Navy Seals REVEAL The 6 Steps To ACHIEVING Anything You Want | Lewis Howes

What people understand is that they live for themselves. Not knowing that you have the power within yourself to change millions of lives. Yeah, by facing life, by facing yourself. And through that, I achieved so much. I was a Navy seal. I'd gone through Ranger school. I've gone through Delta Force selection training. I. I've done so much. I run 200 miles, pull up records, everything. Learned to read and write, became pretty intelligent. And I still was like, man, what.

Is wrong with me?

It wasn't until I got real sick and I talk 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 and 39 hours to 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 where 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'd 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. Yeah, 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 going to waste an hour sitting around for this ceremony.

Most people sit around, and that's what they like. They. They need the ceremony.

If I accomplish something, 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 called 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 a 180 pound person, lost 106 pounds in less than three months. Learned 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 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.

Yeah.

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 year olds.

Yeah.

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

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 all have a dungeon. I'm just willing to talk about mine. Yeah, most of us aren't willing to 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 you sample. It's 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 know what it is, it may be different for you than it is for me, but you go back to your insecurities and then when you go back to your 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. I wasn't training them to do that.

Why weren't you training.

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 that sick portion of my life is long. I didn't care if I died or lived.

Wow.

Cuz I was, for the first time in my life, happy. Wow. And at peace. Because I reflected back on where it 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 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 to £300 telling everybody I'm good. I don't, I don't give. I'm good. No, they're, 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, is 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. When I'm afraid of something, it's 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, I talk in life. Like a lot of us in life want to take the four lane highway that has roadmaps 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 is that Midwest life.

That's right, 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. I was just like, I'm sick and tired of feeling afraid. So I need to do the things that scare me the most. 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 going to give myself a challenge every single day until the fear goes away.

That's right.

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% life most of. Like for instance, I never thought in 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 4020 pull ups. That's the first thing they did. Oh, my God.

4,024 hours or was.

It's 4,020 pull ups in 24 hour period. The first thing I did versus closing my mind, you're like, oh my God, that's crazy. I went and got a pennant.

Say, how many is that every minute?

Exactly.

Every hour, every second.

Instead of taking life and making it out to 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 what we do is 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, we, we take away the possibilities of you could be this, you could be that. Yeah, you could be all these things. And I Never thought at £300 I could be negative.

Wow.

So if my mind was shackled, me and you would never meet. There'd be no book, right? There'd be no book, right? 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. It will haunts me the most. People 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, 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 going to change the world. I was going to set records. I was going to be a Navy seal. I was going to be all these things in the military that I accomplished. You're going to get the VFW award. You could be honored here, honored there. I'm Like God, I was. This isn't me. Like, it says, David Goggins. I was an ecolab guy. I sprayed for cockroaches, and I'm 300 pounds. It 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? Thinking about how much I left on the 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 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 or.

No, I was £300. When 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'd 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 CEO, 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 buds. 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 was 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, 4:00 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 middle 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 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 to that training. But if I could graduate, it would change everything for me. If I can start the hardest training 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.

Yeah.

And you're playing it with yourself. Is it true? I don't care. It got me through the hardest training, starting out broken where most people quit. I just started.

Wow.

And when you take that mindset and you learn to flip that around, that's what made me powerful. And my body followed. And three months later, my stress fractures.

Were healed by running on them, calcifying it just like I never had them.

Since 43 years old.

Wow.

I ran 7000 miles in 2007. Haven't had a stress fracture since. And I'm not saying to do that. I'm just saying that when the mind and the body connect and you didn't and you don't give yourself a way out, the only way out for me at that time was death.

Wow.

I'm going to be a Navy SEAL.

Or I'm going to die.

Or I'm going to die trying.

Yeah.

Period. And my body said, roger that. We're going to get you through this.

So when the mind gives it no way out, your body says, okay, okay, I believe you.

Now I have to heal.

I'm going to figure this out with you. We're going to do this. It's going to be the worst part of your life, but you're going to Survive.

We're going to survive.

Wow.

And as you hear in that 100 mile race I did. I started figuring out more and more and more and more about at the other end of suffering is a life that no one. And I'm not talking about go out there and kill yourself. Don't take these words and flip them and say, oh my God, no. It just be uncomfortable. I caught suffering.

Don't physically injure yourself.

Yes. Not saying that.

And then be out for six months.

That's right.

That's no good.

That's no good. I'm not saying. I'm not saying do what I did. Yeah. I was in a spot. That life forced me. I had a choice. I had a choice to be this guy or the guy that's in front of you. I had choices. I chose this path.

And you're still choosing it. I'm still choosing to go back to that guy any moment.

Because I found out. I found out something with those stress fractures. I found out something through facing all these things. I found out a whole nother world. Which is why I walk around with all my stuff in a black backpack.

Wow.

I found it a whole nother way. A whole nother way of no matter how far you get in life, you have to be able to go back to scratching your mind at a moment's notice. You can never get so far beyond scratch. What that means is when you accomplish something in life, if you want to go back to scratch and go back to that seven dollar a month place where I once lived and visit that place for a long period of time. If you were here when you went back to scratch, you would now be here. Scratch is what makes you better. Scratch. Feel friction. Obstacles create growth. There's no friction when you're this far up in the game anymore. You think there is. That's right. When you achieve so much, the friction is minor because why? I'm sore. I'm going to get a massage today. I'm hungry. I'm going to eat today. The refrigerator is always full. So your comforts are now. So your discomfort is now very minuscule to your discomfort back here in the $7 a month place. So you have to go back to the total discomfort to then raise your level of where you're at now. I'm not saying stay there and stay there.

Visit.

Visit it and then you raise your.

Level 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 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.

You can't be extreme in one direction or the other, right? You can't be. If you're, if you're in a leadership position, you can't talk all the time, right? Obviously as a boss, you need to communicate, you need to talk to your people. But if you talk too much, guess what happens? People start stop listening to you. You're putting out too much information. They don't know what's important, what's not. So that's bad. You can't go too far in that direction. The other direction is you can't not talk enough. And now no one knows what's going on. No one knows what's happening. So you have to be balanced. And that's the whole idea of the dichotomy of leadership. But probably the first dichotomy in leadership that I had to say to myself, you know what, there's another side to this is I used to tell the young SEAL officers that you have to be aggressive. You got to be default aggressive. That's how you got to be. Because when something's going on, you got to be aggressive to make that, get that problem solved. And if you're not being aggressive, then you're hesitating, well, then you can get killed. Okay? So there you go. And that's what I used to tell guys.

And as that's extreme. That's an extreme.

