Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Episode 387 - Rich Diviney

Episode Date: May 19, 2025

Rich Diviney is a retired Navy SEAL Commander. In a career spanning more than twenty years, he completed more than thirteen overseas deployments, eleven of which were to Iraq and Afghanistan. As the officer in charge of training for a specialized command, he spearheaded the creation of a SEAL directorate that fused physical, mental, and emotional disciplines. He led his small team to create the first ever "Mind Gym" in Naval Special Warfare that helped SEALs train their brains to perform faster, longer, and better, especially in high-stress environments. Since his retirement, Diviney has worked as a speaker, facilitator, and consultant, training more than five thousand business, athletic, and military leaders. Today's Sponsors: Black Rifle Coffee Company: https://www.blackriflecoffee.com ExpressVPN: Secure your online data TODAY by visiting ExpressVPN dot com slash clearedhot. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash clearedhot to find out how you can get up to four extra months FREE. https://www.ExpressVPN.com/clearedhot.  

What's up, everybody. Welcome back. My guest today is Rich Divini. 20 plus years as a Navy SEAL officer, 13 overseas deployments, 11 of those being between Afghanistan and Iraq, worked his way up through the rank infrastructure. Commanding officer of one of the assault squadrons over at Development Group for a time. He talks about all of this. And we talk a little bit about his career as well. But I tell you what, this conversation, he's an author. Let me add that, by the way, because actually we talked about, I would say, the content of his books more than anything. Two books, Masters of Uncertainty and then the Attributes. We had a fascinating conversation about attributes and skills, which ones determine outcome, why people quit in Bud, how to effectively attack your goals and be successful where other people are generally not. It was an awesome conversation. I love conversations like this with people from previous background. And it's funny, the outside listener or people outside of the SEAL community often think that we all know each other because it is relatively small, but you really only know the people that work in the building with you, let alone peripherally the people that maybe work in the next building. So we cross paths and we're kind of in the same places, but didn't really know each other that well at all. So it was great to sit down, reconnect and talk about what he's got going on. I really enjoyed the conversation about the attributes and skills and problem solving and just successfully completing your goals. So, episode 387 is going to be with Rich Devaney.

Give me an interview to here. Let me pay the bill so I can keep bringing the podcast to everybody for free. Today's episode is brought to you by Black Rifle Coffee. You guys know the brand. You know I'm tied into the brand. I'm incredibly good friends with the founder Evan. I own one of the coffee shops up here in Montana. None of that can benefit you the listener.

But what can is if you go over to www. www.blackriflecoffee.com. Let's head over there right now. they're still showing up on their top banner Operation Neptune Spear. I covered this in the last ad read. That was the official operation name for the military operation that killed Osama bin Laden. There's a lot of the word operation that I just used there. Moving on. I mean, but also, who doesn't like an owl with a set of binos on there. Rounds, I tell you what, we sell rounds in the coffee shop, and I am shocked by how many people buy these things. It's not how I prefer to enjoy coffee, but the feedback I'm getting that round

are also known as K-cups. They're incredibly convenient, and the recipes keep getting better, meaning how they're putting it together, and the taste of the cup of coffee is basically like right out of a coffee shop. So you can shop those. All of their beans here on this rotating little banner,

this slider bar, you can go all the way from light to extra dark. And you can get sure it's apparel, all of those things. I'll leave you with the energy drinks that are new. They have four flavors. These are also a top seller at the shop.

Again, not my particular cup of tea, but people are loving those things. The last thing I'll leave you with is this. The cleared hot blend of coffee is coming back. Now, you're not going to be able to get that on this particular website, and I'll talk about that later. But it's one of the cool things I get to do collaborating with this brand. It's founded by amazing people. They stand for what I believe to be are the core tenants of this country.

And one of the best ways that you can support me is by supporting the brands that align themselves with this podcast. www. www. www. Black Riflecoffee.com. Go get you some. Back to the show. I'm looking at danger close now.

Can't be clear that. Books. You like writing books. So I love writing books. But I don't write. I don't even like it. You love it. Well, you know,

remember during Buds, they had that period of that course. We all learned how to write books. That's why Seals do it. Well, I remember being issued a publisher. The work still had to be drawn from other people's career and appropriated as your own.

What's funny is, what's funny is I have, there are so many guys now. team guys who are out now and they're writing fiction. Yes. Which is great. I mean, we all know, you know, Jack Carr, of course, but, but there's a lot of dudes with a creative...

His is barely fiction. If you know what you're reading, you're sitting there. That might be lost on the average reader. It's cool to read from our background because you can see a little bit past the curtain. That's right, yeah. Yeah. And he does a good job on accuracy. He's not, he's not bullshitting.

But anyway, all this I say, I like, I love writing, but I don't, I don't, for me, it's kind of like, do I have an idea? And how is the idea kind of maturating in my head? And if it does and it looks like a book, then that's great. It's kind of an evolution for me. Do you self-publish or who have you gone with for the two books? First book was a full-blown publisher, Penguin Renmouse. And then the second one I did a hybrid self-publish.

It's one of these, so it was Amplify where you pay an investment, but they help you with all those things. The percentages are way better. And again, I had a great experience with my publisher. And the time was during COVID. So the advance was really helpful and all that stuff. But their percentages aren't very good with the publisher in terms of royalties and things like that. They need to get their money back first.

They do. Yeah. They're not in the business of doing things for free. Right. Yeah, as are a few people. But so, and I actually had a great conversation with my publisher before I did my second book. And he was like, Rich, I totally get it. I can't offer you these types of percentages.

You can try it out. And yeah, it was a good experience. So, or has been so far. What's your writing process like? Do you have a fully formed idea? Do you lay out a framework or? It's usually, yeah, there's usually an idea around which I want to center, and then I begin to lay out an outline in terms of the supporting things that I can talk about. Now, the first book was about attributes, and that was really the reason why I wrote that was because, so the background on that is when I got out, I linked up with Andrew Heberman.

He and he and he was still teaching at Stanford, and we started. The Hube's, if you will. Is he no longer teaching? No, he still is. Yeah, so I don't know how much, but he was running his lab for certain, because that's, you know, I, I brought my family out there one time just to visit. And so now my son, he's going to UVA for neuroscience because he's so into it, which is awesome. But we began working on some stuff together and we said, hey, let's think about writing a book.

As we went down that process, we got an agent and we started looking at publishers. He had actually been talking about a single, a solo book at the time. What we didn't know about publishing is when you sign for a solo book, you're not allowed to publish your next book for another year and a half or two years. What? It's like a year after that book is published, because they don't want you competing, you know, they don't want competing. I can see that.

Yeah, their competitive products. Ferries, yeah. Yeah. So that point, Andrews, we're like, well, I don't want to, that's a long time. He's like, hey, listen, why don't you write your solo book and I'll write my solo book? You write a solo book. I'll write a solo book.

And then we'll come back. It's like, cool. So that's when I went to my agent, she's like, what do you have? And so I sent her a two-page list on, like, what I'd collect over her high-performance teams, just ideas. and she looks at it and she's like, this is like 10 books. So is there something you want to, is there something you want to focus on? Can we narrow it down?

Please, for the love of God. And so I said, you know, this thing, attributes and skills, this is something I could probably focus on because it's an interesting concept and I could also break it very easily into chapters about attributes. So it seemed like a good outline. And so that one was outlined that way. And I loved writing the book. It was fun.

It was 25 attributes. And I took the work that I did at Dev Group and kind of, you know, you know, expanded on that. And then the second one, Masters of Uncertainty, is in fact a book that I've been wanting to write since before I started writing because I've always been fascinated with this idea of how people navigate uncertainty, challenge, and stress. And so... Not well. Usually not well. Could be titled the first chapter. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. But interesting enough, we, we, the, even the neuroscience, even the neurology that guys like us access in going to buds and then kind of hyperdevelop. It's all human stuff. Let's speak for yourself here, all right?

I am proof that Buds is not selecting for intelligence. Intelligence has nothing to do with it, just so you know. Yeah. No, it's... If it did, the teams might look at the difference. That's right. But it's about how... Yeah, totally.

But I think that's a good... That's actually a good point because it's not necessarily about these tangibles one can read or measure. It's about the qualities we bring to the table. And so... I tell people if they would have let us bet on students when I went back as an instructor, the entire staff would be broke. Yes. Because you snap judge people like the classic book by its cover.

And this, I mean, more often than not, the scrawny dude who you think has no chance who never even talks. Yeah, might not even have seen the ocean before. May not, you might even recognize this in the class. It's just humming at 80% crushing D1 athletes. That's right. Well, and the reason is because we don't, because uncertainty is totally different. And when I talk about uncertainty, what I say is, um, athletics is not. not necessarily the best venue inside of which to practice uncertainty.

Now, it depends on the sport. I would say any fighting sport is an exception. Because when you go into a fighting sport, you just don't know, however prepared you are, you don't know what that other human being is going to do at all. Every time, you're constantly in reaction mode. But things like, you know, basketball and football, although wonderful venues, and I know there's some uncertainty involved, but they're fairly codified environments inside of which people can predict or they're not really, they've seen pretty much everything

that can happen. I think you have fewer options and ability for creativity. That's right. That's right. That's right. And less fear. Well, you might get punched in the face, but they're definitely going to get ejected. Yeah, that's right.

You might get some free throws. That's right. But you're not afraid of getting punched in the face, right? Whereas in a fighting sport, you know, I would say, you know, and I love UFC and even though I don't practice Brazilian jiu-jitsu. How dare you, sir. I know, I'm sorry. I put that on the table.

I want to report you to Jocko. That's right. I'm a late adopter, too. And I tell you why. Yeah. So many people in the teams before I were leaving were so enthusiastic about it. About, yeah. I just had to look at them and say, go fuck yourself.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. I refused to participate. It was a rebel. It was a rebel. You like it that much? I hate it. Yes. So you've gotten into.

So what do you love about it, by the way? Um, I love that you can't master it. Yeah. You can't, you cannot master it. You can't solve all the problems. And it's just infinitely, I, I truly believe that the key of staying young is learning new things. So why not participate in an activity where you can never learn everything? Yeah, yeah. But you actually hammered home my point is that in a genre such as that,

it is unpredictable enough so that you're constantly having to adapt and adjust. And you're literally practicing uncertainty in the moment. And this is why some sports, this is why actually they did a study, and I don't know how official this is. I just heard about it was the guys. I make studies up all the time. Okay, yeah. So, but this is I really heard, right? Was that the guys You can't predict who gets through buzz, but they said guys who come from wrestling sports and fighting sports typically do better. Crew and chess as well. Crew and chess, yeah.

And so, and I think, and I think there's reasons behind that just in terms of the way our brains work. Crew for pain. Chess for thinking. Chess for thinking. And more specifically, compartmentalization. Yeah. And though, crew, it wasn't individual crew.

That's right. It was team crew. Yes. In other words, I am going to, I have to compartmental with my pain because any, any, any, if I let off in any way, I let down my teammates. How interesting is that that there's a deviation between the singles rowers and the doubles rowers? Yes. That's right. I mean, that is

there are some direct ties to almost every ethos of the community there. Whereas fighting an individual sport in many cases is still a sport where you are, A, dealing with uncertainty, but B, you're constantly gauging the environment and having to manage that environment and adapt

at all times. And you are actually, at least in the context of how you're being observed, you're you're cognizant of observation so so there is a there is a quote letting down aspect of even even individual fighting sports which I think is fighting and jiu jitsu I talk to people about this all the time especially training partners everybody wants to win when they're in the gym and if you go too hard you can hurt your training partners or yourself yeah and I remind myself and other people like jiu jitsu is an individual journey but it's a team sport you have to have training partners

yeah yeah yeah for somebody to step into the ufc walk I wish they actually would get rid of the walkouts like get the fuck in the ring. Yeah, yeah. I don't need to see you in super slow-mo. Like, some of the songs are way better than others. Also, I don't, like, never fight anybody from a stand with a chinstrap beard. My God. You're already setting yourself up.

My God. And the music they play, I'm like, all right. But they all walk out with a team. And there's a striking coach and a grappling coach and a conditioning coach. And all of those people, like to get somebody to that apex, my God, it's layered upon, layered upon layered. It's team activity as well. Yeah, I would agree.

And so, but I think it's fascinating. when you get into the neuroscience and the neurology of what we actually have to do to make it through something like buds or any type of challenging situation, those sports begin to help make sense of that whole thing. What did Huberman think? I'm a fan of his, by the way. Never met the guy. I communicated with him once on Instagram.

We messaged back and forth. I said, come to Montana. He's like, yeah, it sounds good and that was it. That sounds about right. He's so busy. He's like, whatever. Because, I mean, the government spent millions. of dollars trying to figure out who to get to buds.

Yeah. They did psychological tests. They did IQ tests, EQ test, personality assessments, training pipelines to begin with. And spoiler alert, the attrition rate was what it was. What does Huberman think? What are his thoughts as to who makes it through? Well, he was always curious as to our thoughts because he wasn't sure. I'll tell you what we both.

Does he realize we don't fucking know even? Well, no, we don't. But here's what we both explored. We both explored. this idea of uncertainty together. In fact, a lot of this, a lot of the stuff I have in that second book is stuff that we actually put together when we were working. And part of this was the way that individuals can process uncertainty, challenge, and stress. And we could call it compartmentization. If we simplify it to an attribute, it's compartmentalization. But how do we, in fact,

allow ourselves to focus in the moment on only what we need and block out everything else? And this, and we're going to talk about the neuroscience behind this, but this is, but this is in fact the secret to buds. None of us, all of us who showed up at the beaches of buds day one had some sort of training or experience in this prior to. Because if we didn't, we wouldn't make it through the first day. I already know where you're going with this and I can actually point back to the exact experiences that I had. I know where it came from. Yeah. And you probably got the advice in buds that I did.

Yeah. Which is just make it to the end of the day. And in hell week, just make it to the next meal. Yeah. which is a broad brush compartmentalize. It's only on the moment. Right. Get through whatever it is, you know.

Yeah. When Master Chief Mayor is screaming at you with his jawware. Nightmare. Is it a nickname, Nightmare? Yeah. We hadn't even classed up yet, not to take a tangent. Yeah. And I think he's out now.

So I'll use his name. This was Mike Mayor. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We were over at 618. I wasn't even in that barracks yet. This was like a Saturday. Yeah.

Yeah. He beat the Everland. living shit out of us with the jaw that was wired shut from surgery. I remember. His daughter was walking around and two dudes just got up and ran towards where they thought the bell was. I remember that and I remember that surgery because I remember because we were going to buzz that around the same time.

I have never been more fucking sore in my life. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, there was even, I remember instructor Disney. You know, remember Disney? Disneyland. Yeah. Yeah.

Literally a relative. Not the happiest place on me. Yeah. Literally a relative of Walt Disney himself. and he had Disneyland. Here's what we have to understand about the way we process, actually any human processes information. And that is when we are in any environment,

our brains are trying to figure out three aspects of that environment, that situation. Those aspects are duration, how long this is in Alaska, pathway, our route in outer through and outcome. What's the end state of this? When we are in absence of one or more, that's when uncertainty and fear begin to rise and anxiety and things like that.

The example would be this. We have, you and I get strep throat. Okay, strep throat is a known disease. People don't die from strep throat, and there's a known antibiotic you can take for it. So when you have something like strep throat, you are in absence of only one of the three. You're an absence of duration. In other words, you know the pathway, antibiotic, and you know the outcome I would get better. Duration might be unknown because you might get over, antibiotics might work more rapidly for you than it does me.

So our mild, our uncertainty, anxiety level is mild. Now imagine we get the flu, okay? A flu is also a known disease that we, most people, at least if you're in the first world, won't die from. So you know we're going to get better. But you are in absence of pathway because there's no known thing you can take for a flu. There's some techniques and things that people say, but no known thing. And you don't know how long you're going to have it.

So you're an absence of duration and pathway. But you do have an outcome. Now our anxiety level, our stress level, our uncertainty level is higher. Now let's take a disease that rolls through the planet and never been seen before. Some people are dying. Some people aren't. There's no vaccine, no, no cure, and we don't know how long this is going to last. Potentially involved in gain of function research, not a big deal, hypothetically.

Hypothetically. However, however, for many people, it sounds quite familiar, right? Because this is 20-20, right. You know, just throwing stuff against the wall to see what sticks. That's exactly right. Now we are in absence of all three, duration pathway outcome. Okay, this is when uncertainty level, anxiety levels at its highest. This is when you hoard toilet paper. This is when you hoard toilet paper, if you're one of those hoarders. However, the secret is, and this is a secret all of us stepping onto the beaches day one of Buds already know, because we practiced it somewhere before, is called, is what I call in the book Moving Horizons. Okay. Moving Horizons is a process where you pick something to focus on, and in doing so, you create certainty by creating your own duration pathway outcome, your own DPO. So, perfect example.

It buds, you know, you're running with those damn boats in your head during hell week. It's 3 a.m. And I remember this happening. It's 3 a.m. We're on the beach, and we're by that big sand berm, okay? And I remember saying myself, fuck, I said, I said, okay, I'm just going to focus on getting the end of sandburn. Yeah. Okay.

What I did in that moment inadvertently was I picked a horizon and created a DPO, duration from now until end of sandburn, pathway from here to end of sandburn. Outcome end of sandburn. Now, what I didn't understand is where Heberman really taught me a lot about our dopamine system is what I was doing was I was manipulating my dopamine system in a meaningful way. In other words, I was creating a horizon. So dopamine is this motivation chemical. it causes us to get up and move. And if we're in absence of dopamine, we don't even, we're not even motivated to get out of bed in the morning.

Has Heberman studied the dopamine level or even the endocrine system of people going through Hellweek though? I don't think he's done that specifically. Because I think this physiological state that you are in in that week, your shit is not wired properly. We're zombies. But dopamine is actually what's getting us through Hellweek, because dopamine is, we're constantly giving ourselves dopamine reward. In doing that thing that I did in terms of picking the end of the sandburn,

what I did is I created a dopamine reward. Once I got to that end state, I gave myself a dopamine reward, which allowed me to come back out and pick a new horizon. And as you can attest to, our horizons are subject to our own experience, subjectivity and intensity of the environment. So in other words, when we're getting surf tortured, sometimes I was just saying I'm going to count five waves.

