Josh Trent narrates his personal journey preparing for and completing the SEALFIT 20X, a nonstop 12-hour physical crucible designed to test limits. He describes struggling with chronic anxiety, rediscovering his "deeper why" through Unbeatable Mind practices, committing to the 20X after an emotional retreat, enduring the event's cold, fatigue, and teamwork challenges, and emerging with renewed purpose, service-orientation, and gratitude. Central lessons: embrace the suck, use breath to choose response, rely on teammates, and pursue self-mastery across five "mountains".
Chapters
My name is Josh Trent. That's me right there. Stiff as a board with no idea what I'd gotten myself into. The truth is, up until the 20x, I've always made things harder for myself than they really are. Ever since I can remember, I've spent countless hours letting anxiety get the best of me, wasting precious energy worrying about what might go wrong, instead of knowing how to allow myself to focus on the moment and what great things were possible there. I made the decision and signed up for the Seal Fit 20X, a non stop physical 12 hour event where you prove to yourself you're capable of 20 times more than you think you are in life. I'm a podcast host and I got to interview Mark Devine and learn about his 5 mountains of training, read the Unbeatable Mind book and months later later I found myself on the floor in tears after a breathing exercise at the Unbeatable Mind retreat. It was perfect timing because I was at a point in my life where I knew my ways of being weren't working. I was exhausted from listening to the volume of my anxiety and I'd lost my deeper why. The why I was working so hard for in the first place. When I heard about the 20x at the UM retreat, I flinched. But my intuition came alive. I knew in that moment I had to commit. It's amazing how things come to us when we really need them. And I felt the pull to finally learn how to truly embrace the suck in my life instead of being overwhelmed by the fact that it's there. I knew it was going to be hard, even brutal. But I also knew deep down I had to do it. I knew if I could complete a physical crucible like the sealfit 20x, I could do anything. I downloaded the training programs from the world class coaches at SEAL FIT to guide me. And as I began the training over eight weeks out, I felt the fear, doubts and voices come up telling me the all too familiar BS stories. Why are you doing this? You're not going to be able to make it. You don't have what it takes. It's going to hurt too much. You won't be able to handle it. Who are you to pretend you can do this? Then one morning I woke up and the day was finally here. Looking into the eyes of the Kokoro team, shivering, holding on to each other halfway through their event. I was petrified. Mark Devine had words for us that are branded in my memory. There's no seminar in the world that can do what's going to happen to you tonight, in those moments of silence, that's the time to ask the big why. Like, why am I here? What's this all about? What's my purpose? What am I passionate about? I've never felt ice water be so cold. As it ran down my spine and filled my shoes, there was nowhere to hide. When the cold hits you, all that's left to do is embrace it and breathe. As the hours of training marched on, I watched myself in moments, forgetting to breathe, feeling all alone, forgetting the truth that we were all in this crucible together. And that's when my body would cramp. Hey, Trent, how does it feel to have your whole entire class get spunked because you decided to be an individual while running in the blackness of night up the side of some mountain carrying a backpack full of sand, Where I turned to one of my teammates and smile. It's in these moments we suffer together and where we grow outside of ourselves that matter most. Each breakout and physical test seemed more stressful than the one before it. And after we completed Murph on the last mile, running in the blackness, I saw the sun crack the horizon. I started to hear a new voice much different than the one I heard before. It said, if I can breathe, I can choose. And as the sun shined higher in the sky, I thought we were getting close to being secured. But we were actually hours away. So just like in life, another true test appeared of what was possible if I chose to embrace the suck. It would have been so easy to make up a fake excuse. Some reason I could sit out and rest for a moment. But I'd learned at this point from the sealfit training to go back to my breathing and surrender to the strength of my teammates. By the time we secured, my body was aching, my muscles hung heavy and I knew in this moment that sealfit was for people who were afraid of things like SEAL fit. My heart was wide open. My deeper why was clear. If I can breathe, I can choose from the 20x. I'm reconnected to that deeper why a why where getting out of my head happens when I choose to be of service to the people and a mission I care about. Bigger than just me. I know now that commitment to self mastery and these five mountains are a gift. My teammates, these warriors I suffered with in the 20x, they've unlocked something inside of me I'll never forget. No, it was. That was the hardest thing that I've done in my life. I think the most thing I'm feeling is gratitude. Like I know I can go that far. Now I know I can push myself literally 20 times further than I've ever pushed myself before. And that feels pretty awesome. So it's been a month to the day since the 20x and the lesson I'm still feeling. The real gift that I got from the 20x is that it's not about me. It's about something way bigger than me. So when people commit to doing a challenge like the 20x, if they really embrace the suck, they're going to lead life and sail the seas with more confidence, trust, and commitment. And I'm not the only one. Did you meet yourself for the first time today? To go through something like this and know that you can do it and get through anything and let those wonderful moments of happiness kind of highlight your life when they can, I think is extraordinary. With the passing of my brother, you just realize that life is so short. You really gotta push yourself and learn as much as you can and do the things you've always wanted to do. And again, you gotta earn your life every day. I was thinking, I can't. I don't hold people up, but I'm gonna be slow for my team and all this stuff. No, we got this. Getting rid of pride and ego is a stag born. Ego's in. Stay in the moment and get through it. The past is gone. The future doesn't exist. Only thing there is is now that suffering produces endurance, Endurance produces character, and character produces so Romans 5. And it just makes it real to see that. It puts flesh to words. I appreciate what you have done for us and what you have given us. And I told the coaches the biggest lesson for me from this entire event was this petulant child that's inside of all of us that I really felt. I got triggered in certain evolutions, and I thought, what is this really? It's not them, it's me. So that's the real lesson I'm going to take into my life, is where else does that petulant child inside me and all of us lock us from healthy relationships and success and abundance, because there's no real room for anger in life, especially the one that holds us back. So thank you. 20 x. It.