Yes, that's the problem with it. And so the question is, can you be too aggressive? Yes, absolutely you can. Hey, there's a machine gun nest over there. Let's attack it. So you charge up the hill and everyone dies. Yeah, you've, you've been too aggressive. So what you have to do is you have to be balanced. And that's probably so even as I had these kind of mantras like default aggressive, can you do too much of that? Yes, you can. So you end up with this. What do you end up? Can you be too passive? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Well, now we're not making any progress. Now we're getting crushed by the enemy because we didn't maneuver. Okay, so that's bad. So where do you want to be. You want to be balanced? Even the idea of extreme ownership. Can you take too much ownership?

Yes.

Yes, you can.

Really?

Yes, you can.

I thought you said you need to take ownership of everything.

Two different things. Listen to this. If you're working for me and I say, okay, here's the mission that I want you to accomplish tonight. Here's the people I want you to take. Here's the weapons I want you to bring. Here's the vehicles I want you to bring. Here's the route I want you to use to get to the target. Here's the method I want you to use to secure the target. Here's the route I want you to do to get back. So that's the plan. Now you take ownership and go execute. Now, can you really take ownership of.

That plan if someone else gave you the whole thing?

I mean, I gave you the whole thing, right? Is that your plan? No. No.

It's your plan.

Yeah, it's my plan. So when you go in the field and now you come up against an obstacle and you're executing my plan, what's your attitude?

Well, it's not my plan.

It's.

Yeah. And you're at an obstacle now, and you're like, hey, jocko, didn't think of this, right? So now you just back away and you come back and you say, hey, we failed the mission because you didn't think of this.

You didn't think of this option.

Yeah.

Yeah, right. So that's me taking too much ownership. So what I need to do is, I say, hey, here's the plan, or here's the mission. How do you want to do it? And now if you're a good leader, you'll go get with your people and you'll say, oh, hey, guys, here's the plan, or here's the mission that we have to accomplish. How do you guys want to do it? Now, you all come up with a good plan, and you come back to me and you say, here's the plan. And I say, that looks pretty good. Go, execute. Now, when you hit an obstacle in the field, what's your attitude?

I need to adapt, and you adjust. What's your plan?

You'll make it.

Came up with this. Yeah. Yes.

So can you take too much ownership? The answer is yes, you can. So with just about every. You can name a trait, right? You can name a trait from a leadership perspective that you think is a positive trait, and you'll immediately see that if you go too far with it, it'll become bad. It'll become bad. So you have to be balanced. So even as I came up with the dichotomy of leadership, I had to be humble enough to say to myself, you know what? Being aggressive is really, really good most of the time. But if you're too aggressive, that's not good.

Yeah.

So like you said earlier, you're constantly questioning everything. And to me, what that is, that's. That's humility. That's you being humble enough to say, you know what? I really don't understand this that well.

And.

And there's some things in my life that I don't get. Whereas as opposed to you walking around saying, I already got this figured out. I already know what I'm doing. I already know where I'm going. I already know what God is specifically. I already know what's going to happen to me when I die.

All those things.

But instead you're questioning everything, which in my mind is a positive thing.

Yeah, that's good to know. Is there anything that is missing in your life? You feel like something's missing?

I know. I feel like I'm living a pretty good life right now. I mean, I'm totally blessed. I mean, I got a great family, I got great kids, I got a great company.

I got.

Working with great people. Yeah, no, healthy. Healthy. You know, I get to work out, train. I'm feeling good in the dream, man. Yeah, living the dream.

So you never feel like there's something missing for you right now? If there is, you're working towards it. You're working on the next book. You're building a business.

Yeah, well, there's a difference between something missing and am I satisfied?

Yeah.

Right.

Because I'm not satisfied. I mean, I always want to go, like, I never. I never get done with the end of the day and go, cool, mission accomplished. Like, it's like, you gotta be close. Yeah.

Yeah.

So you're not satisfied, but you feel like nothing's missing?

Yeah.

Yeah. I'd say that's a fair statement.

What brings you the most joy in your life and makes you smile the most?

Oh, I mean, my kids. My kids are cool. You know, my. My wife and kids. Yeah, my wife and kids are cool and funny and. And we have a good time and lots of inside jokes and all that.

Yeah.

You know, and I. And I train jiu jitsu and that. That's very fun. And surf. That's fun.

Yeah.

Guitar. That's fun.

How old are your kids again? Age?

20, 18, 16 and 10.

And what's the biggest lesson you learned about being about yourself, being a father to them.

Your kids are not going to be who you want them to be.

You can't train them to be.

They're to be who they are. And you can give them some course corrections a little bit, but they're going to be who they. Who they are. And the more you try and force them into what you want them to be, the harder they're going to push back and rebel.

Wow.

Yep.

Did you learn that the hard way.

Or did you get. Yep.

So you tried to train them in a certain way or.

Yeah, somewhat. And it's pretty obvious, like, from my perspective, I was having a similar conversation with a bunch of executives, and they were. We were taught. We, you know, we went down the road because we're having dinner now, so we're done talking about work, but now everyone wants to ask me about, you know, parenting and everything else. And, And I said at the table, I'm like, hey, who here ended up doing exactly what their parents wanted them to do? And there's like one guy out of 10, right? Because most people, you know, your parents are wanting you to do this thing and you do something else. I mean, I joined the Navy when I was 18 years old. Like, that's.

That what?

Probably wasn't even on the checklist of top 20 things that my parents wanted me to do. Not even in the same ballpark.

Right.

They didn't want you to go to war.

Yeah, they didn't want that. So here you go. Yeah. See ya. That's. So the more you try and kind of pigeonhole your kids into being something that you want them to be, the worse off it's going to be.

It's.

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

What if.

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, 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, I don't know, 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, 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 going to either step in. Yeah, I'm going to step in and be like, okay, let's think about that. What's their reaction going to be? And by the way, that's what I'm not going to say. No, don't do it that way. I'm going to 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 a 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.

Gives you more ownership, more respecting yourself, confidence, belief. How important is feedback for leaders? Getting feedback from peers, coaches or employees, team members?

Feedback is how you get better.

Yeah.

No feedback, no improvement.

So.

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. You don't listen to it.

Yeah.

So feedback 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 going to 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 will say, hey, I don't know if that's a good plan. So even, you know, when I was a task unit commander in 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. So my, my, 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 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. I say, I say, how would you want to do it? Tell me what you don't like about it and then tell me how you want to do it. So therefore the next time you have an objection, you're like, you know, the door's 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 list from, 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 two things they could add to ourselves?

Number one is listen, which, which we just talked about so that's fresh on my mind. And you'd be surprised about how many leaders are think 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 given 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, 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 detached, 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 going to 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 meet. This is the meeting that we just talked about, a 38 minute meeting. All this chaos is happening. Sure, I'm a 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 I'm in the weeds and I'm not able to assess what is actually happening. So that, 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. 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. Whether it's my wife or whether you're a business partner, you come to me and you say, the dang. The 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?