That was my horizon. It's remediation. Yeah, no, it's surf. Now they, what is it? It's surf remediation. Yeah, or surf conditioning now, too, I think they said, yeah. That's actually what it is. Surf conditioning.

Because it's not just remediation. They do it to all of them. Well, we used to be when the instructors would beat us, that got shifted. That was remediation. Yes, sir. Surf conditioning, yes, yeah. I would like to note that no aspect of it changed other than the name. And it still felt like torture.

Yeah. And feels like torture. So thank you for rounding the edges on that English please. People don't understand. People who haven't been to Southern California don't understand how fucking cold the waters. Especially in the winter. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And people also don't understand that most people quit buds because of cold. It's not because of the physical stuff. We had a February hell week. I know. Yeah, 212, man. Yeah. It was, there was a cacophony of just an orchestra at the

bell. We had, we had, we had, ours was October. October of November, I can't remember. So, we're just getting on the cusp, right? So all this to say is the horizons we pick are subjective as we manipulate that dopamine system. Sometimes it's, I'm going to count five wave. Sometimes it's going to get to the next meal. Sometimes I'm going to get to the next wave. or get to the end of the day. As we do this, we are able to manipulate our dopamine system in a way that keeps us going. Because if we pick a horizon that's too far, we run out of dopamine and we quit. Quitting is simply running out of dopamine.

It's that old adage in the SEAL teams. If you think about Friday of Hell Week on Monday, you'll quit, right? We never thought about Friday. I didn't think about Friday until Friday, you know, because if he did so, you quit. I didn't even know this Friday by the time it was Friday. Like, you're saying zombies. Yeah. So the cool thing about this is every single human being on some aspect has done this before in their lives, right?

Whether it's been a hard workout or something. They all know what this is. We actually begin to become masters of it. And this is the first element of our mastery of uncertainty is we do this without thinking. When the shit hits the fan, we begin to just pick horizons. And no matter what it is, we horizon. So I was talking to a buddy of mine, you might know. I won't mention his name right now, but he is retired.

and we were talking about hay-ho, the hay-ho jumps. High altitude, high-opening. And actually, we were at luncheon, so it was a couple of us who all served together. H.B. was one of those. Okay. And we were talking about hay-hos. And I remember this dude, he said, you know what's funny is when we were getting ready to jump off the edge of that ramp, you know. And, you know, you love jumping.

I never like jumping. It scared the shit out of me. But, you know, we all did it. I'll see. Yeah. That's right. Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

Yeah. But he said, when we were getting ready, we had a big, you know, big op in front of us, you know, unknown DZ, all that stuff, right? And we're getting ready to get out the door. I'm only thinking one thing. And I was like, what's that? He's like, nail the exit. Yeah. Nail the exit, right? And that's what we're all thinking? What am I thinking? What am I thinking? Pull my parachute? Yeah. And so, so even in the littlest moments, we're doing this automatically. You know, I told you, I live in Virginia Beach. I've been there for 24 years. In our neighborhood, there's a seal that lives across. And so, so even in the littlest moments, we're doing this. across the street for me, there's a seal that lives down to the right, and there's a seal that lives down to the left. In fact, the seal that lives down the right isn't one of our old instructors. Okay. And I remember my wife's saying, I'm so glad these guys are here. Is this last name to start with an R? No, an M. Okay. Yeah, but when I say, you're like, holy shit, that guy's, yeah. But I remember my wife saying, I'm glad these guys are here because if something went wrong, I could go to them and they act like you act. And I said,

what do you mean by that? It's like, because when the shit hits the fan, all you guys, you just calm down, you start working the problem. You know, and so this is what we get hyper developed in and we begin to, and it applies to any aspect of our business of doing skills, but this is also, we do this in everyday life all the time. And this is the first kind of tool that everybody can begin to actualize and practice. And so this, this, this, this lends itself to the neuroscience that Huberman and I talked about in terms of the guys who show up at buds and quit are the guys who have not had practice in understanding that aspect of horizon shifting. And I think that some of the div one athletes who saw show up and quit,

it's probably because they were in an environment. I'm not saying being a Division I athlete's not hard, but they were in an environment where they set up, they set themselves up so they could be at 100% all the time. And if they weren't at 100%, they'd do whatever they could do to get to 100% before they went on the field. You know, I mean, Buds is like, get you to zero

and see what you got. It's got something for everybody. Something for everybody. And if you haven't, and this process of horizon shifting is absolutely what's needed when you're at zero. and because you're literally manipulating your dopamine in a meaningful way. I found with the Division I athletes too or the people, I can take it a little broader than that.

I will just say somebody who had a great amount of success in a singular activity. Yeah. That was in addition to what you're saying, they weren't used to struggling and failing. Yes. They were used to being at the top of their heap in their specialty and being rewarded for that. So you'd get these amazing swimmers and the O course is just, ha ha, right? They can't do the dirty name.

That's right. Or the fucking rope swing. Yeah. The literal. Run and catch the rope. Run at the rope. Grab it lower. Feet on log.

And they would fall four times. I'm sitting there. Like, didn't you get a full ride scholarship for an athletic endeavor of some kind? Isn't that amazing? No, I think you're right. I think, but again, that speaks to the fear challenge on a certainty level. And frustration. And frustration.

Yeah. Failure is, you know, for those of us who are practiced at it, we understand. okay, it's simply a step in the process. And we can probably learn from it pretty well. But we're also comfortable with it because we know it's inevitable. So what you described is a very intelligent way. I agree with everything you said and my own thoughts on it align. I just have a much more rudimentary way of thinking about it

because I don't understand neuroscience. Yeah, I always tell people macro-goal micro-focus. Yeah. And what was interesting, did you ever go back to Buds as an instructor? Not an instructor, but I went to secure my Santana. a new class, so I got to see that. But I would have loved to, by the way. What a fascinating, fascinating laboratory for failure. Yeah. Because I don't know your experience when our class started with 180, I don't think I ever saw or talked to a dude who quit. Because if you were like

running to lunch and talking to Bob and you're running back and Bob's gone and you're just like, whatever. Yeah. And they moved out of the barracks. And you're moving on and their life takes a different trajectory. Yeah. Yeah. I, as an instructor, you get to spend time with those students. So you talk to them. And there's a variety of ways that they describe it. There are, sometimes it's really sad. Actually, there'll be a catastrophic, like, family incident, like a death. Yes, yes. And it's like, you know what, man, come back whenever. Like, and actually, you're doing the right thing. If you hadn't done this, if the instructor staff find out about it, found out about it, we actually might have petitioned to have you administratively removed so you can handle that. Yeah. Other than that, though,

when people that made the decision to quit, my words, not necessarily there is, and I'm combining a lot of feedback over a lot of students who were, they were pretty emotionally low. And I was always just cool. I would just talk with them about it. And at this point, I had, I wasn't a threat to them and blue and gold t-shirt anymore. Right. And I just said, well, what was it? Like, and I would, first I'd ask him, you know, with genuine curiosity. Genuine curiosity. And I would ask him, you know, kind of walk me through your, your headspace. When you showed up here, were you convinced that you were going to graduate, all of them to say yes. Yeah. You know, is this something that was along the lines of a singular focus in your life before you got here?

They all say yes. If I would have asked you on day one, if there was anything I could have done as an instructor to make you quit, what do you think you would have said? Like, no way, I'm going to be there on graduation. And so they're sitting there and I talked to him. So what was it? And it was so many different versions of the same thing. I got to a place where I was either cold or tired or in pain or frustrated. and I didn't think I could do it for as long as what was going to be required of me.

Yes. So I, not that I was there doing a socioeconomic experiment, I was, I 100% took that information and weaponized it because I realized it really is about you describe it in terms of moving your horizon. I describe it in the time of, or in the lens of your optic of time. As a student, your optic needs to be so myopic and narrow. And so my goal is an instructor, all I would try to do is get you to think big. Think big, yeah.

How far, where are you at? Where do you want to be? Let's just focus on the space. Yeah. Can you be this cold for another 162 more days? Right, right. It was more effective than every tool that the instructors have access to. You want to make people, I mean, let's be honest, it's enhanced by the other tools as well.

You catch people in a little suppressed mindset, a little hypothermic, a little cold. They've been up longer than they've ever been up. And you start talking to them about, you know, on Tuesday on Hellwick. There's nothing saying you can't say it's Monday morning. You know, time. Oh, yeah. That's right. Yeah.

I've had students say, we always knew what time it was because we'd look at your guys' watches. I'm like, did you ever consider I said it wrong? Because I was a student once too, you had dumb ass. Although good job trying to look at the watch. But we knew you were going to because we were a student too. So we'd all get together and be like, yeah, sit your watch back a day. Or this is the time it's going to be. Right, right.

Yeah. It was all time, though. It was a matter of becoming overwhelmed. Yes. So this begs a question because I've thought about this too. the military has spent so much money on that particular pipeline. What do you think would be the change in outcome, if any, if they made a concentrated effort to teach people that concept

and have them practice it before? Because like you said, almost, I was exposed to it very young when I was working for my dad on a construction site. I remember it. I was a hod carrier, so I carried bricks and made like mortar. I was 11. I might have weighed 90 pounds. And I remember a specific job site.

There was like 20 pallets of McNair common red bricks. And for people not familiar with pallets of bricks, they come in five hundreds. And I wasn't strong enough to carry two tongs. So I could carry six at a time. Yeah. Where he wanted them was not near where they were. Of course. Yeah.

And I don't know why I was the only employee tasked with said moving of these red bricks. Yeah. But that's what I was given. Yes. You want to talk about being just hit with a tsunami of being overwhelmed. Yeah. And I don't remember if it was my dad who said something to me where I figured it out of my own, but I just hit play on a jukebox because that's what we had.

Massive desal batteries. Sure, of course. Probably a CD. Might have even been FM. Like a set. Yeah. It could have been FM radio. Yeah, yeah.

And I just did six at a time. I think it took me like a week. Yeah. But six at a time. And I wouldn't think about anything outside of that journey. And you can extrapolate that all the way forward. And I do agree that I think most people that show up at buds have had some exposure to that. So here's a funny story.

But then why do they quit? Here's a funny story because my experience is almost identical. My dad, you know, grew up in Connecticut. My dad did not like using central heat. So we had a fireplace. And so you just have cords of wood delivered in the driveway. Now, we had to stack it up with the front door. Now here's the deal.

You know, the front door is, from our driveway, the front door was closest, if he you went up the stairs and then stacked, but then you had to carry it by hand, okay? You can only carry five or, you know, maybe four or five. Or you could take a wheelbarrow and go around the house up this little hill and take wheelbarrow loads. So my brother and I was our job to move the wood and we're like, okay, we're going to do wheelbarrow.

We just, we didn't ever look to the whole pile. We just did wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow, after wheelbarrow. There's no point of looking at the pile. And you didn't look at the pile until they're like, oh, wow, we're almost done, right? This is exactly what it is. And I've talked to people, I talked to a lady who was, I was talking to this about and she said, I used to do long like triathlon level swims.

And she said, I remember when I used to swim, I used to pick out markers. And that was my, those were my results. Yeah, micro rewards. And so, but this is an exact manipulation that we're talking about. And the interesting thing is, though, if you can manipulate the dopamine in the wrong way, if you pick a, if you pick a horizon that's too short, you actually won't get the, you won't register enough of a reward to feel it. That makes sense.

So you have to just adjust it. It has to be just outside your. comfort zone. There you're like, okay, I'm making progress. It feels good. And I get that dopamine reward. So, so, but you are 100% correct. We are, we're wired for this. The question you ask is a good one. I've been asked that before. The answer that I give, and I can't be firm on this, is that I don't, I actually think training people to do this. First of all, I don't know if you can because you can't necessarily do this. You can't train for uncertainty and fear. You can't, I mean, because you just. I mean, we made a career out of it. Well, but, but we did it because.

Because we trained, no, no, we didn't train an uncertainty because training uncertainty implies that you're setting up an environment inside of which you train. What we did is we trained in environments and uncertainty was injected in the environment. We never knew, right? So it's a paradox if you say you trained uncertainty. Uncertainty by definition is you don't know. And so what we did, we had luxury and we had good instructors. They would throw things at us that we didn't expect.

Here's where I think the most important evolution at buds is. is out of all six months, I think there's one evolution of Buds that is the single most important evolution. I'm going to let you guess what you think of it is. Which phase? I'm not going to tell you. Well, at least give me one of the three phases. No, it's in one of the three phases. No shit. Give me what phase. I'll say it's not Hell Week. Okay. What phases is in though? That's going to give it away. No, there's, there's... Okay, second phase. Okay. The most important evolution in second phase? No, I think in Buds, but yes. I was going to say, first phase. I mean, the crucible of Hell Week is, you know, that's kind of where...

You might see the light at the end of the tunnel. I know most people think pool comp is, I mean, when it is statistically your highest likelihood, the most important evolution, the tread. What is the tread? Your hands out of the water for five minutes on the scoop. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, they're going to be that or pool comp? So, so, yeah, you're almost there, pool comp. And here's a reason why, I think.

Okay, again, this is my theory. Because pool, hell week we all know. I mean, hell week is about understanding that you can just push through. It's about compartmentalizing in a way that, hey, no matter what happens, I will push through. How do you think people quit? I think people quit because they can't manage their horizons. So I have talked to, by the way, I have talked to people who've quit buds. I have two, yeah.

Yeah, so, and even not as an instructor. And in every case, the story is the same just in different words. You know, I was, it was Monday of Hell Week. We had been running with that boat all day. And the instructors are saying, we're going to run with it all night. And I couldn't imagine running with it all night. Something like that. You know, it's always about the ability to horizon shift properly.

Do they share it? or when they are sharing those experiences, is there an emotion that sometimes comes with that? Because oftentimes regret. Yes. Oh, yeah. Of course. It's almost always paired. Yeah.

Because again, when you back out of this, every time you back out of uncertainty, as soon as your environment becomes certain, things get comfortable and you get clear-headed, when we are in an uncertain environment, when fear and anxiety begin to bubble up, what's happening is our frontal lobe, the decision-making part of our brain,

is begin to recede, and our limbic brain is starting to take over. So in other words, in full autonomic overload or amygdala hijack, our limbic has taken over. We are acting without thinking. Okay. Comes in really handy for jumping out of the way of a moving train or running from the bear, whatever you want to say, but not handy in most environments where you want to inject some decision making. And so what's happened in those environments is they are reaching a point of autonomic overload.

Their limbic system, their limbic brain is taking over. They're making a decision. So at the end of that, the back end, when their frontal lobe comes back online, they're like, oh, shit, what the fuck did I do? I did the wrong thing. Do you know why they changed it to IDOR instead of I quit? Because the student along the way before the bell in the paperwork decided to say, no, I said I didn't quit. Yeah.

Really? To which the instructor said, feel free to rejoin the class. He was back at the bell at about 45 minutes. Wow. Interesting. But a doctrinal change. Yeah. It's IDOR now.

You can't say I quit. So there is absolutely no answer. No, that's amazing. I didn't know that. That's great. That's why I would have loved to be an instructor. That's great. It is wild.

Yeah. You were first phase instructor? Second. Second phase. Okay, so let's talk about pool comp. Yep, I administered the test. I already know where you're going with this. I was trying to think, in my head I was thinking pool comp, but that seemed almost a little bit too obvious.

I've actually seen people quit post-Helweek on the tread, never in pool comp. Oh, interesting. Yeah, because again, the amygdala hijack. They thought they were driving. It's fear, yeah. Here's why pool comp brings it all together, because pool comp is not only about managing your horizons in a very tense, uncertain, stressful, fearful, environment.

It's also about problem solving. It's literally managing your frontal lobes or you're deciding in the most moment, okay, what do I need to focus on? What's the priority right now? And the priority is air, obviously. And so I don't know if your audience knows about pool comp. Should we explain it? Yeah, I mean, I can talk about it. Somebody who administered it for 18 months. It's interesting you were already describing it in the manner. So I ended up giving, I was the instructor that would give the brief for pool comp because you actually do want to see the students succeed. Sure, yeah. And if they are going to fail, you don't want them to unfail because they don't

understand what it is they're being tested on. That's right. So pool comp is usually Thursday, Friday, where it was when I was an instructor. And it is the culmination of many events. I mean, you really, first you do an intro to open circuit. And open circuit, when you exhale, when you exhale for the audience, when you exhale, it gets a lar five dragger, it gets pushed through a chemical scrubber. So does orb soft and a line and there's no bubbles. So close circuit.

And we start with open circuit and buds. Correct. And I'll just add, just so you know, just so people know, you don't have to ever have even seen scuba equipment when you get to buds. And there are some people who haven't. They teach you from step one. So there's no prerequisites here. Yeah.

And I'll add the tail end of this story. After they graduate pool comp, I would give another brief about how they don't know shit about diving. And they should never go rent scuba gear and do anything that we just did. They know just enough to get themselves hurt. Because I would tell them the test is actually not about diving. It's about your ability to follow procedures regardless of what is going on. Yes. And so.

So yeah, it's on the test. Yes. Well, I'll get to the test because I want to explain. I don't want people to think that we're just like, hey, get in there. It's actually the misconceptions about the training. pipeline or the career, unbelievable. Can't believe the things you guys do. I'm like, well, let me tell you the month of shit we did leading up to what you saw

on Instagram. All well thought out. Yeah. So literally, you get in there and it's first, it's an intro, and then you do a day, ditch and dawn. You're by yourself. You take your gear off in procedure. Put it back on in procedure.

