throw up again. All of that has to change. And what is the present-day reality that we can get ourselves out of? And tell her.

Yeah, I came to that realization to find that one of those 3 simple things in relationship is nobody was listening. So listen, you will find out what the other partner needs because they'll fucking tell you, right? They'll tell you. And why, you know, with 20 years, I know what she wants or he wants.

Really?

Because every 7 years you're a new neurological human being.

Yep, right.

So if you think you know somebody 20 or 21 years later, you're 3 cycles away, my friend. And so hearing, you know, CEOs go through that experience of listening— wow, I didn't know my wife liked that.

Good.

She didn't know I really like this.

Good.

So now you're in this present moment. Now you're listening to what they want right now or what they're thinking about right now. And if you can allow— to me, listening is the hardest part still. And I thought I was good at it until I started teaching it. I'm like, man, I suck as a listener. Like, my daughter needs what she needs. I could think it was important or not, but hey, Dad, I need this. Okay, my son needs what he needs and it's not what I want him to need. Like, man, I wish you would— ah, it doesn't matter what I want, it matters what he wants. And that kind of relationship leads to the greatest thing in the world called, uh, you know, loyalty. Because I'm going to give you what you need, not what I think you need. What you actually asked for. And if they're sad, they're sad. Deal with that. But if you don't want to, you're stuffed. Isn't that what being truly present is?

And that's what being truly present is.

10-minute interval was the interesting part. All it takes is 10 minutes. It doesn't take 4 hours of a conversation. It takes 10.

And that's being truly present.

10 minutes.

Right? To be fully, fully present. To be in the present, to be with them where they're at now, not where they were days, weeks, months, years ago. And one of the resources that I'm thinking of, I'm going to post a link on, on the Facebook chat while we're working for people out there who are listening live and it'll be put into the episode notes, is that Dr. John Gottman, who is one of the top marital researchers, has a list of questions that he starts off with called Love Maps, that as you're reappreciating the person you're in a relationship with, and you can do this with friends and family members, but it's specifically for romantic relationships. It's a specific list of questions that he calls the foundational questions that everybody should know in present day that you shouldn't assume you know the answer, but you should get confirmation that you do.

Mm-hmm.

That's interesting.

And that's John Gottman's Love Maps. The other thing, right, you were talking about, like, how do I love my child the way that they need to love or my spouse or my friend, or even how do I appreciate my coworkers or my colleagues or my boss? The Five Love Languages are incredibly important. It's not just about the romantic love. It's also about any type of relational dynamic. It can be applied in all of those things for kids, for family members, for colleagues, stuff like that. So there's so many wonderful resources out there that we can use that are so simple, right? I think the Five Love Languages online, I think it takes you 12 minutes max if you're taking it slow to learn your love language.

Yep, yep.

And then there's an app which you can download, have your partner do it, have your friend do it, have your whoever do it, and they learn their love language, and you both get the app and you tell each other what the other person's love language is, and it gives you assignments to do for that person, and it's free, so you can't eff it up.

Yeah, or not do it. That's how you screw it up.

Right, right.

It still astounds me that I don't know my wife. What do you want? Like, literally, that's my conversation. So what's it like for you today?

What do you need today?

And she goes, I need to be, you know, for instance, I just need some quiet time.

Fuck, of all the things, that's what you want? Yeah, that's what I want.

Or hey, I just need, uh, can you go and get some flowers? To me, it's asinine. Like, that can't be the most important thing.

If I don't do it, I'm telling you how important it is.

If you don't do what your lover or spouse requires of you, it's now the most important thing in the world. If you give it to her or him, you get everything in return. And it's never, ever, ever, ever, ever what you thought it was going to be. It's never profound. It's, can you touch me when you walk by me? Oh God, I think it's minimal. Okay, she needs a brush by, and so this can't be it. It's got to be something else, right?

Right.