Yeah.

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

How would you do this with your wife?

So if you. Well, if you come to me and you go, the supply department's been late. They're two weeks late on this stuff. I don't say calm down. I say. I said, oh, you got to be kidding me. Two weeks. And you go, yeah. Can you believe it? Ah, that's horrible. We got to put a solution. We got to get that figured out. In the meantime, what do we need to do right now to get the problem solved? Right. So we already. Now we're on the same team so we can work together to find a solution.

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, 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 know, you just calm down, right? How's that going to go? Not going to go good. Now she's going to 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, you want me to have ice shipped in from Alaska there, princess?

Right.

That's not going to go over well.

Those who are looking to accomplish their goals, but they feel stuck in life. What would you say were the strategies of the seals in accomplishing your goals at the highest level? What are some of the things that you guys did? Strategy wise?

Structure and discipline. So muscle memory would be the biggest one, which is now many of the things that I teach in both overcome and in my Point man for Life program. And it was something that I was missing. I felt like I was missing when I left the military. And I think a lot of military members feel the same way. The SEAL teams are incredibly effective at what we do for a lot of reasons. One of the reasons is selection. And that selection is there's a lot of things you have to do to qualify just to get to SEAL training. A lot of people don't realize how smart seals have to be. So there's a level of intelligence, there's a level of physical ability, there's a level of, obviously, resiliency that has to come into this. And then we put everybody through this meat grinder called SEAL training that eliminates anybody that doesn't have that ability. And then once we get, you know, once you get to the SEAL team, it's how we train and build teams, and it's forged through tremendous adversity. Because our training, even once you get to a team, is designed to be very hard. I mean, some people would say almost sadistic in the way we would train. We would look for what is the absolute worst case scenario we can think of. And then how do we amplify that just a little more to make it even more worse? To make it even worse and then train from that and then train from that. And it was grueling and painful, and sometimes we got guys killed in training I mean, you try to reduce the level of risk, but we also recognize that in order to be ready for combat, we have to train at the highest level. So and in order to do that, it was a lot of repetition and crawl, walk, run was the mentality. And it was not these big goals of hey, I'm going to take down this entire town like you know, right off the bat. Because that's really complicated. That starts to get into all kinds of very complicated things. It was, how do I take down a single route and we walk as we flow through it. And then that became, well, how do I take two rooms, how do I take three rooms, how do I take a house, how do I take a compound of three houses, how do I take a village? So it was a quall, walk, run mentality all the time. And then structure and discipline in the way we trained. Everything was built up that way from shooting. You know, oftentimes I was a marksmanship instructor and I've trained some other people to shoot and they're always, they're a little funny because the very first thing do when I train anybody to shoot is you shoot at the, you know, at the three yard line. I little black dot and we're shooting at the three yard line and they're like, hey man, this is stupid. I'm like, no, you're not. You're learning. And the repetition that you need to effectively pull your weapon out and, and get a positive sight picture, trigger, squeeze, release that round, second sight picture and follow through so that we can do that over and over and over again until, you know, at that whatever point, you know, you're shooting from 50, 100 yards or more. Yeah. So all of that comes together to create small victories and repetition, structure and discipline that all come together to be successful.

How does someone create that for themselves when they're not in the military?

So that's or not on the sports team. When I left, so what I began to realize, so overcome when I wrote the Trident, which was my first book, it was just the story. It's a story. It's my story of a young punk kid who did well enough to become an officer or a leader and then totally failed because of ego and arrogance, got a second chance and then redeemed himself and then got wounded and kind of realized there was another level of leadership. And when people would read that, people would say, how'd you do that? And I couldn't definitively answer that question. So overcome became, I mean it took, overcome came out in, I think five years after I wrote the Trident because it took that long to kind of think about what enabled that. And a lot of that had to do with when I got out of the military. I missed that structure and discipline. I missed. You know, a lot of people don't understand that the military is sometimes a really simple existence, especially when you're deployed, like when you're in the combat zone. It's a very simple existence. You. You eat, sleep, sleep, you work out, and then you train and conduct missions, and you're worried about the guys around you. And the real world's really complicated. There's all these distractions. There's no one that gives you the guidance. No one hands you a mission and says, hey, man, this is what you're doing today.

You got to figure out your own mission.

Exactly. And as I got out, I realized that. That I had to figure out my own mission, and all these things were not there. So I started with, okay, so how was I successful coming out of these injuries? Because that's what everybody wanted to see. How were you so positive? How did you write that sign on the door? How'd you, you know, less than a year and a half after your injuries, launch a nonprofit? How did you, you know, later create your own speaking company and all these things? And I realized that I was super balanced as a leader when I was wounded.

When you were wounded.

When I was wounded. I wasn't prior to being wounded, really, and not when I had the leadership failure. And at other points in crisis in my life, I realized I wasn't as balanced.

I think I saw one of your videos recently talking about, like, the key to successful leadership is balance.

It is. I. I believe it. But balance is a misnomer, too, because it's not like, Well, I put 20% in this bucket. In this bucket, in this bucket. I teach five. I teach something called the Pentagon and peak Performance. So five key areas that a leader should be balanced in. The foundational level is physical leadership. And. And it's something that I've come to find that all of us, as we get older, have a tendency to let slide. We do the opposite of probably what we should be doing.

It's going harder.

Yeah.

Because as we get older, we're breaking down, and we need to take care of ourselves better than we do when we're younger, where your body's so much more resilient. And that's why I tell people, as a leader, you need a lot of energy. You need to be able to think clearly. You need, you know, sound mind and everything. That you're doing. So that foundational level of physical leadership is critical to what you're doing. And that consists of sleep, nutrition, and fitness. So those three components and my physical leadership saved my life when I was wounded. Now, for most people, hopefully you're never at that level, but in some ways, right now, you look at today.

You.

