You Will NEVER BE LAZY Again After WATCHING THIS! | Rich Diviney | The Expert Series

I think it's better to, again, understand, be resolute in the outcome. I know this outcome. You know, I know where I'm headed so that when things don't go well or when things seem like I'm moving away from my goal, I still know I'm going to get there. If everybody in your audience right now, if I give them 10 seconds and say, think about someone in your life who you consider a leader, okay, Picture that person.

Today I'm joined by Rich Devini, who is a retired Navy Seal commander, spent 21 years in the Navy SEALs with 13 overseas deployments. And I'm excited to dive in and talk about his new book. It is attributes the 25 drivers of optimal Performance. And I'm excited to talk about human performance, optimal performance. And more than anything else, what I'm really excited to dive into is just the mindset behind everything that you've done and some of the peak people that you've seen, but also optimal people that you've seen that perform the best, the most consistently. So. Welcome to the Mindset Mentor podcast. It's a pleasure to have you.

Thanks for having me. It's good to be back in person with people. Yeah, I know, right? It's been a while.

That's what we were saying is it's. We're coming from Texas, so it's kind of normal. And then we came over here and we're both in LA and we're like, this is. Yeah, it's a little bit different out here than it is back home.

I agree. I'm from Virginia beach and Virginia has been pretty good. We haven't. Nothing's been too extreme. So LA has been certainly at one end of the response.

Yeah, I would say LA is on one side, and then Texas is on the comparison, probably.

Yeah.

But we're getting back to normal. But I'd love to dive into. Before we dive into the questions and everything, I'd love for everyone to know a little bit about you, your story and then also, what made you decide to put this book out?

Yeah, I grew up in Connecticut and I grew up with three other siblings, one twin brother. My dad was a private pilot who we'd take us flying on the weekends. And so my twin brother and I loved flying from very early ages and decided we wanted to be jet pilots, you know, and of course, the only place to do that was as far as we knew, were the air for the Air Force and the Navy. But the Navy guys landed on ships, so that's like really pretty badass. Right, so, so the Navy, it was, we kind of focused on that. And this was before Top Gun came out. We were really focused on that. And it was really the first Gulf War in the 90s, early 90s, and I was still in high school and I came upon an article that was outlining all the spec ops forces in the military. So Marine Force Recon, Army Rangers, Green Berets and seals and such. And, and noticed as I, as I read about them, that these SEAL guys did everything. They were like in the, in the snow, in the desert, in the jungle and they were underwater, which was like, I was a water rat. I loved, grew up on the coast, so anything about the water I loved and I was just like, man, that's really cool. And so, so when it came down to, I was, you know, we both went to Purdue and I was, I was Navy rtc. And when it came down to sel, pilot or seals, I kind of said to myself, well, I didn't want to be a pilot and look over and wonder if I could be a seal. So I picked seals and fortunately I got selected. Fortunately I made it through training and then, yeah, spent just under 21 years, over 20 years, from 96 till the end of 16 in the teams and obviously very kinetic period. Did a lot of deployments overseas, ran training, which is really where I began to get very fascinated with defining and articulating human performance at a very elemental level. Because again, we all know, and we've all heard that the true us comes out in times of challenge, stress and uncertainty. And I was like, okay, what's that true us? Well, I had this laboratory instead of which I saw the true us all the time. And my job as running training was to effectively articulate that which has really got me keyed in. And then when I retired, I was speaking about leadership and high performing teams. And I'd get constantly from organizations these questions about dream teams. And hey, we put together the team of the best this, the best that. And they were good for a little while, but as soon as things turned uncertain or crazy or unpredictable, the teams turned toxic. And why was that? And for me the answer was obvious. I said you were looking at the wrong things. You were looking at skills versus attributes. Which is why I said I could probably write a book on this. I could probably write the book on attributes, which I figured I should and I did. So that's how it came to be.

Yeah, it's kind of like the phrase we ever heard that, you know, if you take an orange and you squeeze it. You get orange juice. And that's what's inside.

Yeah.

If you take a human, you put them under pressure, you're gonna find out what's inside.

Yeah, it's kind of like the coal analysis. Squeeze coal and put it under pressure, you get the diamond. So what is that diamond? Because there's a diamond in all of us. The key is every diamond, every diamond is unique. Right. And so. So I'm really very fascinated with this idea that we are all. I like to use automobiles as the. As the analogy. We're all automobiles, but some of us are Jeeps, some of us are Ferrari, some of us are SUVs. And. And there's no judgment because if you're. The Jeep can do things Ferrari can't do, and the Ferrari can do things the Jeep can't do. But the key is, can you lift your own hood? Can you start to figure out your own engine a little bit? Because you may be a Jeep that's running on a Ferrari track or a Ferrari that's running on a Jeep track. And again, there's nothing wrong with that either, if you choose to do it. But you can at least start to identify some pain points to make your experience, make your journey a little bit more successful. If you know that you're. If I. If I choose, if I decide that I'm a Jeep engine running with Ferraris, then I can start to do things to my engine to help me run better with Ferraris. Or I can say, no, I don't like this track at all. That's why I'm unsatisfied. I can find the Jeep track and, and do that. So part of that discovery process, I think, begins with this idea of attributes.

Do you think it's better to going with what you said instead, if you're a Jeep, instead of going on a Ferrari track, is it. Do you find that's better for the average person to know themselves at a deep level and then just work on those attributes they have versus trying to bring in skills or attributes that might not necessarily be their strongest points?

Yeah, it's a great question. And I don't think I'd ever put myself in the position of telling people what was good or what was bad. I think we all have an incredible gift. I mean, human beings, in fact, I think we're the only species, as far as we know that. And we're separated by this idea that we can, unlike any other species, again, as far as we know, imagine and visualize what does not exist, what is not there, what could Be potential, basically. And so that gift allows us to choose things and go in directions that otherwise may not make sense at the time. And so I would say to anybody who has a goal, audacious or otherwise, first ask yourself why. Because the why is going to be very powerful in your ability to kind of persevere towards that goal. And it's going to be instrumental in whether or not you're happy once you get there, if the purpose is clear. But if it is clear, then go for it. If it means you're a Jeep that has to tweak yourself so you can run with Ferraris, then do that. Or if it means you're a Jeep that has to find the right Jeep track, do that.

You talked about visualization, and I was going to hold this for later, but now we're going to go into it. So you talked about another podcast episode that your mom bought you a book when you were younger, and it was actually about visualization, Law of Attraction and all of that. You know, it's funny to hear somebody who is, you know, ex Navy Seal talk about visualization, law of Attraction, but I talk about all the time. But in. But I try to. I know it's. I know what type of audience I have. So it's like some of them can be really. And some of them very analytical because that's. I can dance on both sides of that when I speak. I'm curious with you. What did that book do for you? And then as going into becoming a seal, what was that like? Did you use the stuff that you learned from that book when you were going through everything?

100%. And I'm someone who was enamored with the woo woo when I first learned about it. But just because I'm a skeptic by nature and I really love understanding and breaking down why things logically happen. I was dissatisfied with it. Even though it was working, I was dissatisfied with just that, with the inability to explain. And so as I started really getting into neurology and neuroscience and I say getting into, I was just fascinated with it. Like you, I just read and listen as much as I can. Hang out with neuroscientists as much as you can. I recognize one of the things I did recognize is just our human systems. You know, we take in about 11 million bits of information per second through our five senses. And so our brains are automatically doing a massive amount of deselection all the time. In other words, so things are happening to us that our brains are like. You don't even have to Notice that for sure. And for example, like, the bottom of your shoes right now. The bottom of your feet in your shoes right now. Until I just mentioned that you weren't noticing it. Because our brain's like, you don't need to notice that right now. Our frontal lobes only process. Our conscious minds only process about 2,500 bits out of that 11 million. And so what I realized in talking to neuroscientists and kind of reading about it and having discussions and thinking on it, is that when we actively or proactively place an idea, whether it be a thought, a goal, or even just something to focus on into that, into our brains, what we're doing is we're telling our conscious mind, out of the 11 million bits, notice whatever, bring to my attention, throw into that pool of 2,500 something, anything that relates to that. And so the example of this is for any of us who've bought a car. And as soon as we buy the car, we start seeing it everywhere. And it's not because the car suddenly increased in sales and everybody bought it when we bought it. It's because we basically told our brains, notice that for sure. And so when we set a goal and we visualize something, what we're doing is we're tweaking our system and we're tweaking our brain to say, hey, notice things that have to do with that. And so this is where I think a lot of serendipity happens. I met this person. Suddenly this person appeared. Right? Well, these signals, I think these cues are all around us all the time. We don't know what form they're in because oftentimes we're not noticing them. And so I think a reasonable explanation for me for the law of attraction is if you set a goal, if you set the intent, you're. You're hacking into your. Your human system and saying, out of the 11 million bits out there, notice everything that has to do with this and bring it to my attention.