I think they give you, I don't know, a certain amount of time, 10 minutes. It's not hard. If you do that, you black out your mask. You do a night, ditch and dawn. Then you do a day gear exchange. One set of gear, two divers. You're passing back and forth the air. So you're monitoring and managing your air exchange.

person takes the gear off again in procedure and they have to put it, pass it across. They both get a weight belt. That's the only thing that the other diver has on him as a weight belt so they can stay down. Pass the gear across, check your gear, give the symbol, come down and you're good to go. Night gear exchange, which is, let me tell you what is hilarious as an instructor. One of the night gear exchange students, you need to be holding on to your partner. Yes. Sometimes just the contact with the partner, it breaks a little bit.

maybe the instructors would come and fin as hard as they could over the top to separate the students even more. But when they both realize they no longer can find each other. And one of them has the tank. Let me just say the panic is far less with the person who has the tank. Yeah, I would imagine. Because the other person, oh my God, you want to talk about frantic, like looking in the dark? And you could hear other instructors in the water just laughing. And eventually, you know, we get them up. Day gear exchange, night gear exchange.

Then it goes back to be an individual. you do like an intro to kind of the problems you're going to encounter in pool comp. And then the final day is pool comp. And it's 20 minutes and it starts. You start with everything. Actually, fins, the only time you're really wearing fins that week. Everything gets ripped off. And the instructor start introducing both solvable and non-solvable problems into your equipment.

And there's really only three ways it can go. You can pass. There can be a gear malfunction, which you're going to restart the test. Or you can fail. Or you fail. Yeah. Or you feel like to say solvable, non-solvable, what they're doing is they're attacking you underwater. Correct.

And you don't describe it like that. Yeah, but, you know, as a student, I wasn't an instructor, so I can describe as a student. They're attacking you. They're ripping everything off. And they're turning off your air and tying your regulator into a knot behind you. And so. Not always. Sometimes it's just looped.

Yeah, looped. But the idea is when you say solvable and unsolvable, you, there's going to be several iterations and they never know, you never know what number is, where you can, in fact, get that knot untied. You actually have to. You have to, right. So the end of the test, we. We'll, I'm not giving anything away. No, yeah, yeah.

No, actually, because this is briefed. And so if the students are going to get this far and training, they're going to hear it. There will be a knot that you're not going to be able to solve. You have to put in the requisite amount of effort going through the appropriate procedure. And every problem that you encounter in pool comp as the person giving the brief, you have to ask yourself. And you tell this to the students, is the regulator in your mouth or is it out of your mouth? Because your procedure starts with that question. Most people fail procedurally.

Some people do fail from freaking out, but that's usually. preceded by fucking up on a procedure. Right, right. And you can see him. They just like start shaking. They get the

Marvel superhero stance on the bottom and they're like, ah, they try to get out of the pool. And you're doing everything you can to drive them back down. They think that you're trying to kill them and,

slow your roll. Slow your role. But it's in your mouth or out of your mouth for the regulator. And so that means you either trace it back. I mean, I still can remember. You go back to the manifold

and you're checking your air on and off. It is brilliant. reefed for hours. They have balsawood tanks that they can practice on. And 60, 70% of people fail the first day. And then they recycle and you get two more chances. At least when I went through or was an instructor, two chances Thursday, two chances Friday. Myself as a student, I failed my first two.

Didn't sleep well. Yeah. On Thursday night, passed it on the third attempt, which is pretty common. By the fourth attempt, the nerves are there. Yeah. And there's, I mean, honestly, you can be a total dick on that test as an instructor because you're watching the student and you have a choice. All the bubbles come out and you rip it out of their mouth.

They're like, I just hit you on an exhale. I would always go down and I would tap their mouthpiece and I would let them get a full breath and I would actually let them spit it out. Sometimes they wouldn't recognize or they would bite down harder. That had a different result. So you were actually a nice instructor. I gave the same test every single time.

Yeah, yeah. Consistence. It was fair. Yeah. I didn't pass that many people, but if you performed, you passed. If you didn't, you didn't. Why the test is hard enough. The problems, it's not like you can manipulate those rigs rapidly. Right.

So they're already holding their breath anyway. Give the dude a little bit. Give them a breath air. So I would tap them. I would watch them take, and you'd see them because you're right there on top of them. It's a one-to-one ratio. They'd spit it out and boom, I'd get to tell. And that would never make the difference.

They either knew the procedure or they didn't. Yeah. Well, the reason why it didn't make the difference is because what we're asking students to do, what we're asking us to do there is we're asking us to problem solve in a very uncertain environment where fear and stress are predominant? And basically, what are we going to do? Are we able to calm ourselves, bring our frontal load back online and work the problem? And work the problem in a distinct calm way that allows us to make decisions as we go.

So yes, first thing, regulator. Okay, can I get that untied? Yes. Okay, cool. I'll get that untied. Put in my mouth. Next thing, air. I'm going to turn on my air.

Okay, after that, I'm golden because now I just have to look for my mask and clear that out and get myself situated again. Yeah. And then, of course, what... You never get your mask back. That's true. That's our personal property. That's right.

I forgot about that. The mask becomes my property. But what, and I think, what I want to add to that is that on that whammy knot, that'll, that'll event. Which is the final knot. The unsolvable knot. At that point, you have to then, when you discover you're not getting anything untied, calmly ditch your gear. Now, calmly ditch your gear is just like you said.

You take off your tank. You put it in front of you. You calmly put your BC on top of that. your weight vest, you calmly blow to the surface, right? As people can imagine, if you do that and it wasn't a whammy not, you fail, you know, and if you're procedurally wrong, you fail, you fail. So why is this so important? It's because this, first of all, I always joke, because I had one of my friends,

I tell you his name afterwards, but he was running a dive phase, and while I was running training at dev group, and we used to have an argument because he said, you know, I think we should give the guys as many chances as they want, you know. And I said, I disagree. It's like, but it's really, I mean, as long as you can get through the thing, you can get through the thing. I was like, no, you don't understand. This is not about the thing.

Yeah. And I was, you know, my first command was SDVs out in Hawaii. And so we did hundreds of hours underwater, dark harbors, you know, under ships, all that stuff. Never once did I have a sea creature attack me and rip my regulator out and tie it into a knot. So I wasn't training for that. Yeah. But I wasn't training for the thing. I was training to see if we had what it took to problem solved when our life depended on it.

That's why I briefed them at the end of that week. Please, for the love of God, don't go out in Red Scooby Gear. That's right. Are idiots. You know nothing about scuba diving. That's right. So you translate that to even skydiving, right? And I, you know, skydiving was always a challenge for me, right? And I remember my first malfunction. And I was incredibly, I surprised myself in how calm I was.

Because as soon as it happened, I said, okay, what's going on here? What's the first thing I try that? What's the second thing I do? And I just worked through the problem. And I recognize that this is why I think Bullcomp is the most important thing, because it takes all of that stuff that you've hyperdeveloped in Hell Week. I can manage fear all this stuff and puts problems. solving aspects because we know in combat, this is it. This is exactly what you're doing. You can't focus on everything. You can focus on what's the most important thing in the moment. And of course,

you're also keeping an awareness of if and when and how priorities change. I'm going to focus on this priority because it seems like the most important in this moment. If, however, a new priority comes in, I'll switch priorities, which is now gets into what we do in close quarter combat, because it's exactly what happens in the killhouse, you know, especially at the speed with which we did it. And this is why I think it's just a foundation element. We have to be very possessive of that evolution in terms of how we run it. What was the malfunction you had? It was a hung, or a caught riser.

It was easy. You cut away a hung slider? No, no, no, I didn't cut away. No, no. That's not a malfunction. No, no, it was a, yeah, well. That's just a party. For someone who loves jumping, yes.

For me, it was an event. Well, the military shoots are so big, and, I mean, you're smaller than I am. Like, the heavy you are. Actually, it was a hung. One was a hung slider. That was easy. I had a, it was a, it was a caught up riser or steering. A toggle?

A caught toggle. So I was in a hard spin, you know, I opened up. Like one release and the other didn't. So I was in a hard spin. So I was like, okay, what's going on? Was this a big military canopy? It was a big military canopy. I mean, let's be careful using words like more, like hard spin.

You're a jumper. You're a jumper. I feel like you were rotating once per two minutes. I reserve the rights. Oh my God. I'm very, I'm very comfortable underwater, by the way. So, uh, anyway. You want to talk about a hard spin.

I have one of my toggles. So the smallest canopy I've ever jumped is an 84 square foot. Fully like sail material, semi-electical. Yeah. I had a toggle come loose on that one. You are above the top of the canopy on your back just like, way, to-ting. Oh, my God. Yeah.

Thank you, no. It took over a decade of jumping to get there. Remember, my friend, fear is subjective. So. I wasn't, I had many malfunctions. No, I'm talking about my fear of my, yeah. I had had enough malfunctions at that point where I actually, actually think I was laughing when that happened.

Yeah. It was so violent and rapid. Yeah. I would, like, oh, just spin out of it. No, no, no. Yeah. I'm looking up as I'm just being corkscrewed through. Well, and people who don't realize at that speed, I mean, if you're not quick on that.

And it was diving. Yeah. If not quite quick on that, you may actually start losing consciousness if you're, if the G forces are. Yeah. I've gotten to the point with jumping. If I instantly don't like what I look at above me. Yeah. See you later.

Yeah. You just like four good line groups. How many cutaways have you had, by the way? Eight or nine. Eight or nine. And that's how many jumps? About 8,500. Okay.

So, yeah. So people, you know, skydive is inherently safe if you do it, if you do it properly. I don't know if I'd describe it like that. I tell people it's not safe, just like base jumping, but you can do it as safely as possible. I can't. Yeah. I know you base jump. Or you used to base jump.

Used to. Yeah. I gave it up. Insane. Yeah. Anyway. I don't consider it to be insane either. I am the most normal person that I know.

I don't, you know. I tell my wife this every day. When she gives me my daily, what and the fuck is wrong. with you. I know, well, you know, again, some guys, you know, there are guys who like certain things and, you know, and guys who just do it. I asked her last night, like, can we get a pet duck? Yeah.

Because I saw one on Instagram and it looked pretty dope. And she looked at me like, what? What's wrong with you? Where can we keep on? Like, we have a bathtub. Here's what I love about the teams. And I've always loved about the teams is that, is that you're someone who, you just love skydiving.

And there are tons of guys who love it, right? For sure. There are guys like me, and I've talked to many of them who hated every fucking time. Yeah, but she still got to do it. We all did it. And we all did it competently, right? We all did it to the extent that we could do it. We did it competently.

And so this is what I love is no matter. Because, you know, every team guy has this thing. You know, some guys hate scuba diving. They just, or they hate this or hate that. Every single one of us knows how, this is what pool comp does. We know how to push through and problem solve for things that we actually don't enjoy, that things that scare us. That's the secret of that type of operation.

And I think that's the secret of our training in terms of what it provides us downrange. I agree with you. I think the most important skill, and it took me. what year did you get out? 2017. Okay, I got out 2013, last day of June and 2013. It's interesting now. The memories of it are becoming hazy.

Yeah, yeah, no, it doesn't, yeah, totally. And I'm glad. I just don't want it to be all that I ever was or all that I ever did. So I actually appreciate that I'm forgetting a lot of the stuff. Have a new chapter, basically, yeah. Yeah. But the most important skill that I took out of that, and I didn't realize it until much later, or at least I wasn't able to codify it or speak about it in any terms that made sense,

was that optic on time, keeping your world small. Yes, yes. Well, let me ask you, because this is funny that you said when you're in that spin, you actually were laughing during this. I was, yeah. It just happened so fast. People have asked me before. They were saying, hey, were there any times that you were like really scared?

You were really frightened when you're in the teams. And when I think about it, I say them so, I say them this and see if you agree with this. I say, you know what? When I think about it, the answer is no. And the reason is not because I wasn't, it's not because I'm fearless. It's because when you focus on the small, when you move, horizons correctly, you actually, you mitigate the fear because you're actually working the problem. I have been, quite literally, I've been through situations and I'm more frightened, I get more

like nervous thinking back on what happened versus when I was actually in it. The key to that is don't think back. Well, yeah, of course. So, yeah. But the idea is this process allows you to actually move through this stuff and mitigate fear because you're actually, you're creating certainty, you're creating knowledge, and you're just working the problem. What you just said brings up an interesting point, though, because for as capable as the community of people that we came from, the statistical suicide rate is through the roof.

Yeah. Now, there is some TBI, post-traumatic stress, CTE aspect of that. But what you just said, the ability to basically put your emotions to the side and work through problems, I'm starting to believe that there's a lot of, you just said, the ability to basically put your emotions to the side and work through problems. I'm starting to believe that there is an additional step there that is often left out. Putting the emotions to the side doesn't mean the emotions aren't still with you somewhere. You have to take the time. And everybody's different. Like you have a smaller coffee cup. I have a larger cup of water. We're all a vessel of some kind.

And I think a lot of the guys have skydiving for me. Maybe that was the way that I actually let some of the steam off. I was enjoyable. Quite frankly, I tried to, you know, alcohol. that didn't work too well as with many guys. Recreationally wasn't enough. Let's do this professionally. Drinking.

Didn't work. Whatever it may be. Some people, it was exercise. There's some extreme behaviors in the teams. And I think some of those extreme behaviors might have been a cloaked way, or meaning unintentional way, that they were dealing with stress relief. Yes. Because there's no reason that a community of people that are capable of doing the things

that you're talking about should have a higher than statistical average suicide rate. Yeah. There's something there about being able to not engage in the emotional aspect of those situations. I think people make the mistake of thinking that there's no long-term residual from that. And I think they hang on. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. And I'll add a couple of distinctions that. First of all, I will say that it's very, it's very common for guys to try to trace that adrenaline that we got in the teams in other ways.

Because, you know, I have coffee with guys who are still in Virginia Beach. It's like there's no, there's nothing that was, I can't replicate the high of going overseas and kicking doors and things like that or doing what we did. I think that's a good thing. I totally think. Well, the guys who, the guys who adjusted healthily and they found different ways and they're smaller ways. They don't have to, they don't have to chase that in terms of the volume. I think that's one thing. An argument can be made that we shouldn't have been exposed to that level of adrenaline in the first place.

Like that was an un, it's such an abnormal expression of an occupation. It is, yeah, it is. Yeah, I mean, that's why war sucks. I mean, it's, you know, I guess, but it was also the most awesome thing I ever done. That's the problem. That's the problem, right? I mean, you can't, you think back as like, I can't believe how grateful I am that we got to experience that, especially with people we loved and trusted. So, so that's one piece. I think the other piece is this idea that we, there's obviously stress and trauma. We were so good at compartmentalizing that some guys don't take the time to actually, look at and revisit and process their stress, whatever that was, whatever form that was, I know that even me, when I, when we go overseas and something horrible would happen, you'd see something horrible or something horrible would happen. I would, in a moment, I couldn't do anything because you had to finish what you were doing. But there were times where I deliberately afterwards, when I was by myself, everything was done,

I pulled myself offline and I mourned. I did it deliberately. And I think the guys who I talked to who did that, they effectively started moving through that. They learned what you're talking about. Yeah. I think there's one more factor here that, that I think is interesting and also could be problematic. And it's one of the chapters in this master's own uncertainty book, and that is

identity. Okay. We are, we are collections, we're collages of identities of IAMs as we go through life. And we paste these on, some of them very powerful, some of them benign. You know, I went to this high school, I played this sport. I'm a husband. I'm a father. I'm a Navy SEAL. I'm a Metallica fan, whatever that is, right? All of these identities come with rules and conditions inside of which we behave and they define our behavior. Now, we will, in most cases, especially stress challenges and uncertainty, behave towards that identity that we prioritize the most, right? Overseas, we prioritize Navy SEAL. That was fine. Sometimes, as you can probably attest, there were times where the target would be different or change and you have to prioritize Hubs and Father because

of the way you had to act, right? The Navy SEAL identity is an incredibly powerful identity, incredibly powerful. And when we leave the SEAL teams, you know, I always say it's not like the Marines. Marines are really good at, you know, once a Marine, always a Marine, you can talk to 90-year-old dudes who's like, I'm going to restart and whatever. Seal teams are a little bit different. For us, it's like you earn your trident every day, you take off the trident, you're not really earning it, your former Navy SEAL at that point. You still have, you still communicate with guys and things like that, but you're not really doing the deed. So the identity has to be put on a shelf. And I think, I think for some guys, that dearth that's left, that space that's left is,

is difficult to bear. And I think the guys who I talk to, certainly myself, who are able to move through that in a healthy way, we decide to put it on a shelf, honor it, of course, but then we choose another identity or we lean on another identity. You know, for me, husband and father was a powerful one. That was as powerful as the Navy SEAL. So when I got out of the teams, I had that one, but I immediately started to create a new one. Author, entrepreneur, all that stuff. What are those new identities I can create?

And the guys I talk to who are healthy, they have begun to create new identities. Some guys can't do it. And it's a big gap. It really is. And I think that leads to some of this stuff. I think it's something that needs to be reinforced by the community while you're in. Yeah. I think it would, people would be better served if they were constantly reminded that this is what you do. This isn't who you are. Yeah. You know, it's, it's interesting the phases of your life. I got the, you know, the very classic point, a bone frog tattoo. When I was, before, did I have my bird yet? Oh, boy, did you? I didn't. I got it. But you were through buds at least. I was in STT. Okay. That's fine. I'm not sure. No, no. Yeah. Statute of limitations has expired on this. And I had it on me forever. And for the last year, I've been working on my sleeve. Underneath this is where the bone frogs used to be.

Because I didn't want to see it every day. And people have said, well, how could you cover that? I'm like, first off, dipshit. I've earned the right to get it again if I want to. Maybe I'll get it on my forehead next time so we can all see it. It was a reminder of what I did. Yeah. And it will bump up against your ego and try to make you think that it's who you are.

And I just, I'm not, you know, I am not perfect in that respect of always not thinking about it in that way. but you catch yourself, man, let's just, let's move on. Yeah, yeah. This, by the way, is not limited to seals or military, right? I mean, there are business people who their identity is what they do. And when they leave or get fired or get downsized or whatever, it's incredibly hard for them to understand that that's not who they are. It's what they did.

