Honoring Our Independence Day NAVY Seal on How to Achieve Anything in Life | Lewis Howes

The biggest reason that people quit is because they're looking at the big picture, man. The guys that quit, they couldn't break.

It down one step at a time, one breath at a time.

If you will push yourself, you reach this place. I call it the steady state.

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So again, thank you so much as always for your support. It means the world to me. Make sure to click the subscribe button below and let's dive into this conversation. It seems so overwhelming. You're like, if I can't do this right now, if I'm struggling this moment, how am I gonna take on all this, right? Six months, four months, three months. And so we become overwhelmed and in.

Fear as opposed to just one step at a time. That's it, bro. I remember in Evolution during Hell Week, all it was was a one mile repeat. The instructors just got everybody together and said, All you gotta do is run one mile, Over and over again until we tell you to stop. There's no time standards. There's no- you- could walk. You could walk. I mean, you had to look like you were running, but you could walk. So I'm out here like, heck yeah, dude. All I gotta do is run one mile at my own pace on a sunny beach on Coronado Island. Like, this is amazing.

No sprinting, no time- Just like vacation.

Yeah, yeah, man. But that was the single evolution during Hell Week where we lost the most guys. And it was because of what we just talked about. They could not, certain people just could not focus on that mile, dude. All they could think about was all the miles in front of them, which they didn't know if this was the last one or not. So they looked at it as a big picture and They just couldn't handle it. And really it was the easiest evolution that we did in all of Hell Week.

Do you remember how many miles you actually ran?

Dude, I have no clue. And what the instructors do, they just keep it going until enough people quit.

And then they go, okay.

And then they call it.

Yeah.

Really?

Yeah.

And just to they're like, okay, we're gonna do 10 miles, 15, 20 miles, whatever, until people quit.

That's right. Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah, so that's the biggest thing, dude, about, and I take that now into ultra running and even 3 of 7, the business model for 3 of 7 and all that we have going on with that. It's just like, conquer what's right in front of you. And if you can stay in that mindset, on an ultra race, when I'm 95 miles deep into a race and I've got to climb a 2,000-foot mountain, How do you think I do it, bro?

One step at a time.

Yeah.

I mean, I pick a tree 20 yards ahead of me and I get to that tree and then I pick another tree and then eventually I'm at the summit, you know?

How do you manage your mind and the thoughts of, man, I've got five more miles or however many more miles to go, how many more hours to go, days to go, and this is freaking hard. How do you manage the mind? that wants to tell you to stop when it seems like there's so much ahead of you, but you're just going 10 feet at a time. How do you do that? When you're tired, when you're hurting, when you're exhausted, or you just don't get tired.

No, no. That's a mantra we use, right? And we can talk about that later. But for me, bro, it's like if you will push yourself if you will push yourself hard enough, you reach this place, I call it the steady state, and it's where it's not gonna hurt any worse.

And.

It'S not gonna get any harder. It's the steady state, man.

It's gonna stay hard.

It's gonna just stay just like that. That's exactly right. And it's almost like a For me, it's almost like a primal feeling. Like everything else is stripped away. And all I have to deal with is this pain, physical pain that I'm feeling. And it's a beaut, for me it's a beautiful thing, man.

So I don't- To feel the pain?

Well, to reach that steady state to where everything's just boiled down and it's just so simple, dude.

You're not stressing about who's calling you, what's happening at home, friends, or... That's right.

Yeah.

You're not stressed about that stuff. You're focused on one thing.

Yeah. And so how... I guess one way that I manage that, I like getting to that point in the first place. But some way that I guess you could say that I manage that pain is I stop fighting against it.

Wow.

I literally just tell myself, I accept this. And I almost just like in my mind's eye, I see it passing through me.

-The pain.

-The pain. And you can use this with all different types of things that are uncomfortable, like cold. If you stop, we'll stop fighting against it. It diminishes its power. But as long as you're fighting against the pain or you're using your energy to fight against the cold, it's gonna continue to gain traction and power over your mind. So it's just forcing yourself to let go and stop fighting against that discomfort and just rock and roll, man.

So for the everyday human being who does a five mile run, or maybe there's someone going extreme into an ice tub for two minutes, and they feel pain after a few miles or that first minute in the ice tub, how would you process that mentally or in your mind's eye? When you're entering the ice, when you're going to that five mile run where it starts to hurt, you get the cramps, you get the heartaches, sweating, what would you do in that moment? Obviously for you that's like 50 to 100 miles, but for the everyday human, how would you approach that mentally? like a process we could understand. I understand of like surrendering and letting go through you, but what is it, what's a strategy we could implement you think?

Well, I mean, I think a strategy to implement that particular thing about not fighting against it, I think is that you could speak it out loud. I talk to myself all the time and that's something I'm so adamant about is the spoken word. So, you know, if you, So it's.

Starting to feel painful. I'm on my third mile. I feel like I want to slow down. What would I say to myself?

Well, I mean you can counterpunch that with any number of statements or mantras, whatever works best for you. You know what I mean? Of course I have some that I use on my own, but that's for me, that would be the number one tool to kind of manage that pain.

Spoken mantra out loud.

Yeah, the spoken word.

Not an internal mantra or a whisper, but actually saying it, you think?

Yeah, totally, man.

Yeah.

Yeah, it has to be said out loud.

Okay. Were you gonna say something else?

No, I'm good, bro.

What's the killer of getting through hard challenges in your mind? What's the thing that kills most individuals? once it starts to get hard and they stop.

Negativity, man. Yeah.

The thought process, the words.

It's not necessarily the negative thought because we can't control our thoughts, obviously, all the time. We're gonna have thoughts in our head that pop up that we don't want to be there. But it's when you give those thoughts power through the things that you say. So I give you an example. one of my best friends going through SEAL training. He came to me one morning and he said, I could tell he had been in a bad place mentally, but he was doing fine, progressing through training. But he came to me one morning and he said out loud for the first time, I don't think I'm good enough to make it through this training anymore. Which was a lie. He was completely physically capable of doing every single thing that we had to do that day and every other day. But when he came and said that, it gave those thoughts that he had, that what do you call it, like lack of confidence or, you know, those thoughts that he was having that he wasn't good enough, they didn't have enough traction to stop him until he came and told me that out loud.

Spoke it into existence.

He spoke it out loud, yeah man.

So you might be thinking, am I good enough to do this? Can I make it through? Maybe I'm not as strong as these guys. These guys are more talented. But once you start saying it to someone else out loud, that's when your body starts to believe it even stronger and it gets harder and harder to go back into a confident place, I'm assuming.

That's it brother. Yeah, so like when he told me that, it was just like seconds later he was going to ring the bell.

Really?

Yeah, and there was nothing that I could do to stop him.

It's like he finally believed it 100% and he was out.

Yep. Yep.

Just don't say it and you're halfway there, right? If you like, just don't say it, you have a chance.

That's it, brother. That's it. And so your tongue, your tongue is the thing. I compare it to a rudder. A rudder is the main control surface that steers a ship, steers the direction of a ship. your tongue is your rudder. It's going to steer the direction of your life and the outcomes of your situations 98% of the time.

So.

What you say is pretty important.

Yeah, it's paramount to me, bro. I mean, that's like, I take this to such an extreme that I don't curse. I'm a Christian, but not cursing is not a Christian thing. It's because none of those words in and of themselves have a positive meaning. So why am I gonna use them? So for me, it is paramount, dude. The things that we say, yes.

Did you ever come to a place where you started saying negative things to yourself during BUDS training or as a SEAL? where you had to catch yourself or have you always been clear with your words to yourself?

I have not always been clear with my words to myself. I became more conscious about the power of my words throughout life and doing really, really hard stuff to where, you know, I've put myself in enough situations with other people around me to see the power of the spoken word actually work not only in my own situations but in the men around me or women around me in racing. You know?

Yeah.

So as every time I see it work, I'm like, Holy smokes, this is powerful. This is powerful. Well then finally I started going on some podcasts and telling people that it works and then I now I get hundreds of messages a month of people saying, oh my gosh, this works.

What are the words we should never say to ourselves? And what should we say to ourselves every day?

You know, I think that's really, I think that's really individualized, man. I mean, as far as the words that you should never say to yourself, it's going to be dependent on the situation you're in, you know what I mean? And then the things that you're saying to yourself, you know, a big one for me is, I will not die in the chair. That's a huge mantra, you know, that I use. I won't die in the chair, and that has a whole meaning and story behind it.

What's the brief meaning?

So that was born out of that last man standing race that I did a few months, well, no, it was back in May, where I was running you know, we had to run 4.16 miles every hour on the hour. Each one of those hours, I would dedicate to a fallen brother.

Wow.

In the SEAL teams.

And their actual names?

Yeah, I had a wrist coach that I was wearing and I would have their, you know, index card with their face name, their family's names, their date of sacrifice.

And so, holy cow, that probably gave me a lot more power and strength.

It did, man. But it gave me a lot more pressure too, dude, because each one of these laps was for this guy. And some of those guys were guys that I had spent a lot of time with, you know what I mean? So the way that race worked, there was no definitive finish line. You just kept running until only one runner was left standing. So I could not promise my brothers that I would win. I couldn't promise them victory because I didn't know if my body would break or, you know, I was, I didn't know. I didn't know where the race was going to end. So, but, but I could promise them that if I died and death meaning death within a situation, not physical death, but death in this scenario would be of my race, if that time came, I would die out on the race course battling for every step that I took.

Not on the chair.

I won't die in the chair. That's exactly right.

Sitting around waiting.

Yep. So at the end of each one of these laps, there was a chair. So if I came in off the lap in 55 minutes, I could sit down for five minutes. And it was hard. A lot of people died in the chair that day.

I'm done. I'm done.

Because it was hard to rise back up, man. For sure.

Did you win the race?

No, I was the I think I was the third man standing. I ran 116.5 miles. And my last lap, dude, was actually for, my last lap was for a good friend of mine named Blake Marston. And we lost Blake in a skydiving accident not long ago. And dude, I remember looking down at, I went out on that lap and so, It was muddy. I had tied my shoes too tight and so my shoelaces were sawing through that large tendon in the front of my ankles. That was painful. Yeah, so it got to the point that I could no longer flex my toes toward my shin anymore. So every step was like I was dragging my feet like lead weights. So I went out on that lap and I pretty much, I was broken, dude. Yeah, your whole body. But I wasn't gonna die in a chair, dude. You were on the lap, though.

I was out on the lap. You fell on the lap or you didn't make it back in time and.

You'Re like, yeah, I got out there, dude, and I remember I was looking down at Blake and dude, I just started crying because I knew at a certain point that I could not make it back in time.

Oh my gosh.