Like, and then, and most spouses don't need money. Like, they don't care that the husband makes millions of dollars. They need you to say something nice. It doesn't make sense to the man brain. Like, you know, men need what they need. Now when I can communicate that to Stacy, she now knows that it's urgent. I need this. And she'll literally put down what she's doing and give me that. And now that's it. It's 10 minutes, my friends, 10. If I don't get it, the whole day is screwed up. If I get it, I'm like, I'm done. Now it's— now I'm into execution. If I don't get it, it's delays everything, and then it disturbs all the emotionality between us. And to make it simple— and I'm sure it could be made more simple than that— but that, that simple thing in the, in the complex environment of relationship. Like, you have a million, you know, things that you know about relationship.

So we lost him for a second, so we're just gonna go back and review some of the resources that are available to you until Tom jumps back on. So, right, if you click the link that you just saw posted in the Facebook chat on my website, it's the resources and quizzes that has some really good stuff from Love Languages that has has some really good stuff on John Gottman stuff. So you can definitely check in with that, see what's there. We're talking about, again, the Five Love Languages and the Love Maps. That's under John Gottman and the Five Love Languages. There's also the links to Tom's books that are available. I put the links into the chat on Amazon that are available there. And we're hoping that we get past this little technical glitch at the moment that's happening. With Tom on his side, waiting for him to jump back on. But if you have any questions, I know Ira, we're gonna get to your question in a second once Tom jumps back on. We're gonna get to you. There we go. So I know while we were talking, I was just giving people some resources while we're waiting for you to jump back on, but someone in the chat asked the following question, and I wanted, before we go there, what you were saying about it only takes 10 minutes goes back to your story about the finiteness, right, of when you were out in a mission, that it ends so finitely. And when someone makes a request of you, it's not just, what do you need, right? I would say even advance it to say, and what would that look like for you? Which is the best follow-up question. So you can't really— can't screw that up. Then that's something that I would think you should ask, right? Someone said, what do you need right now? And what will that look like for you is the best way to get that which you need. As we, we bounce back out of him again, as we're waiting for him to jump back on. Sorry, guys, for everybody who's listening out there for the technical difficulties that we're having, right, in Zoom. So we know that there's some wild and crazy stuff happening with technology out there, but we're going to be patient for one more minute. But if you guys have any questions specifically at the moment Please feel free to ask it now. I'll wait a moment just for that, so before you all start disappearing on me. But is anybody else in any questions? I know Ira, we're gonna get to your question next. What's going on, Arturo, Nina, Jason, Sarah, Mark, Josh, Mike Cameron, what's going on, Jamie, Evan? I just want to give you guys thanks for checking in. Anybody have any thoughts, any comments, any questions about what we're discussing with Tom Shea? He is a decorated Navy SEAL, Senior Chief. He's the author of the books Unbreakable and Three Simple Things. He has a podcast called The Unbreakable Podcast. And we're going to wait for him to jump back on, and he's coming on right now.

There we go.

Welcome back.

That's crazy. Sorry about that.

It's all good.

So we're just trying to be Zoom.

Exactly. As I was sharing, so the question that someone was asking, Ira, this gentleman Ira was asking, it's what's the midpoint between what you emphasize as being prepared for total failure while keeping proven group concepts, bonding, team memory, etc.?

The midpoint?

Yeah, I guess the balance. Where are you?

Oh, the balance.

Yeah.

Okay, I got you. The midpoint between keeping, uh, the, the ball rolling and, uh, and people engaged. Is that another way of saying it?

Yeah, I get it, right? It's the being prepared for failure by— but also knowing that you have proven group concepts You've done this in the past. This thing has worked out in the past, right? The juxtaposition of two things. Maybe I think that's what it is.

I don't think— I hate, I loathe the word balance because nothing ever is in balance. It's always, uh, tippy. Uh, allowing for failure is paramount. All the time. If you don't recognize the value of failure, you're going to be stuck on doing the same thing over and over and over again, and then nobody's going to learn. So it depends on what part of a process you are. So if you're just bringing on somebody new or you're having new experiences, they're all based in failure. So the, the quicker that you get people to fail as a boss, as a human being, the easier it is to do harder things. If you're in execution where people are at a high level of skill, guess what happens there?