Know, Covid is kind of a strange thing, but for the most part, it is individuals who are not healthy that are having the greatest problems. And those with a stronger immune system seem to be doing better. And it's like that with other diseases. So once again, physical leadership to have the energy and the ability, we manage stress better. So that's the foundational level. Number two was mental leadership. And when I became a junior officer and I was super arrogant, I really thought I knew everything. And I didn't challenge my beliefs. I didn't question my own capabilities. Do as I say, not as I do. I didn't do things to get out of my comfort zone. Those are the things that make up mental leadership. Constantly educating ourselves, constantly challenging our beliefs. We're in a day and age where it's dangerous, in my opinion, because social media feeds you the information that you like to see. And so many people don't go seek out, they don't challenge that belief system of what they're being fed. So it only furthers their belief and things that may or may not be true. But because you keep clicking on that line of thought, you're being fed all that information. The news is no different. The media people watch what they like to see and it's very biased in this day and age. So mental leadership is constantly challenging your beliefs. It's doing your due diligence to find out what's really true and how does it play into who I am and what I'm trying to do. It's getting outside of your comfort zone. It's finding the individuals who are where you want to be and identifying them as mentors so you can be better. So, so that you're not surrounding yourself with individuals who are pulling you away from where you want to go. Right. Number three, and this is the biggest one and my weakest point, and that's something I found about the Pentagon. Most people have one area where they're super strong naturally, and then they have an area where they're super weak. And my weakest area was emotional leadership. And emotional leadership is our ability to maintain as a leader. It's critical to be even keeled. We're not too hot, we're not Too cold. We're not too excited. We're not too angry because people can count on you with that consistency. They know as a leader, I can come to you and tell you bad news and you're going to take it well, and I can come to tell you amazing news and you're not going to burn it down drinking and be an idiot. You got to ride that balance. And I really struggle with that because I. I was an emotional roller coaster when I was younger, and I came to realize that that really damaged my credibility as a leader.

Yes.

And. And it's also choosing that positivity in the face of negativity. Nobody wants that leader. That is a. Just an emotional train wreck, you know, or a negative Nelly. They want that leader who they can count on, that's positive, that's going to push you forward. They also don't want that leader. That's something I call a leadership wrecking ball. A leader who. They're all about the result, but they leave a path of destruction behind them. They'll. They'll crush you in their path to get things done. And that, in my opinion, is weak emotional leadership. Also, as a leader, we got to think about the others, the health of others. Yes. And then the last point. Well, the last part of emotional leadership is. Is managing our mouths. Because our mouth. Our mouth, yes. Yeah. Because so many people.

So true.

So many people. And I was guilty of this. And, and, And I'm not. I'm not impervious to this. Like I said, this is my weakest area. But I'm really aware of myself now because when we let that zinger fly, 90% of the time, it doesn't do anything to. To further what we're trying to accomplish as a leader. All it does is massages our ego, you know? Well, I was angry in the moment, so I wanted to say this. I see this in relationships all the time, husband and wife, that let these zingers fly. It does nothing to further that situation in a positive way.

No.

That's part of being a leader also.

Right.

That people are going to disagree with you. So what, you know, if you have conviction in who you are, it's just going to happen. I mean, in this world.

Yeah.

Another Navy SEAL that I had on Chad Wright said, your tongue is like a rudder in a boat. It's like whatever you speak, like, it's going to start guiding you in that direction or influencing you in certain directions in your life. So make sure you really use your words correctly based on where you want to go. Kind of back to the no negativity. If you're negative, it's going to affect you and take you down a negative path in your life. Feeling that way emotionally, you know, you're going to attract negative people. So, you know, you made that decision in that moment to speak differently, use words differently, which I think was powerful.

Yeah.

Okay, so that was three.

Number four, Social leadership.

Social leadership.

How do we build the rings of influence around us? So, and I break that down into four rings of influence. The outermost ring is our work relationships. The innermost ring is a lot of times our work acquaintances, friends. The third ring is our close friends. And then that, bullseye, is our immediate family. And in western culture, there's a tendency to put a whole lot of time and effort into the two outermost rings, our work relationships and our work friends and acquaintances. And we have a tendency to take for granted our close friends and our family.

Yes.

And we think they'll always be there for us. But when a major crisis comes, when you're on the X, that may or may not be true, because that's when everything is being pressure tested. And if you haven't put the time and effort into your immediate family, then oftentimes it will break. And Jimmy Hatch, a friend of mine, described it like this. We all ride on trains in this life. I rode on the seal train. You rode on football train. Football train. And we never know. All of us hope that someday we'll get to wherever we want to get off. For some of us, it's the end of the tracks. For others, there's specific stop they want to get off on. But sometimes there's a catastrophic event that occurs in our life and we get thrown off the train. And those outermost rings don't get off with you because they're still on the train. And it's not that they won't like you or anything like that. They're just still riding the football train or the seal training. You're no longer on it. But who gets off with you is your close friends and family. And so often I have watched individuals that get into a major crisis. And you also know so many successful people that have been super successful but got to the end of their career or even the end of their lives and said, why didn't I put more time into my family? That's true. So social leadership is making sure that we are. We are investing in those relationships to be ready. The key question I ask everybody is, will you be ready for what? It doesn't matter. Will you be Ready for that moment when it comes, because we don't know what that moment is. Right? So that balance enables us to be ready for almost anything. Having a mindset of the next ambush is out on the horizon. If I maintain balance, if I have a leadership mindset of being ready for it, I'll be ready for it. No matter what it is.

No matter what it is.

Doesn't mean it's going to hurt less, but at least I'll be ready for it to drive forward. But it takes those things. That's why I was so successful when I got wounded. I was balanced in those areas. The last one is spiritual leadership leadership. And for me, faith played a part of that. But for others, I tell them, it's our ability to get outside of ourselves and have perspective in this life that what you're going through. We all live in our own personal hell when we're in a crisis. But spiritual leadership enables us to recognize that there are a whole lot of other people out there that are going through much worse than you are. And if you can do things to get outside of yourself and recognize there's a great big world out there, that what you're going through is temporary, even though it's painful, super painful, you will get to the other side and be able to get beyond it. What I talk about is that if you're alive, man, it's a gift. Yes, it's a gift. And it may be hard, it may be tough, but it's still a good day. And it's up to you to drive forward, to get off that act. So I have a motto. No bad days. Yeah. You know, because I'm still here.

That's right, man. No bad days. What do you think is the skills that we should learn to master more, to help us reach at the top of our field, our industry, or to set us up to be prepared when that ambush comes. So we stay ready. We don't have to get ready.

So it comes. In my opinion, it comes back to four key things which I call the point man principles.

Point man principles.

Last year I wrote a planner called the Point Man Planner. And it came about because I got really sick. And while I was really sick trying to, they were trying to figure out what was wrong with me. I had a parasite and a blood disorder that attack my central nervous system. And I was super messed up. I thought I was dying, to be honest. And at one point I was like, man, I wish I had a point man. Like when I was in the SEAL teams to lead me out of Some of these bad situations. And it made me think, well, why? What made them so effective? And when we were talking about what makes the seals effective, like, it became really clear to me that. A really good point, man. A lot of seals live their life in this way. And there's four principles. And I think this is how anybody out there can be effective and bring their game to the highest level. Number one, relentless belief in your mission. And there's a lot of people who don't know what their mission is. They've never written it down, They've never defined it. And if you write down your mission, it's got to be built on the foundation of your values. And there's a lot of people that don't know what their values are. They'll tell you cliche things. They'll say, you know, faith family finance, faith fitness. But when you hear those things, you're like, dude, you haven't been in church in two years.

