Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Entrepreneur Mark Divine on SEALFIT & Mindset Training

Episode Date: January 11, 2017

This conversation is with Mark Divine. Mark and I first met a number of years ago at a high performance camp (Elite11). Mark served 20 years in the Navy SEALs, retiring in 2011 -- and has tak...en his insights and best practices from the SEAL's candidate mentoring program to create a warrior-leader training model that involves physical, mental, and emotional, and intuition training -- the idea was to create a training process for corporate teams, sport teams, first responders and warriors from all walks of life -- that were based on what he came to understand from training thousands of special operators candidates across the globe. The company names are SEALFIT (Physical and mental training), and Unbeatable Mind. The reason I wanted to connect with him -- is because he has sincere interest in helping people grow, by pushing their limits, as well as, he has a fantastic command of the basic mental skills that can either accelerate or inhibit progressive learning (pushing boundaries as a way to improve at an accelerate speed requires the intent to do so, and the mental skills to "stay in it" when it's hard." What I hope comes through this conversation is that if you're not training your mind -- seriously training your mind, you're not getting the most out of your potential. We go pretty deep into a handful of mental skills, as well as, specific ways to begin a mindfulness training program. There's no time like now to get started, or to re-start (over and over and over again) training your mind. It's not complicated, but it does take time. Know your ideal mindset (for the craft your invested in). Know the inner-dialog that supports and gets in your way. Invest in breathing, so that you can have a command of your activation levels when you need it. Know you philosophy, articulate your mission in life (in writing) -- and push limits every day so that you can figure out how to think when it doesn't go the way you had planned._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Starting point is 00:01:21 intuitional, spiritual until they merge as one and your experience as one. And then, you know, you feel like you're just beginning. So your cup truly becomes empty. And I think when you can get to that point where you wake up every day
Starting point is 00:01:34 and you say, and thank God I have another opportunity to work on my mastery because I've got a long way to go. Right? And you empty your cup to receive more. You know, now we're getting somewhere. All right. Welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm Michael Gervais.
Starting point is 00:02:03 And the idea behind these conversations is to learn, to learn from those who are on the path of mastery, who have a point of view about how the world works, how they work, how people work, how their unique world works, their craft, if you will. And we want to understand from them the insights that they've come to develop so that we can apply those same insights and tactics and strategies from a psychological standpoint in our own lives so that we can do and become and be more of the person that we're trying to become. Finding Mastery is brought to you by LinkedIn Sales Solutions.
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Starting point is 00:04:25 I feel and think and perform. And that's why I've been leaning on David Protein Bars. And so has the team here at Finding Mastery. In fact, our GM, Stuart, he loves them so much. I just want to kind of quickly put him on the spot. Stuart, I know you're listening. I think you might be the reason that we're running out of these bars so quickly. They're incredible, Mike. I love them. One a day, one a day. What do you mean one a day? There's way more than that happening here. Don't tell. Okay. All right. Look, they're incredibly simple. They're effective. 28 grams of protein, just 150 calories and zero grams of sugar. It's rare to find something that fits so conveniently into a
Starting point is 00:05:06 performance-based lifestyle and actually tastes good. Dr. Peter Attia, someone who's been on the show, it's a great episode by the way, is also their chief science officer. So I know they've done their due diligence in that category. My favorite flavor right now is the chocolate chip cookie dough. And a few of our teammates here at Finding Mastery have been loving the fudge brownie and peanut butter. I know, Stuart, you're still listening here. So getting enough protein matters. And that can't be understated, not just for strength, but for energy and focus, recovery,
Starting point is 00:05:37 for longevity. And I love that David is making that easier. So if you're trying to hit your daily protein goals with something seamless, I'd love for you to go check them out. Get a free variety pack, a $25 value and 10% off for life when you head to davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. That's David, D-A-V-I-D, protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash finding mastery. Now, this conversation is phenomenal. I really enjoyed it. And it's with Mark Devine. And Mark and I first met a number of years ago at a high performance camp called Elite 11. And if you're into quarterback development camps,