Failure.

So it's just hedged by, uh, having other people recognize, like, Tom is going to have a struggle right now doing what he's doing, and he's going to fall apart have somebody else go support those struggling times. Failure is the, is the 99% of success. 1% of it is the iceberg coming up above the surface that you call success. And nobody recognizes the value of failure. So your kid, if you've raised a kid, their whole childhood is failure. They can't study right. They don't do the right— they get even a 99% on the test. The kid doesn't think they did well.

Somebody turns them—

or they try for a sport or they're in band. They can't play the note well. Failure is the premise of success. And I wish people would look at it that way as opposed to when do you you know, cut somebody loose for failing. I don't know, are you a nutrition-based organization? Cut them loose quicker. Yeah, if you can replace somebody, do that. But it depends on the organization. If you look at it organizationally, sometimes you can't keep the same thing happening. It's a failure point. You got to have a solution, and that person may not be the right person. Uh, it depends on the organization. How much would you say, like, in the SEAL teams, failure happened all the time. Go ahead.

And how much was leadership responsible for that, for not either empowering— because taking a step back, what you're talking about really is resilience. How resilient are you going to be that if it fails, where you're looking, instead of looking for all the success points, you're actually looking— the success is finding a fail point and improving on that, right?

You expose fail points all the time. You know, the leadership conversation from a SEAL is a whole different conversation. Leaders are only one cog in the wheel, and they have a specific job to do, and the blame of things going wrong is never one person. So you could say it's the leader of the team's fault, but it's not that. The reality is leaders cause failure so that we can get better. Great leaders acknowledge failure. So you call it empowerment. Okay, duty, other than empowerment, figure this out. Uh, we're not going to leave until it's figured out. It may take 6 days, boss. Okay, we're going to stay here and not go home for 6 days.

I'm empowering you.

I'm here, but we have to figure this solution out. Fail, fail, fail, fail, come back. What did we learn? There are not a lot of leaders that have the ability to do that. Like, man, do I really want to— do I want to see this iteration 100 times? It's better just to get somebody in here that already knows what to do so we can stay normal as an institution. But if the leader is the one that really is an empowering leader, he's empowering failure, or she's empowering failure. It's going to be mipple. Working for an empowerment-based leader is miserable because you can't go home until it's solved. Yeah, but I don't care. I'm empowering you to solve it, so let's solve it. Everybody wants a great empowering leader until they get one, but oh my god, it's, it's ruthless.

Is that like that Steve Jobs story of like when he said like, this is what I want, and his design team came back to him, or his tech team came back and were like, well, this doesn't exist yet. And then he's like, well, then go create it. Is that kind of—

go do it, go figure it out. Yeah, that's an empowering leader. So they're, they're a very difficult human being to get along with, and everybody wants to be empowered. Good, I empower you. Let's go. I know that you can solve this, but it's too hard is the first thing that comes out of your mouth. Yes, it is. It's never happened before and we're going to solve it and we're not going home until it's solved. Like Elon Musk is one of those people now. He's weird, but how do you get a vertical rocket to come back to Earth? It's never happened.

And land standing up, right?

And he's empowering, but he's also going to cut you loose if you don't stay up.

Yeah, well, I remember seeing that when they had, uh, what was that, that Red Bull sponsored jump from space? I can't remember the name of the gentleman who did that.

Yeah.

Um, but like, that was probably in modern times. Like, we grew up with space shuttles, whatever, me. But like, the dude literally jumped from space and there was net, right? It's never been done before. It's not evil. That was like Evel Knievel times a billion, right? So was the technology there? Do we know? Is the space, right, everything— is he gonna burn? All of these were all the fail-safes that they probably had to go through. To make that happen and still was an unknown.

Yeah.