It's very, I would say it would be a difficult, it would be a difficult task to convince anybody. You could tell them all day long, hey, this is not who you are. It's what you do. Because part of, I think, the culture is, it's who you are. I think perhaps a better strategy would be to help guys, especially in transition, understand. And we have organizations who are doing much better at this, by the way, help them understand that this is an identity that, while very powerful and should be honored, and we should put it on a shelf and a place of honor, it's the past. And the new endeavor, the new challenge is to pick a new one.

In fact, part of our identity can be that I want the next mountain to climb. You know, what's that new mountain? And that can be very empowering for a lot of people. And but if you, if guys are focused on, oh, I had it and I'm not that anymore, you know, that's where the trouble begins. And if they don't have families to lean upon and just compounding and maybe they move away or they don't have guys who they can talk to. Let's not forget the potential substance abuse. Well, the substance abuse. And the problem is, you know, at least, you know, it's funny because when we were in, drinking was part of the culture.

I mean, it was just heavily part of the culture. Oh, yeah. Yeah. by the way now. It's not. I meet so many team guys right now and they don't drink at all. Good. Yeah. I think it's great. I think it's great. I wonder how the first week at SEAL Team 5 when the XO was saying, you know, if you guys want to get kicked out of here, go ahead and get a DUI or an alcohol-related incident. In the next breath, he'd be like, hey, keg are at noon on the grinder. New guys, get the keg and you better be the last people to be here. I'm like, I drove to work,

dude. Yeah. Same thing. We have. We have. You would have. You would have. I could name, we could name the Master Chiefs, awesome dudes who would sit on the, at a retirement, for example. First of all, their whole thing was like, hey, make sure your DUIs and awful drinking, don't do it all. Then they'd sit at a retirement and all they'd do is tell stories about the guy and they have drinking stories. Like, oh, we were drunk doing this. I mean, so. Or nothing's better than the Master Chief coming down to you for drinking and you know he's got three dewees and six ex-wives. That's right. That's right. That's right. You're trying to come down on me. I always call the teams like this.

It was a beautiful mafia. And part of the mafia is this hypocrite in many ways. You know, the rules don't apply for the same people. And so, but we loved it. It was like we were, you know, I was think of us we get out and we're like Henry Hill. We like, you know, at the end of Goodfellas when he's in witness project, he's like, man, I think about that. I'm in this house and I'm safe and I can do this, you know, but I think back at that. I was like, man, I loved it.

I wouldn't change it for that. I mean, he's miserable in his new things. All this, all this that I did got me here. to this punishment, but I wouldn't change a goddamn thing because I loved it so much. It made me who I was. God, the absolute atrocious failures and just lack of judgment. Yeah. But now, it added that because I talk about humor as an attribute in the first book

and how powerful humor is in the equation. One of the reasons why, by the way, humor is so powerful is that when we laugh, we get juiced with three chemicals, neurotransmitters. First is dopamine. We've talked about dopamine. Second is endorphins, which mask our pain. and then third is oxytocin. It's binding bonding chemical, right?

And so when we laugh, whether we like it or not, we get juiced with this stuff. So when I'm talking, I give the story of being in surf torture, surf conditioning. And the instructor driving the van up onto the beach and getting out of the van and saying, hey, I have blankets and hot chocolate and donuts

for anybody who quits right now because it always happens, right? Yeah. I remember them. And I want to be clear, as an instructor who augmented Hell Week, we would take our time and set up the table so they could see the steam coming out of it.

Well, here's what happened to be. Because you need them to hear it, but also I want you to see it. That's right. So here's what happened to me. This is a true story, right? We're in surf torture. Conditioning. Sorry, conditioning.

Yeah. Get the verb is right. Again, exact same activity. A little bit more for the senators. It's better. We're in there and the instructor makes that offer, right? The guy on my right side, he's on my right arm. Immediately yells back at the instructor says, hey, do you have any chocolate glazed donuts?

Because if you don't, I'm not quitting. Okay? And he burst out laughing and I burst out laughing. And suddenly I felt better, okay? I look to my left, the guy on my left. The guy on my left is not laughing at all. He's lost in his pain. I don't even think you heard the joke.

Yeah. I was like, oh, boy, this guy's not going to make it, right? 30 seconds or so he quits. What happens there is when we laugh, right, we immediately, dopamine says, this is good, keep doing this. Endorphins mask our pain. They make us feel better. And oxytocin tells us we're in this together.

So I'm miserable. You know, the guy makes his, you know, the instructor, thank you instructor. Yeah. my body says, this is good, keep doing this. This doesn't feel that bad. We're in this together. How many times can you remember in seal training, in combat, whatever we were, the shit would be like absolutely atrocious and some dude would crack a joke and we'd be laughing.

I mean, it is a, and by the way, it's a hack into courage because when we step into our fear, this is also neuroscience, right? When we choose the fight response, i.e. step into our fear, we get a dopamine reward. When we laugh, we get a dopamine reward. So anytime you've been in a situation where you're afraid or anxious or something, and someone genuinely makes you laugh, the fear goes away. Because you've just hacked into what you get when you step into your fear. It's why it's so freaking important in any high-performing team.

And people say, do I miss the teams? Like, you know what? I don't miss the teams because, A, if I were standing, all my friends are admirals, and you don't do seal stuff at that point anyway. And you also age out of to be able to climb sides of ships and do all that stuff. So I don't miss that aspect. What I do miss are those times when we were laughing our ass off when shit was just so miserable. Someone would crack a joke, usually highly inappropriate, and we would just be crying.

We'd be crying. I mean, amazing. I can give you a great example. So Team 5, pre 9-9-11, we're up at Kodiak, Alaska, doing cold weather training. And of course, what better to do in Kodiak than an OTH? Yes. Which is an over-the-horizon zodiac. I mean, literally, like, let's just drive out of the ocean until you can't see the land.

Going around ice fields, by the way. Then we'll turn around. Come back in. We'll launch Swimmer Scouts onto the beach. Lovely. And then everybody will swim across. We'll do an OTB. So if you can do an OTH, you might as well do an OTP, which isn't over to the beach.

We had gone up, we were messing with our AOC. We had found a mannequin and we buried an axe in its head because we were going to basically pretend that we found a dead body. Everybody was in on it except for him. This is the one you got over the beach. We had it already pre-stage. First off, I don't know how we found a mannequin. Where we got the axe?

Creativity. Whose idea was to stuff it where we knew we were going to. I think we actually talked to the cadre. We're like, hey. We'd like to do this. Can we get the grid on the OTB? Because we want to make sure. And of course they're like, yes, because they're team guys.

100%. And they were also there watching. The only person that didn't know is the AOIC. Was he of a demeanor that you knew he'd kind of freak out? Was that why you targeted him? I think we were just testing him. Okay. We needed to determine said demeanor.

Yeah, yeah, sure. So the water in Kodiak is cold. I was one of the swimmers scouts, so I went up there in classic red, you know, did dog, red light, flashlight. Yeah. Everybody comes in. You're freezing ass cold. The seals aren't great on dry suits.

Some people take pisses, forget to zip them back up. That's a journey of discovery in and of itself. Yeah, yeah. You're freezing your ass off. You're stripping out of this stuff, getting ready to move. And I forget how we triggered it. But essentially, someone's like, oh, shit. Sir, get over here and check this out.

He lost his shit. Oh, my God. That's so good. I was. And so every per. He's like trying to get the, what the fuck do we did? And first he was nerded out. He didn't want to get close to.

He's like, I think we found a dead body. And the worst it got, I am in fucking stitches. Yeah, yeah. And this is the beginning of like a three-day OTB. I'm sure the instructors were halted. They were like, oh my God, I hope he calls it in. It was some of our best work. I can't take responsibility for all of it.

Some of our best work. And we got bin Laden. Dude. So. Dude. And, yeah. I mean, you're freezing your ass off. It was the beginning.

Some people were legitimately in wet stuff because either their dry bag fail. in their rucksack. So they're getting out of a freezing suit into basically frozen camees. We're going to be going and patrolling for three days to nowhere. I think we probably had rubber weapons, to be honest, just to keep the salt water off them.

And that's how we started it. Fuck, that was 20 plus years ago. And I still remember, I mean, I was combat ineffective for 20 minutes. Just fucking. Dying. Dying. He was so pissed.

That's even funnier, by the way. Because the teams, in any of these environments, if you get pissed when someone pranks you, that is game over. Because you're just going to get pranked more and more. That's the idea. Shaw's. We were at Shaw's doing...

Mid-South Institute. Yeah, yeah. We were with Red Squadron doing some training there. And one of the guys, I'll have to tell you his name later, but he was a very serious dude. And one of our other guys, same guy I was talking about who I have coffee with, huge dude, he decided to do a what's called a low tide

in his hotel room. So for the audience, that is not to be crass, but it's going in, it's stealing the key, going to the hotel room, taking a dump in the tub and then filling the tump with about a half inch of water and then turning up the heat Michael's taking notes right that's called that's called a low tide low tide so yeah so you're welcome so so this guy gets a low tide okay next morning this you know we're all you know because we're mustering just to get get the word for the day and he's like hey I have announcement to make

someone did this I want to know who it is this is not funny blah blah blah things like that fucking next day Another low tide He comes in the following day He's like Guys, I'm sorry White flag I'm done

This is funny It's so good to go I apologize For freaking out You know it was a lesson for him Right? You can't take it seriously As soon as someone takes it seriously

It's like a nickname Yeah If you see If you have a pizza size button on your chest Yes And they laugh at it You're like okay That's not right

If you see him like wince a little bit Or you can tell You know like That is your name For the end of time Yeah yeah By the way This is why

Navy SEALs typically do very poorly when we go into the civilian environment with our wives and friends who are not SEALs because we look at misery and we immediately start to laugh. The number of times that my wife has made that comment, this is putting pieces together for me. Yeah. Yeah. This is why. This is why. Because we laugh at misery. Because we always laugh at misery. And so when we see someone they're generally miserable or they're complaining, complaining is the worst or the best for us. When we see someone complaining, oh my God, it's hilarious to us. It is absolutely hilarious because we're like, Because, and again, we have context, but we just don't complain. We laugh. And so, anyway, it's a transition we have to make into the civilian world. So going back to Buds, I'm curious your thoughts, because I do agree about this shifting horizons or time or the optic. What do you think it would change if they made a concerted effort to teach those students?

So one of the, so getting back to what I was going to say before and when we got out of pool comp is one of the one of the, one of the unconscious geniuses of Buds, when Draper Kaufman first did Hell Week back in the in the 40s. How do you think he came up with the idea? Well, so. Because it had to go from a time where nobody had done it until. So he had, as we, well, you know the history, but for those of the audience, Draper Coffin was an EOD guy and he had actually put together EOD schools, explosive disorder. And this was back in Fort Pierce, right, in Florida?

This was back in Fort Pierce. And he had trained and put together schools to train EOD guys. So he actually had in his Rolodex a bunch of dudes who knew explosives. The task he was given, though, was not just explosives. the task he was given was to create a unit that could swim in, they could do explosives, but they could in some cases go over the beach, do some sort of record order, do maybe some sabotage. To the hinterland, if you were.

Hinterland, right, yeah. But ultimately, they were only, they were basically armed with nothing but a knife and swim trunks and explosives, right? Don't forget the axle grease. Yeah, that's right. And the lieutenant had a pistol. The lieutenant was the only guy who had a pistol. That is unacceptable. By the way, I had a, just a cool.

So one of my mentors before I went to Buds, a guy named Barry McCabe. Barry McCabe was a UDT in World War II in the Pacific. And this guy, he lived until he was 88 or something, all the way until he died. He did bodyboard. He buggy boarded in Virginia Beach. He was just a phenomenal dude. He was also an avid photographer. He had tons of photos back when he was there.

No way. Yeah. And so he had a photo, which he submitted to the museum down in Florida, by the way, of one of the Japanese officers surrendering to a UDT guy in, in. in just his shorts and his pistol, surrendering her sword, right? That's how cool it was. I find it deeply disrespectful

that only the officer had the pistol because in my experience, the enlisted guys would probably be a little bit better on the range. Well, maybe, yeah, but maybe not back then. Well, not if they weren't given one

in a chance to practice, bastards. Yeah, I will testify that. You guys were always better at the pistol. We got more time on the range. Yeah, you do, yeah, you do. Anyway, Draper had to not only, it wasn't just about explosives. It was about, can I get people

who can think under pressure, who can be adaptable, who can act on our feet. So, and again, I think it was an act of unconscious genius. He said, you know what? I'm just a designer week that puts guys through as much of a realistic ringer as I possibly can and see who shows up, who makes it through. And first hell week, it was like, I think 10 people made it through.

And he was like, okay, this is the guy. Now I know I can teach them what I need. This is why Buds is not a, they say Bud's training or seal training. Seal Training is not training. It's a selection and assessment force. Yeah, it's a crucible. It's a crucible. I don't know if you've heard the story because I use it when I talk about attributes

because it kind of hammered at home. You know, I did this attributes work when I was running training at Dev. And they wanted me to actually try to articulate why certain guys weren't making it through. Because we know at Dev, I mean, just rock stars who were going through, but 50% don't make it through. Yeah, and we should describe the difference because people ask this a lot. You know, Buds, what we're talking about, the six-month initial large end of the filter. It is a crucible. You love, you, I mean, I remember third phase.

it's basically the most rudimentary. Yes, basic patrolling and weapons and things like that. Like battle drill one alpha type stuff from a running core manual. Under an immense amount of scrutiny, you might huck a grenade. They're probably going to tear gas you on one of the ranges. You know, it's very basic stuff. You learn how to be a seal afterwards. I mean, I'm not intimately familiar with the pipeline afterwards now,

but they do all the jump training in-house, cold weather, all the finishing stuff. And I would say, so that's probably a two-year process to get to a team. I'm going to say three to five years to truly get up to speed. Yeah. To be, it's not that you're not an asset when you're first there, but you're ready to mentor somebody else. Yeah. And, and be, I mean, you're an expert at that point in at least your, you're an adult seal, I guess.

Yeah. But in that pipeline, the first pipeline, it's about tolerance of physical pain. Yes. Yes, there are standards of the run, swim, obstacle course, hell weak, pool, comp, the tread, you know, there's like the beehive, the 50-minute underwater swim, whatever stuff we did out of San Clementing, it was timed. But it is, if you look back, those are, you would have to attempt to trip over those. The way I like to describe it is that your primary job in Buds is not to quit.

Correct. Whereas. Selection for the command on the East Coast, I would describe it as they are testing your ability to be a seal. They are testing you at the core companies of shoot, move, and communicate, which are not even exposed to you until after Buds to begin with. Yeah. Yeah, and at that level, because I always, you know, I always was very careful.

You know, people can argue all day long. In fact, there was, there was consternation between the commands for a while that, you know, oh, this is the tip of the spear and the best of the best and all that. That command has a very specialized mission. And the other SEAL commands have other missions. There are things that the regular SEALs do way better than the guys of that command. So it's just specialized, you know. And I try to explain people this.

They look, you know, the number six. Yeah, yeah. Oh, my God. I'm like, listen, everybody there came from the conventional SEAL teams. And I was actually speaking at a hospital recently. I was talking with all the doctors. And I asked my, like, you know, what's your specialist? You're, and they said a urologist, to which I said, that means pee, right?

Like we're talking about, and she was like, she was like, yes, close enough. And I said, okay, are you good at your job? She's like, yeah, I think I am. I said, okay, but what if I told you, I need you to brush up on your infectious disease and you're going to be a brain surgeon as well? And also you need to be a pediatrician and cancer specialist and skin related stuff, all these things. what would happen to your ability to be proficient across all of those? And she answered the way that everybody does.

It would decrease. You'd be it up, honestly, with that much stuff, probably 20. Yeah, maybe less than that. Probably less because of what it is. And I said, okay, now what if you only had to be, was a urologist, and I gave you a 15 to one support ratio of people standing by to help you and also an unlimited budget. Yeah. How good could you be at your job?

She said, that would be amazing. Can we pitch that to our administrative staff? I'm like, that's going to be on you to do that. But that's the difference between those commands. That's right. You strip away all the other bullshit. You know, the fine, fixed, finish, exploit, and analyze, they really are good at the finish. Yes, that's right.

So this mission, you know, this very specialized mission, requires a very precise level of cold score of combat. It really does. Very fast, very precise. And so what was happening was, and so just to kind of piggyback on what you're saying, to get to the command, you have to have been a seal for at least five years. So you talk about that maturation period, you have to actually have been a seal for at least five years. Most people have been longer than that, but at least five years. You have to have performance reviews, seller performance views, recommendations, all that stuff, psych tests.

You go there, you go through the nine-month selection course, and 50% of the guys don't make it through. Now, when I was going through, even when I took over training, our problem was we were unable to effectively articulate why guys weren't making it through. We'd say something like, well, the guy couldn't shoot very well. You tell a seal of that caliber he can't shoot very well. It's like, come on, this guy has shot more rounds than most people in the military. is disingenuous to them, disingenuous to us. Our leadership starts to ask tough questions. They said, Rich, can you start to see if you can articulate what's going on here?

This is when I started really thinking about attributes because I said, you know what? When I thought about it, these courses aren't in fact designed necessarily to measure skill. They're really designed to measure attributes, especially buds. I would offer that selection at the command is a mixture of both. You're actually your training skill to sess out attributes, you know. How would you describe the difference? between those two, a skill versus a natural. Okay, so the skill is, the skills are not inherent to our nature.

In other words, none of us are born with the ability to ride a bike or throw ball or shoot a gun, okay? We're trained to do those things, we're talked to do those things. Skills direct our behavior known in specific environments. Here's how and when to drive a car, throw ball, shoot a gun. Skills, because they're very visible, they're very easy to assess, measure and test. You can see how well anybody did is any one of those things.