And I thought, you know, what does Blake think of me right now? And then I just had this sense of peace come over me, dude, and I could see his face in my mind's eye laughing at my poor physical state because we always find, I mean, team guys, we always find humor in adversity. I mean, no matter how miserable it got, we would be joking and laughing at each other. So I saw him laughing at me, you know, and then I found a stick on the ground and hobbled my way back to the finish line.

Yeah, so you made it through. It wasn't in the time allotted. It was after the time.

It was after the time.

That's right.

So, 116 miles.

Wow.

Yeah, but you know, you can apply, I apply that now that don't die in the chair to all aspects of my life, man, whether it's business or personal relationships or marriages or you name it dude.

So, you have a mantra and you'll say this mantra out loud or internally every day when you feel it gets tough.

Yeah, yeah it's used as a counter punch dude to those negative thoughts.

You know what's funny? Like mantras are talked about a lot in kind of the spiritual meditation communities. But you're this hardcore Navy SEAL guy who's saying The power of the spoken word, the power of a mantra, a positive mantra, is what gets you through adversity.

That's it, bro.

And that's the secret.

That's your router, man.

What are the things that you saw other guys do really well or that you did to learn how to overcome being insecure, lacking the confidence of something, and just overall doubting yourself? That everyday human beings could apply on a daily basis.

Bro, I think that we all need to come to the realization that we're all made of the same stuff, man. Freaking dirt. That's all. We are all made of the same stuff. So, Lewis, you are a awesome dude. You have accomplished so much, man. But you know why you have done. You have used your tools properly. You don't have anything that I don't, and I hope you don't mind me using us as a direct example. You don't have anything.

That I don't.

Have from a physical, I have a strong healthy body and a strong healthy mind. We're made of the exact same stuff. You have utilized your tools, your time, the people around you, your speech, your relationships, all these universal tools that we all have access to. We all have access to time. We all have access to people around us.

Resources at some level.

Yeah, those are and you can't use the argument that oh, well, take time for example. Say time is a tool that helps you accomplish your mission. Well, yeah, you may have more time than me, but take a look at it in the natural world as say we both had a hammer. The hammer represents time. We need to drive a nail through this table right here. Your hammer is bigger than mine, so obviously you're going to drive the nail faster than me, but I have a hammer too, even though it's smaller. I can still drive that nail flush with this table right here. So it's not an excuse to say, well, Lewis has so much more resources than I have. It doesn't matter, dude. We're made of the same stuff.

Yeah, you can still get the job done.

We can still get the job done. So for me, that's essential, is to stop looking at each other like, you know, somebody, you know, and look at me, for example, bro. I'm some old country dude from North Georgia. How could I have ever dreamed to go and serve at the tip of the spear with the best men America has to offer in the United States fighting forces? How could I have ever dreamed of going to do that? It makes no logical sense. But even back in those days, I had the same viewpoint. We're all made of the same stuff, bro.

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That's an excellent combination, Louis.

I like those.

It sounds like you answered that question, bro.

But is there anything else that you--.

I can, I mean, and so So I'm very hesitant to give advice. I never give advice. I can tell you what I do based around those things that you just said. I have a routine. I get up every morning at about 6:00 in the morning. The first part of my day, I dedicate to my God. So I give Him the first fruits of my day. I honor Him in that way because I feel like He expects that of me. Through prayer, through reading. For me, it's the Bible. So that's what I do. It could be for five minutes, it could be for 45 minutes. But that's how I start my day every single day. If I don't do that, I'm screwed up, dude.

Really?

Yeah. So, you know, I do that, then I spend four hours a day training. That may sound crazy, but I train for four hours a day. And that right there, that's where all my perspective comes from. That's where my outlook on life comes from. during that four hour block, I am honing my body and my soul, my mind, will and emotions. That's where the battle is, is in the soul. What do you want to do? What do you think you want to do? How do you feel about something? Those are the things that we have need to get a hold of, right? But when you're out Doing something hard, self-inflicted adversity, it hones that soul portion of us down at the same time that it's training our body. So the two are very intertwined.

Giving you energy, keeping you healthy, keeping you lean, sharp. It provides that for the body.

It provides that for the body.

And the soul and the mind, right?

The soul being the mind, will and emotions, it makes you force your your mind, your will, what do you want to do and your emotions? How do you feel about this activity and this pain?

Because you don't want to do it.

Exactly. But when you go out and do it, you're honing that portion of you as a human and then moving forward from there.

So that's every day, seven days a week, because it's five days a week training four hours a day.

Yeah, I train every day. I set that block Now, the intensity may vary.

Right, right.

I mean, it may just be a four hour hike in the woods. You know what I mean?

It's not a ultra marathon every day.

No, no, totally. I mean, I may only cover 10 miles in that four hours. I may cover 30 miles.

It's always a run, is it something else, a swim?

It could be a combination. It could be weight train. I do weight train, you know, strength training twice a week at least.

But why four hours? Why not one, three, five? Is there a number with four?

Because there's no number. I feel like that's what I need personally to perform on the level that I want to perform and to maintain the perspective that I have on life.

Powerful, okay. So after that?

After that is my work time. So from noon to the rest of the day, up until 5, 6, sometimes 7 o'clock. That's my work time. And so I take all that perspective and all that energy and all that good stuff that I get out there on that run or that weight lifting or whatever, and then I transfer that over into my work time.

That's probably powerful. You got so much clarity.

That's it, brother.

And you get all your best ideas from those four hours. You probably let go of all the pain or frustration or anger or whatever you've got in your head that's festering from the day before. If you have anything that clears out.

That's it, brother.

Purge that stuff. You get back to a peaceful place.

Yep. So I took care of my spirit in that first 30 minutes. Take care of my body, soul, and that next four hours, the rest of the day, man, I can hammer some stuff out. I can put down some So that's the one thing, you know, that's my biggest fear as things grow. My biggest fear is that this telephone and this phone, text messages and social media, my biggest fear is that that stuff is one day going to maybe tarnish the clarity of my perspective, is going to take away from that that four hour block of time. Because if I don't put the time in to myself, all that Instagram, all that stuff, none of that matters. Because if I don't put that four hours into myself, the stuff that I put out on the back half of the day is not going to be as pure as it should be. So my biggest fear is losing that purity, man. And I shouldn't say I fear it. I'm very conscious of it, man.

So you finish around 5, 6, 7, and then what's the evening look like?

That's my wife's time, man.

Yeah.

See, I love her more than anything else in the world. Yeah.

How long you been together?

Brooke and I have been together for seven years now.

She got married while you were in the Navy.

Yeah.

And was that challenging? for her to be with someone who's off in war every day?

Oh, it's, I wish you could ask her that question. I mean, I feel like it was more challenging for her than it was for me, you know? And as a SEAL, you're gone on average, I'd say 300 days out of the year. I mean, you're not at war that whole time. It's training, but, you know, it's a mix of both. And yeah, it's extremely difficult, man. Yeah, for sure. And she suffered from it, you know? But luckily, we're still together. And again, because of the adversity we went through in our marriage, it's the same theme, brother. The adversity we went through in our marriage, my wife had a very dangerous disease called addiction. She, you know, she got wrapped up in that for a while and we had to go through the process, I shouldn't say wrapped up. She was, you know, in it. In it.

Yeah.

And it was bad, dude. And that's a whole other story, man. But we had to go through that adversity together and now we have the best freaking marriage on earth.

Wow.

You know, so what's the greatest lesson she's taught you? while you're an active Navy SEAL and since your retirement.

Humility. Humility for 100%. She's, she, she, she's, she keeps me grounded, man. Yeah, she did that all, you know, because as a team guy, man, you're hanging out with active duty, you know, pipe hitting alpha males all day long, and you need somebody to pull you back down to earth sometimes. And, and even with ultra running, you know, really competitive there. And I'm not a cocky person, dude. But if I start to get a little lofty with, you know, my speech or something like that, man, she snatches me right back down to where I need to be.

Okay, so. So humility has been the biggest lesson. What's something she that you've learned about her since you've left the Navy that has surprised you? that's different than when you were together in the Navy. Because you had more time with her, assuming.

I would say how talented she is. Like, I didn't get to pay enough attention to her talents when I was active duty. And now that I get to spend more time with her, and she's getting to pursue some of her passions, It just has blown me away with how talented she is. So she loves photography, she's an awesome cook, and just her people skills, man. So that's the biggest thing.

What's the.

Do you have any regrets from anything in the 12 years? Or wish you could have gone longer? Because you had to retire essentially because of the hearing loss from all the.

Bombs and Yeah, it was a whole combination of stuff.

A bunch of different things they pretty much said.

So I was medically retired.

Gotcha.

Yeah.

Would you have stayed in it had you been perfectly healthy, 100%?

Oh, yeah, man. Yeah, I would have definitely, I mean, I would have stayed in the teams as long as they would have let me. I mean, you get to go to work with heroes every single day, bro. Why would you ever want to leave that, you know? Do I have any regrets? Nothing that really stands out, man. I really wouldn't change a thing.

You wish we'd have found a few more walls to get behind, a couple more rocks still.

No, man, because it's all brought me to where I am now. I'm sitting here talking to Lewis Howes, man. I mean, in my opinion, I don't deserve to be here, bro. But the whole chain of events have brought me to where I am now.

Meeting just people.

Yeah.

Yeah, and yeah. And I'm not trying to put you on a pedestal. I'm just using you as an example because we're sitting right here.

Sure, sure.

Face to face, you know.

What were some of the coolest moments that you got to experience where you're actually in the moment thinking, man, I'm just a kid from this town in Georgia and now I'm, I don't want to speak out of line for you of what you've told me in the past, but Now I'm doing this and now I'm doing this and this is crazy. Did you ever have any of those moments or were you just?

The coolest moments that I've had in my life have been since I retired this past January.

Really?

They have totally man. So much stuff has happened dude. Just like the vision I told you about and being able to let go and move forward into this awesome future.

I mean not holding on to the identity of the past.

Exactly.

This is who I was. This is my dream. This is my whole life. Now it's over.

That's awesome.

Holding on to like the glory days.

Yeah, so the coolest moments have definitely been in this last eight, ten months, the coolest moments of my life.

Really?

Yeah, man. And not to take away from what we did in the teams, but that was a job. It got to the point, and I think all guys get that, it's just it's no different than you going to do what you do with your group every day. It was a job, dude. We had a mission. We went and did it. Skydiving, diving, that was all the job, man. But now it's fun and it's like all these exciting things have happened and just the network, getting to know people like you, like Jesse, you know, Scott Worthington out in New Zealand, getting to know, create this network of just awesome individuals and It's been amazing, bro.

People get so stuck in these day-to-day struggles or pains. Not to say it's not challenging for them in their season of life, but why do you think so many people suffer in their stuckness of job, career, life, purpose, and how can they start taking full ownership as opposed to making excuses or blaming everything around them as opposed to being responsible for their life? how can someone learn this?