Yeah, yeah.

There's.

There's two sides of it. It's like, does the universe actually bring it into. Into. And am I actually attracting this?

Or.

For the analytical person, it's just like I'm going to tell my brain exactly what I want it to focus on, and it's going to find that there's. The car's a great example. I had an example that happened about six months ago.

I had a.

A friend from middle school that I hadn't seen in probably 18 years, passed away, and I was looking through his photos on Facebook. And I saw an old friend of mine that I haven't seen since middle school as well.

Ryan.

And this is back in Florida where I used to live. I live in Austin, Texas now. So I. I see him, I'm like, damn, I wonder what's going on with Ryan. I haven't seen him in so long. Next day I'm at the coffee shop and I'm working, and literally I see a guy walk by with his dog. And I was like, oh, my God, that's Ryan.

Yeah.

And then he walked in and walked back out, and I was like, that's not Ryan. And it still blew me away because I know how the reticular activate system works. And I'm like, holy shit. It does actually work that way. So it's almost like setting your. I always say you get in your car, if you want to go somewhere you've never been before. You just set your gps. So it's almost like you wake up every single morning, you just set your GPS for what it is that you want and tell your brain or the universe, whatever it is, or both of them together, this is what I want. But most people, they don't focus on what they want. They focus on what they don't want. And then they can't figure out why they keep getting more of what they don't want.

That's right. In other words, they're preloading into their system what to notice. Because I've had the opposite happen where I've thought of someone and then a day later they show up, I see them, and it's actually them again, I would love for there to be some science around those other instances where it seems like the universe is bringing us things, because that's happened to me many times as well, too. But ultimately, if we take a very broad view of this, which I think you'll agree with, if you wake up in the morning and just set the intent to notice positivity, notice, you know, be grateful. So this is why. This is why gratitude is such a powerful feeling and emotion. Because, well, A, it's neurologically dosing you with just massively good neurochemicals and neurotransmitters and hormones. But B, it's causing you to focus on really, really good, positive things. You. And we all know we've all had these experiences where our day starts out shitty and the day just stays shitty, and that's because we've primed ourselves. Or the day starts out great and it's a great day. It's because we've primed ourselves and we've set these conditions of what to notice because if you say 11 million bits per second and then do the math, there's a lot of shit coming in one day of of conscious activity for sure.

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Think it's it's Some people think that they're just born pessimistic. Ah, this is just how I am. Yeah, I feel like I was pessimistic for a lot of my life until I started realizing this stuff. Watching the secret reading books and realizing that, oh, man, if I just set myself up to look for the things that are positive in my life, I just find more stuff to be positive.

Yes, I totally agree.

And so I'm curious, you know, when you become a Navy SEAL and you go through BUDS and Hell Week, which has become super famous, everyone thinks. Which is rightfully so, because people think, how can somebody do that? Like, that's living on their edge for five days straight, Right?

Five days.

And you get like, what, three or four hours of sleep?

Yeah.

Do you find that when you were in that moment that you were visualizing the end of it or that you were telling yourself positive stuff? Like, did you use this when you're going through what they call absolute Hell Week?

Yeah. The bad news is absolutely not. None of it. You're trying to get through it. Yeah, you just get through it. So there's a difference between in the moment of challenge, stress and uncertainty, when things are really bad. This is why inspirational quotes are awesome, but they're not necessarily transferable to the moment. You need tools, you need. There needs to be things you can do in the moment because. And I, you know, guys used to tell me when guys wanted to be SEALs, I used to talk to guys about it. And I remember giving a. I was on a ship. I was on a Navy ship, and some of the sailors were, like, really interested. And so they had a gathering of like five or six or something guys who wanted to go to Bud's. And the first thing I told them was, I think you guys are going to realize something is that. Is that when you're actually doing the job of a Navy seal, there's no cool soundtrack in the background going. I mean, it's not cool. There's nothing cool about it. It usually sucks. It's. You're cold, you're wet, you're dirt. I mean, when you're diving, it's always at night. It's always in shitty conditions. It's usually in harbors which are usually just dirty and murky anyway.

So it's not as sexy as a commercial recruiter.

When you're jumping out of airplanes, you've got so much gear that you're really. And you're at 22,000ft, for example, it's 3 degrees per thousand feet. So the temperature drops 3 degrees per thousand feet. So at 22,000ft, if you're getting in the bird at 60 degrees, it's a nice balmy la. 60 degrees. Right. At 22,000, it's sub zero. Right. So it's freezing and oftentimes, and you're stacked with gear, you have oxygen, you have face shields, all that stuff. And because the temperature changes so drastic a lot of times that your, your face mask frosts over, right? So you're going out blind. So it's just, you just. You almost laugh at how shitty it is sometimes. So, by the way, humor, we can talk about that. How humor is a hack to getting through.

I've got that stuff, right. I love that hack.

Yeah. But no, I think you have to preload yourself with vision, purpose, positive thinking, inspiration, whatever that is that gets you into the moment. But once you're in the moment, there's something more that has to happen. You have to be able to. I mean, there's a process. You have to be able to take in the environment and ask yourself some questions about the environment that allow you to move through. For example, the first question is, what about this? Can I control? And then once you ask that and you can answer it, you say, okay, I'm going to move to that. And then you move to that. And then once that's done. And so when you do that, by the way, you get a dopamine reward neurotransmitter. Once you hit that, you ask it again and you say, what can I control? Now this is how you. By the way. So I talk often about moving through fear. I know you're going to see Huberman. One of the things Huberman I talk about is what makes up fear. Fear is the combination of anxiety plus uncertainty, right? And you can have one or the other without having fear. You know, you can have uncertainty without. Or you can have anxiety without uncertainty. That might be. I'm nervous for a presentation that's coming up. It's to the boss. He can be mercurial, you know, but I know the stuff. I know you know, I know it's not a big deal. I'm just a little nervous, okay? There's uncertainty there. Without anxiety, you can be. No, that's anxiety without uncertainty. You can be uncertain without being anxious, okay? That's every kid on Christmas Eve. There's no fear there. If you add the two, if you combine the two, you start to get fear. And this is where challenge, stress, and kind of strife start to happen. You can buy those down by buying down either one or both. You can buy down anxiety through physiological mean. Anxiety is largely internally focused. It's an internal response. So you can do that through breathing, visual tools that Hebrew will talk about. You can do it through visualization if you have time. So you can. You can bring yourself out of. Or bring yourself down from an autonomic hijack or not autonomic response of anxiety. Or you can buy down uncertainty, okay? To buy down uncertainty, you have to take your environment. You have to begin to do what I call chunk it, okay? And you have to ask yourself some questions and answer those questions. First thing is, out of this environment, out of this thing, this whole thing, what do I understand? Okay, get those answers, okay? Out of that list, what can I control? All right? Once I get that, okay, I'm going to control this, I'm going to move to that. It's almost like setting your horizon, really. Move to that, get a reward, ask again, move to that, get a reward, ask again. And you step through that, and there's. So there's a. You know, for those of your audience who might not know the specifics, Hell week, right? You start Hell Week on a Sunday afternoon. You get your breakout for a Sunday afternoon, and you go until the following Friday. That's when they secure you and you sleep maybe two or three hours, if you're lucky. When I was a funny story about Hell Week, when they gave us our first sleep period, it was like. Like Wednesday. And I remember them saying, okay, get in the tents, lay down. You know, you didn't know. You weren't. You didn't trust what was going to happen. But so we all laid down, and you. After about 10 minutes, you realize, oh, they're going away for a while, right? And. And so everybody around me starts falling asleep, and I can't fall asleep. My legs are killing me, you know, because you know how when you're up and moving for a long time, your blood starts rushing back and it's like, itchy. And my legs were hurting so bad, I couldn't fall asleep. I was like, gosh, what the hell? And so finally I'm like, okay. So I got up and I leave the tents and I go around to the cage area where there's the bathrooms. And these two bronchers. The Brown church are students who are just, like, keeping watch, you know, just make sure students aren't wandering off into the surf zone or whatever. And they run up and they're like, hey, dude, what's going on? It's like, I don't. I don't know. I can't sleep. And they're like, don't quit. I was like, I didn't say I wanted to quit. I just. I can't sleep. I. You know, it's like, well, don't quit. I Say, I told you I don't want to quit, right? So anyway, if you're lucky, you get three hours of sleep. I think I got back and maybe was able to get half hour. But. But the. There's a saying when you are in Bud's training, it's a kind of a truism too, is that if you think about Friday of hell week, on Monday, you'll never make it. And the guys who do never do because you're. It's too. It's too much. It's kind of like if you have a really audacious goal and you're focused too much on that end thing in the moment and you realize how far it is and how much work it has to do, you may give up at that point. So I think there's a real value in not focusing on the goal on the end state too much, depending on where you are in the pathway. One of the things I also say is that you have to be very resolute in your outcome, but be flexible in the approach. And that means know where you're going, but just be flexible. The rock climbers are great examples of this, right? They look at the face of a cliff and they say, okay, top, that's where I'm going. And they may even map out a kind of visualize a plan of how they think they're going to get there based on what they see. As soon as they start climbing, though, they all recognize and all admit that's going to change, right? They're looking for the best hand holds and footholds. And what they might have thought they seen as a good one might be a shadow. So they have to move so that the pathway will change. And sometimes they'll find that they actually have to move like right and down to get to the next best handholder foothold, which means they're moving away from their goal to find a better way to the top. Which means sometimes when we're going towards our goals, it'll feel like we're moving away and we have to be flexible. We have to be adaptable to be able to do that.