You could scores around them, you could statistics around them. You can put skills on resumes, which is why we get seduced by them often when we're hiring. What skills don't tell us, is how we're going to show up in stress, challenge, and uncertainty. Because in an unknown environment, it's very difficult, if not impossible, to apply a known skill.

This is when we lean on attributes. Attributes, on the other hand, are elemental, okay? They're inherent to our nature. In other words, all of us are born with levels of patience, adaptability, situation awareness. Now, you can certainly develop attributes over time and experience, but you can see levels of this stuff in small kids. Anybody who has kids or is even hung out with kids will agree with me when I say there are one and a half year olds who are patient and they're one and a half year olds or impatience. Okay. So there's a nature, nurture element to attributes.

attributes don't direct our behavior. They inform our behavior. They tell us how we're going to show up to an environment. So my son's levels of perseverance and resilience informed the way he showed up when he was learning the skill of riding a bike. He was falling off a dozen times doing so. And then finally, because they're difficult to see,

they're very difficult to measure and assess. How do you measure someone's levels of patients or situation awareness? They show up the most visibly and viscerally during times of stress, challenged uncertainty. This is what we lean on. And so they are true performance indicators at our most raw. Our attributes, whatever our unique stack is,

are how we show up at our most draw. When we think about the attributes, and in the book I wrote about 25, now we have 41, which we actually have an assessment tool, and we go into organizations to help them understand that. But there are 41 attributes. And if you take our assessment, you have, it's ranked from your top attribute down to your bottom attribute,

or 41, which means all of us have all the attributes. The difference in each one of us are the levels to which you have each. Like a stereo equalizer. They're set to different things. 100%. Yeah, the dimmer switches, right? Adaptability is a great example. You know, our Lycard scales of seven is a high and one is low.

You and I are probably a level six under adaptability, which means when the environment changes around us, outside of our control, it's very easy for us to go with the flow and roll with it, okay? Someone else might be a level three. Same thing happens to them. It's difficult for them to go to the flow. They're still adapting. And then we laugh at them.

And then we laugh at them. Yeah, that's our humor attributes too. They're still adaptable, though, because all human beings are. So it's very much a unique performance fingerprint in terms of these attributes, these qualities. All this to say, we are looking at qualities. And so when we think about, and so the way this hit me, at least when it came to the work I was doing, and when I thought about seal training, for example, Buds, you know, by that time it was 2010 or so, I've been through buds in 96. And we were talking about running with boats on your head and the log PT, 300 pound

telephone poles. By 2010, I'd already been on hundreds of missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. And I can tell you with certainty, and I think you'll agree, never on one of them that I carry a big, big, heavy boat on my head or a 300-pound telephone pole. Right. So what they were doing to and Buds was not training us to be Navy SEALs. They were putting us in the environment to tease out these attributes. The other way, you'll appreciate this, because this was told to me by an older seal. He had been a seal way before you and I had gone through and an instructor. And he said, you know, Rich, there's a story about a kid who showed up one day at Buds.

And he walked into the instructor's offices and said, I want to be a Navy SEAL. And the instructor said, okay, let's humor this kid. You have to do a swim test. And the kid said, fine. So he took him out to the pool. You know, easy. It's a 50 meter test, right? 25 meters, one end, 25 meters back in, back to the other end.

Anyway, this kid gets all ready to go, proceeds to you jump into the pool, and then proceeds to sink to the bottom of the pool. He doesn't know to swim. And at the bottom of the pool, he starts to walk across one side, the bottom of the bottom, touches one side, walks across the bottom of the pool to the other side, comes up, gasping for error. Instructure says, what the fuck are you doing, right? The kid says, I'm sorry, instructor, I don't know how to swim, right?

The instructor pauses. He looks to the kid and says, that's okay, we can teach you how to swim, right? Why do the instructor say that is? Because that's what we're looking for. That's what we're looking for. So when we talk about these attributes, these are the quality. The training know how to swim. Yeah, that's right.

That's right, yeah. Save yourself some change. Actually, nowadays with the competitive thing, you're not going to be able to, yeah, the basic test is swim, right? Don't confuse what we're talking about is the pathway towards becoming a sewer. This was actually, you know, because back in the 90s when we went through seal training, no one knew what the fuck seals were. I mean, it was like, you had to find, you had to like surf for the old books around Vietnam and stuff. Let's be honest.

How many times did you watch the movie Navy SEAL? A lot. And also. No, not hundreds, but tens, you know, and then also under siege. That was a good one. You got to put the pies back in the other. Yeah, totally. And I thought I would know, I thought I would learn a keto,

and I thought I would be able to, you know, do explosives, even though we know a keto is not as efficacious as we. Yeah. No, it was hard to find information. It was, it was. And so it's a lot more competitive now. All this to say, attributes are those qualities that tell us we have what it takes to do the job. And we think about different teams.

The list of attributes required to be a Navy SEAL looks different than the list of attributes required to be a salesperson or a teaching team or whatever. when it comes to the differences between those two, for example selection at that command we're talking about, it's about what attributes do you have for that specialized role? And in this case, I would say if people were to put my, you know, put a gun to my head, I'd say it's a, it's a massive, very rapid ability to compartmentalize.

Because when you are going into a room like that, the speed with which you have to come in with a, with a situation where optic, big. You have to go small, focus in, right? Address a threat, come back out, and then focus in. It's basically a rapid kind of out in, out in, out in. Yeah, it's never ending. Never ending.

And then add to that the fact that you have to be very adaptable, very resilient because what was the primary tool that the instructor, the cadre used in the house when someone started to screw up? This episode is brought to you by ExpressVPN. Food for Thought. How many people listening to this would feel comfortable going into your random coffee shop, opening up your laptop, logging into everything, realizing you need to go to the bathroom, and instead of closing down your laptop or taking it with you, just going to the bathroom.

Now, most of the time, you're going to be okay. But statistically, unfortunately, out of 100 people, one or two are going to come back and their laptop is going to be gone. Going online without ExpressVPN is exactly like what I described. You are leaving your information out there unsecured. Every time you connect to an unencrypted network, we've been talking cafes, hotels, airports, your online data is not secure. Any hacker that is on the same network can gain access and steal your personal data.

That could be passwords, bank, logins, credit card details, etc. Your data is valuable. Hackers can make up to $1,000 per person selling personal information on the dark web. ExpressVPN stops hackers from stealing your data by creating a secure encrypted tunnel between your device and the internet. Why is ExpressVPN so awesome? Well, for one, it's super secure. It would take a hacker with a supercomputer over a billion years to get past ExpressVPN's encryption. It's also very, very easy to use. I have it on both my phone and my laptop. You fire up an app and you click one button and you can get protected. For people who are in the U.S., it comes with

Identity Defender, a new suite of tools to get your data removed from data brokers, alert you when your data appears on the dark web and even ensure you against data theft for up to $1 million. ExpressVPN is rated number one by top tech reviewers like CNET and The Verge. As you are listening to today's episode, I am currently in a country traveling with my family where I needed to use a VPN to access a few of the websites required for upload. Like I said, I have this on my phone and my laptop. You click it on there. You can choose the country that you are going to be surfing the internet through, which

allows you to, if you need to, bypass or access different types of information. And it is literally what allowed me to bring this episode to you today. Super easy on both devices. Secure your online data today by visiting expressvPN.com slash cleared hot. That is Express. EX. That is Echo X-Rae. Papa Romeo Echo.

Sierra, Sierra, Victor, Papa, November.com slash cleared hot. I still have it, people. to find out how you can get up to four extra months for free. ExpressVPN.com slash cleared hot. Back to the show. Spotlight, right? More attention, more pressure, because they wanted to see if that guy could shake it off

and keep going. So resilience was a huge thing. And so all this to say, when I was doing this work, the way I kind of thought about it was like, hey, we have to understand what attributes we're looking for. We don't need to change the training at all.

The training is actually brilliant. But if we change the optic from which we're looking, we'd be able to explain better to guys, as to why they might not be waking it. And so what happened was when we, so I went through the command, I did a bunch of small committees to the different squadrons. I said, hey, come up with a list of attributes you think we're looking for. Got it all collected, like 100 things, called out the skills,

because oftentimes we'll conflate. Shooting is not an attribute, it's a skill. Running fast is not an attribute of skill, right? So conflated it, you know, sometimes it could conflated, but got that list down to about 36 things. And basically said, okay, these are the 36 attributes who we're looking for. And what I do before a green team class is I'd get the class in the auditorium there, and I'd say, hey, I'm about to give you the secret to making it through.

See all the notepads come up. And I put up the list of attributes. I said, here's what we're looking for. And they wouldn't know what to write. And it's like, you have to understand, the training is just the extra thing we're doing. We were looking for these qualities. You know, if you have these qualities, this is, you know, you're a good fit here. But even if you don't, it doesn't mean you're not a good fit.

It means that we're going to show you what attributes you have so that you coming out of this thing when you go back to the teams, you know exactly what you're good at and what you, where you can actually capitalize on some of these things. And you can always come back later if you're not ready for it. You always come back later. And so it made the exit conversations much more meaningful in terms of why guys, hey, this is why you didn't make it through. Now, it always, it's always painful because guys don't like to, none of us at that level like to know, you know, we didn't cut it or whatever. It sucks. But it does make the conversations more meaningful. At the end of, at least my first book, the attributes, I talk about linking up with a guy who I had dropped.

And he was on the West Coast. He was in a new role. And I said, hey, how you doing? We went and have a beer. And I said, hey, how's it going? He's like, I tell you what, that experience, even though it was disappointing, it was one of the most developmental experiences of my life because I came out knowing so much more by myself, which now I apply to the stuff I'm doing in the teams, right, what I'm doing now today. So it was, it's a, it's an attempt to, but a very, you know, a meaningful attempt, and it works to help people describe how and why they perform the way they do and how that applies to whatever they're doing. And again, in the seal commence, it's different.

Green Berets need a different set of attributes slightly. Rangers need a different set of attributes. So whatever that is, it starts to give you a blueprint of what that, what's required for that role. Specifically for the seal community, what would you say is the most impactful attribute? Give me like top three. So you don't have to necessarily. Top three. Top three, not in any particular order.

Compartmentization is, I would say, the number one. Because compromiseization is basically moving horizons. It's the ability to move horizons. Okay. That's number one. I think number two is, well, we could debate on number two or three, but I think number two has, and maybe it's not numbered at this point, but I think courage is one of it. We have to have an ability to step into our fear.

And again, that's a neurological thing. Courage, people misunderstand courage for what you do for a living. But we have to know that courage is literally, when we get that fear response, we're being asked or being provided neurologically these two choices, flight or fight, right? When you choose to fight, a specific switch gets clicked. That's the courage switch, and you get a dopamine reward for that, by the way. Okay. But all this to say, fear is subjective.

Okay, so you could have someone who's generally an anxious person, and because every day, all day, they're stepping into their fear and discomfort, their courage level is high, right? So we need to have someone, or you could have someone who does crazy shit, right? But they don't have to access. So you've seen, you know, in a matter, Alex Hunnell, the, the, yeah. I'm almost convinced he's autonomous robot. Yeah, so.

I also believe his endocrine system doesn't exist. Well, so in Free Solo, if you watch that documentary, right? I watched that documentary after knowing he was still alive. Yes, and my fucking palms were still sweaty. And you jump out of airplanes, for God's sake. So it's amazing. But you remember that documentary? They looked at his brain, right?

And they saw that his autonomic amygdala, his autonomic or amygdala hijacker, his amygdala doesn't get tickled the same way. His rheostat is higher. It takes more for him to feel fear. Now, I'm not saying, Alex is not courageous, right? But what I'm saying is he, it takes more for him to access the fear switch. We cannot access the fear switch in the absence or the car.

We cannot access the courage switch in the absence of fear. So he said he wasn't even scared on that climb. I know. I was scared watching it. What does he need to do? Hold on to what Elon Musk? Does he need to hold on to the outside of a SpaceX rocket? Yeah.

But notice in that, I think it was really cool in that documentary that they showed a couple of his attempts where he was climbing and he was like, okay, this doesn't feel right. That's his amygdialist saying, hey, something's. wrong here. We have to understand. You know, I was given a piece of advice by an officer when I was a J.O. He said, Rich, beware the fearless leader because that guy's going to get you, that guy's going to get you killed, right? So, so fear we use as a risk assessment tool. So, so, so I think he is, he's dialed into, obviously he's been doing it for a long time and he's, he's, he's done it safely, right? So I think he's very precisely down. Up to this point.

Up to this point, right? But he's certainly dialed into his risk assessment tool, right, wherever it kicks in. Yeah. Anyway, all this to say, compartmentalization, courage. I think adaptability is one. I think humor's one. I really do. I don't think there is not a team guy alive who doesn't have a good sense of humor that I know. I know guys I worked with that I believe could crush most modern day stand-up comedians. Yes.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And they were doing five-minute sets on Target. Oh, my, I mean, I'm in gun. I mean, you know, we both know Rob. Rob's now famous, right? And people have their opinions. Rob was, he served as always be a good friend.

Rob was one of our primary class clowns. That guy was fucking hilarious. I mean, every time he, he's. have some sort of comment and we just have us in stitches. I remember his, this is during a jump brief, right? And, and, you know, in a jump brief, you're briefing your malfunctions. And they usually pick on people in the room to brief the particular malfunction. And so the malfunction, the, the hard pull malfunction, which for the audiences is when you go to your rip cord and you try pulling it, and it's not coming out. So that's called a hard pull. And so Rob volunteers. He stands with,

what's the procedure for the, for the heart pull? He's okay, the procedure is, you try, you, you, you put your hand over the rip cord, you try pulling it. If you don't, you take your other hand, you try pulling it in. If it doesn't work, you take your left hand, you take your trident, rip it off, and then burn in. I appreciate that. Yeah. The other answer is you go to the fucking gym. That's right. If you survive the jump, right? So, yeah. So, anyway, I mean, class clowns are amazingly. So I think, I think, if I were to pick four, compartmentalization, courage, adaptability, humor. And there's probably more in there. Perseverance could probably be made an argument for. With those?

Cunning, I think, could be a bit more than a being for cairning. But again, which ones will predict someone making it through buds? I think compartmentalization would predict someone making it through buds. If we could have a test, I mean, I don't even know if our assessment tool would, in fact, predict with enough accuracy, someone making it through buds. But I think I always wanted to do an experiment. Tell me if you'll agree with this. But I always said, if you gave me a buds class right before they started, and I got them in the classroom, and I said, okay, here's a piece of paper. I want you to write down on this piece of paper what your journey was to get here.

Okay. And I think that the guys who had like several pages versus the guy who had like one paragraph would be the guys who didn't quit. Because my assumption, my hypothesis is the easier it is for you to get there. If you go there and you're super physically fit and you pass all the tests and something you're there, your chances are, but your chances are lower, right? Whereas the guy, all the guys we know who just fought their ass off together. Now this is not definitive, right?

There's exceptions either way. But the level of shit you go through to get there in the first place matters. I would say that the selection process of a buds starts way before you ever get to buds. Yeah. And there's an interesting statistic as well. The people who return for their second time through training have a higher probability of graduation than people who are there on their first. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I think that's because, one, if you join the Navy to be a seal and nothing but absolute respect to fleet sailors and what they do, if you joined to be a seal, that's not what you wanted to do, but you ended up doing that for a period of time. Exactly. So they have an additional level of experience or something that they may not want to read. Motivation, call it what you will. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But, and they had to grind to get back. Because like you said, it's competitive. They know what they're getting into. They know that they didn't meet the standard the first time. And some of those people are unbelievable. Like a man I never met, and I'm sure you know the name, Mikey Monsour. Oh, yeah, yes. Jumped on a grenade.

I know a couple of people who were on the roof And from what I understood He was probably of the people on the roof In a position where he could have dove onto the stairs And likely shielded himself They heard the grenade hit He yelled grenade and jumped on it Expired on the rooftop

Medal of Honor recipient Quit Buds his first time through Yeah Yeah And it's like I was able to sit down with his dad I hosted his dad from him just fuck me man Yeah

There's not in a tissue create Oh my God yeah But and his dad spoke about the impact that it had on, and of course, this is his dad speaking for his son, so take it for what it is. From what his dad saw, though, and the impact on Mike from quitting. He was, he wasn't destroyed by it, but it was not, you know what I mean? It wasn't something that he was, like, going to write home about and be proud about it. Well, I think also this speaks to people who go the second time, this resilience factor and the,

and the ability to fail and come back from failure, because how many people, they fail and they never go back. Some of them because they realize, oh, this is not what I thought it was. that I want to do it. Some people are, they just, they just can't process it enough. Or they don't want to confront it again. Or they don't want to confront it again. I always say, you know, and you, as an instructor, you know, I mean, the, if you break the attrition rate of buds between officer enlisted, the attrition rate for officers is, in fact,

less. I think it's only 50%. We are required to treat you differently. Well, now I know. You guys get what's called in the instructor staff world, Bud's light. I'm completely making all this up. We get white glove service, right? So would you like another slice of cake under the boat?

That's right, yeah. Thank you, yes. What was your commissioning source, by the way? ROTC, Purdue. Purdue University, yeah. You God, it wasn't the academy. Although I was the only non-academy got to make through my Buds class, 210. I was the only non-academy I got to make it through. But I will say even back then, even though even when people didn't know a lot about SEALs, it was still super competitive to get there as an officer.

You had to really, like I was. There's just fewer slots. Fewer slots. I was one of 11 slots ROTC nationwide that got a bud slot. in 96. Well, it goes to your, how much is on the piece of paper. You had to go through more. You had to fight harder.

That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. So I think the attrition rate is reflected in many cases by that. And plus, officers, if you quit, you don't come back. There's no coming back. You don't get a second chance to go to Buds. Again, I have no data to support it because it's not something that they do. But I would tend to agree with you. I think that that would be kind of right on the money.