Yeah.

When I hear this story of you, I'm just like, what's anyone's excuse?

Sure.

On how to overcome adversity.

Yeah.

I'll start off because you mentioned this perspective is a powerful tool. You mentioned comparison and whatnot. Powerful tool when it's wielded or when it's weaponized appropriately. And, you know, I was in the hospital at Walter Reed for a year, lost my leg, could have easily felt really sorry for myself when I was alongside people that had, you know, they were missing all their limbs, or even worse, service members that had such severe traumatic brain injury that they did not recognize their wife and kids.

Oh, man.

When I'm next to that individual, this is a paper cut to me. So like that power of perspective, because I was able to weaponize the gratitude in that scenario. That's the key. Because a lot of times I think when it comes to comparison or perspective, it can drive people even deeper into a hole because they're saying, hey man, like this person did this thing under these extreme circumstances and I'm having difficulty getting up in the morning, like what's wrong with me? And it ends up being a driving factor that makes it worse where No, no, stop for a second. Be grateful for what you have. See it that way. Open up your heart and your soul a little bit. Say, wow, I'm really fortunate. I got a lot of great things going right now. And use that as a tool. Those that are stuck, if there is.

Not.

A mission that's been identified, in my opinion, it becomes extraordinarily difficult to get past the adversity, but even and oftentimes just to get moving. Like, what is it that you want to do? It sounds like a very simple question, but there's layers of difficulty built within this. Like, have you begun an internal dialogue with yourself yet at all? Have you looked in the mirror at any point in your life and said, what do you want to do? Who do you want to become? And I think oftentimes, and that's how it started for me, just very simple, and letting the universe or God or your soul or call it whatever you want, communicate back to you on what do you want to do, who do you want to become? In order to make that exercise of any kind of value, one is expectation, knowing that it's likely not going to, the answer is not going to come blasting through the glass and punch you in the face. more often than not, it takes repetition. You have to actually work at it. Two is if there's not a degree of self honesty, then it's really not going to matter. And in today's world, you can make the argument that that has never been more difficult ever in the world of immediate satisfaction and social media and where people are projecting an image because that's become the norm. It's easy for us to begin to believe our own and our own facade. And so that internal dialogue, that level of self-awareness is important. But if you're lying to yourself, then it's not going to matter. So there's a lot there to begin playing around with. But I do think that once that mission has been identified, and oftentimes I'm asked, well, I'm having that conversation. I really am, I'm journaling, I'm being honest, I'm doing all these things, but I still don't know what my purpose is. I'm still, my soul is not being lit towards something, you know, a technique that is often used is to hone in on your talents and kind of leverage the likelihood of success. Because if you hone in on our talents, which are the things we do best with the least amount of effort, and then you lay a skill on top of that, odds are you're gonna be in a really great place to do some really great things. I just prefer to use the course of action prior to that as COO 1 because it doesn't place any limitations on ourselves.

I think it's beautiful. This is everything that I've been preaching but communicating to my audience about from my lessons in sports. If I didn't have a goal, I wasn't willing to I would quit football if I didn't have some type of mission or goal that I was excited about. It was meaningful to me that had a reason why I wanted to do it. Because three days were so painful and it was hot and I could go chase girls instead or do something easier. So I needed something bigger than myself, a mission bigger than me that I was excited about to go through all the pain of all the different sports injuries and just sacrificing whatever, early mornings, all these different things, cutting out bad food, whatever it was, that was the easy way out. And same thing when I transitioned to business and just life and relationships, it was like things would, I would suffer and struggle more when I didn't have a meaningful mission. You can take on different things in life, but if it doesn't bring some type of fulfillment or meaning, it's gonna feel harder and you're gonna suffer more. It's going to be hard no matter what.

Sure.

Right?

There's going to, you have to do things every single day to be successful. You have to show up, you have to experience some type of pain and overcome it in order to build your emotional, mental or physical strength, right? Absolutely. Consistently. Yeah. So you might as well enjoy it or find fun in that process with a meaningful mission that you're tied to or seeing in the distance and trying to draw in closer. So I love that you talk about mission because I think a lot of people don't have that. and I love that you talk about talent and skills. One of the things I did when I got out of sports and was trying to figure out who I was and my identity in life now that sports was over, was I started to address a lot of my insecurities and fears. And I said, how can I maximize my talents, but also my fears and insecurities make me feel really, I lack confidence because I know these are in the background. It was hard for me to do public speaking. I knew this was just a challenge for me. So I went all in on public speaking every single week for a year. I knew I had this desire to learn salsa dancing, but I was terrified to get on the dance floor because I didn't want to be made fun of. So I went all in and practiced every week for a couple of years as well. I just said, what are the things that I can build as talents and skills that I'm not good at as well that will make me more bulletproof emotionally and mentally?

Yes.

You know, like I can, whip out these tools at any moment and feel more confident. Before the interview continues, if you feel like you're not living your most authentic life, not leaning into your purpose, and not living the life that your future self would be extremely proud of, I've written a new book called the Greatness Mindset. And I think you're gonna love this. Through powerful stories, science-backed strategies, and step-by-step guidance, the Greatness Mindset will help you overcome all the different challenges in your life to design the life of your dreams and then turn it into your reality. Make sure to click the link below in the description to get your copy today. Okay, let's get back to this video. What would you say are the main talents or skills then that you've developed since that time, since losing your leg? And you speak another language too, or did you have to learn another language or.

Yeah, I speak a few languages now.

Pretty fluent on this?

No, we'll say we have a working knowledge.

Right, right, right, right.

Yeah, if I know I'm going someplace where I may have to use it, I gotta pull out the materials and dust off the cobwebs. It's an awesome question, you know, kind of looking at the positive sides of any scenario because they're there. I don't care how horrible it was, I believe that it's only a matter of time and with enough reflection that there's positivity to extract from that. this being one of those, certainly not towards the top, but one of them, one I would say is my level and commitment to efficiency. And the example I'll use or really the way in which this has been reinforced is when you have an amputee or when you use a prosthetic with a traditional socket system. So imagine this is my actual leg. my legs fits inside this bucket, and that's how it stays attached to my body. That's how most of those of us that have prosthetics, that's how it stays attached to us. Sweat becomes the ultimate enemy because it gets slippery, it slips around, it's not working. It starts to chafe. The leg isn't functioning normal. So I eventually began to visualize the second I put my prosthetic on my body, a clock began to tick. And it was only a matter of time before I had to take it off, wipe it down, depending on what I was doing, maybe let it breathe for 10 minutes or 20 or an hour. Because you sweat a lot.

Because I sweat a lot. Me too. I'm a big guy.

You're sweating all the time. Walk out in the snow and you sweat probably, right?

All the time.

Me too, yeah.

Right.

Especially fun fact, when you lose this many sweat pores, your other ones work in overdrive.

Oh my gosh.

To cool you off.

Yeah.

Learned that in the hospital. I was going through multiple t-shirts a day. So, you know, I am more capable when I'm on two feet. Certainly I can be mobile, I can be in a wheelchair, I can be on crutches, but I'm not as capable as I am when I'm on two legs.

You're more efficient when you're on two legs.

Absolutely. I'm more productive when I'm on two legs. So that clock begins to tick. So I knew I needed to maximize every single moment that I was on two legs. and it got a little OCD, which my wife eventually kind of got cool with because it got to the point where if I, for example, were leaving my house for the day and I grabbed my stuff and I took, you know, eight steps and I realized I had forgotten something. Well, that's 16 steps that I'm not getting back. Eight to go back to my thing, eight to get back to where I was. And it started to drive me more and more crazy.

So I began every step needs to matter.

Every step, every minute, every second needs to matter. And this is, I get, I understand this is the extreme. And some of your viewers may be like, this is insanity. But, you know, again, I set my sights on something so ambitious that I need to maximize every single moment. And therefore, I began just modifying, creating or modifying these different systems to minimize the likelihood of me missing those 16 steps again. So it's like, okay, I forgot my, you know, wallet. So now it's wallet, phone, like at the end of every day, like this is where everything goes.

So that everything you need to leave the next day is in one place.

Everything is streamlined.

Yes.

So just day to day, I began just kind of instinctually creating these different systems throughout my day to maximize my level of efficiency just so I could do more things Betta on two feet and for longer. So that's just kind of a process in which I likely would not have learned if I had not gone through this. And it's one that I've, you know, I've maintained really to this day.

For the last nine years now, right here, however long it's been.

Yeah.

Right.

So it's almost instinctual where I'm just, I'm constantly looking at ways to improve, to make up a second or two.

Or not, but with the stream, circumstances, you need to take extreme changes to maximize your life or to master your life. Otherwise, you could fall two hours behind every day because, oh, I forgot this and not upgrading your systems with a level and the degree of your new reality. So you need to upgrade your level of thinking, your skill sets, the systems inside of you, your processes. to be even more efficient than before, even with, you know, the changing of the prosthetic or whatever you might have to do.

Right.

And this is, I mean, this is more tactical, on the ground stuff, like physically, you know, moving things around through my day. This is tactical, tangible tools.

This.

I'll, I'll use a second, a second point. It's more conceptual, but I really want to emphasize this. You talk about what were the upsides? What were the positive aspects that you've learned or been able to leverage from losing your leg? And it's knowing, realizing and knowing that although I was a hard worker and I was productive on two legs and I've got plenty of accomplishments and stuff that I'm certainly proud of, that took a lot of really hard work. There was an entire another level of work ethic and productivity that was sitting inside me the entire time that I did not know existed until this happened. And I set my sights on something extraordinarily unlikely, but I committed myself to because I knew I needed to be able to work at an extraordinarily higher level, like the highest possible level. And it's not as if when I was in the hospital, you know, some scientist walked into my room and rammed a metal spike in the back of my head and uploaded work ethic, like Neo in the Matrix. Like it was literally there the whole time. I think that oftentimes it takes a traumatic event or hitting rock bottom for people to realize that there's so much more inside them that is literally sitting there waiting to be leveraged. And that becomes the kind of the catalyst for them to start to see that. And then it becomes contagious. It's like, oh my gosh, look what I just did. What else can I do? What else can I do? And that snowball effect happens. But having retrospectively kind of analyzed that, yeah, sure, this was the catalyst and I've seen what I was able to do. How did I really do that? And it was through the modification primarily anyway of two relationships, my relationship with fear and my relationship with pain. And those are relationships like any other relationships we have, right? It's a two-way street. You talk to that entity and it talks back. You can only influence so much, but by modifying my relationship with those two things really is what facilitated my ability to do more, push harder, create more.