Yeah, yeah. So you kind of talk about, you know, the dopamine reward systems, which is important because I find it so many, so often working with, I've worked with tens of thousands of people, is that they, they have these big, lofty goals that are four, five, six years in the future, but then they give up because it's too far away. Like you're saying from, from Sunday to Friday. It's just too Far away. But when you chunk it up, what you're saying we can go deeper on it is the dopamine reward system is. You might say, okay, we're in the water right now, and this is terrible, but I'm gonna get done with the water eventually. And then it's you. You get done with the water, and there's a little bit of dopamine that's released in your brain that's like, hey, you did it, but congratulations. And it makes you a little bit more driven to continue going. Is that what you're saying?

That's exactly right. And just to relate it to something more every day, I mean, anybody who's losing weight, we all know that that process is extremely difficult. And when you start it, start on January 1st or whatever, right? By January 5th, you're to look in the mirror. It's not going to look like you lost much, right? It's going to be painful getting to January 5th. In fact, sometimes those are the most painful days, those first few days. And you will look no different January 5th than you did on January 1st, most likely, if you're doing it in a healthy way. So if you give up, then, because, oh, this is not. It's not showing anything. It's not looking any different. You're lost. The person who has never run in their lives and they're overweight and they want to run a marathon, to think about a marathon at that moment is not a good idea. What you need to do is say, okay, well, what's the. What's a good goal? Well, maybe it's to buy some running shoes. Okay, that's goal, right? I get those running shoes. Now I'm going to put the running shoes by the side of the bed, and when I get up tomorrow morning, I'm going to put them on. That's all I'm going to do, right? And then the next morning, I'm going to put them on and I walk out to the mailbox. And then maybe a week later, I'm going to jog, talk to the mailbox or whatever it is. But these are. It's basically this whole adage of eating the elephant one bite at a time or, you know, or chunking it up. But it's neurologically actually true because you're setting a reward system for yourself. It has to be subjective because the goals have to have meaning to you. They can't be given to you necessarily. They have to have meaning to you. So if you set something too small, it's not going to work. I try to run once or twice a week. So if I tell myself I need to get back into running, I'm going to put the shoes by the door. I need to do a little bit more than that. There has to be a little bit of challenge, a little bit of ability to say, cool, okay, I did something new, different, novel towards and it felt like I moved towards something.

Yeah.

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And I love it because cliches are cliches because they're true. But it's really what you're talking about is fall in love with the process. Like falling in love with not the end goal, but if you fall in love with the process of, okay, I'm just gonna put on these shoes and I'm gonna walk to the end of the street. And that process of just falling in love with those little teeny tiny things and doing them consistently will eventually get you the end goal. But I feel like most people, what they do is they try to focus on the end goal and go, I'm like you said, I'm never going to make it to a marathon. Or they look at themselves and they say, oh, I've lost no weight in the past five days. Yeah, this, I guess it's just my genes, it's my family. But in reality, what they should be doing is saying, well, at least I showed up for myself and I worked out today. At least I decided to eat something healthy when really what I wanted was just a pizza.

Yeah. And.

And it's just about finding little things to celebrate yourself as often as possible. To fall in love with the, the process of becoming who you want to be versus just getting to the end goal.

Yeah. And I would also recommend, because I've been guilty of not doing this, jotting down what you're doing. Because, because, because if you can go back, if you see where you started, if you write down, hey, today one, day one, I, you know, I, I put my shoes on and walk to the front door. Right. And that's day one. And then you just do that over day, you know, three months later, four months later. Even when you're, Even if the goal you're achieving, you're looking to achieve is a year away, you'll still look back and be like, oh my gosh, look how far. Look where I started and look where I am now. Right. So to see what you've done also. So, you know, some people could do that through journaling. You know, it's funny. Journaling is the one thing that I highly recommend that I don't do. You know, because I don't do it. I always say, oh, I should do it. And I, you know, I just never. Maybe that's why I wrote a book, just to get some of My ideas down on paper finally. But, yeah, journaling is actually a great process. I think if you just take some time at the end of the day and just jot down, hey, what did I. What did I accomplish today? What happened? What did I learn? You know, what. What can I be grateful for? I think that's a really powerful process. It's a cool tool that I should probably start doing, but I definitely recommend.

Yeah, so. So I'm curious because you were talking about fear just a minute ago, and I have a friend who, he went down and lived with the native Brazilian tribe in Brazil, like, five days into the jungle. Like, they don't have cars. They don't have any of that stuff, right? And he had to walk around. He was down there for 40 days, did a whole spiritual journey with them, and he had to walk around the machete at all points in time because he's like, if you see a Jaguar, it's too late. It's already been seen you for a really long time. The one thing that he said is, he said, at that point in time, I realized the difference between what he calls a primal fear, which means there's some sort of death attached to it, and intellectual fear, which is like judgment, worry about enough money that's in a bank account, all that different type of stuff. Do you notice that when you are in those situations that. That's true. Where you. You can tell the difference of when you're in situations, you're really cold in buds, or maybe you have something that's going on. Admission there is no thought of, like, any of the intellectual fears popping up in your head, is there?

No, you're right. I think it's very basic. You get to have a very basic stuff. But what's interesting is a lot of the guys you talk to, because I'm one of them who get through SEAL training, will say, at some point, for example, when you're freezing in the surf zone, said to themselves during training, I mean, they can't. They can't kill me. So it's not like they're allowed to kill me. So they got to end this at some point, right? And I literally remember saying that to myself. It was so. It was so miserable. I was like, well, I mean, they're not going to kill us. They're not allowed to. Right? So you almost try to make intellectual what might feel primal, at least in that moment, because you know it's real or you know it's not necessarily real, which is interesting because it's a great distinction that I Had not considered. So I'm actually glad you brought it up because when you get into combat, you then have to make a little bit of a transition, but not overly so, because. Because I think if you get. I think if you get too focused on the primal part, that's when your amygdala starts to kick in, you know, because you. Because we want to survive. That's all we want to do.

Right.

And so I think, I think one of the things seals are very, very good at and spec operators or anybody who kind of, you know, first responders who run into danger are very good at is compartmentalizing away some of that primal fear so that you may move. You know, not considering. I mean, listen, you jump out of an airplane at 22,000ft, there's many, many things that go wrong. And other than understanding my parachute malfunction procedures, if something happens, I didn't think about any of them because it wasn't really the time to do it. To go down that spiral was not productive. I needed to focus on the job, getting it done. Certainly I was prepared. So I think there's a level of compartmentalization that actually is very effective in being able to set aside even a little bit of the primal fear in day to day life. However, we have to recognize that most of us, and I would count myself in this category now that I'm not in the. I'm retired. I'm just living day to day life. Very, very few of our fears are even approaching primal. It's almost all intellectual. And so that's what we have to recognize is that it really is. What is it? False evidence. Appearing real. Which is an acronym. It really is kind of that because you're placing things and perspectives and judgments around it that I think it'd be healthy to interrogate once in a while.

So let's go back to buds, because I know, isn't it like 90% of people drop out?