The more experience you have in life, the more adversity. because I don't know about your class. Some of the first people to quit in mine were the D1 athletes. The best runner, gone on a swim. The best swimmer, O'Korse chewed his ass up. Yeah, well, yeah, yeah. Let's be honest, how fucking,

the dirty name is not that hard. What the fuck is wrong with you people? Well, what's funny is that, here's the other thing where it gets kind of perverse as team guys, is that we also get dopamine rewards from seeing other people quit. Oh, it's the best. And now this is, it's the best in the moment.

It actually, it's why we actually eat each other alive sometimes, in the community because you're like, you know, someone screws up and we're like, we're on it like, you know. I describe it to my wife as we are piranhas in a tank looking for a drop of blood. That's exactly right. And the reason is because we get rewarded by people failing. But again, you go to buds and someone like me who was, you know, I always say I was never an athlete.

I played sports, but I was never an athlete. And athletics have nothing to do with making it through buds. You know, I weigh a hundred and 55 pounds. You have to be in shape and you have to be tough, right? Athleticism can help in some cases, but it has nothing to do it. But I remember seeing guys who were like, holy shit, that guy just quit. And I was like, and I'm still here. Okay.

That's pretty good. You know, it just, it boosts your confidence to see that stuff. I've seen it go the other way, too. In my class, and you'll recognize this as well, we had a guy who claimed to have made it to Wednesday of Hell Week and got rolled backwards instead of four weeks. And man, he was like the Burning Bush. He had the beta for us. This is what we should expect.

Yes. Yeah, he was the guy to go to to talk. Yeah. We were. So my class did not get a breakout for Hellweek. Really? I have yet to determine, I know I have determined because of talking to other people in the class and the leadership. Yeah.

That the instructor staff 100% hated our guts. Wow. They, I do believe we're trying to get us to be one of the few buds classes that just vaporized on paper. Zero, zero graduates. Well, yeah, because they get to, like, you have less than one boat crew. You're all getting rolled to another class. So they hated us. So I don't know if we didn't get a breakout because of that or they just want to always keep people on their toes.

Or maybe some admin dude didn't put. Put it, you know. Put it the budget in for the blanks. For the blanks. They were out of smoke grenades. I can actually see a combination. What was your? Okay.

So they put the, you know, the Vietnam GP tents out on the beach. And they lined them up. Sunday afternoon. Yeah. Totally. We were in the second phase classroom. We ate a bunch of pizzas. Watching Braveheart.

I actually think we did probably. That was the movie of the time. Yeah. And so just out of, you know, the fence that you run to get wet and sandy, they put them, you know, three tents south to north. I was in the northern west tent. And we're in there. And I think we were in there for a couple of hours.

and everybody, of course, anxious anticipation. You're waiting for what you'd seen on the document. Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And just like smoke in 60. Nothing sounds like a good 60. Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah. God, that cyclic. You almost look forward to the chaos

because it's the beginning, yeah. Yeah, and you're, like, you're stressed about the week to begin with, but almost to the point of, can we just get this shit started? Get it going, yeah. And we just hear hit the surf. But the instructors, they were standing closer to the southern.

their most tent. So they all went out there and everybody else was just peeking through the little gaps to see if it was, if it meant, if the word was meant for all of you? We knew it was for all of us, but I just, I don't know. And we knew that the week was going to get kicked off. And so then eventually the second tent went. But again, I'm in the third tent. We go out there. I don't think it was the first iteration of surf conditioning, but this guy quit within the first few hours of Hellweek. Wow. Now, had the sun gone down, by the way, when they... It was night. Okay, yeah. But I tell you what, it had the opposite impact in that moment of this guy couldn't make it and this is awesome because I'm doing something that

somebody else can't. There was a whole train of people who hopped on board and said, I'm assuming, if this guy can't do it, there's no way that I can. Yeah. Yeah. So that's another. That brings a careful. The stories you tell yourself. So this is a whole other psychological thing I think is fascinating about team guys. And it can, it can translate to humans holistically. But it's this idea of caring whatever. other people think. So there's an attribute I talk about in one of our 41 called insuciance. Insuciance means Insucians. Okay. Damn you and you're large. You're like Huberman. You're like Huberman light. So it's a compliment. But insouciance is it means a casual lack of concern or indifference to what others think. Okay. So someone who's high on

insucians, they're often the trend setters. They march to the be of their own drum. They just don't care. They just do their thing. Often they're flocked to. They can be a conno class in many ways, but they do their own thing. They don't care. Low insuscience, and again, there's no judgment on any attributes. Whether they're high or low, there's good, there's pros and cons for all. Low insuciance means that we care about what people think. We look over and we say, okay, I care about what people think. I'm going to adjust my behavior. Now, I have a theory. There might be some exceptions here that most seals are low insusians.

We actually care what people think because... I think most people are low insucians. I think so, too. Yeah, and we find in our assessments that we're finding most people low insucients. Now that I use this term casually in my vocabulary. We go to companies and people want to put it on T-shirts. They love it so much, right? So, yeah.

I don't think that would sell well, but whatever. So how does this translate? Most of us would say, if asked, hey, why didn't you get up out of the surf during buds, right? And most of us would be like, there was no fucking way I was going to be the guy who stood up and rang that bill. Judgment from your peers out of that. I would die there before I looked bad. It's the same reason why I jump out of airplanes.

I'm jumping out of airplanes, even though I don't want to do it because the guy next to me is doing it. So regardless, I'm doing it. Or we would have thrown you out. Or we were throwing out. But even that, it's like, no, we can't have that happen because then I'll get, you know. So here's what happens, right? The guy who quits, who might be high in Susience, right? Because I've talked to some guys who quit.

And when I talk to like, oh, this is a guy, they don't really care what people think. So that was one of the reasons why they got up in the first place. Suddenly, they're not the first one, right? And so all these other people who've been thinking about, they're on the edge, like, ooh, I'm not alone anymore. You know, and then another person quits. Why you probably saw it more often than anything is just you get one, two, three people quitting something, there's a deluge of quitters.

They had to stop the evolution in our class. Because so many people, yes. We were merely hours into what we all knew started on Sunday and ended on a Friday. Yeah. And I remember so many people quit right at that first. Yes. Wow. Yeah.

You know, because there was the call that in addition to the insoucians, of course, there was the fact that people had put this person into a position, a leadership role, a position of authority. A pedestal. Yes, they thought that they, he knows how to get to Wednesday, which seemed like a monumental feat. I also still to this day, I want to find the motherfucker that said, if you can see the sunrise on Wednesday morning, it's all downhill from there. Yeah. Right in the face. Like, it's not downhill at all. Closer to being done. Unless you mean by downhill, you mean falling downhill.

God. Yeah. I remember seeing the sunrise on Wednesday and thinking, yeah, this, no, this sucks. I'll give you one better. I don't know if they did this to you. And we all say our Bud's class was the hardest one and they hated us. But the fact that they did that to you is very distinct. However, what they did to us was they on Friday, you know, and most of us knew, because we've been briefed. You talked to the demo pits is kind of the last big thing, right? Very filtered clean water.

Yeah, yeah. So where you're going, you're crawling through and it's explosives, but we all know who demo pits, okay? You're almost done. Almost done, right? So we go to the demo pits on Friday. Okay, we finish out the demo puts. The instructors line us all up outside the,

them, it's all that stuff. I go, okay, class 210, you are like, not secured from Hell Week. And I swear to God, and we had to run to lunch and we had to go do surf patches again. Let's go get those boats on hands. Those three hours, whatever it was, were the longest three hours of the entire Hell Week. Because you were dopamine depleted. It was like you were done, right?

So those are the longest ones because they fake secured us from Hell Week. I don't know if you ever did that, but if you did, you're an asshole. We never did that, but I tell you what. having the tent empty on Wednesday, but keeping one of the students in there who is asleep and forging DOR paperwork. Oh my goodness. And surrounding them with the instructors

and just casually, like, hey, just want to let you know, like, this guy here, you know this rollback, he's going to help you sleep as long as you want to. The class has already, because, you know, class has already continued on the evolution. Here's the paperwork you signed.

Just want to make sure that you have it. I've seen them try to fight the instructors. I've seen them try to run out of the tent. have to be restrained, I've seen them roll over and go back to sleep. That is... No, it's fucked. It is fucked. But it's delicious.

Tears. I'm talking... You have to keep it together in the moment, and then afterwards the rest of your shift, you're dying. I remember, I mean, even like in... That was the only instance I ever saw where a student was allowed to just absolutely cuss out the instructor staff. And not be punished for it. Oh, yeah.

They just do they're fuckers and then just ran out and collect. And it's like, yeah. The instructor's like, he's going to be okay. Because even Green Team, you know, because I, as an instructor green team there, I was, but I was an officer, so I was really overseeing, okay. The funniest shit was the shit that came from the Raptors, the shit that the guys would say, the instructors would say to the guys in the shoot house, in the killhouse with live ammo to just get them off kilter. I mean, tears, absolute tears. I mean, bolder oversight, we almost have to stop the revolution because no one's watching what's actually going on. But I think that's another key too.

Yeah. The stress and the microscope is not on the students as much as they think. They think we see everything. Yeah, that's right. And we portray that we do. Yeah. And maybe we have moles so we can, you know, have false information that ends up being true and they don't know where we got it. It's the same thing in the rafters.

Yes. Eventually, you know, at some point in Green Team, at least around through, you probably you realize you're going to make it. And you're going through run and you get in the hang of a little bit and you look up a little bit. And the dude is supposed to be watching you. It's just like fuck out of it. in space because he's also exhausted by watching the same dude. And if you were going to make the mistake or oversweep or not decock or whatever it is, it's already going to have to happen.

That's right. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. So, and again, this is all, again, I call it unconscious genius in terms of the way this is set up to tease out these qualities. See if the guys have what it takes because the collateral. And I think the collateral result of something like Green Team is phenomenal training.

I mean, you train in all this stuff, right? And you're looking at attributes all away. But you're, I mean, it works. If you could, how would you change the buds pipeline? Or would you? I wouldn't. In fact, what I change is how much attempted predetermination goes in prior to buds. I actually have always disagreed with, and I say this in a respectful way, but I've disagreed with trying to pregame the system. And even the green time, I was like, hey, the selection is the process. And the more we try to pregame the process, the more at risk we are of not finding that dark horse.

The guy who looks bad and doesn't seem like the guy who's going to make it and maybe fails this or does that, then they get in. They're like the rock star of the chorus, right? So I actually think that we have to be careful. And again, I say we, I'm not involved in it. But the over-emphances on physicality, right? In other words, right now, because of the competitiveness, the top physical scores are the guys getting in. Okay, there's nothing wrong with that, but we all know that the guy who grinds, you know, if the guy does 80, if the standard is 80 pushups and the guy is at 79, okay, and is working his fucking ass off the entire two minutes trying to get that next pushup but doesn't get it, I'm like, let that guy in. I just saw something there that I want to see more of, okay, versus the guy who does 80 and pops up and he's done, you know, or 100 and pops up and he's done.

So, I'm not saying that guy is not a candidate, but I think we have to be careful of pregame the system, whether it be green. team or buds. I tell you what, for buds, what I didn't realize, and maybe, I don't know if you realize this going through, the injury rate was a lot higher than I realized. Yeah, yeah. There was an aspect of luck for both of us. Yeah, yeah. You went straight through, I'm assuming. Yeah, yeah. I did as well. People like Jack Carr unable to do to physiological and psychological weakness, but honestly, he was unlucky. Yeah. But you go into that program overtrained, I'm telling you right now, the odds are levering against you. Yes. Yeah. The number of people that I saw just hurt them.

I mean, they're falling off of obstacles. You know, the spider wall, almost right towards the end. You go on, you go do that on Wednesdays usually. If it had rained the day before that morning, holy cow, it was like climbing on moss. I watch guys break their legs on that. I watch guys fall off the slide for life, which is really weird, considering you're holding on

with your hands and feet. Well, they had a net for a while, too, right? And then they kept getting cut down. I don't know who would have ever wanted... Is that why? Oh, so people were cutting it down. Is that why it ended up disappearing? Who's to say,

why it was not up. Who's to say if people who went through without the net thought that the net was a set of training wheels that others shouldn't have to them. Why? Because it's fear. That's why. Yeah. So I can make an argument for that. But shin splints huge. I mean, they're just, I watch people, a guy got rolled in second phase because they were not being careful with putting down 2080s and broke his hand. You know what I mean? So there was an essence of luck. But if you go into that training program, overtrained, I don't have data to support this, but anecdotally what I saw, your likelihood of injury, just given how physical it is to begin with, is much higher. I tell people all the time, and talk to guys who want to be, you know, buds.

And a lot of them have gone through the process to some degree. Some of them have gone through all the physical tests and they're good to go. And I said, okay, listen, at this point, it's not about how many push-ups you do, okay? There's only so many push-ups you can do. And if you can do 120, guess what? The instructor's going to make you do 120 until you can do zero, right? The guy who can do only 80, the instructor's going to make that guy do 80 until he can do zero, right? So there's a point at which it's a sum of returns is just diminishing some of returns, right?

Here's where I think the community actually adjusted well is that we saw, and I think you saw this too because you were still in, there was a, as the popularity of SEALs gained and the recruitment, isn't it amazing? It's amazing. It's amazing in not good ways. Yeah, I know, I know. However, as that happened in the 2000s, they began. to take candidates in boot camp, and the candidates would go to boot camp as seal candidates, right? And so they'd go to boot camp in Great Lakes or whatever, and they'd be given, they'd be set in a separate, they'd have separate quarters, divisions.

They'd have separate workout training things, that have separate, all this stuff. And what we were finding, or what the community was finding, was that these guys were coming into the teams entitled, right? Because they were already being told from day one that they're special. They're more special than other people. And that was starting to show in some of the behaviors in the community. And as a result, as I understand it, they began to stop that, you know. I saw students rolling their eyes at instructors. Can you fucking fathom rolling your eyes at Mike Mare?

No. Or reworts? Yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah. I mean, also like audible air leaks, meaning, hey, go hit the surf and guys are like what and so what happened did they get this shit kicked out of them when you saw that? It's hard to say exactly what happened.

It's hard to say, yeah. What I can tell you is kicking the shit out of the student is nowhere in the acceptable practices. Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah. I understand that and I accept that. But I can't believe it. I can't believe it. I mean, the fact that someone had the, even the capacity to think that was an appropriate response. Yeah.

It's amazing, you know. But I think the community's adjusted nicely. You know, I've been out there. A couple of my buddies are out there. I know you've been out there too. And I think the program still stands. I think the program's wonderful. I think it's harder.

I think it's harder than it ever has been. I mean, it's, I should say, it's just as hard as ever it was. I actually think it's harder. And here's why. It goes back to moving your horizons. When I went as an instructor, I was very, I'm very late to the social media internet game.

Yeah. I realized, because I talked to some of the students, there are full websites that list almost every evolution of every day. And at first, I'm like, you cocks suckers, you have the advantage. But then I realized the more they know it's actually worse. Yes, 100%. Because they know, if you, everybody has good days and bad days.

It's like a sign wave. Let's say your Monday's starting off really shitty and you already know the other eight evolutions that are likely to happen. Right. I'm going to get you. Yes. It's harder to shift horizons. Yes.

I'm going to get you because you know everything that's coming as opposed to setting it yourself. Yeah. That's a good theory. I agree with that. I really do. the attrition rate hasn't changed since all that information is available. I would actually advocate for people, don't look at it. Yeah.

Well, that was like me going to buds. I mean, I tried to get all the books and all stuff, but ultimately. Of the three that were out there. Yeah, the three. I never went to mini buds. You know, a lot of the officers in the academy got to go to mini buds, which is like a two week. You go out there and do two weeks, you do some of the stuff that you're going to do.

I never got to do that. And so when I showed up to buds, I was like, holy shit, this is not what I expected to be. But I'm more, I'm better at getting hit with the Mack truck. and then by the time I come to, I'm like, oh, I'm almost over. It's almost done, right? So, but I agree with you. I think that knowledge, that pre-knowledge, the pre-gaming.

Anytime you pre-game, it's going to disrupt your ability to deal with uncertainty because as soon as something doesn't go, the way you thought it was, what do you do? You know, and how do you deal with it? So I agree with you. You can also make things seem like they're way harder than they actually. Yes. And that's classic. I think that's the most classic mistake of anything I've ever done in the SEALs is that, is

that you build it up and you build it up, build it up, and you do it. I was like, wait a second, that wasn't, that wasn't as hard as I thought of me. You know, and so, so I think that's, that's a huge aspect. Why did you decide to get out? It seems like you were on a pretty good trajectory. Yeah. I would call it, you know, the officer pipeline. Yeah, yeah. You were on a gravy train with biscuit wheels headed towards a flag position, which I don't even know what that means, other than they fly around in private jets and have probably really good food. It's all that, all that, all that, and more, actually, that we won't tell you about, and I can't talk about on this podcast. I mean, I make fun of officers. I was one for the last five new years my career.