What do you think was the thing that got you through? really a year of kind of surgeries and recovery and, and you're still recovering in some ways, you know, from the trauma emotionally, physically, all these different things. But what allowed you to get through that mentally, that period of time to be determined enough to get back into service at full capacity?

Yeah, I think what enabled that was a very clearly defined and continuously refined vision of where I was going. And again, having knowing that this is what I was put on this earth to do didn't allow me an alternative option. So, and I say this delicately because I really never went down this dark path of negativity and depression and struggle mentally, certainly countless times of frustration and anger and disappointment and all that. But I stayed generally positive and target fixated, I think because I had that sense of, of mission. I knew what my mission was. And I say that not that it's something I'm really proud of, because I don't think it's something to be ashamed of if that happens. I know some absolute Worriers that have struggled at times with that. I just made a decision in the extraordinary early parts of this journey that this is what I was going to do. And it gave me something to grasp onto during the countless moments of doubt and second guessing myself. And when all of the off-ramp justification starts sounding really convincing, it was like, no, no, no, no. Stop.

Wow.

This is what's going to happen. Get your head back in the game and, like, figure out this next problem.

So you had to enroll yourself and other people who were saying, hey, listen, it's okay if you need to, like, you know, retire. It's okay if you needed to, you know, to really think about the next chapter of your life. Like, think about your family, you know, all these different things.

Yeah.

You had to coach them, essentially, in saying, that's not an option. This is what we're focused on. Yeah. Is that right?

I was surrounded by that. And, you know, because they were trying to take care of you.

They were trying to. They were trying to do their best.

It comes from a place of love, man.

Yeah.

It's not like, I don't believe in you.

It's right. You can't be. You're not gonna be able to walk.

For a while, you know? Like, let's.

Yeah.

They're thinking about that. Let's be practical. I'm looking out for what's best for you. Right. I was able to coach those that I was able to, or at least get into a place where they understood. my mentality, but there were many that I was unsuccessful at convincing or communicating. I was unsuccessful at effectively communicating to them what my intentions were. And, you know, a lot of times the road of ambition is the lonely one, and you just have to accept that. And if you're willing to do it anyway, Sometimes that's the road you're on, man.

Holy cow.

Yeah.

How do you think you kept your emotional strength so high under extreme pain, loss, physical loss, you know, psychological and emotional loss with fallen brothers and teammates? How did you keep your emotions, your heart at a level of some sense of peace and not get into a depressed state or a downward spiral like so many people do, which is probably normal for people who've lost their brothers or teammates, their family, lost a leg, potential loss of identity of being a soldier again. How did you keep your heart and your emotions in a state of calm peace and certainty? with all this trauma.

Yeah.

One aspect of that was being made aware of how the attack happened, the information that I explained earlier. Once, once my teammates got back, they came to visit me. They told me what they had learned about the, about the incident because I was holding on to a lot of anger from that.

Sure.

Particularly because it was someone that I had been working with. And at that point, I had been in, you know, a whole lot of different engagements and gunfights and the explosions and to be killed by someone or that wounded by someone that I was working with.

You trusted.

Trusted to a degree.

Collaborated with.

That's a better way to put it.

Yeah.

Was frustrating to me.

I can imagine. Betrayal, the hurt, all that stuff.

Yeah, betrayal. That's some powerful stuff, right? So once I was made aware of his reasoning, I was able to let go of quite a bit.

And have some understanding or some type of compassion. Complete. It's hard to have compassion for someone who's doing this to you, but when you know why.

Yeah, man.

He cared about his family and he knew he was gonna die.

Right.

Because although I didn't have, you know, the wife and kids I have now, I could empathize with that. And saying if I'm put in that position between truly a rock and a hard place, and I have no practical way to fight this, right? Like nine guys with guns, and I'm a dirt farmer in my home, I'm doing the exact same thing. So I was able to like let that go. And then, you know, get to business and you ask, you know, how, and I'll just, I'll sum it up into one word, because it's the only one I can, I can think of to explain it. And it's faith, you know, which certainly has a, I have a strong, you know, religious and biblical feel to it. However, a definition of faith being a firm belief in something for which there is no proof. And I just felt it in my heart, in my soul as I was laying in the hospital bed. And as I began doing early phase physical therapy. And once I originally got my, you know, my first prosthetic, I just had this belief that this is possible. It's never been done before, but that doesn't make it impossible. I just have to figure out how to go about doing it. And, you know, I mentioned Green Berets are somewhat natural problem solvers, and then we become highly trained problem solvers. This became the greatest problem that I needed to solve, and I just leveraged everything I had learned as, you know, certainly an athlete in college, but more so. as a Green Beret, working on a team and being tasked to do these things, I leveraged those lessons and I leveraged the people that I had the chance to work with to begin solving that.

Do you think, have you seen anyone else in the military get out of a tough situation? I mean, a situation similar to like yours, where they lost an arm or they, something happened physically to them, or they some of their teammates were lost. Have you seen anyone get through it in a positive, semi-healthy way, if that's possible, without faith? I can be seeing people rise up against extreme adversity, whether it be physical trauma, emotional trauma, psychological trauma, with something other than faith.

I'm not sure I've seen it. Do I think everyone who I know that has done that would recognize that faith or at least verbalize it that way? Probably not. But I do think that it is a fundamental requirement, depending on the degree of goal that they're trying to work.

Towards to overcome the adversity.

When it comes to achievement, The struggle is the size of the struggle is commensurate with the size of the goal. When it comes to achievement, the size of the struggle is commensurate with the size of the goal. So if you are trying to overcome the greatest challenge in your particular life, whether or not it's been done before ever is irrelevant, but this is your biggest set of adversity, your greatest challenge ever. The struggle is going to then be the highest that you have ever dealt with before. So, and the likelihood of success is also probably the lowest it's ever been before. So to say that you can accomplish something like that without faith seems to be unlikely. At some point, you are going to believe in what it is you're trying to do, whether or not anyone else does or not, but you believe in it. There's no proof that you're going to make it happen. There's no proof that it's possible. But you feel it. And you buy into that to such a degree that you're willing to do it anyway.

If I'm trying to force my plan down my team's throat, the more resistance I'm gonna get from it. Whereas if I plant the seed and I allow that plan to grow with them, the better it's gonna be received. Like when people ask me, how do you get people to buy in? Well, you allow them to come up with a plan yourself.

What if in your mind you're like, you really know that plan is not that good.

It depends on how bad it is. How bad is it? Or what's at stake? If you're working for me and you're going to meet with a client and you have a bad pitch that you're going to give them and the client is some tiny client that I think is a low probability of us working with and the contract doesn't really matter, I'd be like, Hey, hey, Give it a shot. Here's a couple. I might give you a couple adjustments and give you some coaching on it. And then you go and you do your thing and you come back and you're like, oh, no, we didn't land it. And I say, well, what do you think? Let's debrief. And now we talk about it. I said, you, know, you said this and you said that. Here's some other ways to go about it. I might even actually have you do it to me. So then I could sit there and take some notes and say, Hey, here's some other things that might have worked. Now, if you were going to meet with a big client that really was going to add value to our company, I'm gonna, I'm gonna either step in. Yeah, I'm gonna step in and be like, okay, let's think about that. What's their reaction gonna be? And by the way, that's when they're not gonna say, no, don't do it that way. I'm gonna say, give me that. Tell me that again. And let me hear, let me give you some objections that you might hear from them. And all of a sudden, I'll let you come up with the solutions. Even though I'm sitting there going, yeah, what he needs to say is this.

No, I'll let you come up with the solution. So then you're kind of going in there like you got this dialed and then you're gonna feel like you won, which you did. That's great. Which is great. It gives you more ownership, more Respecting yourself, competence, belief. How important is feedback for leaders? Getting feedback from peers, coaches or employees, team members.

Feedback is how you get better. No feedback, no improvement. And if you're not humble, you're not looking for feedback and you're not listening to it. So if you think you know everything, you're not listening, you're definitely not asking for it. Even when it gets told to you, you don't listen to it. So feedback is is built upon being humble.

What would you say is in your way to getting to the next level? What feedback do you think you need to hear or receive from your team or people in order to reach the next goals that you have?

I mean, the weird thing about me is, even though you might think, look at me and think, oh, who's gonna tell this guy anything, right? The reality is, if anyone of my friends, my team, anyone that works for me up and down the chain of command, if they think I'm wrong, Everyone said, Hey, I don't know if that's a good plan. So, even when I was a task unit commander, so I'm in charge and I'm the head seal for this 40 SEALs. I'm the main guy. Anyone in that chain of command, those guys would all come to me and say, Hey, I don't know if this is a good way to do it. And you know what I'd say? Why not? What do you think? What are you thinking? How do you think we should do it? My mind is open. If my plan is bad, please tell me. They would know that. My friends, my family, they'll tell me when I'm doing something wrong all day long.

They're not intimidated or scared of you?

No.

That's good.

No.

So, how does a leader cultivate that with his family, friends, team in order to welcome the feedback of the information? Yeah.

What you do is when somebody gives you feedback, you listen to it. This is like, you know, just the other day we have a, we have a, a leadership event that we do two or three times a year. But the thing that I was telling this group of people was, as a leader, you should be listening 98% of the time and talking 2% of the time. So, every time you come to me and you say, Hey, Jocko, I don't like this plan. I don't say shut up and do it my way. No, I say, How would you want to do it? Tell me what you don't like about it and then tell me how you you want to do it. So therefore, the next time you have an objection, you're like, you know the door is open, you know that I'm going to be open-minded and listen to you, and that's how you build it. Every time you shut someone down from speaking their mind, you actually are creating a negative environment where you're not going to get the feedback. And if there's no feedback, as we just said, you're not going to improve.

What are two things that any leader could do to improve their leadership skills? right off the bat, two things you can think of and what are two things that want to be leaders do that hold them back from being great leaders? So, what are the two things they could add to their leadership? Yeah, two things that you have.

Number one is listen, which we just talked about. So, that's fresh on my mind and you'd be surprised about how many leaders are thinking that because they're in a leadership position, they should be talking all the time.

Wrong answer.

Wrong answer. I'll sit through a meeting with a client or with one of my companies and I'll listen for 38 minutes.

And at the end of those 38.

Minutes, I'll have already thought through every.

Discussion that's been had.