Yeah.

What do you feel is the difference between someone who stays in and someone who drops out in the middle of the five days?

Yeah, if I had that answer, we would patent it and then go sell it to SEAL training.

Did you notice anything as you're with those people, though, of like, oh, this guy's about to drop?

Well, there's sometimes I notice. And so this is where we could talk about humor. Yeah. One, yeah. So there's. So first of all, compartmentalization. If you can compartmentalize, the guys who make it through can all compartmentalize. You know, that's an absolute.

So, so Give me an example of like, what that would look like in, in. In the moment where you're going through hell week. What is compartmentalizing?

That. That's like, okay, I'm running. I'm running for hour, whatever, with this boat on my head. And I'm. I'm it. I. Every part of my body is aching and I'm miserably hot, right? And I say to myself, okay, well, pretty soon I'll be in the cold water and I'll feel better, you know, and then I'm in the cold water freezing my ass off, you know, and I'm like, oh my God, I can't move. Well, soon I'll be running the boat. That's compartmentalization. That's basically. Or like, hey, I'm just going to make it to the next meal. That's my next, you know, I'll just get there. It's kind of. It's almost that ability to move the horizon. It's the ability to, I mean, in the book, I describe it very kind of precisely. And that is from a mental, from a brain aspect, what it is. It's the ability to assess the information that's coming in, okay? Assess its relevance. So out of all this information, what is relevant to me in this moment? Then from that list, prioritize, okay, from this list of what's relevant, what order do I need to put on it? Put it in. And then from that order, focus on the top thing and forget about everything else for a moment. That's compartmentalization. So in a environment like hell week, which is kind of extreme, where the idea is you, you don't necessarily want to focus on what you're doing in the moment. You want to focus on maybe one other thing beyond that. You're saying, okay, what's relevant? Well, what's all this information? Well, yeah, I'm running, blah, blah, blah, it's hot, all that stuff. But let me prioritize the way I focus. I'm going to focus on the cold water over there that I'm probably going to be in, and I want to just focus on that. So the compartmentalization. From a psychologist standpoint, we've often heard compartmentalization negatively described as this, this act where people kind of put away things that they shouldn't, that they don't want to focus on at the detriment of their own psyche, which happens, by the way. And it happens especially when you're really good at compartmentalization. But ultimately the effective use of compartmentalization is the ability to focus on exactly what you need in the moment and ignore everything else you have to ignore, you know, then, you know, and to the, to the extent that you're not even emotional about it, right. This is like you see the Hollywood movies of, you know, people in gunfights and the buddy next to the, the star, you know, gets killed or dropped and he spends the next five minutes, you know, kneeling over the body, crying and mourning during the gunfight. Right. That doesn't happen. Right. You don't have time to do that. You basically have to win the fight, you know, so that's effective compromise. Whatever happens, whatever happens, whatever happening, I need to focus on what, what's important in the now. And then once that's complete, I move on. That's what compartmentalization is.

So let's go back because now I get a question on that. There's so many things I got questions on. But let's go back to watching someone who you think is going to be dropping out soon. So the difference between someone who is. And this is the humor story, which I love, between someone who you can tell they're probably going to make it versus someone you're like, this guy is on his way out. What did you notice the difference between them?

Well, okay, so, so from a compartmentalization standpoint, if you, if you saw someone just in the way they were moving or the way they were looking, not focusing on the moment, they were kind of like, you know, but it's very hard. That's very hard to see because that's usually a really mental exercise. Right? So, so you don't guys just quit, you know? Right. Humor becomes a much more visual way to see this because one of the things that every high performing team and human has is the ability to laugh when things get tough because. Well, let me give you this story. When I was in hell week, you know, I was in the surf zone and freezing there for a long time during surf torture. And surf torture is you, you link your, you link arms with your, with your classmates, you, you march out into the surf zone until about knee high, you turn around, you lay back, the water crashes over you and recedes and it's the coldest thing. I mean, anybody here in Southern California knows that the water out here is not really that warm. Especially in November when we're going through how we. So it's really cool. A lot of people quit. And during my hell week, as most hell weeks this happens, the instructors pulled up a van on the beach and got out with a megaphone and said, okay, Anybody who quits, we have hot chocolate blankets and donuts for anybody who quits right now. Right? And of course, it's like the survivor thing. So a lot of people like, ooh, that's a. And I remember the guy next to me. It's funny, this guy next to me, he was just at my house this weekend. We hadn't seen him in a few years and we were remembering this story. The guy next to me yells at the top of his lungs, hey, do you have any chocolate glazed donuts? Because if you don't have any chocolate glaze, I'm not quitting. And I remember him laughing and I burst out laughing. And at that moment I was like, okay, this is fine, right? But I looked over my left, right? And the guy to my left was stone faced. I mean, he hadn't even heard the joke, you know, he was just, he was lost in his pain. I said to myself, I remember saying to myself, this guy's not going to make it, you know? And sure enough, within a minute or two, he quit. But what happened there, what humor does, is when, when we laugh, it releases three chemicals, two neurotransmitters. One hormone, dopamine, which is obviously, we know, feel good chemical. This is good, keep going. Serotonin, which is kind of feeling of safety bonding, you know, Huron will be able to elaborate all. It does a lot of things, but generally feels good. And then oxytocin, which is known as the love hormone. Okay, Oxytocin is actually a hormone, but it actually moves in many cases not as fast, but faster than normal hormones, usually. Neurotransmitters, are they. Well, they are. They're very rapid in our system. They get released rapidly and they dissipate rapidly. Hormones take longer to enter our system, but they also last longer. Oxytocin is actually in between. It moves fairly rapidly, so you kind of feel it and you get it when you acts of, of love and affection and gratitude, hugging, shaking hands, when.

People look at their babies, a lot.

Of times that's all oxytocin. So. So you get all three of those chemicals just by laughing. You know, actually, did I say serotonin? I'm wrong about serotonin. It's dopamine. It's endorphins and it's oxytocin. Okay. Serotonin is for, for something else.

And endorphins are painkillers.

Endorphins are painkillers, Right? They're the humans, the human beings, natural opiates. Right? So dopamine, you get flooded with dopamine. So when my buddy made his joke, right, I got. I laugh. I get flooded with dopamine. This is good. Keep going. You're fine. Endorphins. Hey, it doesn't actually feel that bad. I'm masking my pain. I'm getting some opiate hits and then oxytocin. We're bonded. We're in this together, all three of those things. And so it's a hack. Laughing is a hack into kind of keeping going. It's. It can help push us through these bad times because we're flooding our body with these, rebuilding good chemicals. This is why you hear cancer patients who say, when I was going through my treatments, I decided I was just going to watch funny movies and just laugh a lot longer. And it worked. I began to recover. The phrase laughter is the best medicine is not actually just a phrase. It's actually a truism because it releases these chemicals. So. So, yeah, in the cases where guys couldn't laugh, you would say, this guy's not gonna. If you can't laugh, this guy's not gonna do well. And then you see that translate. It's actually. It's a brilliant strategy because it translates as you move through your career. Because I can remember the things I missed the most about the teams were those times of where we were. I mean, laughing so hard. We were in tears, and the environment might have been miserable around us, but we were just. We were joking around.

Is there any. Is there any moments you can remember where it was just, you shouldn't have been laughing because it was that scary? But something popped up. Was there. Is there always, like a kind of a class clown that's in. In each of the groups? And did you know about this before or is this after you got out? You're like, oh, this now makes sense with the chemicals and stuff. Or is it when you were in a group, you realize, like, and you're, you know, commanding over these people that if somebody's cracking a joke, it's not like, hey, shut up. Be serious. It's like, hey, this is probably actually good for everybody, at least at this moment.

Yeah. No, I mean, you. You recognize how good it feels because you. I mean, buds. Is the. Is the. Is the where this all begins? I mean, no one makes it through buds without laughing. No one. You know, so. So that's where it starts. And even the instructors will crack jokes, so you realize it's the culture. But I think there's a difference between cracking a joke so everybody feels better versus cracking a Joke. And this, it's not. When. There was never a time. I say this is not the time to crack jokes because no one cracked jokes at those times. Because that would mean. Well, I'm like, we're talking about the way we're supposed to do the operation or, you know, hey, we need to understand this step. So that's. You don't crack a joke. That's like serious stuff. But no, when. I mean, when, when things are bad, you always, you always wanted and appreciated someone cracking a joke. You really did. I think that was. That was largely recognized. But I don't think this is something. I think this is a human thing, to be honest with you. I think this has happened since, you know, since we could all begin to communicate as we were. We were cracking jokes with each other, making each other laugh.