Right? I mean—

Yeah, so that's an interesting— so the balance point, it's not a balance point. It's the acknowledgment of the character of the people in the institution. If you want real articulate enduring success, all you'll face until the last step is fail, fail, fail, fail.

Fail.

Get up, start over. Oh my God, that didn't work. Everybody is arguing with each other. Okay, tomorrow's another day. That type of leadership and culture is very rare. Everybody thinks they want it, but it's a very rare culture to have.

And this is the culture that you are now committed to bringing into the world through your coaching and your speaking and your podcast and your books. So let's, let's wrap up our conversation with a few minutes about that because there's so much value of what you're bringing to the table that I want people out there to be able to leverage that. So you have two podcasts, correct?

Uh, yeah, it's going to be one, but yeah, we, my partner, I'd started a podcast two years ago called Unbreakable to literally allow conversations of, uh, what I call epistemology, the study of human beings, so to speak, and, uh, the, the mindset behind what would be possible for human beings. That was the original podcast. I partnered with another guy recently, uh, that he was— he and I would meet once a week anyway, and we're like, man, I get more from these, why don't we just make a podcast of it called Solving the Gap? Now we're just going to roll that into Unbreakable as the same conversation because of the followers that are under Unbreakable. And he and I, you know, he supported me in writing the book, 3 Simple Things, which is literally the training. He asked me 6 months ago, what happens if you die? I'm like, what do you mean? What happens to all that technology that you just created? I'm like, man, it's a secret sauce. I don't want to teach anybody the secret sauce. He goes, it's too hard. I put him through training. He goes, If you hadn't put me through it, I would never would have learned it. So let's just put it out there. So 3 Simple Things is the— what happened during, after, or after retirement of my putting a training together to teach human beings to operate at what I call 2X. So if you want to operate 2X better in those 5 areas that I mentioned— health, intellectual capacity, wealth, relationship and spiritual, this formula-based model that is lethal. That's what the book's about. And it boils down to your ability to do 3 simple things a day. Simple but not easy. It's freaking ruthless to do 3 simple things.

Love it. Love it. So the books can be found— I put links in the Facebook group. I'm also going to put them in the show notes. But right, the first one is Unbreakable: A Navy SEAL Way of Life. And the now forthcoming one is Three Simple Things: Leading During Chaos. And of course, the website that they can follow you on is what?

Yeah, just ThomShea.com.

Awesome.

And we disrupted the model. We're building a whole new organization. As we're flying the plane, we're building a new plane. The way to do it.

Right. That's the constant pivot as we've been talking about. So again, I know there's so much more and hopefully in the future maybe we'll have a round 2 of this because I know a lot of people have been piping in and asking some questions that we've been trying to bring into.

I love your mind. I need a lot of therapy, so I may contact you on the private.

Well, I have a feeling there's gonna be some really cool things that we can collaborate on, on multiple levels, but it's really true. Jason, I've been looking forward to this for a while. I know we had to reschedule and I'm glad that we were able to, to find a time to make this happen with everything going on. And again, guys, everybody who's listening out there, please do me a favor. Please check out his podcasts, right? Subscribe to one, then subscribe to the second one. As it's very meaningful to both of us and I make this request, please leave a starred and written review on iTunes. Not only does that make us feel good for the effort that we're putting into it, but it also helps other people who are like like-minded by the information that Tom and I are sharing in each of our podcasts. So please go to his— Minding the Gap?

No, go to Unbreakable Podcast.

Unbreakable, right? The Unbreakable one first. Subscribe to that. Leave a 5-star written review because why would you leave a 4-star review? You've got value out of this. And then go to the You Winning Life Podcast. Please feel free to follow us. All the other stuff is in all the show notes. We're going to put his books up there. Highly suggest that you check those out. Tom, two things again. Thank you so much for the time and thank you again for, for the service to this country and for all the people that you've led and trained and, and the, the difference that you're making in the world on your side.

Sure. Well, thank you, sir. I appreciate you and I appreciate every comment that people have made. Thank you.

Awesome. Thanks so much.