You haven't been in a gym.

I haven't seen you in a gym this year. You know, we just throw these things out there and understanding. Because whether you know what your values or not, know what your values are or not, they are driving you and they're driving your decision making, right? So if one of your values maybe is fame or. Or recognition, that's okay. You should be aware of it. Doesn't mean it's a negative thing unless you know you're stabbing somebody else in the back to get it. But knowing that is important because now you can build your mission in this life upon it. And because my mission now, now that I'm out of the SEAL teams, it's about setting that example. As a leader, I want people to regard me as a point man for my own life. Someone that they want to learn from, someone, you know, that is a leader that sets the example, that communicates well. So that has become my new mission. Number two is a clearly defined destination and a set course. So in the military, we always knew exactly where we were going. And in life, people often don't. In life, people say, well, I want to be rich or I want to be in better shape. Well, those are not clearly defined things. It's kind of like saying, I want to go west if I needed to go someplace, you know, So a clearly defined destination. In the military, we use something called the universal transverse transverse Mercator system. It's a grid system that covers the entire earth and it breaks it down.

Into the exact point, exactly a 1.

Meter square, almost the size of this table.

Yep. It's crazy. In the whole world?

Well, all the way the, the north and south poles become an issue.

Yeah, sure.

But yeah, all the way almost to the north and south poles.

Yes. Where most of the people live. Yes, exactly.

So, so when we identify a target, it's broken down usually all the way to that 10 digit grid, meaning a one by one meter square.

That's crazy.

So a very clearly defined destination and that enables us to not have any deviation. You know, and we're not going west. We know exactly where we're going. And then the second part of it is a clearly defined course. And that course is a bearing on how we get there or how we follow our compass to get there. Most people may have one, but they don't have the other. And you can't get to where you're going without having both.

They may have the destination, but not know the how to get there.

That's right, because the course becomes the how to, it becomes our waypoints. Like I give the example of when I wanted to be a SEAL as a kid. I knew that was my destination. That was a very clearly defined destination. And the course was all the things that I had to do. So I had to enlist in the Navy, I had to get accepted, I had to get a SEAL contract, I had to physically pass the SEAL screening test, I had to academically pass the ASVAB score with a high enough score to get picked up for seals. I had to get a SEAL rating, I had to graduate from my A school, I had to get the SEAL training, I had to make it through SEAL training, I had to make it through Hell week.

Right.

All these things were waypoints on the course. So if people can break their goals down in this manner, and I break them down in the point man planner quarterly, and then every day we make sure I do something called the rule of three pieces, one physical, one personal, one professional. Every day we're moving the needle just a little bit towards those goals. That's how we stay on course. Right, Number four, or, I'm sorry, number three of the point man principles is risk assessment and situational awareness. So many people walk through life totally blind. When we talk about, will you be ready? They're not ready for the ambushes that are coming. And oftentimes they never see them coming even though the signs were there. So one, are we regularly doing risk assessments of where we are in our life? Are we still balanced? Are we still taking care of ourselves? You know, both in the Pentagon and Peak Performance? Are we making sure that our Destination is front sight. Focus that we're on course, that we're hitting the waypoints we should. So we're consistently doing a risk assessment. We're also looking for the indicators that an ambush is on the horizon.

Yes.

And so many people don't. So then they walk into these ambush and they're like, oh my God, I never saw that coming.

Okay, and number four. So it's risk assessment and situational awareness, right?

Yep.

And the fourth one is an overcome mindset to get off the axis quickly as possible.

Overcome mindset.

Yeah.

So you can't, you can't prevent every ambush.

Most.

I estimate that most people in this life will go through five, at a minimum, five major life ambushes. And I define a major life ambush as anything that will forever leave physical, mental, emotional, or deep financial scars and you'll never fully recover from it. You know, or let me rephrase that. You will always carry the pain of that ambush. You will always look back and you will think, that was painful. Like it hurts when we think about it. And I tell people that on the lower end of the scale, it can be the ending of a relationship, it can be the ending of a marriage, job, job, personal failure, professional failure, lawsuit, bankruptcy, the failure of a business. It can be life threatening illness or injury, Life threatening illness or injury to someone you love. It can be sexual trauma to you or someone you love. And then at the higher ends, it starts to get into the loss of a loved one or one of the highest I've seen is the loss of a child. Oh, man. Yeah, that's tough. So having a mindset of readiness and knowing that unfortunately those things could happen. And I teach something called the REACT methodology. So it's a, it's a system to use when these ambushes come.

What's that system?

So REACT is an acronym for when an ambush comes. The very first thing we have to do is recognize that we are in a crisis. And it goes back to what we were talking about in the beginning. When you're on the X, there's a natural tendency to procrastinate and deny and look at the past or the future or recognize. Yeah, it's usually the hardest and depending on the level of ambush. And. And I want to make sure that people understand if you lose a child, timeline is relative. I don't expect you to, you know, yes, it's going to take time to get off the ax from losing a child. But also recognizing that you're already thinking, I can't lay here forever. Like, I have to Some point, get up. Yeah, exactly. So, number one, recognizing you're in a crisis or recognizing the reality of is what I say. Number two is evaluate your assets. So when we are hit by a life ambush by any kind of crisis or catastrophic event, it's natural to feel totally overwhelmed in the moment because your world has just come to a grinding halt for whatever it is. It's like you suddenly stepped into a raging storm. You're in the darkness. You're trying to figure out what's happening in this chaos with the wind howling and lightning and thunder and people beating on you, and it's overwhelming. And we tend to think, you know, there's no hope, there's nothing I can do. It's all outside of my control. But we have to, in that moment, figure out how we control what we can. And one of the first things we can do is evaluate what assets do I have to bring to bear to this problem. I also talk about. It's like tools in our toolbox, you know, so what can I either buy, borrow, use that I already have. If it's a, you know, business crisis, it may be an accountant or an attorney or it may be advisors or a board that, you know, or maybe whoever that's helping you to get out of this crisis, maybe, you know, outsourcing someone that has specialties that help you deal with whatever problem you're in. If it's a personal crisis, maybe it's a relationship crisis. So it could be a marriage counselor or a priest or whatever it is. Having those things, though, makes you suddenly say, okay, this is crisis, but I can deal with it. Sure. Number. Number three is assess possible options and outcomes. And what usually tends to happen when we go the slowest part is A, recognizing B, starting to gather. Hey, I have tools or what's in my inventory to deal with this. And then there tends to be this, this. This tendency, if you will, to. To suddenly rush, like, oh, my God, this sucks. I want to get off the ax. And I have these tools. So let me. Let me use these to get out of here as quickly as possible. Right. Okay. And. And I tell people, you got to slow down. You got to take a tactical pause. In the military, we called it let.