So there's a story that reminds me of just going back to how, you know, humans in Helen, they've been using. This is. There was a guy who went over and he was. He lived with some tribe in Africa and he's like, man, I'll tell you what, they were the funniest people I've ever been around. Like, they would be in the middle of an intense hunt and just one guy would just rip a fart and everybody would just laugh because of the fact that it was just like they'd be in this intense thing. There'd be a line that was off to the corner, one guy would rip one, and then they'd all just start laughing about it. But I could see how 10,000, 20,000 years ago, that could actually be part of the thing or even if they didn't have communication that's, you know, the same way we do.

Yeah, it bonds. Yeah. I mean, again, yeah, this is one of the reasons why we, we as human beings look for a sense of humor as one of the qualities. It's one of the top qualities either sex looks for in. In a partner is. Is can this person. Person make me laugh? Can this person laugh? Because we know what that signals to us is that when the times get rough, they will be there and they will lift us up or they will help or they will. Or I'll be able to help lift them up. It's why it's such an important quality for human beings in just the getting together process too. I think it's largely a species thing. Interesting.

Talk to me about any self talk that you used to have when things like this were going on and you were in something intense. Is this something that you would, you know, consciously Try to have some self talk of like, this is going to go well. This is the way that I want. This is going to go the way I want it to. Like, did you have strong internal self talk when stuff was going?

I did, but I never, I never, I tried not to specify the moment because I knew the moment was sometimes me climbing sideways and down. Yeah. What I would often do if I had the time, if it were, if it were a more, a longer duration challenge such as all of Bud's. Right. And I'm just like, again, I mean, I'm only, only halfway through. Right.

Right.

I would remind myself what my goal was. I do self talk. Hey, this is, I am supposed to be here. I am supposed to be an abc. I do that type of stuff. Right. But I would never, I would really, I'd never. I guess a couple times I tried to. This is, this is going to go well. And it, that doesn't work very well because sometimes it doesn't go well. Right. And the key is not to back yourself into a corner where immediate success is necessary because if it doesn't come, then, gosh, you're worse off than you were. I think it's better to again understand, be resolute in the outcome. I know this outcome. I know where I'm headed. So that when things don't go well or when things seem like I'm moving away from my goal, I still know I'm going to get there. I might not know how, it might not feel like that, but I still, I'm going to go there.

Was there ever a moment where you're like, I don't know if I'm going to get out of this?

No, I can't recall a moment where I thought that because I think, well, certainly in the SEAL world, in the combat world, that type of thought, I think can be a. It can start a negative spiral right in the wrong direction because that means you're focusing on the wrong thing. You know, it's, you always have to say, hey, I will find a way. I mean, this is just solve the problem. Let's work through this. So I don't ever remember doing that and I've tried not to do that throughout my life. Now that's not to say there were times I didn't just feel shitty and miserable and feel like, man, this just feels bad. There were times I can say, gosh, I don't know. I don't know what the way ahead is. I just don't. I feel like I'm not, I don't know, I. But I never relinquished my outcome. You know, I always said, I'll get there, but, man, it doesn't feel like I'm getting there, you know. So I think that's important too.

Yeah. When we're going back to the. The original question, I with compartmentalization, before we dove back into fear, you know, when it's. It's obviously extremely important to be able to. To do that when you're in those moments. But when you're coming back to civilian life and you can realize that there's. There's some aspects of that that are probably not good for being a civilian or relationships that you have. Do you find that there's any tools that you use to be able to. I mean, it's got to be so trained into you after 21 years to be able to kind of untrain that from yourself.

Man, what a great question. That is difficult. It really is too, because it's a it. So this gets into attributes and it gets into this idea that we can develop attributes. So in other words, if you're low on something, you can make a choice to say, I want to develop that. You can't train it like a skill because you can't be taught and you can't teach it. Right. But you can say, hey, I want to be more patient. So I'm going to proactively work on my patience and I'm going to proactively throw myself into environments that test and tease out my patients. Right. So I'm going to go drive on the highway at rush hour. Right. Or I'm going to pick the longest line of the grocery store. I'm going to do that deliberately. The same thing is required if you're trying to come down off an attribute. So coming back from, you know, I was always vigilant, but I was certainly, I've certainly been hyper vigilant. Now I don't think I'll ever not be hyper vigilant. You know, that's the thing. But what I can do is I can deliberately tell myself when I'm walking through the streets in New York City, you don't have to worry about the people right behind you. You can relax a little bit. You know, maybe in New York City might need my. I took a glance, I did a scan, and I'm fine. Right. You know, one skin, but I don't need to keep on scanning. So I think there's a deliberacy in your ability to relax, and that's very difficult. This is, I think that this is where A lot of the seeds of PTSD happen with most service members is they can't turn it off and they. They're hyped up and they're amped up in. In areas that they shouldn't be. And that's very, very stressful to the nervous system. In fact, even sleep. My own sleep issues have come from a hypervigilance. I kept on waking up. I slept so lightly, and I kept on waking up, and I'd wake up at three in the morning. I couldn't fall back to sleep. And when I finally got checked out, they're like, yeah, your brain is not turning off properly. You're just too hyper vigilant. It comes from. Directly from all my time overseas when my brain and didn't turn off, you know, so. So it's. It's difficult. It takes. It takes work, and it may even require professional help. So if you're having trouble with that, doing it on your own, go seek help because there are people who can help you, you know, so. For sure, yeah.

I'm curious if you and Andrew Huberman ever talk about ptsd and if you guys, you know, with how many people come back and, and have the issues that come back, I mean, rightfully so, from the way that stuff they've gone through, stuff that they've seen and they come back and it's. They can't turn it off. Like, I have a friend who didn't sleep for more than like an hour for a year and a half.

Yeah.

And he ended up just having a. You know, he had mold in his place. He didn't realize, and it set off a certain part of his brain. But he would walk down the streets and he thought that the buildings were going to fall on him and he just couldn't fall asleep. And every time he'd start to fall asleep, his brain would wake him back up, which I could imagine is. Could be, you know, part of ptsd. Do you guys ever talk about that or how that, you know, is there. Is there research going on? Do you know, around that? And how maybe they can be helped through figuring out what's going on inside their brains and the chemicals that are. That are going on?

Yeah. Well, I know Andrew would be able to talk very effectively about the. About the chemical reactions, but we are both reticent to get into the psychology of it. Right. Because he's into neuroscience and I'm not even in the medical field. Right. So, however, I think what we have talked about and I think what we can say in general purpose, you Know is that, is that a lot of growth, personal growth, ability to move beyond and grow from a challenge and stress requires an ability to effectively reflect back on that experience and ask yourself some very empowering questions about it. What did I learn? How can I grow? How can I use those things to move forward and persevere? Now, the only way you can ask those questions effectively and get effective answers is to do so from an objective. An objective emotional state, which means you have to cleanse yourself as much as possible from the emotions of a. Of an event, recover enough so that the emotions, event aren't triggered when you actually do the reflection. This is the problem. This is where a lot of folks need psychological help because they have to reframe the events so that it doesn't trigger those emotions. Because as soon as you trigger, you get yourself into a brain state where you can't effectively reflect and you start reliving it again. And so I am certainly not in a position to be able to help anybody do that. What I am in a position to do is help most of us who, you know, who experience little tragedies, you know, and, and spin on them for no, for no reason. And you can actually ask yourself, you can actually more deliberately get over the emotions of them because you can actually say, well, I probably overreacted. You can kind of think through it a little bit and say that if you want to look at those, and I call it honoring your antagonist. If you want to look at those antagonists in your life effectively and grow from them, then do some recovery so that you're not. You distill the emotions around it as much as possible and then effectively ask some questions about it. Now, that distilling process may. It may take a few hours, it may take a few days, it may take a few years. In the serious traumatic events, whether it be war or otherwise, that humans go through, go get help to do that. Seriously, not joking. If you feel like you can't do it, you need to get help because there's so many people out there who can help you reframe that. But if you're just feeling like you can do a little bit better in life and you feel like you've been through some lows that you want to learn a little bit more from, then you can actually be a little bit more proactive in the process. And in fact, you can probably reflect. One of the first exercises you can do for yourself is you can say, okay, let me think back to an experience in my life that was painful and I got through it, and then ask yourself, okay, what did I do back then? What were the steps that I took in that? Because that is an example of you growing from challenge and trauma, uncertainty. So if you have an example, if you. We all do. I mean, we all have antagonists. It's funny. The theatrical definition of protagonist is a person, place, or thing that is for the main idea. And an antagonist is person, place, or thing that is against the main idea. Right. So it doesn't have to be a person. It doesn't have to be. It can be. It can be a weather event. It can be a layoff. It can be, oh, a global pandemic. Right. But it doesn't even have to be evil. It can be like, you know, something that just happens, and it's like, oh, my God, that was a challenge. So. So the idea of honoring one's antagonist is to be able to do the. Do the appropriate recovery. And if the. The answer to am I recovered enough? Is, can you look back on it with a degree of objectivity? You know, if the answer is yes, then it's time to effectively reflect and then effectively reflect, you know, but some. Some people, they don't take enough time with that recovery. So it's important that you take enough time for that recovery to get to that objective place. And if you're finding trouble doing that, go get help.