You know, you want to argue with him and he's arguing with her. And guess what? I get to sit there and assess those arguments and see which one is the most important. Meanwhile, you're expending all your ammunition, she's expending all her ammunition, he's giving up everything he's got. I'm learning all their thought patterns. I'm learning the pros and cons of each one of their arguments. And I do that for 38 minutes and in the 39th minute I say, Hey, here's what I think we should do. And guess what? Because I've done an accurate assessment and listened, I'm actually going to be able to make the best decision. It wasn't because I was smarter. It wasn't because I had better tactical understanding. It's because I actually shut my mouth, listened to everyone spill their guts, learned everything that they knew and did a good detached assessment of what the right thing to do was. So listen and the other one is the word that I just used which is detach which is not getting emotional, not getting into the weeds about stuff that doesn't matter. If you can take a step back and look around, you're gonna see infinitely more than you can when you're in the weeds staring the firefight in the face, looking down the sights of your weapon shooting. If you're doing that, you can't see anything else. Just think about that metaphor right there. If I'm looking down the sights of my weapon and I'm shooting, my world is this big. The minute that I stop shooting, point my weapon at High Port, take a step back and actually look around, I can see infinitely more. So apply that to a meet. This is the meeting that we just talked about. A 38 minute meeting. All this chaos is happening. Sure, I'm the boss. I could jump in there and start arguing and giving my opinion. But what am I really doing then? What I'm really doing then is in the weeds and I'm not able to assess what is actually happening. So there you apply it there to your personal life. If you and I are arguing, you're my friend and you did something and now we're starting to escalate an argument and I'm starting to get emotional, am I able to listen to you anymore? Am I able to logically figure out what's going on? If I'm talking to my wife and she did something that made me mad and now I'm starting to raise my voice. Is that whole situation going in the right direction?

No.

No, it's not. It's not. So what I need to do is take a step back, detach, calm down, listen to what she's saying, and then try and assemble a logical thing to say back without saying you need to calm down or you're too emotional.

No, no, no, no, no.

Because if you come to me and you're mad about something, you come to me, whether it's my wife or whether you're a business partner, you come to me and you say, the dang supply department didn't give me the stuff I needed. If I say, hey, calm down, right? If that's my reaction, then you realize that I'm against you, right? I don't get it. And so now it's me and the supply department against you.

No one understands.

No one understands. So I do a little technique.

What is that?

I call it reflect and diminish. So I'm gonna reflect your emotions back to you, but I'm gonna diminish them a little bit so that we're not escalating the situation.

How would you do this with your wife?

So if you come to me and you go, the supply department's been late for two weeks on this stuff. I don't say calm down, I say.

You gotta be kidding me.

Two weeks? And you go, yeah, can you believe it? Ah, that's horrible. We gotta put a solution, we gotta get that figured out. In the meantime, what do we need to do right now to get the problem solved?

So we already, now we're on the same team so we can work together to find a solution.

We bonded on the pain. Yes.

You felt the pain.

Yes. We're on the same team. Okay, my wife, what's gonna make my wife mad?

The ice machine's not working.

Right?

The ice machine's not working. It's your fault. Whether it's my fault, but we don't know. The ice machine's not working. By the way, this is a real story. This is happening today. The ice machine's not working. She didn't get mad about it, but the ice machine's not working.

If I go, hey, chill out.

You have a refrigerator and a house and you can just calm down, right? How's that gonna go? It's not gonna go good. Now she's gonna get mad, now it's me against her. you know, so instead the ice machine's not working. Ah man, that thing is junk. Have you called the repair guy? You know what I mean? And then all of a sudden we're on the same team and she's like, well, no, I haven't but I'm about to. Okay, cool. As opposed to the ice machine's not working. Well, okay, do you want me to.

Have ice shipped in from Alaska there, princess?

Right?

That's not gonna go over well.

So what would you call it? Reflect and diminish. Reflecting, what if someone's coming after you and attacking you? Not like the supply chain or the ice machine, but it's like you didn't do this. Oh yeah, this is your fault.

I want you to guess what I'm gonna do.

What's that?

What do you guess I'm gonna do? If you come and attack me and tell me something's my fault, what do you think I'm gonna do?

You personally, you would listen, reflect and diminish. I would actually- Detach.

Detach, yes.

How do you detach your emotions from someone coming after you emotionally, even if it was or wasn't your fault.

Well, there's a couple things that you've asked me now in the last couple of minutes. It's all good, 'cause it's all exciting. 'Cause I can see like your mind is spinning here. You're absorbing and you're like, oh, this makes sense. If you're attacking my ego immediately, as soon as I feel frustrated, angry, defensive, all three of those things are red flags to me that that's my ego. Okay. I immediately know, I go, when I feel my bristling, yeah, when I feel that, I know it's a hard, I guarantee it's 99%, it's just my ego that I'm mad. So what are you doing that moment? I immediately go, oh, that's your ego, you idiot. Listen to what he's got to say, let's win, let's win.

So how do I win?

Do I win by attacking you?

No.

No, I don't win by attacking you. If you're the only winner, you both lose. Yes, so when you attack me, you're hoping to win. And you say, Whatever your attack is, you say, this is your fault. I go, you, know what? Absolutely. This is my fault. Here's the mistake that I made and I know it affected you in a negative way. Here's the things that I'm working on right now to remedy it. What are you going to do? Are you going to yell at me more? Are you going to say, are you.

Going to tell me it's my fault again?

Like I just... A crazy person might say a couple more times. And a crazy person, I'll be like, yeah, I know. You know, I get this. This is another question I get when it's sort of similar to what you said earlier, when you said, yeah, but what if it's not really your fault? The other one I get a lot is if you say, Hey, listen, Louis, this is my fault that this happened. You go, you,'re right, it is your fault. And then people say, what do I do then? What do I do then? If the person's blaming me, how do I take ownership then? And I'm like, that's the whole point. That's the whole point. The whole point of taking ownership is when you, look at me and you point your finger and you say, this is all your fault. I say, Yes, I know. That's what I just said. This is absolutely my fault. I'm the one that's in charge and these are the things that I'm going to do to fix it. That's where we're going to start. So, when someone blames you, yes, take ownership. Now, if you have in the back.

Of your mind like you did earlier.

Like, hey, maybe this isn't really my fault. Like, if you have that in the back of your mind, you're actually wrong.

Wow.

You're actually wrong. You're in charge. And that applies to your life as well. That applies to your life as well. How you, you know, you got to take ownership of what's going on in your life. When you're not where you want to be and you say it's because the boss doesn't like you or it's because the girl treated you this way or the guy did this, like all those things, you got to take ownership of them.

How do we train our minds and our body to be motivated towards a goal and not stay lazy? Yeah.

Well, at first it's know thyself because we all, we're all different. So one of the attributes I talk about in the book is discipline. and what I had to do with discipline was actively separate discipline from self-discipline. What's the difference? Okay, well the difference is that self-discipline is internally focused. Self-discipline is about managing oneself and it has very little to do with external requirements, right? So you or I can decide to get in shape, for example, and we can change our diet, we can work out every day. The external environment doesn't have a lot of say in that, you know, in us achieving that accomplishment. So self-discipline is about an is about managing the internal. Discipline, the way I talk about in the book, is about achieving that long-term goal. These are those long-term goals that are going to take a while to achieve and the external world has a say. So getting that promotion, writing that book, becoming the famous singer, becoming a Navy SEAL, right? The external world has, starting a podcast, right? The external world has a say in whether or not you do that. And the discipline that is required to move through those wickets, those wickets takes adaptability, it takes flexibility, it takes the ability to not get seduced by the highs, the successes, and not get crushed by the failures and continue to move towards that goal. And what I found was, because I'm a very unself-disciplined person, I don't have a lot, right? And so I had to separate this, because I've been able to achieve a lot of goals in my life. I say, what's the difference? Well, the difference is, if you are overly, so those with very high self-discipline, discipline, sometimes, this is not exclusive, but sometimes have trouble achieving long-term goals because the achievement of long-term goals often takes an ability and by necessity to march into the unknown, into uncertainty, which is going to throw you off routine and throw you out of certainty. The self-disciplined person, the very self-disciplined likes routine, likes certainty, right? That's how it's structured. I mean, that's what it is. And so moving towards a goal like that, takes oftentimes being able to adapt out of structure, you know, and say, well, I can't do that. Like, I'm normal. I'd have to just go in. I have to go in unknowing right now. The best, the most successful people are those who have both self-discipline and discipline, right? In terms of staying motivated for a goal, the way I would do it by knowing myself is I would, understanding I'm not a very self-disciplined person, I would simply try to chunk a goal into smaller pieces, Right?

So.

If I want to lose weight, then I can say, well, that's why cheat days are actually good for me. Because I can say, I'm going to take this piece of it and move. So I chunk my reward system in a different way. But I think the way one stays motivated towards a goal is highly subjective, but it would, in my, kind of through my thought process and my experience, involve a an active or one to actively map out a reward system that helps someone move through that.

So, they're creating a reward system first for the goal in order to help you stay motivated.

Depending on how you show up.

Not to say like, okay, my goal is to achieve this thing, it's going to take me three years to accomplish it. And that's the only reward I'm going to get in those three years. But how can I reward myself every day for an action I take, every month for a milestone every year if we're getting closer. So focusing on the reward system.

Yes. And this is neurobiological because dopamine, the neurotransmitter, is you get hits of dopamine as a reward when you achieve things. There's many ways you get dopamine, but one of the ways is when you achieve things. So if you're able to effectively create a reward system that means something to you, it can't be kind of inert. So if I want to run If I want to run a marathon and I can barely run to my mailbox, then maybe buying some running shoes and putting them on one morning is enough of a reward system to get a dopamine hit. As someone who runs somewhat frequently, and you probably identify with this, just putting on our shoes one morning is probably not going to give us that dopamine hit. We've got to extend that task a.

Little bit so that-- you-'ve already accomplished a lot of something.

Right.

Push beyond it.

You have to push beyond it to get that reward system. So it becomes subjective.

What would you say, 20 years as a Navy SEAL at different levels, and you were deployed how many different times? Are you allowed to talk about that?

Well, I mean, 13 and some change.

Deployments between, what, six months and over a year?

Yeah, I never did year-long, but anywhere between three months to six months usually.

This is Iraq and Afghanistan.

For the most part, yeah.

And other places maybe not a lot of talk about. What would you say of that 20-year experience was the most challenging experience for you? Was it something within a mission? Was it learning how to develop as a leader? Was it having a relationship with your wife during that time? What was the most challenging point for you?

Yeah, the most challenging thing ironically wasn't the job because we were also prepared for the job and we were around just the best people in the world. So the trust and the camaraderie was to this day, you know, I look back on it very fondly, right?

So not the day-to-day job, you mean even just like the missions you went out on?

Yeah, that wasn't challenging. I think if I were to say, you know, the first and foremost was probably having to leave the family. When you have to say goodbye to your family for a stint, whether it's three months or six months or some folks are deploying for a year, right? That is a rough deal that not many people can capture. Not many people with families can capture that when you have to say goodbye to your kids and your wife for that. Okay, well, see you in however. And then to add on to that, understanding their stress, or at least my kids were a little bit smaller, but understanding my wife's stress, knowing that I was going someplace and she was staying. It was dangerous. Yeah, well, luckily with today's technology, contact was, fairly easy. But we found, again, ironically, we found that daily contact was never a good idea because what happens is you establish a routine. You get comfortable.