I know so heavy on the limited light on the duty yeah that's right yeah that's right yeah so I mean I did 21 you just I just just just just under 21 years I was a commander I did command I did I commanded at at dev group I was one of the squadron commanders and I was op so I was the first of all I had done in terms of professionally I had done pretty much everything I wanted to do all my goals were set I didn't I didn't have any um big aspirations of of being a captain or being admiral My family was done. I mean, I'd been gone so long. I was kind of like, you know what, I'm over it. I had, I had my favorite jobs or the ones when I was lieutenant commander, training officer, troop commander, things like that. And I knew that was, that was kind of waning. I, so I had already been angling to get out. Admittedly, as I got out, I didn't, I left a little bit acrimoniously in terms of the command because, because I had, I had, one of my buddies who was an author had written a book called Stealing Fire. And as part of the, that book, he had asked if I had an example, an unclassified, an example of kind of this idea of seals with this flow mentality, his group flow mentality. So yeah, I have a, I have a, I have a

story, an example I can give you. I need to keep it unclassified. So I'm not going to tell you where, but I'm just going to tell you kind of how this went, you know, how this went down an unclassified way. And I contributed that to the book. My plan was to contribute to that to the book. And then right before, as the book was getting, getting kind of developed, I would take it to the command and say, hey, this is what I've done. Or this is what I've done, do we have permission? It got out, it got word leaked before that happens. Cart a little before horse, perhaps. Cart before the horse. And so subsequently, even though there wasn't a lot that I was technically

doing wrong, it initiated suspicion and it just didn't, it was, it was a, it was a little bit rough as I left. So, so I ended up kind of saying, okay, well, this is it. I'm just going to, I'm just going to finish up. Again, I retired with honors and all that stuff. There's no, there's no, hiccup that way. But that in addition to the fact that I was like, you know what, I want to try something new. I want to, I want to be home and I want to spend time with my family. And honestly, the guys, my peers are not admirals. And these guys absolutely should be admirals right now. They are the top choice. I mean, when I look at our year group and I look at the guys who should have been admirals, these are the guys. And so I'm really very confident with the guys we have in

charge right now. And I'm confident in the fact that I made the right choice. I don't think I would have made a good admiral. I really don't. I'm way too undisciplined. So, so, but I loved it, you know, so. That command is an odd place. You know, I was there for four and a half years. I did the minimum amount of time that I was required to. I left due to my injury. I feel like I would have stayed longer if the command had to give me just a chance to recover a little bit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it was what it was. I'm glad for the experience. I just don't ever want to try to portray it as something it wasn't. But that command is a weird place. Yes, it is. The book stuff, you know, when I, wanted to be a seal when I was young. I went to the library and I tried to find as many books

as possible. And it was through those books that at least I got an understanding of what a Vietnam era seal was like. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. But it lit my, it continued to throw, the fire was already lit in that direction. It reinforced that even though I didn't know what that was, but it's what I wanted to do. And I, you'll never find somebody who agrees more with, you know, protecting TTPs. Yes. Anything that's sensitive. don't talk about equipment that you shouldn't talk about. Don't talk about how we would, you know, the fine fix, even the finish, you know, or exploit, like, leave all that alone.

And there's also ways it's so simple to talk broadly about those things. I totally agree. And if you're going to do that and write a book, there's nothing wrong with that. But that particular command, it's like if you open your mouth, you're exiled from that place. And I don't know. I don't know if it needs to be like that. I don't think it does. And I would say that there are, it runs the gamut.

There are guys, there are guys in the teams, but there are certainly guys that command who feel like if you say anything to anybody about anything you did, it's sacrosanct, right? And I just, this is not realistic in terms of, and even a guy, even someone trying to apply for a job, right, you need to talk about what you did. The other thing I think, and again, this is done in, in some cases, there are some, there are some irresponsibly written books out there for sure, right? And I would be the first person to criticize us. Yes, that's right.

Yeah. What I will say is there are also some very responsibly written books that take experiences such that we had and give it to people in a way that's not only, it's not just entertainment, it's digestible and usable and relatable. And so I was always really fascinated with, hey, how can I take this experience that people think is up on this pedestal? They see it as this pedestal, like, oh, I could never even relate to be a seal. And how can I explain things in a way that has them say, you know what, I can now take this for myself and use it in my own life? I think that's a really cool challenge. That's one of my mountains I like climbing. In fact, the best compliments I get is when I go speak or give workshops.

And I have people come up to me who are 100% different than me. Like, you know, older women who are, you know, who are overweight, for example, right? And they come up and say, Rich, I can't tell you how much what you said means to me in my life and how I can use it. I was like, this is exactly it. This is exactly what we're. And I think there are, there's many books out there, many leadership books out there and seal books that actually do the job of that very well. And I don't think we should deny people of that. I think we should, I think, I think it's helpful. I think, I think it's a way you can continue to serve if you do

it responsibly. But you're so right. You know, I, you know, I, I, I, I don't have a middle finger big enough to say, yeah, I agree. I agree. Also, let's be honest, we all fucking rented our Trident. Not a single one of us created the idea of being a seal. That's right. That's right. I did the best that I could. I hung it up. But guess what? I spent just under 17 years in that community. What is the point of all of that effort?

If you can't, like what you're saying, find a way to connect with somebody who would never want to be with that and impact their life. Or take those experiences and the lessons learned and continue my life outside of that. Our community, I swear to God, if you were a seal and you find success outside of the seal realm, holy shit. It's the piranha thing. You know, we don't, we, we, for us, and it gets, this is why it's a beautiful mafia, right? You know, you can't, and we love it while it's in. So I look at it and it's like, listen, I love, even though my ending was a little bit acrimonious, I kind of say, you know, listen, I was riding the bike at 120 miles an hour.

For sure. And I hit a pebble, and that's on me, right. So, so that's what happens. But I think, I think you're absolutely right. I think what's obviously perverted is the guys who've done it incorrectly. Yeah. I think you're right, the guys who've been lazy in how they've done it. I put my first book up, the attributes,

for the government review and I and and um a mutual friend of ours he said hey I I know when I did mine as soon as you get your because you have to submit it online versus like ugh and this is like during COVID you know but as soon as you get an email from someone saying that they have your book call that person like just you know just you know I did that I called the guy it's like hey listen this is rich you have my book I just want to let you know if you have any questions blah blah blah he's like oh this is good it's like I've started looking at it doesn't look like it looks pretty but I'll let you know he calls back within a week right this thing these things people talk about their, eight months, nine months.

He calls back within a week. He calls back within a week. He's like, Rich, there's nothing in here that I see. Nothing. And I did all the keyword searches, all this stuff. And it's like, yeah, because I know how to write shit. Yeah. And also being responsible.

Yeah. Without giving stuff away and being responsible. There's, you know, so I think it's a laziness factor that gets people, gives people a bad name. And, you know, again, it is somewhat of a mafia, which, again, we were so lucky to be part of it. I mean, the guy's in there right now. I was talking to a guy who, he was in our era.

So he's a former seal. And he was saying, you know, I talk to guys who are in there right now. And the guys who are in there right now, some of them, they have these judgments about people. And they don't know, fuck all. I mean, they never even seen these people, but they have these judgments. It's like, you know what? That's how we were. You know, that's how we were in that fishbow, right?

Yeah, we were in that fishbowl, right? You're in the fishbow. So I forgive them. I really do. You know, you can. It's just rough. It is rough. It is rough.

It is rough. And some of the people who are the largest critics, you can tell their entire identity. is derived. That's right. Yes. And I do my best to have empathy. I'm getting older, not necessarily why. That's an attribute. I've been working on it too. So yeah. Age is an attribute? Okay. No, no, no. Empathy. Age is an inevitability. Right. So, yeah. Oh, I try. I'm doing my best to try to see things from other people's eyes, to not quickly judge, basically the opposite of who I was when I was when I was a younger man. Right. And, uh, but sometimes, man, it's like, God, I just think this is coming from a place of jealousy or they don't, you know, like, how dare you do something?

Or possessiveness. Who knows? Yeah, that's probably a mix of both. Because in a possessiveness, it automatically goes to identity, right? If you, if this is how you identify, if this is really almost all of who you are, and you're still in it, even if you're retired, you're still in it. When you see people doing things outside or doing things successfully and leveraging certain aspects, you know, I can see. I can see how people feel that way. And I actually, I can empathize because, A, I can say, admittedly and embarrassingly. I did it sometimes when I was in there.

So I can remember that feeling. And I can empathize with that. And all I would say is like, listen, you have to be who you are. I really love when I see team guys leave the community and do something totally different. I think that's so fucking cool. Start a business, you know, I have a buddy of mine. He just started an ice cream shop in Virginia Beach. He's super successful.

His hobby was ice cream, right? So I love that because it shows creativity. We should acknowledge the fact that that's super weird, that that was his hobby. Yeah, but I mean, how cool is that? How cool is that weird? I mean, you fucking wingsuit, that's weird too. It's cool, but it's weird. I'm the most normal person I know.

So, yeah. Yeah, that's niche, if you will, for sure. So, yeah, but I think it's fun for me to see in any, and even veterans who get out, what I tell them is, listen, whatever you want to do, I think the advantage we come out of the SEAL teams with, or even any military endeavor, but certainly SEAL teams is we come out with confidence. And by the way I define confidence is the ability to, the understanding that I know that regardless of, regardless of, we're not, regardless of the military, we're not, regardless of the security. what happens, okay, in my life and whatever, I will figure out a way. And this is this ability to move horizons. I know that whatever happens, I'll figure it out. It may not be pretty. It might be ugly, it might be painful, might be hard. I will figure it out. And this is why guys can come out and say, you know what, I want to be a trader on Wall Street or I want to start a

business or I want to write a book or I want to do this. I want to be a teacher. You know, I want to be a stay at home dad. I have a buddy who got out of the teams. He's just, I just stay home. My wife earns all the money. I stay at home with my kids. Fucking great, you know, have the confidence to be able to do that. And so, and so part of me thinks, in some cases, some of those folks who are critical of that. And they try to stay in the community. They start to stay really connected. And this is not all people, but some kind of people.

It's an inability, maybe a fear of trying out something new. Maybe, or maybe not fear, but just I don't want, I have no desire to. I have no desire to. It's hard to be, I just describe the command as the sharp end of the spoon. The spork? Is that a spork? No, it's a spoon. People are like, you guys are like scalples.

I'm like, yeah. Have you ever seen an ice cream scooper? It's like just a little bit. Yeah, that's right. I try to tell people the truth. I'm like, listen, I think if I had a smart monkey, I could teach him how to do everything that I did. They're like, that's not possible. Like, you have no idea what you're talking about.

Right, right, right, right. I, uh, it took me a long time to realize that our background is actually really dangerous. Mm-hmm. People who are at the apex, it's hard to start over at something that you're brand new at. And you're not going to be treated like you were. You're going to go back down through the valley. Yes. Which everybody wants to.

And the mud. Yeah, but I want to talk about mountaintops in life. To me, the juice is in the valley in between. But our occupation, our old job is actually really dangerous. And I say that because it opens doors for people that they're not qualified for. And I've seen it so many times now where somebody will get hired just based off of what they're seeing on a resume. Military skills that they think this person is unbelievable. I'm going to fit them in over here.

And what happens is it goes really poorly. And then that organization shuts the door to everybody else that might be behind them. because of the bad experience that they had. It's an amazing experience. It's an amazing occupation. But I think you've got to be careful with it. You have to recognize, and it's tough to do, to tell yourself, I should probably say no to this

because I may not be tooled for it. Yeah, my attributes may not align. Yeah, they really may not align. And this is why it's important to understand that because it's the difference between joy and misery, to be honest with you. And this is also what we were talking about in terms of guys who end up being psychologically damaged

and worst case, you know, maybe offing themselves is if they try something and it fails and they feel like, oh, I failed that, I felt that. If they've been on this pinnacle, it's a tough thing to roll with. It really is. And so, but I think you're right. But we've seen this. I mean, guys, you know, you go up that mountain.

And I always tell people how common is it for someone in life to go through school? They start a profession and they start at the lowest level. And then they go 20 years or so, or 17, 20, 25, 30 years. And as they go, they just get to the top of the mountain, right? How often does that person in the business world jump off the top of the mountain into the valley and climb a new mountain? No, they jump into retirement. Yes, which is every single, but every single military person, when they transition out of a career, that's what they're doing.

I think they should be reminded of that daily. Yes. And what they also have reminded about is the same attributes that allowed you to be successful in that one mountain are going to allow you to be successful in that second. In fact, you might have to dial them a bit. You might have to dial them and you'll have to get used to some mud and guts and pain there. But in a different way. I mean, you know, speaking, writing, consulting, starting a business. It's a different type of mud that you're working through.

You know, fear still exists. Trepidation still exists. I think we stay young by continuing to find mountains to climb. That's how we stay young. Yeah. Yeah, I describe it as trying to find things that consistently learning is the key to staying young. I mean, I have 47 on my driver's license. I look at that.

I'm like, what the fuck? I know. You too. Yeah. I'm 51. thing. You know, so it's like, how do we, but again, I feel like, I told my wife this. When we first, I wrote the book and we were building the business.

We've been out of five years. And I said, I feel like I'm just out of buds, like a new guy of the teams. Like, and everything's fresh, new. You don't, you know, the future's bright and unknown, you know. And I think that's the level of joy and kind of open-mindedness I want. So even after this, you know, I'm going to write some books, build a business, do all that stuff. And when I feel like that mountains, like I'm towards the top of the mountain, I'm going to pick a new mountain, you know, and what do you think it'll be? I have no idea. And I'll let, I'll let the environment

dictate. But I want to be, just a quick story about my dad. My dad's 85, okay, he's been a lawyer, his whole life, grew up in Connecticut and was part of a law firm for, the law firm has been has existed for 100 years. He was a, he's been out for 50 or 60 years or 50 years, was a partner of everything. Last January, he writes us kids, you know, I have three siblings. And he says, hey, I just want to let you know that, you know, times change, things change. And the law firm has decided it's going to close this doors. The business model is just not effective anymore. So it's going to close his doors. But don't worry, I've already interviewed with three other law firms. And I've picked one. And I'm starting next week. Because we were

really worried about you, dad. I'm starting next week. He started at a brand new law firm. So his first day at work is, hey, when you go to work, make sure you pack your lunch and don't get wedgied. Right. And so, you know, he started, he's now at a brand new law firm, a bunch of young lawyers. He's like, I love this. A bunch of young lawyers I'm learning from. They ask me for advice. He's like, he keeps moving. He's like, Rich, I can't imagine. imagine not doing something. I want to get up in the morning and do something. And he loves the law. He does civil law and estates and stuff. He just loves it. Yeah, you and I will never stop either. Yeah, we won't. Hell to me sounds like retirement and doing nothing. Yes. Like absolute.

Yeah. Yeah. That's hell. And part of doing something, even if it's not for a paycheck, it's service to others in whatever capacity. We served in one way. And this is why I do think people who badmouthed, the guys who are doing it right, are wrong because the guys who are doing it right are serving others in just different capacity. It just looks different. I can't tell you how many people, how many police organizations, police stations reach out to us, firefighters, EMTs, first responders, military. And we're always like, yes, let's do it. Let's do what we can. Let's help you. Love that shit because I want to serve them because they continue to serve us, right? And so this is, we're, I think, people like us are building a capacity. By doing it right, we're building capacity.

And this is different because we know the guys who just write books to tell stories, they're not doing the same thing. you know, but, um, uh, but those of us are doing right, you know, although here's one story book we could write, uh, if you're interested. Because a, uh, an old chief of mine said, you know, I want to write a book called men with red faces. Uh, because there was a famous seal book called men with green faces, you and I, yeah, uh, men with red faces talking about all the embarrassing shit seals get up to, you know, so, um, so I've actually considered, I've had this book idea pitched to me. You know, there's a book called the things that they carried. Oh, yeah, I've heard of it. Yeah, we write one about all the stupid, funny shit.

Yes. That happened. Like, like, yeah. In Iraq with the squadron overseas, watching a dude sprint through a courtyard and get closed line by a close line, under nods. Again, for five minutes, there could have been a massive gunfight going on. Combat fucking ineffective. Or we are up in the East Coast doing patrolling in a field, and our point man didn't realize that the fence he was going over was electric. And he put his leg over it, and it was raining that is. Yep. Oh, man.

It was. Same squadron, Afghanistan. in, a man makes a dynamic entry into the room where humans decided that they need to shit. Slips, I was the number two man. I see him go, slip, his head disappears as he slides, and I just close the door. We'll leave that. He's basically a casualty in a different way. He sat at the back of the 47 on the right back.

And again, or like, there's a cow in a house one time. And my friend's pinned up against the wall. And he's like, help me. And I'm like, I don't know how. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because there's a life, like I'm fucking dying laughing. Like there's livestock in a room and you're pinned against the wall. This is fucking awesome.

The chicken coops in Iraq. How about that? The one target we did and the guy was, you know, we had to bring him off target. And, you know, unfortunately he was, he was deceased, but we still had to bring him off. And this guy was about 300 pounds wearing just a, that's rough. A mu-moo. Yeah. And the mu-moo came off.

And the guys are swimming this big, dead, naked guy through the surf zone. I was, of course, I was in charge of the whole thing, so I was just sitting there laughing. But I had to stop my radio transmission so I could get in a vehicle. You got to get your shit together. No, we could write a book. There's a book there. There might be a movie, too.

You know, who knows? I don't know what it would be. Or at least a comedy sketch show. What would it be rated? Yeah. Man. Yeah. What was the highlight of your 21 years?

Can you think back on anything like the absolute waftop? I mean, the absolute lathevistically was just being part of, teams where we would, anytime we were laughing, just laughing around. That was always the wavetops. I would say, I would say from a, from a tactical perspective, you know, there are a couple missions that were cool and all that stuff, but I would say one of the, one of the wave top training missions I did was in SDVs. And it was a mission where we had the SDV, we were going out of a submarine in the middle of the ocean, we were in Hawaii, going out of the submarine, finding out of the ocean, finding our harbor, penetrating the harbor, going in, laying our shit, coming back out,

and in the middle of the fucking ocean, finding a, finding the submarine landing, and then going to, you know, getting all dry and going to sleep. And you're underwater the whole fucking time. That, to me, so the reason why I wanted to be a seal in the first place was because of that. I wanted to be a stealth. I thought the whole idea of coming from the water was as badass as you can get. I mean, I just, there was nothing cool than that. I'm going to rephrase my definition of hell. I was going to say it was retirement. That actually sounds slightly worse. It has a water thing, right? I mean, I've talked to some guys, yeah, and I will say to them, I'm sorry, how many hours did you say that evolution was?

Yes, yeah. Underwater the whole time? Yeah, I don't care how warm the water was or what a tropical island you run. So, yeah, I'll put retirement as a close second to what you just described. Yeah, my longest SDV die was 13 and a half hours underwater. We saw, first, I saw an underwater sunrise, basically, but, but yeah. That is gnarly. Yeah, so, but, you know, I loved it.

I love being underwater. I mean, to this day, I do. Yeah. Kids, my both boys are on a scuba call. We go on scuba trips. My wife is, she's not as thrilled, but my both boys are fish, so we just, we protect her. We swim a diamond. How old are they?