Yeah, agreed. Yeah. Especially when you see the numbers of. Of what could be happening with PTSD just over this past year that we had.

Yeah.

But with. With the attributes, you know, you make a clear distinction the difference between attributes and skills. And for anybody who hasn't read the book yet, I do recommend that everybody goes out gets it. But give us a little bit of an idea of the difference between the attributes and the skills and what can be built upon between the two of them.

Yeah. So. So again, you know, I had. When I'm talking about. I'm really fascinated with elemental human behavior. Like I said, so what. What are those things? And so in doing that and looking at even the SEAL training, I had to say, okay, I had to separate skills from these attributes thing. Well, skills are things, you know, we're not. They're things that we learn. Right. None of us are born with the ability to throw a ball or ride a bike or shoot a gun in this. In the SEAL case. All right. We learn those things. We're taught those things. Okay. Skills also direct our behavior in known, certain environments. Right. So here's how and when to throw a ball or here's how and when to shoot a gun or ride a bike or whatever. And, and because they are tangible and visible, they're very easy to assess, measure and test. You can see how well anybody does any one of those things, you know, and so oftentimes we get seduced when we're selecting teams or businesses or hiring or even judging ourselves with those tangible results. Right. You know, because it can be put on a resume, it can be put on a stat board, we can see how well someone's sales numbers. We often judge ourselves sometimes on our skills. But what skills don't tell us is how we show up in challenge and stress and uncertainty. When the environment becomes uncertain. It's very difficult, if not impossible, to apply a known skill to an unknown environment. So this is where we lean on our attributes. Our attributes are innate. We're all born with levels of adaptability and patience and situational awareness and resilience. Certainly they develop over time and environment. But we can see levels of these things in very small children. Anybody who has small kids or hangs around with them will say, well, yeah, that two year old is really patient and that two year old is really impatient. Right? They're there. Right. So we're born with them. They inform our behavior rather than direct it. So they tell us how we're going to show up to a situation. So my son's levels of resiliency and perseverance, for example, informed the way he showed up when he was riding, when he was learning how to ride his bike and falling off a dozen times. And then because they're hidden, they're not necessarily kind of in front, they're hidden in the background. They're very difficult to assess, measure and test. Right. It's very difficult to sit across from someone, say, in an interview process and see and assess how adaptable they are or how resilient they are. Right. So they get missed on a lot of assessment and hiring procedures or practices. The best, most visceral, visible ways you can see these things are in environments of stress, challenge, uncertainty. Which made the SEAL training that I was running and then even basic SEAL training perfect laboratories. Because they're just like, that's the. But it's all about throwing guys in distress. But we, as just regular people in regular life can actually start to look at our behavior and our performance during times of challenge and stress and say, and to start to ask ourselves, okay, how did I show up? Covid 2020 is actually a great example for all of us. We all went through this period of really deep stress, challenge, uncertainty, and we can Start asking ourselves, hey, where did I fall on these attributes? So the thing about attributes, also the good news is that we're. We all have all of the attributes. We're actually born with all of them. The difference in every one of us are the levels to which we have each. So if we take adaptability and 10 is high and 1 is low, I would be, say a level 8 on adaptability, which means when the environment changes around me outside my control, it's fairly easy for me to go with the flow. Right. I just roll with it. Someone else might be a level three, which means the environment changes around them outside their control. It's very difficult for them to show they still, they're still adaptable. I mean, they still adapt eventually, but it's tough. They have to drag themselves kicking and scream. It just means they're low. And again, there's no judging on. So if we line all the attributes up on the side of a wall and they're all dimmer switches, all of the dimmer switch positions are different. Right. So all of our lines would be different. And there's no judgment there because we like judging our hair color. Right. There's no. It's just how we show up. Right. We can develop attributes that we're a little lower on, but you have to do the process which I described. It has to be self motivated, it has to be self directed, and you have to make a deliberate step into those environments. And in some cases, it's somewhat contextual. Right. Because again, because we're not. So my sense is you can probably achieve conscious competence in an attribute that you're a little lower on. I don't think you can achieve unconscious competence. So, for example, a person who's inherently impatient and then has kids, okay. And says, okay, I need to be. I need to develop my patience. That person may develop their patience with their kids. Right?

Right.

But when it comes to other kids, they're still very impatient. Right. So, I mean, so it's. Sometimes it's contextual, but. But the good news is you don't have to develop all the attributes long. You just have to look at your path, look at your own engine, look at where you want to go, and ask yourself, okay, in the context of what I want to do and my goals, which are the ones I'm strong at and which are the ones I actually need to develop a little bit like me and, you know, say, courage and jumping out of airplanes. Right. I don't, I don't like heights. I never did. And so I had to say, okay, well, I need to actively and proactively develop my courage about jumping out of airplanes. And so that's what I did.

My business partner and I, who's off camera, we were talking about this earlier where, you know, how can somebody. It's when you're in the seals, like you said, it's just stress, challenge, uncertainty. You can put people through that and you can see what's inside. But if someone's listening to this and they're in a business and they're like, well, I want to hire somebody, and they seem like they're the right person, person, the skill sets look like they're right. Is there a way to take that and actually put it into a business setting of stress, challenges, and uncertainty?

Yes, there is. And it's, but it's, it's a little bit more difficult because it's subjective. Right. You have to. Well, first thing as a business, as a team, you have to do is outline the attributes that you're looking for. Okay. Because the list of attributes that, say, are required to be a good Navy SEAL is going to be different than the list of attributes required to be a great nurse or a teacher or whatever. So first you have to come up with that list, and then you have to then say, okay, what are some environments that I can create to test and tease those? And they're going to have to be a little bit more uncertain and a little bit uncomfortable. It doesn't have to be masochistic. Right? I mean, you don't have to, you know, you certainly don't. Yeah, you don't have to take your employees down to the surf zone in Coronado and throw them in there. And because it's not contextual, it's not going to teach you anything anyway about what you need. It's going to, you know, so.

But like, fun team outings do that.

Well, not that fun and it might be a bit, little bit illegal. Who knows? But. But I would say, you know, an example would be if you and I wanted to hire someone who's great at sales. Well, we know that sales, there's a, there's a skill level, there are certain skills that are, that could be applied to the, the job of sales. All right, But a lot of sales is attributes, right? It's, it's adaptability, it's flexibility, it's. It's emotional intelligence. Things like that. You and I could say, all right, as a hiring process, we're going to bring this person in and we're going to have them give us a Sales pitch on this coffee mug, okay? And we tell the person, hey, when you come in, you're gonna give us a sales pitch on the coffee mug, okay? That person comes in, sits in front of you and I and begins to pitch, right? Or is about to start. Now, if we let them go, okay, that person most likely will have rehearsed and done everything, and they will do a fantastic job. And you and I are like, man, that guy or gal was really good, right? We would have learned almost nothing about what we need to know. Or right before they start, we can say, hey, you're no longer. Something's changed. You're no longer pitching this coffee mug. You're gonna. You're gonna sell this pencil, okay? And there's an AV problem, so there's no slides. Let's see what happens now. At that point, we're gonna see something different. And this point, you and I would have to proactively disengage from judging skill, because what we're. What we were. What we were going to see in that moment might look pretty ugly, right? But now we're not looking at skills anymore. We're looking at how they're adapting. And. And what I would be looking for particularly is like, okay, how frustrated, How. How flustered are they getting when we just said that? Or like, okay, let me try this. And then they start. It might be ugly, but they're really humorous about it. They're laughing. They're funny. I'd be like, okay, that's someone who. Who has some of the attributes I'm looking for, right? Versus someone who's getting frustrated, flustered, angry, angry. You know, starting to. You know, it may be ugly, but, you know, we're look. We're starting to look at attributes instead of skills. And so. So you can begin to. And this is some of the work I do with businesses is A, helping them identify the attributes they're looking for, and then B, helping them come up with some environments inside of which they can start seeing this stuff. So they can, A, they can hire properly, but they can also. They can also start developing their current team members because they need to look at their own team and say, okay, what are we as a team? How do we show up? Are we hitting everything we need to hit? Do we need to develop this? You know, one of the great experiences out there is these escape rooms, you know, you know, taking these business teams that go to escape rooms, that's a great way to start seeing attributes. You have to be. You have to do some work and say, okay, what attributes am I looking for? Right. But I mean, you can start to, you know, you're throwing people into uncertainty and challenge and stress, you know, and you can start seeing how people show up. So the, so the person who seemed like the rock star who's now suddenly, you know, or you thought, hey, maybe this is, this person might be a leader. Because this person's telling me that they, they who starts barking orders and yelling at people and you know, and dictating. It's like, ooh, actually that's not what we're looking for in leadership. Right. Whereas the quiet person who said nothing is now like, hey, hey, let's solve the problem. How about this? And it's calm and you can start to see stuff, which is cool. So. So I don't own any stock in Escape Room, so I'm not plugging it for any reason.