You get comfortable.

So something happens, I'm working, I'm overseeing something, I have a mission that goes long or whatever, and I don't get to call her that day. Well, suddenly she's worried. And it also makes time actually seem slower.

Interesting.

Yeah, so we decided we were only going to talk usually once a week. My son who had a real trouble, he was young. I mean, he was born in '05. So by the time he was two, he was having trouble with me deploying. And every time I went, it was rough on him. And we actually for him, we actually almost had to, well, we literally had to just decide not to, I was not going to talk to him on the phone. It was too hard for him. He had to basically kind of forget me.

Oh my gosh. So he had to compartmentalize as a child.

In order to- We had to help them compartmentalize.

Survive.

And not go depressed or be stressed. Because that's one of the attributes you talk about is compartmentalization. How do you do that? If you're an emotional human being that's, you have these deep connections to your family and friends, how do you just detach in a sense and become more machine-like for a period of time and then allow yourself to feel deeply in other moments.

Well, it never goes away. I think the attributes, the way I talk about compartmentalization and the attribute is more surrounded by the way our brain functions and processes information versus I'm going to block something out so I don't have to think about it. However, I think most team guys, SEALs, Spec Ops guys have a very high ability to compartmentalize away from things, block out things that are painful. I know that about me. and I know that about my buddies, because you have to, because war sucks, you know? And at the end of the day, the mission has to be accomplished, you know? So if something gnarly happens on a mission, you can't sit there, these movies that show these extended scenes of people, you know, mourning when their buddy goes down or whatever, like, oh my God.

You don't have that.

No, you don't have that time, you know? You have to win the gunfight.

Right?

Because if you don't, then all of you won't make it home, right? So you have to, and I think the training allows you to do that. The training is so intense and.

So.

Effective that it requires you to compartmentalize. Training teaches you to compartmentalize. You become very, very good at it. Now, that could be a detriment in a relationship. So I think those of us who were able to recognize that, actively try not to do that with our families. And so it becomes much more of a precision tool versus a frenetic thing that just happens without us having control over it.

What was the moment that was the scariest for you when you were deployed? Where you thought like, I may not make it. Or our team may not make it, or this is a really bad, I guess you're training for bad situations all the time. But was there ever a moment you were like, I don't know if we're gonna get out of this?

No, I was fortunate not to have that moment. I say that with immense gratitude because I know there's a lot of friends of mine who didn't have that, that can't say that. They had those moments where they said that. But no, I was fortunate enough to be always in a position, and my team was always in a position, that we had prepared, planned, and executed in a way that was highly effective so that when things went wrong, because things always go sideways, we had complete, you know, or near complete control, or we understood the pathways we needed to go throughout of. But I say that also, you know, this comes back to compartmentalization. You know, one of the things that you have to be able to do when goes sideways is to not focus on that thought you just brought up, right? The focus is not, oh my god, I don't think I'm gonna get out of this. The focus is how do I get out of this? so the mental acuity attributes which are situation awareness, compartmentalization, task switching and then learnability, right? So that's how information is coming in, how we're processing it and prioritizing, how we're switching between the necessary tasks and then how we're learning from our decisions, right? So I talk about the parachute malfunction in the context of that. But ultimately comes to even be able to do that in the first place, it requires a forebrain dominance in the sense that you're not letting your autonomic system take over into a fight-flight response and you're able to think through stress, challenge, and uncertainty in the sense of say, okay, what can I control right now? And this is where trust in your teammates comes in because now I have a team. I mean, I can say this.

With.

Great pride and gratitude. I can remember literally walking in areas, you know, when we were overseas, and thinking, man, this is a bad area.

Sketchy.

This is sketchy and having complete and utter faith, right? Because I was around, because I was with my teammates, right? I was around people who just, I trusted. I knew that if something went wrong, we'd be able to handle it, you know? And so I think that's a necessity when you do this type of stuff.

When you're going out on a mission, what's the process like of preparing for that mission? Are you planning more for all the things that could go wrong on how to get out of that situation, or is it planning for here's exactly how we would like it to go right, but let's also have a exit plan or a plan for when things go wrong. What do you-- It's the ladder.

You plan the mission as you'd like it to go, and then inside of that planning, you put together, you build contingencies within each factor.

So when this doesn't go as planned, what are the three ways to get out?

Yeah, so you know, just like any-- athlete would understand. So a quarterback coming out of a snap would say, well, I have two or three or four plays I can fall back on depending on how this line shapes up, right? You have the same thing. This is where experience matters. You do it over and over again. It's okay. Well, as we're coming in on insertion, there's a few things that could go wrong. So if this, then that, if this, then that. And you kind of do that throughout the phase planning. But then there's what we call the 80/20 rule and that is you get to 80% of certainty and then you recognize that 20% is just out of your control and that's where confidence comes. You say, if something happens outside that 20%, we will figure it out, we will figure it out, because we're not going to figure out everything and Murphy's law will dictate that something happens that we haven't thought of, so you prepare yourself to deal with uncertainty.

How do you train your mind to deal with chaos in the moment so that you don't freak out and freeze up, but you actually turn on a level of focus and attention towards achieving that goal.

Yeah, so I think we're predisposed, each one of us, to what I call Huberman and I both have called this, is the autonomic set point. At what point do we start flipping into an autonomic response, into fight-flight, where our system starts taking over and our forebrain starts coming offline. If you and I use boiling point as the average, most of us might be average. There are those who start really freaking out at like 190. So 212 is the average at 190 degrees, they're starting to freak out. There are people who it takes till like 230.

To boil.

To boil, right? I think that the guys who make it through that training are predisposed to have a higher set point, first of all. In other words, we tend to, when.

Bad things start to happen, we tend.

To slow down and start thinking through it versus get all hyped up. It's funny, you know, I live in a neighborhood and in my neighborhood there's four other Navy SEALs. There's one across the street, one down the road.

Must be nice.

Well, it is nice, you know, A, because they're great dudes and it's great they're great neighbors. But I remember my wife once saying, she said, Hey, I'm so glad these guys are here. and I in the neighborhood, I was like, why? She said, because if something went wrong, I know I could go to them and they'd act like you act. And I said, well, tell me. I said, because if something happens, they would immediately calm down and they'd start working the problem. And so I think we show up predisposed. Training to it is difficult, you know? And I think so here we are actually working on some stuff to help teach people to do that. But it comes down to understanding your own neurology and it comes down to understanding that, you know, Here's how you have to think through situations under stress and then it's going to be about putting yourself into deliberate stress to practice that. You can't practice this type of thinking if you're not in stress. You need to put yourself in that.

What are some things civilians could do to practice stressful moments on a daily basis where it doesn't hurt them but it's actually preparing them? I talk about every day I think you should be experiencing some type of pain, something that's uncomfortable. seeking discomfort, whether it be through a 10 minute workout, whether it be through a longer run, it doesn't matter what it is, an uncomfortable conversation, we should be doing this every day in a structured environment that allows us to grow. What do you think are some ways we could do this that's not putting us in harm's way or physically hurting ourselves?

I can't answer that because it's so subjective. I can give some ideas and you just gave some. I mean, some people are very social people. so starting a conversation with a stranger is a piece of cake, right? For me, that would be hard, right? Starting a conversation with a stranger would be hard. So that might be something I do. Giving a presentation, public speaking for people is tough. So volunteering to give that presentation is a great way for a lot of people because, you know, you know, they, that makes them anxious, you know? So working out for some is like, for some people they've developed a system where that pain point of working out is something they highly enjoy. right? So they're not practicing it.

So.

Someone should look at their own makeup and ask themselves what fright? Well, in fear, again, it doesn't have to go all the way to fear. Fear is interesting because it's actually a combination of two things. It's a combination of uncertainty and anxiety. You can have each one of those and not have fear, right? So if you are anxious but not uncertain, that would be I have to give this presentation on Monday. I hope it's going, I'm nervous about it, right? That's, you know, but there's nothing uncertain about it. It's Monday, it's a two o'clock, I know what I'm going to do. I'm just, I'm nervous about it, okay? Uncertainty without anxiety, well that's every kid on Christmas Eve, okay? I mean, so, but it's when you combine the two that you start to generate fear. Well, the idea is if you have fear, if you have uncertainty plus anxiety and it starts to manifest into fear, the key is to understanding which of those two factors can you buy down? Okay? Anxiety. Buy down. Buy down, which means decrease. Anxiety can be decreased internally. It's an internal response, right? So things like some of the tools Huberman talks about, visual tools, breathing tools, you can begin to shift your physiology out of your sympathetic into your parasympathetic, come off of the autonomic response system, right? So that's how you could start, you know, kind of buying down anxiety. Uncertainty is largely external, okay? That means something around you outside of you, you don't understand. There's unknown. The best way to do that and the way we do it in Spec Ops is we control what we can control. So some people have referred to it kind of control your three-foot world. But it doesn't have to extend. It's not a three-foot thing. It's what in this moment can I control? And then take control of that. Because then you are grabbing onto certainty. You're taking what is uncertain, you're grabbing onto something certain. as soon as you've controlled that, as soon as you move through that, then you have to make another decision. What's the next thing? This is basically kind of stepping through, right? Stepping through this challenge, right? So you can start to practice coming off of fear or moving through fear by kind of understanding both of those pieces.

What do you think is the greatest lesson you learned throughout the 20 years for yourself that has helped you not only during that but also after being with the seals?

I think it's not fearing the unknown. It's the idea that when you go through something like that, you understand that, hey, I could pretty much do whatever I'd like to do. And I know that even though I don't know how I'm gonna do it, I know I can figure it out. If there's enough interest, if there's enough passion, right? I'm not gonna, I'm not interested in becoming a pro football player, you know?

Right.

So that's off my list, right? But I was interested in writing a book, and that was a whole new process for me. When I left the Navy, I started public speaking. I did not like public speaking at all, right? I did not like it. But I knew it was an edge that I wanted to conquer and say, okay, well let me work through the things to conquer this edge. It's kind of like your philosophy. I think it's not only a deep one, but it's profound because if we are consistently deciding what our edges are, moving towards our edge and then getting there, then we are growing. You know, because guess what we're doing at that point, we're looking for the next edge, you know, and that's the growth process, is continuing to move to.

Our edges and then finding the next edge. I mean, you say you don't like.

Public speaking, but don't you have to speak to your teams and guys? Yeah, but that's not public, that's like, you know, that's the guys. So it's different. It's different, yeah, it's different, there's a lot more, you know, when you're, you know, because you're, and when you're in the military, there's no expectation of, you know, kind of great articulation or humor or, you know, What's effective? What's effective?