The battlefield develop and look at all the outcomes.

Yeah, all the outcomes. And also maybe there are things that are happening that you haven't seen yet behind the scenes.

Yeah.

So getting your team together, whoever is helping you, whoever's part of this inventory, this is where we now assess both the short term and the long term impact of the decisions that we're going to make.

Okay.

And the C choose and communicate. So you choose the direction you're going to go and you communicate it to the people around you. You're never on the X by yourself. The X has its own gravitational pull. Any kind of life ambush. So if you are in a, if it's a personal ambush, your family, your kids, your friends get pulled on the X with you. Yeah, it's a business ambush. Your team, your team, believe it or not, even your clients can get pulled on.

That's true.

So it's important that we choose and then communicate because frequently as a leader, especially when we're in a crisis, sometimes we want to internalize and we don't want to. Even though everybody around us can see you're in a storm, man, you're on the edge. But it's important to communicate for three different reasons. Number one, when we communicate, we verbalize what we're going to do. And there's a level, and there's that lead yourself level of internal accountability. When we say we're going to do something, something now, it's like, yes, this is what I'm doing. Number two, it tells others and they're like, oh my God, yes, we have a plan. This sucks, let's go. And that third component of that is hope. It gives people hope. It's like a positive direction. Yes, we have a plan. This is where we're going. And then the last one is take action, execute on that plan. There are so many people who will go through this process and then they're waiting for the perfect moment. And the perfect moment's never going to come. The time to act is now. You know, imperfect action is better than waiting for this perfect plan.

Exactly.

And it creates momentum. It gets you off that X and you may go from 1x to the next. And that happens sometimes, but use that momentum to keep going.

How do we train our mind 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. And 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. 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, in us achieving that accomplishment. So self discipline 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. The external world has started a podcast, right? The external world has a say in whether or not you do that. And that's. And the discipline that is required to move through 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 said what's the difference? Well the difference is if you are overly so. Those with very high self 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. That's how it's structure. I mean that's what it is. And so moving to towards a goal like that takes oftentimes being able to adapt out of structure and say well I can't do that, I have to just go in, I have to go in unknowing. Now the most successful people are those who have both self discipline and discipline 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.

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 sort of.

Creating the reward system first for the, for the goal in order to help you stay motivated.

Depending on, yeah, depending on your, depending on Your how you show up, not.

Just say like, okay, I'm gonna, my goal is to achieve this thing. It's gonna take me three years to accomplish it.

Right.

And that's the only reward I'm gonna get in three years. But how can I reward myself every day for an hour action I take every month for a milestone, every year for getting closer. So focusing on the reward system.

Yeah, 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. Right. So if I want to run, if I want to run a marathon and I can barely run to my mailbox right, 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 got to extend that task a.

Little bit so that we've already accomplished a lot of something. You have to 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. Yeah.

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. In other places, maybe you're not allowed to 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 you. Because we were all so 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, I look back on it very fondly. Right.

So not the day to day job even, just like the missions you went out on.

Yeah, that wasn't challenging. I think if I were to say 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. 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. Yeah. Well, I mean, luckily with today's technology, contact was fairly easy, but we found was. You know, 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 overseas in something. I have a mission that goes along 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. And he was young. I mean, he was. You know, he was born in 05, so he was. By the time he was 2, 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 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. And I think the attributes, the way I talk about compartmentalization and the attribute is more kind of 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. And at the end of the Day, the mission has to be accomplished. So if something gnarly happens on a mission, you can't sit there. These movies that show these extended scenes of people mourning when their buddy goes down or whatever, like, oh, my God.

You don't have that.

But, no, you don't have that time. You have to win the gunfight, because if you don't, then all of you won't make it home. So you have to. And I think the training allows you to do that. The training is so intense and so kind of 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. It just happens without us, 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. I say that with immense gratitude, because I know there's a lot of friends of mine who didn't have that. Can't say that they had those moments where they, you know, 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 or near complete control, or we understood the pathways we needed to go through out of. But I say that also this comes back to compartmentalization. One of the things that you have to be able to do when shit goes sideways is to not focus on that thought you just brought up. The focus is not, oh, my God, I don't think I'm going to 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 learnability. 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. So I talk about the parachute malfunction in the context of that. But ultimately, to even be able to do that in the first place, it requires a, 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 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, I was around people who just, I trusted. I knew that if something went wrong, we'd be able to handle it. And so I think that's a necessity. When you do this type of, 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 and 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.

It's the latter. You plan the mission as you'd like it to go, and then you. Inside of that planning, you put together, you build contingencies within each factory.

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

Yeah, so, you know, just like, I mean, just like any athlete would understand, or. 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. Okay, well, during, 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 a phase, 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 out why, 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, the. Well, so I think we're predisposed, each one of us, to what. What I call Huberman and I both have called. This is the autonomic set point. You know, at what point do we start flipping into an automatic, 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, I live in a neighborhood, and in my neighborhood, there's four other Navy SEALs in the neighborhood. There's one across the street, one down the road.

Must be nice.

Well, it is nice a because they're great dudes. And it's great because they're great neighbors. But I remember my. My wife once saying. She said, hey, I'm so glad these guys are here 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. So I think we show up predisposed training to it is difficult. So he remember, I actually working on some stuff to help train, have 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.

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 prepared. I talk about every day. I think you should be experiencing Some type of pain, something that's uncomfortable, right? Seeking discomfort, yes. 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 that makes them anxious. 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, and 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 at 2 o'. Clock. I know what I'm going to do. I'm just, I'm nervous about it. Uncertainty without anxiety, well, that's every kid on Christmas Eve. Okay. I mean, 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 an anxiety and it started to manifest into fear, the key is to understanding which of those two factors can you buy down. Okay. Anxiety 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, 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, so that's how you could start kind of buying down anxiety. Uncertainty is largely external. 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 the Inspect Ops is we control what we can control. 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, stepping through this challenge 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, 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 going to do it, I know I can figure it out if there's enough interest, if there's enough passion. Right. I'm not interested in becoming a pro football player, 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. 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 kind of like your philosophy. I think it's a really. 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. Because guess what we're doing at that point, we're looking for the next edge. 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. That's the guys. So it's not the same. It's different. Yeah, different. There's a lot more, you know, when you're, you know, because you're in when you're in the. In the military, there's no. There's no expectation of, you know, kind of great articulation or humor or, you know, here's the word. And that's what you appreciate, too. There's like, 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. And required, you know, so. But that's not, you know, public speaking.

What do you think was the hardest lesson you had to Learn through your 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 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. Someone else makes that decision. You can't designate yourself that way. Someone else decides whether or not you are a leader, 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 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. 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, a 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 the efforts. 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 look 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. 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 feel?