Now they're 18 and 20. Nice. Yeah, I have 21 going on 22, 20 going on 21, and 16 going on 17. Oh, yeah. It's cool. Yeah, it is. Yeah. Taking them to Costa Rica next week for a jihitsu seminar that my wife is teaching, so it's just awesome.

Oh, cool. Okay, good. Yeah. It was a low point 21 years. Yeah. Oh, low point 21 years. Um, uh, low point. I mean, again, I would say holistically having to leave the family, um, leave the kids.

That was always low points. You'd have to get through that. But yeah. It was a tough drive to work. Yeah, it is. Yeah. Um, uh, it would be very easy to say all the friends we lost. I think that's, that's an automatic low point.

Um, but I'd also agree with you. I think, I think, I think retirement and getting out was a low point because it was an end of an era, um, to the, to the degree that, you know, you recognize that, man, you just, you're never going to be in that environment again. Not only because you're not part of the team, but even the time frame mattered, right? We got to live a period of time. We got lucky. We're unlucky depending on your optic. No, I think it's lucky. And it's funny because, you know, I grew up, I wanted to be a Navy pilot when I was kid. I have a twin brother. He was a hairy pilot, by the way. He ended up being a higher pilot. But my favorite two books growing up were

Chuck Yeager's autobiography and the right stuff. And the reason why was because I read about World War II fighter pilots. All I wanted to be was a World War II fighter pilot. That was the hog heaven for fighter pilots. I was like, I just wish I could be that. Because even back in the 80s, you know, the planes were, they weren't dogfighting the same way. I recognize now having gone seals, and I've talked about this with a couple guys, as we lived the hog heaven of the seal team. We really did.

We hit it right at the right point, and we got to do exactly what we trained to do in a capacity that was just unique. It's called luck. It's called luck. It really is. And I couldn't be more grateful. It was horrible in many ways, but it was, you know, glorious in other ways, you know. So, yeah, I'm grateful.

I think there's any way we can stop our friends from killing themselves? Yes, we got to reach out more. Do you think that would do it? Well, I know that when I, I try to be very proactive with guys, especially in the Virginia Beach area. We have coffee, HB and I see each other all the time. We'll get a pick so I can show them. By the way, one of the most positive attitudes, I have talked about him on the show, but I never use this. I actually think I might have said HB.

So he was my first team leader when I got to the command. he was this single best example of leadership that I ever encountered. He, spoiler alert, lost both of his legs. After the military and still has one of the most resoundingly positive attitudes. I'm like, hey man, can you actually be an asshole once or twice so I can see it? It's incredible. Because you make me feel like shit. Yeah, he's incredible.

I see him all the time. In fact, we were, you know, we've met each other at the airport before because he's going somewhere. I've gone somewhere. It's a guy. He has two artificial legs. He will not do a wheelchair. He just wants to walk. He wants to walk.

He wants to be active. He wants to be. Meanwhile, you'll see people who are in wheelchair just because they're overweight. I was like, oh, my God. You know, so Harry, I just, he's an inspiration. He is an absolute inspiration on all aspects. He helps people with trauma now. That's what he does.

And so what he's doing is a huge give back. I mean, he's, and I don't know, the guy, he was my troop chief. And, I mean, so highlights. Yeah, you know, we talk about highlight was, was that, was that timeframe when we were troop commander and troop chief because we just had it and our troop was awesome but you know again troops the troop was awesome yes the guys were awesome um a troop is as you know largely defined but the relationship between the the the leadership if the troop commander and the troop chief do not get along that's gonna be a miserable troop right and it's a shitty 18 months to see it's a shitty one yeah and so and but we from the get

go just got along and we we saw each other we saw the things the same way even when we didn't we communicated it was never this you know again we can joke because because we have about the officer enlisted relationship, but people have to know that the best running platoons and troops in the, in the teams are the ones where there's mutual respect. As an officer, I distinctly had different roles than you as enlisted on target. I mean, that's the thing, but I loved my role. I didn't try to pretend to be anything else, you know? And because of that, the guy saw it. It's probably what made you good at your job. And the guy saw that. They're like, it's the crossover where you start getting in trouble. You try to do what the other guy does, you know? And so, and so I think

that type of synergy, I miss it. I, that's, that's, I do miss it. I do miss. that. But again, to back to your other question, I try to engage with guys as much as possible. If anybody reaches out, I say, hey, how are you doing? The guys who I don't talk to you once in a while, I say, hey, check in, how are you doing? What's, what's going on? And I don't know. Have you looked at all at the relationship between, and this is something that I did, again, it took me a long time being away from the military and having conversations with friends that I was friends with very close friends while in the military, but our conversations are much different now in this phase in our life.

Yes, yes. Like, I don't remember asking a single person like, hey, man, how was your childhood? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or how do you feel? If they would have said, oh, it was rough. I was like, shut up, pussy. You know. That was a trick question.

Yeah, like, shut up, loser. Yeah. And now it's, I have no data to support this. But in more often than not, it seems to me that there is some type of connection. and I'm wondering if you've looked into this at all. People focus so much on the trauma of the job, which it is real and people carry it in different ways. And like I said, we're all a different vessel with stress relieving mechanisms.

I have been shocked by the number of people who brought an immense amount of trauma into the job. Yeah. And I've thought about it. And I've talked with them, you know, some of them horrendous family environments. If you phrase it broadly, painting with a broom a little bit, it's they end up looking for a job that allows them to go after people that would either bully or target others. Yeah. There is no job, like the one that we used to have that allows you to take those type of people,

look for them, find fix, finish, get them off the board. Right. But it's the same thing with the, the, there's something to being able to detach from emotions. You still have to deal with that. So if you brought a lot in and we're exposed to a lot and you get out and you haven't dealt with either of those, there's a connection there somewhere. It's more than just the military aspect as well. There's a certain type of person that wants to do that job.

Not everybody. And they're designed to do it. Yeah, but this is also part of identity, too, I think. But I will say this. I agree with you. And the guys I talk to, in fact, we've had this specific conversation about what we call the In the Teams Brotherhood and then the Out of the Team's Brotherhood. And the In the Team's Brotherhood is, it is largely competent as based.

I mean, yeah, we love each other. and we, you know, we, you know, we, well, I would say, Harry and I used to say, we, we, we, we, we love everybody. We don't like some of the guys, but we love them all, all right? But, but, but, but it's, if you are not competent, it's, you're, you just, you can't be a part. So, so, so part of the competency while you're in the teams means you have to compartmentalize stuff. There's certain stuff you don't talk about, all that stuff. Out of the team's brotherhood is, hey, now we can talk on a level that competence doesn't matter. Who you are or what you did as a seal doesn't matter to me anymore. I want, I want to, I want to get to know the human being, and that's what I care about. So we can talk about how we feel. We can

talk about all this stuff. And I think that's actually a very healthy transition. The guys who are able to do that, every one of them that I've seen has been able to healthfully transition out of that identity because they have that catharsis that comes along with understanding people at a different level. It's the guys who try to hold on to that other piece. Because again, you age out that shit. I mean, as you can't pass the torch at some point. Yeah, you do. I mean, we could not, you and I, you know, as good of a shot as you are or were, you're just not going to be able to go do the same things. You know, I would not be able to go do the same things. You know, I would not be able to do the same things.

Allegedly. Yeah. Give me the chance. How about that? So we age out. I mean, we got to pass the torch, you know, and it's healthy to pass the torch. We have to, I mean, part of our job as leaders is to create an environment where the team ends up outrunning us because we've created an environment where they've really been able to maximize

their capability and design something that's even beyond us and outrun us. And if we've done that. That's the natural evolution. Any coach and teacher, if you're not developing athletes or students that are better than yourself. there's actually something wrong, likely with that person, because it's usually an ego-based. It's an ego-based. I used to tell junior officer, I used to tell them, hey, listen, you have to get used to and comfortable with what I call the irony of leadership. The irony of leadership, if you do your job correctly, you eventually work yourself out of a job. Because you create a team that can run without you. Now, critical in our line of work when we're in the teams, of course, because any one of us could get whacked at any point.

But, honestly, if you do this, every leader should aspire to do this. Hey, I remember sitting in these interviews for the command. You know, you'd interview guys. to come to the command. And I'd look at some of these young officers coming in. I'd be like, holy fuck, these guys are so much better than I am. And I'd get excited about it, right? Because like, these guys are going to take this to a whole new level. You know, for me, it was an exciting thing because I knew these guys would take the place to a whole new level.

That has to be, I think that's really the mark of a leader. And I would say, if someone is not doing that, they're just in charge. It's just a position to them. They're actually not leaders. So, yeah, I think that at the same time, guys like us, I think there's a catharsis in keeping in touch and making it. sure we're checking in and making sure we're okay. Because it's important.

It really is. Yeah, my only worry with that one is, and you know this deal as well as I do, and this is probably just men writ large, not necessarily as seal teams. How you doing? Good. Yeah. You okay? Yeah.

Okay, cool. That's true. However, there's a nuanced way as you can ask questions. What you do here in podcasts, whether you do it with regular people or former team guys, you actually know how to ask questions in a way that gets people talking in a much deeper way, right? That's your job. That's the way.

And you can do that at a cup of coffee, too. You don't have to say, I mean, how do you feel we know. I mean, I ask my teenager how he feels he's going to say that. So, I mean, it's just the way they answer. I play this game with my daughter every day. How was your day, sweetheart? Fine. Yeah.

Awesome. Yeah. And I actually have stopped asking follow-on questions. Yeah. Because they provide me no more information. That's right. Yeah. I sometimes say my boys and I was like, hey, did anything really interesting happen today?

You know, what happened at, you know, in chemistry or, you know, just. What did you, were you excited about an interview? That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

If you ask them a question that could be answered in a single word. Yes. Often with a single syllable. Yeah. That's what you. It's called a closed-ended question. Say yes or no answer. There's also leading questions, you know, where you say, you answer a question in a way that you know you're leading the answer.

Like, did you like that? Did you like that experience? Now it's going to be a yes or you're leading them. Or no, actually, that's a yes or no. Tell me why you like that. That's a leading. Or you say, hey, tell me about that course. Tell me about that experience.

Tell me about your day. Tell me about chemistry. Teenagers. She'll say, it was fine. Yeah. Fuck. However, the best thing is that you probably experience this is when if you, if you do that, at least to make an effort, your kids, even as teenagers, will talk to you.

They'll just do it on their own terms, you know. And so I have some of the coolest conversations with my kids. It's why whenever I'm working, because I do most of my work, if I'm not traveling, I'm working at home. If my, if my boys walk in and they're like, hey, you know, dad, can I talk to you for a second? I put down a lot of doing. Let's do it. I want to hear, you know. I'm not busy.

Let's do it. You know, so, you know. Plus, it's fleeting. It is fleeting. Yeah. And we missed a lot of it when we were deployed. My kids, fortunately, were very young. Yeah.

So let me see, 2010 was my last deployment. My oldest was seven. So then it was been seven, five, three. So I got away with it a little bit. Yeah. My eldest was born week one of Green Team for me. That's not good timing. So, yeah.

They actually let me. It was the admin week where we could go getting their gear. And then I had to go straight to jump to the down around. What a great week, getting all your gear. I couldn't believe the shopping carts that they loaded me up with. I know. They opened you guys with jumping, huh? Yeah, back then it was jumping and then CQC.

And then they changed it after that. It actually took a several years of change. Then they did CQC up front and they did CQC up front and they wanted jumping. And then at, so for us... What year did you go through? O2. Oh yeah. So you were before me.

So it actually rebound because I went through an 05. Yeah. And at the end of the jumping phase, they'd let you know if you were going to assaults or boats. Oh, they see the back then. So when I went through, there was the boats. stuff was separate, right? So they did jumping, then assaults. And then, of course, they shifted that because we're going to get washout. So we might as well save some money here. But we actually had one guy in my class quit jumping before we ever got to assault. You know, he quit. And that's very rare. Very rare. Yeah. Well, the theory was that he wanted a pathway out of the Navy and of the teams and out of everything. And so he was able to use that as a pathway to get somewhere else. That was a theory. Very intricate.

Very intricate. But again, you know, jumping, that's a whole other level. I mean, you know, you, again, a whole other level of compartmentalization. Smile and relax. Gravity is an undisputed champion. It works everywhere. I've tested it on all set and comments. While smiling, yeah.

Yeah, they have proved that, I don't know. Easier said than done for those of us who, yeah. You just got to, you know, just step off. Yeah. Or just shift your horizons, you know. Exactly. Focus on the exit. That's what you do.

Focus on the exit. That day out there where they, the cadre came up and said, to the class, how would you like to receive this information? Would you like us to read the names of people going to assaults, which we will do alphabetically? Or will you like us to read the names of people who are going to boats? Oh, geez. Which we will do alphabetically. What did you guys choose?

Did you have to have a committee to decide or was it a quick decision? I think they looked over at the O's. That's a super. Yeah. This is why you make your money. Otherwise we'd have been there for 45 minutes, that's right. That's right. fight breaking out.

Yeah, yeah. I think they went with names going to boats. Okay. That was going to be a smaller list anyway. Smaller list anyway, but I tell you, you know, that was on a Friday. We all went out drinking that night. And there were people who were drinking for happiness. And then also for sorrow.

Yeah. Yeah. And it all worked itself. Which is funny because boats, I mean, that is a fucking bad ass tough job. You want to talk about willingly getting the living shit. Oh, my God. I mean, yeah. And by the way, ocean, water, that's the separator.

I mean, it really is. Those guys are badass. And then a lot of these guys worked their way up into the assault squadrons anyway. Yeah. You're still at a command that I have, I struggle to have the vocabulary to describe it. And even our guys who aren't steals as SWIC guys. I mean, fucking badass dudes. I mean, they drive those boats.

I mean, you could always tell the SWIC guy who's driving the boats versus the team guy who didn't know what they were doing. Because the SWIC guy could drive it. One would actually navigate the waves. The other one would punch through the waves. And you just get your ass handed to you. Whereas the guys who knew what they were doing, it was hard, but they knew how to throttle it. And so. I learned quickly when you see the driver duck, you better.

duck. That's right. Because the green wall is coming for your ass. Yes. Oh my God. And if you don't duck, you better have a really strong lantern on your nose. Yeah, yeah. It's true.

Yeah. Just hold, stiffing up a little bit. Yeah. What other kind of entrepreneurial endeavors you think you'll get into? You got any crazy Wahoo stuff that you're kind of eyeballing? Not right now. Right now we're working on the attributes stuff. We have an assessment tool and we have a whole, a whole portal that we're building out and

build out the consulting and the workshops that were. And of course, the master's uncertainty. We want to get this out to people. I want to get this to people so that it can help a lot of people. So that's what we're going to be working. I get to do it with my life. We've been at it together. She's the CEO, which is great.

She's been the CEO forever. I was going to say, just because she officially has the title now. It doesn't mean she was. I mean, 24 years we've been married. So, yeah, it's been pretty good. But I love and we love being able to do this together. And it's a real mountain to climb because it's tough. I mean, you are, but we love also having our fate in our own hands.

I mean, there's no one paying us. There's no secured paycheck. Obviously, we have the retirement, which is great. But that's the goal. I think let's do that for a while and see where we can get. And then as other mountains emerge, I'm curious to see what my kids do because I think one wants to be a neuroscientist, the other one wants to be an engineer and go to space. Both of those are passions for me.

So I'll live like Carey for them and then see if any opportunity presents itself, presents itself in there. You have any desire to enter brick and mortar type business stuff or take the opportunity if it ever presents itself? It depends on what it is. It depends on what it is. I think at this point, the information business is a way we can scale this stuff, and it doesn't necessarily require brick and mortar. You do it on a laptop.

Yeah, that's right. That's right. What you can do with a laptop egg. Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing. You know, so yeah, if those things present themselves, I'll keep open to it. But I always remember the old Russian proverb, which is if you chase two rabbits, both will escape.

So you got to pick the rabbit to chase, focus on it, and do that. I don't have any additional Russian proverbs to bring to this conversation. I know of none. I know one now. Yeah, yeah. But it's a good one. It's a focus. You can't, you can't try to maximize four different things.

Just pick one and focus on it. Yeah, that is a true story. Where can people find you? What do you want to leave it with? We've been like two and a half plus hours. It's flown by, by the way. I'd say, no, you're going to get a conversation. Yeah, it's true.

Yeah. Yeah. So The Attributes.com. Just go to the website. The Attributes.com. Everything's there. You can get both books. You can get the assessment tool.

to figure out what we're doing, you know, figure out more, learn more about us. I'm on Instagram as well. Smart man. You sure you don't want to have six different websites for one for one book. Rabbits, man, rabbits. Did I say? Just go to the Wist's website and then go into my link tree, which we'll save. So do this and pick the, the Attributes.com.

That's the best place. So, so find us there. And what's your handle on Instagram? Rich Deviney, you think, on Instagram. Some asshole took Rich Devini, didn't they? I think so. Some fucker out there has Andy Stumpf. Really?

Which is why I'm Andy Stumpf, 212. Isn't that amazing? Asshole. Yeah. Yeah. My 76-year-old father just, oh, actually 78. He's like his old as Jesus would be in the still life. Just got on Instagram and followed like three Andy Stomts, none of which we're correct.

Oh, boy. Yeah. Dad, let me help you. Let me help you. I try too, but also I'm terrified of him. He is literally the example of shooting a monkey into space when it comes to the internet. Yes. I'm worried he's going to take the phone to the bathroom with him and not realize he's trying to go down.

Swip it hole. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. My dad's not, my dad's does not do so. He's good at computers. He's usually on YouTube watching, usually aviation stuff because he's an aviation nut. But he's not on social media. I don't think he'll ever get on social media, which is fine. So, so we'll just keep it there. But, uh, but yeah. Cool. Dude, thanks for coming out. Thanks for having me. Yeah, man. Dude, open invite. Awesome.