Give me a word.

Here's the word. And that's what you appreciate too. There's no one wants you to sit there and pontificate. It's like, hey guys, this is what's going on. So there's a directness that's appreciated and required. But that's not, you know, public speaking.

What do you think was the hardest lesson you had to learn three or 20 years? Something that you were struggling with or challenged with, or you kept repeating until you finally learned the lesson?

Yeah, I think the hardest lessons, the hardest lesson, maybe not one, the hardest lessons were just around leadership. What it takes, what leadership take, what it takes to be a leader. Because again, being a leader and being in charge are often conflated. They're not the same thing, okay? What's the difference? Well, anybody could be in charge. As an officer, you know, in the military, I was pretty much in charge of something all the time. It didn't make me a leader. You don't get to call yourself a leader. It's like calling yourself funny or calling yourself handsome, okay? Someone else makes that decision. you can't designate yourself that way. Someone else decides whether or not you are a leader, okay? And that's done through the way you behave in that position. So if you are in charge and you're behaving in a way that causes someone to make a decision, okay, this is the person I would lead, I mean, if we think about the leaders in our lives, the people who we consider leaders in our lives, it's not because they were just in charge of us. In fact, we could probably think of people who we would follow into hell and back and they have they have no place in the hierarchy of our lives, right? They are just someone who just, they behaved that way in a way that's made us kind of endeared to them. So the attributes I talk about in the book in terms of leadership attributes are all attributes that actually cause behaviors that typically cause people to look at others as leaders.

What are the behaviors that most human beings admire the most that we want to follow that person or be inspired to be led by something that they're sharing or involved in, a community of movement, whatever it may be, what are the three or four main behaviors that they have and we should be developing if we want to be better leaders? Yeah, well, I talk about five in.

The book, in terms of these adverbs. The first is empathy, okay? And again, I would say this, there's not an exclusivity in terms of what someone will decide because there are people who will live- It's subjective, right? It's a subjective thing, you know? Again, it's someone's choice as to whether or not they think. So empathy is one. selflessness is another. And this is not just, you know, so let's just back up here. Empathy, not just I know how you feel, I feel how you feel, right? I can put myself into your shoes and that reflects in the way I communicate with you and I care about, it shows that you care about another human being.

What is the best way to show that? I mean, give me an example. As opposed to saying, I know how you feel, how do you empathize, showing you feel how they feel.

Well, first deep listening. And so, so, so we all, so listening to another person, but, but true, like deep, full on, like listening. Like, I am hanging on every word listening. Oftentimes we listen to people and we're two things, one of two things is happening. Either we're thinking about what we're going to say next, right? Or we're thinking about how what that person is saying relates to our lives. And it's not from a malicious standpoint. It's really because we're trying to relate. So we're trying to say, okay, you're talking about football. I'm thinking, okay, wait a second, you know, did I play football in eighth grade? Maybe I could talk about that. I played football in eighth grade. Maybe I could talk about that. But what I'm doing is I'm not listening to you anymore, you know? I'm making what you're saying about me, you know? So, what deep empathetic listening is, I have like a whiteboard in my mind, okay? And as I'm listening to you speak, if something pops onto the whiteboard, I erase it and I move on. I just keep on listening. You know, that is, if you do, if you, if you, empathetically listen, like look into someone's eyes, attentive behavior, facing each other, they are going to feel cared for because you're exchanging. Now there's an exchange going on. There's serotonin being released, there's oxytocin being exchanged or at least released, and all these kind of these bonding chemicals, right? So that type of listening shows someone you care about them. Empathy is a little bit tougher for some. Some people are just wired. We know some people are wired to be... My wife is extraordinarily empathetic. I mean, she really feels other people. I mean, I am not. I've had to really try to develop empathy. It's something that she's taught me.

As human beings, we believe, like so many people, before I give them a workout plan, they're talking about recovery. Everybody that hears me speak, they want to go straight to recovery. Workout first.

Huh.

Workout first. Before you talk to me about recovery.

How to recover, yeah.

Work out first. We are always looking for, like whenever I talk to people, people take my words and they put it in a way to where they want to feel comfortable. This guy, you know, they want to put you in a box. They want to put a title on you. No, you're putting a title on me to make yourself feel better about yourself. If you read this book of mine and you see where I came from, This person was not built. This person was not made by God. This person, sorry, this person was built. I made this person. I made this person by diving into the insecurities that life gave me. Because now they're yours. They're yours to own. If you're not smart, call yourself dumb. It's okay, because you are. But take that knowledge and put yourself down. If you're fat, call yourself fat. I used to be 300 pounds. We want to talk so soft to ourselves. We're looking for that recovery day. And that recovery day is everything in your life. Everything in your life is that recovery day. We're looking for it. It's not coming. It's not coming. Get over that recovery day. And that's the mentality I took with me. And what happened through that process was all the frivolous things of life started to float away. I used to tell people lies so they would like me. Because I was so insecure. When you start to build yourself up and start to have the one thing that we don't have is confidence. Yeah. Real authentic confidence from hard work. Everything else goes away. You no longer look to other people for your self-esteem.

That's the foundation.

That's right.

Yeah.

You now know I walk in the room now and I know the hours and years and decades I put into David Goggins. That's something, it's not on the wall. It's not a trophy on the wall. It's not a medal around your neck. It is actually a feeling in your heart. And people, why don't you ever smile? I don't have to. Yeah. Yeah, I do have a stoic look on my face. I'm a very focused person. But the feeling I have in my soul and in my heart, that's why I need to smile. I don't need to smile. I don't need you to look at me and say, oh my God, you look happy, because half of us aren't happy. We're giving you something that we think you want to see. I don't do that anymore. I don't care how you perceive David Goggins, because through my journey, I figured out the one piece I was missing. I thought it was cars. I thought it was women. I thought it was money. I thought it was everything. The one piece I was missing was me having the courage to face myself. And once you do that on a daily basis, it's not about the running. People's gonna be like, you're not working out. Where I got my work ethic from was the hours I had to spend learning this. When you sit down and you're not smart and you have a disability and you still want to be in the top of your class, I didn't want to get by. When I realized that I can learn, do hard work and I can beat the valedictorian in school, but I got put in 10 hours more a day than he does. You know what kind of strength comes from that? When you're sitting down that guy that valedictorian student for an hour and you know I caught you. I caught you and I am dumb, but I have the work ethic to catch you. That's where David Goggins got really invented.

Yeah.

Was at a kitchen table with 20 spiral notebooks that were empty. And then three months later, they were full. And when you can go through that, I still have them in my storage unit. You go through these spiral notebooks of your life and you realize, this is how I learned. This is unbelievable. There's no miles. It's not about the miles. It's that having a discipline every day to say, for me to learn this one math problem, it's gonna take me 10 hours.

Wow.

And that's where it, and you realize.

Through hard work.

You can outwork anybody. No matter how badass they are. But that's the part people don't want to dive into. Yeah.

When someone's lacking confidence in themselves, what's the answer you would give them?

That's right.

How do I gain more confidence?

It starts with yourself, man. You got to start diving into those things that you are afraid of. You don't gain confidence by going to the spot that makes you feel good. It's could be a false reality. And the second life gives you that challenge, all you want to do is go back to what made you confidence or what gave you confidence is that happy spot.

No.

What gives you confidence, what gave me confidence was spending years at a kitchen table trying to learn how to read and write on my own, realizing I can't learn the way you learn. I can't, but I can learn. What gives you confidence not being afraid is overcoming the fear. I used to stutter severely bad. So right now, I don't know how many people are gonna watch this. You know what gives me confidence is knowing I no longer care if I sit here and start stuttering to you. That's what gives me confidence, is facing these things, overcoming them. And maybe not overcoming them every day, but facing them. And facing them and facing them pretty soon like this. You know what man, this is where it's at. It's not in that comfort zone. It's in the discomfort zone is where my confidence is getting built. That's where it's getting built. But people want to, they want an easier answer. There has to be an easier way. There's not. I'm sorry, I searched for it my entire life.

You cheated.

I did.

You lied.

I lied.

I did everything. And I still felt empty. I coach a lot of people nowadays, billionaires, who call me on the phone and say, Man, I'm still missing something. It's because they did what they were good at. And they had this beautiful family, two, three houses, cars, everything. Has everything the world on the outside looking in, like, My God, man, how can you be unhappy? I walk around with the backpack with all my stuff in it, no car, and I walk around happiest person in the world. Have nothing, happy as hell. It's because I found out the whole key to life. It's not in all that. You have to face yourself. So many people live to be 100 years old and they die miserable, having everything, because they never examined I call it my live autopsy. You never examine this. Happiness, peace, enlightenment, it's all up here, man. It's all up here. If I start talking like this, people go, man, you know, I don't know. It's the truth, man.

Yeah, it is true.

It's all up here. You just gotta be willing to go and face it. That's the hard part.

What's your biggest insecurity today?

I'm not to be arrogant. I don't have one.

What was the last one you had?

And when was that?

The last one I had was probably still me.

Me.

Still living. Because I. I always talk about I. I pay rent.

So we live.

We used to live in a seven dollar a month place when I was growing up.

And that's in Buffalo or is this.

This is in Indiana. Yeah. so, like, we had a lot of money in Buffalo. And when my mom left, my dad, we went to nothing for a period of time before she got on her feet. Right. And that seven dollar a month place used to be. It was my. It was who I was. I was no one. I was in the sewer. My mom went there. I had nothing. And you always feel like you have nothing. I had achieved so much. I was a Navy SEAL. I'd gone through. Ranger School. I've gone through Delta Force selection training. I've done so much. I run 200 miles, pull up records, everything. Learned to read and write, became pretty intelligent. I still was like, man, what is wrong with me? It wasn't until I got real sick, and I talked about in the last chapter of that book, I got real sick, and I was about 38 years old. I'm 43 now, and my life got real quiet. I went from running 205 miles in 39 hours to I couldn't get out of bed. The doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong with me, but once again, it was the best thing that ever happened to me.

Why is that?

In that moment, when my whole life changed, I went from a guy who worked out every day, trained every day, to a guy who couldn't get out of bed. My life was taken from me. The one thing that kept me going was my training.

Now you didn't have that.

I didn't have anything.

Now you just had to sit alone.

Alone.

And not train.

And that's what changed me. And that's when I realized I hadn't thought, hadn't taken time to think about what I had done in my life.

You hadn't reflected yet.

I hadn't reflected. I'd done all these things, but there was no finish line. I still believe that, but you must have time to reflect. I was just going. I wouldn't even, I finished a race of life and I wouldn't even receive my medal. I go on.

You're like, on to the next.

I get in the car and I go. You won't even take the medal?

Gone. Don't care about it.