Empathize, Showing you feel how they feel.

Well, first, deep listening. So listening to another person. But true, deep, full on listening. 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 gonna say next, 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, did I play? I played football in eighth grade. Maybe I could talk about that.

We were late.

But what I'm doing is I'm not listening to you, I anymore. I'm making what you're saying about me. What deep empathetic listening is. I have a whiteboard in my mind. 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. If you empathetically listen, 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.

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. What's anyone's excuse?

Sure.

On how to overcome adversity. Yeah.

I'll start off because you mentioned this perspective is a. 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, 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, you know, 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. It's easy for us to begin to believe our own and our own, 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.

Right.

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 like, 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, 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 going to 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, as CO01 because it doesn't place any limitations on ourselves. Right.

I think it's beautiful. This is everything that I've been preaching but communicating to my audience about from my lessons in sports. You know, if I didn't have a goal I wasn't willing to, I would quit. I would have quit football if I didn't have like some type of mission or goal that I was excited about that was meaningful to me that had like a reason why I wanted to do it. Because, you know, three days were so painful and it was hot and there's, you know, 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, right. Of all the different sports injuries and just like 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 going to feel harder and you're going to suffer more. It's going to be hard no matter what. 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. 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 talents and skills. One of the things I did when I got out of sports and was trying to figure out who I was in 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 date dance floor because I don'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 and see where it leads me towards my mission. So these are some of the things that I'm so glad you're talking about this because I love that preaching this stuff. And what would you say that 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.

Yeah. Pretty fluent.

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

Right, right, right, right.

Yeah. If I know I'm going someplace or I may have to use that, I Gotta pull out the. The materials and dust off the cobwebs. That's an awesome question. You know, kind of looking at the. 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, you know, one of those. Certainly not towards the top, but one of them, one I would say is my. My level and commitment to efficiency. And the example I'll use, or really the way in which this has been reinforced is, you know, when you have an amputee or when you use a prosthetic with a traditional socket system. So imagine this is my actual leg. My leg 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. And a guy, you're sweating all the time walk out in the snow and you sweat probably.

Right.

All the time.

Right.

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

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah. Learned that in the hospital. I was going through, like, 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.

Yeah, 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 had 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 better on two feet and for longer. So that's just kind of a. A process in which I likely would not have learned if I had not gone through this. And it's one that I, you know, I've maintained really, to this day for.

The last nine years now. Right. Or 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. Or not.

But with extreme circumstances, you need to take extreme, you know, changes to maximize your life or to master your life. Right. 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.

Right.

It's like you need to upgrade your level of thinking, your skill sets, the. 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. Right. Like, physically, you know, moving things around through my day. This is tactical, tangible tools. This I'll use a second. A second point. It's more conceptual. But I really want to emphasize this when 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, you know, 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, right? Like Neo in the Matrix. Like it was literally there the whole time. I think that. And 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 and accomplish more.

How do you modify your relationship with fear and pain?

I think, at least for me, man, it began with a recognition of what they're there to do. And you know, the human brain does a lot of amazing things for us, but its primary responsibility is our survival. Yes, is to keep us alive. And the brain has a security system within it. And within that are two different alerts, one of which we know is fear, when we know is pain. Fear is the alert of pending danger or a potential threat, like something bad could happen. You're now scared. I need you to be scared of that, to stay away from it. Pain being the alert of damage or impairment, right? Because the brain wants us to survive knowing that our brain is there, because it wants the comfort zone, like homeostasis, like the medical term. It wants things nice and predictable and sustainable and forecastable. And let's just keep things all nice and calm here when it comes to even a heartbeat, our red blood cell count, like it doesn't want change. Recognizing that and then knowing that if we've set our sights on something righteous, something of ambition, something that is unlikely, unprecedented, there are going to be times when we have to ignore our brain and listen to our heart and our soul. And one of the greater challenges of life really is knowing when to take that risk and asking yourself in that moment in real time, like right now, are you willing to take the risk of doing this particular thing? Knowing the potential hazards, but then also knowing the potential effects, like, are you willing to do it?

I'm curious about in your mind. I don't want to assume anything, but it has. Has anything become harder since you've lost your leg? And has anything become easier or better since then as well? I don't want to make assumptions either way that things have gotten harder or easier and better. But if there is. Is there something on both sides that's been harder and easier and better?

Yeah, certainly. I mean, there are countless specific tasks were really hard to relearn and are still harder today, even after having learned them and doing them now for almost a decade. I mean, walking is harder now than it was prior. I think generally speaking, the. The hard comes from a willingness to accept that you don't know how to do something right now, and that's okay. And not letting my pride and ego get in the way of that. Slicing off a massive serving of humility. Be willing to take that risk of embarrassment, you know. And when it comes to fear, sure, we're fear of physical damage, but I would argue fear mostly comes through the lens of emotional damage. Fear of failure, fear of embarrassment, you know, self judged by other people. Judgment. I think most of that. So again, a modification that relationship. Am I willing to do this? But most, I think, is probably accurate to say most tasks, certainly anything that involves me being on two legs are more difficult today than before.

What's. What's easier or better?

If that's. Man, I'll start off in the clouds, man. Because if I could go back in time, right. Like Doc Brown shows up in the DeLorean and he's like, let's go back and we'll save your leg. You know, the butterfly effect is a. Yeah, is, you know, a concept.

You weren't there and you were in another room or something during that time.

Yeah.

But I look at the life I have now, man, and you know, particularly my family and my boys and my wife and. And it's just amazing. I would not undo a Single thing really, if. Because there's just a chance that I don't end up where I am here right now, like talking to you, with my family at home, I live such a fulfilling and loved life that I would, I wouldn't change a thing about this. That's like up in the clouds. But it's important, you know, note. I think I'll go into the, into the, into the tactical realm. So I'm big into Jiu Jitsu and I started as a two legged guy and competed. And Jiu Jitsu is a huge part of my recovery which began in the hospital. Certainly physically, range of motion, flexibility, humility.

Also your spirit too.

Just absolutely.

Camaraderie, competition, all that stuff.

Yeah, huge aspect of my recovery and just really overall life. But you know, Jiu Jitsu is a weight class sport and although, you know, I walk around now today at around 220 pounds, big strong guy, man, I'm missing about 45 pounds of leg.

Right, right.

So you would be a 265 weight class. But you're right against guys you know my size.

Absolutely.

Just bear hugging them.

Yeah.

So, you know, I learned that there's like a huge advantage in that realm, which is, you know, I wouldn't say it's silly because you can conceptualize that to say like, no, there's, there's always upsides to it. So sure, I was able to leverage, you know, my upper body strength and whatnot when I would compete as an amputee. And if you looked at me versus some of my competitors from the waist up, you'd be like, there's no way these guys are in the same weight class.