But that sounds like a lot more fun hiring process than anything else. It's just like, let's do a group interview and then we're all going to go to the escape room and see who can be the best.

Yeah. The key is knowing what you're looking for. Because if you do it without knowing what you're looking for, it's a waste of time. Right. And you have to. And you can't be looking, you can't, you can't be looking for the wrong things. A lot of people say, oh, I want to take my team out to do some, some off site physical activity. Okay. And they do some sort of competition. Okay, well, all you're doing is seeing who's the most competitive people. I mean, and you're not necessarily. Because guess what? Competitive people are great in some scenarios. Non competitive people are great in other scenarios. Right. So you want both. Right. So you have to make sure you understand what you're looking for before you either create the environment or throw people into the environment.

Yeah, I love that. And so when you're talking about, you know, the person stepping up and being a leader in different ways, I love the way that you talk about leadership. So before we dive in and talk about it, how do you frame leadership so people can kind of get an idea of the way that you see it?

Yeah. Leadership is a confusing word because we often conflate it with being in charge. And they're not the same thing. One's a noun and one's a verb. Leadership is a behavior, it's not a position. And we don't get to self designate as leaders. We don't get to say, I'm a leader. To do so would be saying, like, you're good looking or funny, right? You don't get to make that decision. Other people decide. Other people decide whether or not they look at you as someone they want to follow and it's done. And they do that because of the way you behave. And so leadership becomes a series of behaviors. And this is a very basic concept that most people miss. But know intuitively, if we think about, if everybody in your audience right now, if I give them 10 seconds and say, think about someone in your life who you consider a leader, okay? Picture that person, all right? Once you have that person in your brain, in your head, ask yourself, what did they do? Why do you consider that person a leader? And immediately the people in your audience and you and I are going to start thinking about behaviors. Well, they were humble, they were accountable. They took a risk on me, but they had my back. They pushed me forward and they showed me who I was. They pushed me to be a better person, right? All these behaviors. It's not that, that no one, I guarantee no one's sitting in the audience saying, they told me what to do. They gave me a good list of jobs to do every day. They gave me a raise when I deserved a raise. They wrote some nice things. That's not what great leaders do. And this is why when you're in organizations or teams, it's often, sometimes too often, where the person in the hierarchical position of leadership is not, in fact, seen as the leader. It's like the guy over there or the gal over there who, who does, like the. Whatever job that no one thinks about, but everybody goes to when they have issues, right? That's leadership. And so, so the attributes I talk about in the book are the attributes that lead to the behaviors that cause people to designate leaders. And again, we've. In the work I did, I've done around the, really around the world since I retired. In the leadership space, we go around and we ask crowds, say, hey, describe what great leaders do. And we'd make lists and we'd write it on a whiteboard, and then we'd have lists of like 20, 30 things. And what's interesting is the same words always came up. It was the same shit, right? The lists were always the same. Didn't matter where we were. We were us, we were Europe, we were Africa. If it was millennials, it was baby boomers, it was Generation X, who knows? It didn't matter. It was always the same list. And it's these behaviors, and they're very elemental. And we Know it, it's just intuitive. And the same thing for being a good teammate. This is why the team ability attributes are also behaviors, because you don't get to call yourself a great teammate either.

Yeah. So let's say I have a business. Someone out there is listening. They have, you know, a position that they need to promote to. They have three people that they're considering for that, and they're trying to figure out who would be the best leader, what are some of the attributes that you're going to look for in somebody and maybe even if you happen to know any of ways that they could put them through the stress and the uncertainty and everything to find out who that person is.

Yeah, Well, I mean, you could, you could create environments in that moment, but if you have three people who've been in the organization, then you already have a massive amount of information, data staring at you in the face, and it's. It's the other people in that organization.

Yeah. Would you ask the.

Ask them about. Oh, of course, of course. This is, this is the problem with most organizations, to include the military in many cases, is that the promotion systems are designed that. So that you promote based on achievement. Right, Right. How good are you at your job?

Yeah. And if seniority or seniority.

Right. Yeah. And if you're good and you're senior, you promote. Okay, well, what does that translate into? You get into a position of leadership and suddenly you think as a leader, well, I was the best at my job and I was the most senior. Which means I know the best. Which means, I guess my job is to tell other people how to do the job. Right. This is the seeds of micromanagement, which is, in anybody, in Eddie's opinion, the antithetical to good leadership. Right. So what happens in organizations is they oftentimes promote. You get put into a position of leadership based on being great at your job. And then when you're in that position of people having people in your span of care, no one tells you that your job has fundamentally changed. Your job is now to help empower. You know, this is the other problem with the word leadership. Right. And the word leader. Because leader, by definition, at least one of the definitions, the noun is in front. The person in front, okay. The leader of the, of the race or whatever, that's the person in of front. We all know that the best leaders are oftentimes in back. Right. They're pushing people forward, they're empowering, they're invisible. In some cases, you don't even know they're there. Right. They're just these presence that. They're. They're, you know, in fact, I used to tell my junior officers, I said, hey, you have to get. You have to understand what I call the irony of leadership, which is if you do your job correctly, you work yourself out of a job, eventually, you know, you concede your own obsolescence because. Because you've created an environment where they don't need you anymore. That should be the goal of every leader. To be honest with you. There's a humility involved in that, though.

That was actually exactly what I was going to. Was going to talk about is when I think of, you know, I know that's one of the attributes as well. When I think of the best leaders that I've always known, they're never somebody who just talks about how great they are. They always talk about, you know, somebody else's win. And so, you know, how important do you feel humility is for a leader?

It's of utmost importance for a couple reasons. First of all, it shows. It shows that that person, that leader, the person in charge, doesn't know everything. And that shows an understanding that the journey is just as important as anything else, because we all know anybody. It shows a lack of arrogance and egotism and all that stuff. We've all seen those people who show up and they're like, I know it, I've arrived. Right? None of us trust that person. It doesn't induce trust at all. Because again, trust and leadership are almost the same. You can't, you can't think of someone as a leader if you don't trust them. Right? You really can't. So the behaviors are very simple. The behaviors that cause someone to be called a leader are very similar to the behaviors that cause someone to trust another person. And so at first, it shows, hey, this is a person who is displaying the fact that they don't know at all. And that's important because then you're showing yourself as someone who is always ready and willing to learn. What is that doing? That's modeling the behavior you want to see more of, right? With my kids, if I tell my kids, hey, I don't know that, let's look it up. What am I showcasing to them? I'm showcasing, hey, sometimes dad doesn't know, and here's how he goes about finding it out. He's curious enough. And so you develop in your kids a process by which they can discover versus just giving them the answer. The other reason why it's really important is it displays a vulnerability that is Critical in high performing teams. High performing teams. Vulnerability, which is oftentimes stigmatized as just showing your weaknesses. But actually it's the idea of showing your weaknesses and your strengths wearing both of them on your sleeves. Because you need to create an environment where you know exactly when you can lean on someone else and they know exactly when they can lean on you. And then the team starts to operate in that way. As a leader, what that shows, humility. What humility shows is it tells, it showcases, if not says explicitly to all the members of the team, I need you. Right. And that's important. It really is. I mean, when I, you know, as a SEAL troop commander, I didn't know what my snipers knew, I didn't know what my. I mean, I knew I had background in it, Right. But to the level, to the granularity that they knew it. My breachers, you know, the door kickers, these, all these, all these experts, I needed them, you know, I absolutely needed them. And they needed me for what I knew, you know, because I knew stuff that they didn't know and didn't have time to know. Right. So. So as a leader who is humble, it displays this kind of implicit message, sometimes explicit. I need you. You are important, you have purpose. People just want to know that they have value, they have purpose, they are valued in an organization, in a team. And if the leader shows them that by saying, I need you, you are important here. You are, you are someone we need. I need. It's huge, by the way. This doesn't happen just with business teams. This happens. A great marriage is a high performing team. Right. What do a great marriage, what does a great couple do? They need each other and they're explicit about when they need each other and they're there to support and lean. And that's important too.