Like, I'm not gonna waste an hour sitting around for this ceremony.

Most people sit around and that's what they like.

They need the ceremony if I accomplish something.

The validation.

I haven't done anything. Let's go, let's go, let's go. I'm just getting started. I'm just getting started. What's right? When I started figuring out life, that I was leaving so much in the tank. I caught my 40 rule. Yeah, I was leaving so much in the tank. Once I realized, my God, man, I was this dumb, fat kid being bullied. And now I'm 180 pound person lost 106 pounds in less than three months. Learn to read, learn to do this, learn to do that. I was like, I need more. I was fueling my mind with everything. I never took time to say, my God, you came from this hell and you're here. So those insecurities, and this is how I explain it the best way, SEAL training became pretty hard and a lot of guys weren't getting through it. So they designed a SEAL PEP prep program.

Like a boot camp for the boot camp.

That's right.

And it was two months. In my last two years before I retired from the military, they sent me there to train these kids.

Wow.

To get ready for 18-19-20 years old.

Young kids. So when they get to Navy Seal training, man, they were physical studs. They were running, swimming. I mean, they were hybrids.

Wow.

But they get the buds, and the same amount of people would quit.

Why is that?

This is why. We were training bigger, stronger, faster quitters.

Hmm.

It's not about-- Not the mind.

That's right. we weren't diving into the sewer. Everybody's got a story. We don't share it on social media. We share our nice life on social media. We have. We all have a dungeon. I'm just willing to talk about mine. Yeah, most of us aren't really talk about it. I want to talk about my dungeon. I wasn't getting into the dungeon of these guys Minds. I wasn't building that so-called mental toughness. Mental toughness isn't something that. that you sample is something that you live in every day. So when something hard would happen to these kids, like in Hell Week, it would draw on something that made them very insecure and they look for comfort. Whenever hardness comes, and you all know what it is, it may be different for you than it is for me, but you go back to your insecurities and then you go back to insecurities, you then look for comfort. within those insecurities. And we all look for that cookie that your mom used to give you when you were sad, when you were sick. We look for our wife or our husband. We look for comfort. It's in those moments you must retrain your mind to think differently in hell. I wasn't training them to do that.

Why weren't you training them?

I wasn't training myself yet, because at that time, I was doing what I was told. These guys need to meet a standard.

Physical standard.

A physical standard. The physical standard is not what they need to meet. It's a mental standard you must meet in life. So going back to when I was sick, I was hitting the physical standards. I wasn't meeting the mental standard. The mental standard is you must know how far you've come.

Wow.

I wasn't, I had come 8,000 miles from where I started. But if you never know that, you're still in the $7 a month place. When I was sick, I was able to slow it down and reflect back on my entire life. And in that bed, and I thought I was dying, because that story is long, that sick portion of my life is long. I didn't care if I died or lived. Wow. Because I was for the first time in my life happy. Wow. And at peace. Because I reflected back on where I started.

You said, well, I have come a long way.

That's right. And no one saved me. It wasn't like someone came down here and guided me through life. When you figure this out on your own, the amount of pride and dignity and self-respect you have, that's why I walk around the streets. with a backpack and just like, I don't need anything else. Yeah. You figure it out by going inside yourself, by callousing over the victim's mentality. You're always a victim, even if you have everything in life, until you realize what you've achieved. You have to first realize what you've achieved. And my mom has accomplished so much in her life since my father. But she hasn't done that one step.

Really? She doesn't acknowledge it and reflect on it.

She continues to go back to the dungeon of her past life.

And live in that space.

And live in that space versus living the space that she's in now and reflecting back on, my God, this is what I've done with my life.

So... Have you talked to her about this?

We talk about it all the time and you have to be willing to go there. you have to be willing to really go to not, not surface. I don't, I don't live on the surface of anything. Yeah. Surface is what got me where I was at. It got me from 175 pounds to 300 pounds. Telling everybody, I'm good. I don't give a damn. I'm good. No, they're hollow words. A lot of us speak in hollow words. I used to speak in hollow words. I don't do anymore. Everything that comes out of my mouth has substance. It's real. And we all have these feelings in our bodies, in our minds, in our souls. I act on mine. A lot of us who are afraid of something, we allow our minds to choose the path of least resistance so we go a different route. I'm afraid of something is telling me, you must do this thing. You must do that.

Yeah.

You have to go that way. And most of us don't understand that mentality. we go left and we wonder why we haven't fulfilled something in our lives. It's because we continue to take the journey that is mapped out. And how I look at it is I talk in life like a lot of us in life want to take the four-lane highway that has road maps and all this other stuff on it, man. Tells you where to go, gas stations. The next 10 miles up, you're gonna see a McDonald's, a Cracker Barrel.

Yeah.

It's the easy route. Very few of us want to go.

To the right side.

The Cracker Barrel's that Midwest life. That's right.

That's right.

It's all about it, man.

Indiana.

Cracker Barrel everywhere. Dude, that's amazing. Bringing back memories. This is powerful because I've been telling people this. I've been living that way unknowingly my whole life of like whatever the thing is I'm afraid of. When I was in high school, I started doing those things.

Right.

And it was just like, I'm sick and tired of feeling afraid.

Right.

So I need to do the things that scare me the most. That's right. You know, I've talked about this a lot on the podcast. Tiffany's heard me share these stories, but I was afraid to talk to girls when I was a teenager. I was afraid of dancing. I was afraid of, like, singing and playing music in front of people. I was afraid of all these different things. And so I said, I want to do this. I'm gonna give myself a challenge every single day until the fear goes away.

Sure.

And I feel like that's, what more of us should be doing. I'm hearing that that's what you, how.

You live your life.

That's all it is, man. And it helps me feel so much more confident. When you overcome that fear of saying this doesn't have control over me anymore, it's like you can be at so much more peace.

It's 100% in your life. Most of like, for instance, I never thought my wildest dreams I could be a Navy SEAL. It's until you opened your mind, open-mindedness creates that we all shut down our mind, like for instance, When I broke the pull-up record, everybody around me who heard the pull-up record was 4,020 pull-ups. That's the first thing they did. Oh my God.

4,024 hours or was it 4,020 pull-ups.

In 24 hour period?

Yeah, yeah.

The first thing I did versus closing my mind to like, oh my God, that's crazy. I went and got a pinning.

How many is that every minute?

Exactly.

Every hour, every second.

Instead of taking life and making it out to be, be this grandiose thing. Start breaking it down. Start breaking it down. And most of us, we live in a box and we don't want to go outside that box at all, ever. Outside that box is all these possibilities of life. But we do, we shackle our mind. We are a prisoner in our own mind that this is all I can do. This is all I'm good at. and we take away the possibilities of you could be this, you could be that, you could be all these things. And I never thought at 300 pounds I could be naked and still. So if my mind was shackled, me and you would never meet. There'd be no book, there'd be no book. There'd be nothing. So what people understand is that they live for themselves, not knowing that you have the power within yourself to change millions of lives by facing life, by facing yourself. And through that, I would die never knowing that I had the power to change millions of lives. And what haunts me the most, you ask me, what haunts you the most? What haunts me the most is that if I were to die at 300 pounds, let's say I was 75 years old, I got to heaven and God has a chart like that on everybody's life. God knows all. Let's say that. I don't care what you believe in. Doesn't matter. I'm not judging anybody. Let's say my thing is God. You get to heaven. I'm 300 pounds. I sit down. I was a cockroach Terminator my whole life. And we're sitting down just like this. You're God and I'm David. And he gives me that chart and he says, look at this. Now, look at this chart. And on the chart, it has all these different things. But my name's on it. But these things aren't me. I was gonna change the world. I was gonna set records. I was gonna be a Navy SEAL. I was gonna be all these things in the military that I accomplished. You're gonna get the VFW award. You're gonna be honored here, honored there. I'm like, God, this isn't me. Like it says David Goggins. I was an Ecolab guy. I sprayed for cockroaches and I'm 300 pounds. I said, Here, I'm 185. It says here, I got a bachelor's and a master's. It says all these things. And God goes, no, that's who you were supposed to be.

Wow.

My biggest fear in life is if there is a final resting place in this world and there's a final judgment and you talk to something much bigger than you. I don't want to sit down and have a conversation with someone with something that says, you,'re in heaven. This is what you should have been on earth. And are you really in heaven now? Are you in hell? Thinking about how much I left on a table for fear, for not willing to go over the wall and over the next wall and over the next wall. So in my mind, I believe that. And God knows all. At least I believe that. I want God to be up there right now as we're speaking, writing stuff down, saying, my God, he exceeded even my expectations. That's how I live my life. I now know that there is no cap on the human mind. There's no cap. We cap it ourselves.

Wow. Is there a cap on the human body?

That's right.

Is there one? I...

I don't believe so. Because one thing I found out was, I didn't, for several years I gave myself a way out.

When you were 300 pounds or whatever?

When I was 300 pounds, and I was, all the way up till I was 24 years old, I would climb a mountain, I'd fall back down. I start climbing, I fall back down. For the first 24 years of my life. I went to my first hell week, my second hell week, and then my third hell week came in SEAL training. And the CO, Captain Bowen, looked at me, I'm on crutches, I'm all jacked up. He says, hey, this is your last time you're gonna go through BUD/S. This is it. I had several stress fractures. I had double pneumonia. I was jacked up, and he gave me a few months to heal. He said, this is your last time going through. I shouldn't even let you go back through. Wow. I started Navy SEAL training with stress fractures. Stress fractures. Not shin splints.

That's hard to finish.

Stress fractures. Starting the hardest training, arguably the hardest training in the world with stress fractures. And this is when I started to not put a cap on the body. If the mind is there, every morning I would wake up at 3 30 in the morning, four o'clock in the morning, go to my dive cage. Go in there before anybody saw me, I get duct tape and I would tape from my forefoot all the way up to the mid of my calf and I would put two black socks on and so I ran not using the pivot.

Oh my gosh.

And I ran my hip flexors. So for the first 45 minutes to an hour, I was in absolute excruciating pain. But what motivated me through that whole process is was the fact that this kid came from that. I'm in the hardest training in the world in the worst shape of my entire life. What if I can graduate amongst these studs?

Wow.

All these guys around me are studs. They're stallions. They're gladiators in my class. They're all healthy. Most of them, they're not broken like this. They may have some, you know, everybody's sick going through that training. But if I could graduate, it would change everything for me. If I can start the hardest train in the world, broken, and graduate. So my mind fed off of that. You are now, from the weakest man, you are now the hardest man to ever live. If you can do this. If you can do this. Life is one big mind game.

Crawl, walk, run mentality all the time. And then structure and discipline in the way we trained. Everything was built up that way from shooting. Oftentimes I was a marksmanship instructor and I've trained some other people to shoot and they're always.