Right.

It's impossible.

Well, you look like a beast next to them. Yeah.

Right.

So certainly it's an example, man, of things that I would say are, are easier, but certainly things that I can leverage to my advantage.

Yeah. Yeah, that's cool, man. Anything else that's easier or better now with this is do you have a different, you know, mental capacity, emotional capacity? Do you appreciate things more?

Yeah. Oh my gosh.

Is your heart open now because you have different type of humility? I mean, I'm just, I have no idea, but I'm throwing it out there.

Yeah, my, my degree of confidence is actually probably higher now than it was really as a two legged guy.

Wow.

Wow.

Why?

How?

Yeah, great question. You know, I think you could summarize confidence in, into two words like training and preparedness. And when you feel, when you've, when you've put in the reps and you've got the resources in place to deal with the what ifs. I think drastically increase the level of confidence. And my training was, you know, I attacked that on a whole nother scale. And as I was working my way back to the team and then continuing to deploy into combat and doing all these different things, my level of training was quite. Was quite insane at times. And I needed to.

Physical training or like, oh, yeah, workout training to get back. Yeah.

I mean, it was. It was belligerent. You know, my. My. My lifestyle and structure was. Was nuts. And then my level of preparedness also had to increase as well. I would break these things. I would need tools, I would need stuff to have available. I learned all these through really difficult lessons. So training and readiness or training and preparedness were essential for me to do what I needed to do. But most significantly is as I began to fail repeatedly in front of those in which I wanted to impress, like my teammates and my commanders. I eventually got to a place where I was okay with failing in front of people. Like, when I first got back to my unit, I was only in the.

Hospital for a year.

I got back to my unit, I was still really raw. I would not be seen without my prosthetic on my body. No one would see me without a leg.

Why?

Because in my mind, that would be seen as weakness. I would be seen as a liability. I would be seen as. And there's no way this guy can stay in this community. So I struggled with that for a while. And there was a time, eventually one of my teammates came over, and I was hobbling around. I clearly needed to take my leg off and, like, let it chill for a minute. And he came over. He's like, dude, why don't you just take your leg off and, like. Like, sit down for a second? And he knew why. Without me having to say it, he's like, listen, dude, everyone here knows you only have one leg.

Yeah.

Like, if you take your prosthetic off, it's not going to change anything. And I'm like, okay. And that was like, step one. And I just did that. And I looked around, and no one cared. No one cared.

Yeah. Like, getting comfortable with the uncomfortable.

Absolutely.

Yeah. The fear of embarrassment or the worry. What are people gonna think? Yeah, no one cared.

No one cared.

They just want you healthy, happy. They want you feel ready to go.

That's it. And then from there, it just kind of began to snowball where I would, you know, I'd push myself harder, and I would trip and fall or my Leg would come to tap patch, or I was. I would fail on this deadlift, or I'd be out trying to learn how to run and I'd fall down. And I began to just care less about the opinions of others.

Yeah, if you fell down, you didn't matter anymore.

Didn't matter. Like my teammates, my family, my loved ones, they love me regardless.

Yeah.

So I just began to build up, you know, a greater sense of. Of confidence because I was callousing my mind to a degree where like, no, I can do this. I can be vulnerable. I can mess things up. And it's not only is it okay, but it actually inspires people around me and makes them want to dig a little bit deeper.

Is a Navy SEALS guide to eliminating self doubt. 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 you that. That I don't have from a physical. I have a strong, healthy body and a strong, 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, say, 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 taking 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. Yeah, 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, whoa, Lewis has so much more resources than I have. It doesn't matter, dude. We're Made of the same stuff.

Yeah.

Still get a job done.

We can still get the, the job done. So for me, that, that's, you know, 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, 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, you know, 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.

How do we, what can we do on a daily basis besides having that understanding of the tools and time to again overcome that doubt that we have overcome the insecurity or the fear or the judgment we put on ourselves in order to have more belief in ourselves to accomplish our mission? Is it. You should have a set of routines and habits that you honor your word to every day and you are your word to yourself. What you say you're to do. Is it doing hard things every day that builds more belief? Is it the words you use as well, like what's the, what's the ingredients?

That's an excellent combination.

I like those.

It sounds like you answered that question right.

But is there anything else that I.

Can, I mean, and so I'm very, I'm very hesitant, you know, to give advice. I never give advice. I can tell you what I do.

Yeah.

Based around those things that you just said, I have a routine. I get up every morning at about 6 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 prayer or reading or 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.

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, 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 hung tones 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.

The soul being the mind, will and emotions. It makes you force your mind, your will. What do you want to do? And your emotions. How do you feel, feel about this activity and this pain?

Because you don't want to do it.

Exactly. But, but you, 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, or is it five days a week? Training four hours a day is, it's.

Yeah, I train, I set that block. Now, 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, totally. I mean, I mean I may only cover 10 miles in that, in that four, 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 training. I do, I do weight train, you know, strength training twice a week at least.

But why four hours? Why not one? Three, five? Is it a number with four?

Because there's no, there's no number. I mean, 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 from, from so from noon to the rest of the day up until 5, 6, sometimes 7 o'. Clock. That's my, 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 weightlifting 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, 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 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.

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're 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, it's a mix of both. And yeah, it's extremely difficult, man. Yeah, for sure. And she, you know, she suffered from it, you know, and, but, but luckily we're still together. And again, because of the, the adversity we went through in our marriage. It's the same thing, brother. The adversity we went through in our marriage. My wife had a very dangerous disease called addiction. She, she, 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 nother story, man. But we had to go through that adversity together. And now we have the best freaking marriage on earth, man. You know?

So what's the greatest lesson she's taught you while you were 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 even with old ultra running, you know, I'm 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 snatched 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, 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, and just her people skills, man. So that, that's 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. You had to retire essentially because of the. The hearing loss from all the bombs and.

Yeah, it was a con.

Yeah.

It was a whole combination of stuff.

Bunch of 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 and 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. I really wouldn't change a thing.

You wish we would have found a few more walls to get behind a couple more rocks.

No, no, man, because it's all. 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. Be here, bro.

Yeah.

But the, the whole chain of events have brought me to where I Am now. 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, go and, 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. Not holding on to, like, the glory days.

Yeah.

So the coolest moments have definitely been in this last 8, 10 months. The coolest moments of my life.

Really?

Yeah, man. You know, and. 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 know, 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, like, 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.

It's like if you want to have.

Everything you could possibly want and more.

Then be a good person.

The better a person you are, the.

More likely that is to happen. That doesn't mean you.

That you're completely protected against getting cut.

Off at the knees.