Yeah. And I could also see that from parenting as well.

Totally. Yeah.

So when you're looking at a company, you walk into a company, do you find that a lot of times that, let me ask you in a different way, what's the difference? When you walk into a company that looks like it's a complete shit show and you walk into a company where like they're actually doing really well, we're just going to add some fuel to the fire.

Yeah, you can, you can, you can often tell by the level of safety and vulnerability that is displayed. You know, the more, the more safe and vulnerable an environment it is, the more transparency you have. One of the. Here's a, here's a. And so there's different there's different environments, there's different situations where you can see this play out. One of the situations you can see this play out is in debriefs. Okay? So in the military you have what's called the aar, the After Action Review or the Critical Event Debrief. After every and most of the military does this. I know certainly in spec ops, after everything we did, whether it was a mission or a training evolution, before you cleaned your gear, before you cleaned yourself, before you did anything, you all got around and you basically asked yourself three questions. What went right, what went wrong? And what could we do better next time? Okay. And you had this, you had this debrief and some of these, sometimes these debriefs were brutal, right? Because it was like, okay, that got screwed up, that cost. And it's like, it's, you know, it's, it's hard, it's harsh, but it was always from the context of making us better. So, so the person who screwed up wasn't the target. Learning was the target. And in that environment, what happened, because it was a, because the, the culture was imbued with that, that philosophy. The person who screwed up was oftentimes the very first person who stood up and said, hey, I screwed this up. Let me tell you what I did wrong and how we learned. Because the person knew it was a safe environment. Any environment you go into, any business environment where people are afraid to show their mistakes, there's going to be issues. Now again, I know there's people out there who'll say, well, no businesses can succeed. I will concede that some businesses can do very well and have a pretty toxic environment, but what you're not going to have are long term players and people who stick around and people who feel fulfilled. You might have some people who own the business or who are at the top levels, who are making consistent money, but the environment underneath is not going to be, it's going to be pretty transactional. No one's going to feel a lot of pride being there and it's not going to be a durational thing. So if you are a leader who endeavors to create an organization, a team that is long lasting, that people feel proud to be a part of, that the turnover rate is low and that operates pretty damn effectively. When things go south and sideways, when pandemics hit or the world changes or whatever, you're going to want to create an environment of safety and trust because that's the foundational element of any high performing team, is this foundation of trust.

So I'm going to take a complete turn because we're talking about humility, but I want to talk about the opposite of that, which is also an attribute, which, you know, is, is narcissism as well.

Yeah.

So let's talk about narcissism in the, you know, the attribute, but also the importance of it that you found as well.

Yeah. So narcissism, the definition of narcissism, at least the way I define it in the book, is the desire to stand out, to be recognized, to be adored and noticed. Okay. Now when I, when I explored this as an attribute, what I had to do was some, some deep inner work because I had to ask my. Well, first I did, first thing I did is I went to the DSM 5, which is this, the, the psychological bible. Basically it outlines all the different psychological diseases and things like that. And so I looked up narcissistic personality disorder, which is a codified bad thing. Okay. And in the DSM 5, they'll let, they. It outlines nine criteria. They're basically sentences that describe, you know, narcissistic people. And the, I think it says if you have five or more, then you are, you. You qualify as having the disease. Okay. And I read those and I didn't have five or more, which is good. But what I did realize is that a lot of the stuff in the sentences wasn't that foreign to me. It wasn't like I was reading that and saying, oh, I never do that, or I never do that. So I was like, okay, that's. Sometimes that's clue number one, right. That I'm not necessarily clean on this one.

Right.

But then I asked myself, okay, why did I become a Navy seal? Because my friends and I have talked about this too, you know, and I was a 22 year old kid and sure I was patriotic and sure I wanted to serve my country, but I also wanted to be a badass. You know, I wanted to see if I could do something that very few people could do. You know, there's a, there's seeds of narcissism in that thinking because as human beings, we all at some point in our lives want to stand out. We all at some point want to be adored, we want to be recognized, we want to be noticed. This goes back to infancy. And this is where you get burst with three chemicals. I got it wrong for humor. The three chemicals you get, you get burst with when you're, when you're getting paid attention to by your parents as a, as a, as an infant or by anybody. You're Getting a burst of dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin. So, so in humor, it's endorphins. In, in. In. When you're getting paid attention to, it's serotonin. And that feels great. Doesn't. Doesn't change when we're adults, right? When you're getting the standing ovation, you know, the. Or the actors are getting their awards, right? They're getting burst with that. It feels great. So I think what we have to recognize is that narcissistic personality disorder, as a disorder is bad. It's also rare. I think they say it's about only 1% of the population have the actual disorder. Obviously, there are people on the edges, but anyway, the ability to. The desire to set sometimes audacious and even narcissistic goals can be an incredible driver. It's why it's one of the drive attributes, right? Because that desire to be special can be a driver to work harder than you've ever worked before, to push longer, faster, better just to be something, to take your life to places where they hadn't been before. So we have to use our human narcissistic elements to our advantage. And then we have to be very careful because the big caution label that comes with this is that if we get over the edge, right, if we are too narcissistic, it's like a vampire staring in the mirror. It's impossible to see in ourselves, right? So the inoculation to that is you surround yourself with people who, you know, love and trust, and love and trust you enough that pull you in and slap you down when you're getting a little bit too out over your skis, right? The grounding wires in your lives. This is my wife, over 20 years. This is my teammates, right? If you are, you can tell narcissists, right? So narcissists are really easy to see on the, you know, from the outside. And what's the first thing you see? You see the group, they're hanging around, right? You know, if you. If you're. If you're curious, if you're not sure whether you're not a narcissist. Narcissist. Look at the people you're surrounding yourself with. If you're surrounding yourself with sycophants, yeah, you're in trouble, okay? If you're surrounding yourself with people who always put you at the center of attention, you're in trouble, all right? If you're surrounding yourself with people who always are laughing, they're telling the truth, you're not Always a center. In fact, you're oftentimes not right. If you do get out over your skis, you get slapped down either with humor or otherwise. Right. You have a good group of people. There's candor there. There's candor with care that's going on that people are telling you the truth and keeping you reined in. That's how we use narcissism to our advantage, but not get it too overblown.

Love that.

Well, I could do this forever.

It's great.

We've only covered like three of the 25 attributes, so clearly people are going to have to go out and buy this book. But I want to ask you a question I asked people at the end, and I'm really curious for you. So there's a phrase that says you die twice. Once is the moment you stop breathing. The second time is the last time someone says your name for you. What would you want people to say about you before that second death? What do you hope they say? The legacy that you. That you leave.

Great husband and father. Yeah, I think, you know, it's funny, you know, we just having this discussion about, prior to this, about identity. I'm really fascinated with identity. And I think whatever identity we place on ourselves, whatever we put after the two words I am, I think I am, are the two most powerful words in the human language. So whatever we place after those two words is where we drive ourselves. Right? But whatever we do, whatever identity we do place, we serve that identity the most. I think oftentimes we get confused or even sometimes unconsciously biased towards identities that don't necessarily serve us as well as we do. So I'm always really cognizant of what my premier identity is and will always be. And at the end of my life, if I've done nothing, I want my wife to say, he was a great husband. I want my kids to say, he was a great dad. If there's nothing else, I'm good. Now if I can do some other stuff, that's cool too, right? Great author, good teammate. You know, some other things help the plan a little bit, but those are the two basic things.

Love it.

Rich Devini. I appreciate it. For anybody who wants to go out and buy the book, I recommend it. The book is the attributes to 25 drivers for optimal Performance. Appreciate you being here. Thanks, man.

Thanks for having me. It's been great.

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