Starting point is 00:06:15 this is a marquee camp and you can go check out Elite11.com for sure. So Mark served for 20 years in the Navy SEALs, retiring in 2011, and he's taken his insights and best practices from the SEALs candidates mentoring programs that he cultivated, learned, and administered to be able to create a warrior leader training model that involves physical, mental, emotional, and intuitional training. And the idea was to create a training process for corporate teams and sport teams and first responders. And as he likes to phrase it, for warriors from all walks of life. And the idea behind that is that he was able to base these insights and his understandings from training thousands of special operator candidates across the globe. So he's distilled those insights and practices and put it into a format that those that are wanting to train their mind, body, and emotional capabilities are coming to him for. The company names are SealFit and Unbeatable Mind. And you can go over to sealfit.com, S-E-A-L-F-I-T.com, to learn more about the programs. And we'll also have links up on our website, findingmastery.net. And the reason I wanted to connect with him is because he has this sincere interest in helping people grow by pushing their limits. At the same time, he has this fantastic
Starting point is 00:07:46 command of the basic mental skills that can either accelerate or inhibit a progressive learning period. And so when we push boundaries as a way to improve the speed of which we want to learn, it's the mental skills that allow us to stay in it, especially when it's hard. So what I hope comes through in this conversation is that if you're not training your mind, seriously, seriously training your mind and listening to the Finding Mastery podcast is one way to water your appetite and to give you some ideas on how to train your mind, but really dedicating time and space and energy, whatever that might be for you to train your mind, but really dedicating time and space and energy, whatever that might be for you to train your mind is that if we're not doing it, we're falling behind flat out, just
Starting point is 00:08:30 falling behind. And so we go pretty deep into this conversation, into a handful of mental skills, as well as specific ways to begin, or if you're not beginning, but to think about a mindfulness training program. So there's, there's no time like now to get started, just period. And it's not because it's in the new year, it's just because if we are not training, we're falling behind. And so it's a great time to get started or to restart over and over and over again, the training of the inner experience. And it's not complicated, but it does take time. And, you know, it's as simple as know your ideal mindset for the craft you're most invested in, whether that's love at home or that's, you know, an effort in entrepreneurship or arts,
Starting point is 00:09:15 whatever it might be. Know your greatest mindset that facilitates openness and learning and command. And then know the inner dialogue that supports you to get there. Invest in breathing, flat out invest in breathing so that you can have a command of your inner activation levels when you need it. And so it's like a front loading. The breathing work is a front loading so that when you put yourself in a hairy situation or a heavy situation, that you can adjust more swiftly and accurately. And then, you know, part of the base stuff is know your philosophy and then be so clear that can you get your philosophy out at knife point or gunpoint or
Starting point is 00:09:50 under duress is where, you know, emotional duress is where duress is where most of us find moments of panic. And then be able to articulate very clearly your mission in life and put all this stuff down in writing. And then, you know, lastly, I'll say it over and over again, but push limits every day, emotional limits every day, that so you can figure out how to think when it doesn't go the way that you planned it to go. Okay, enough of that. Let's jump right into this conversation with Mark Devine. Mark, how you doing? Doing well, Michael. Thanks for having me.
Starting point is 00:10:23 Oh, it's a pleasure. I've had a joy. It's been a joy being able to follow your work and see how you've contributed to the field of psychology of performance as well as your business efforts about helping people be mentally and physically fit. So it's been phenomenal to watch from a distance. Yeah, thank you. Yeah. So let's jump right into it. We met, we kind of shared space, if you will, in a project, the Elite 11 Quarterback Camp. I think it was about five or six years ago. And it was the first time that I'd seen you work.
Starting point is 00:10:55 And the way that you had structured your teachings around using physical training to help people reveal the way that they use their mind to capture their attention so they could train their mind. Does that sound close to what you're still doing now? Yes, in some ways it is, although we've kind of expanded beyond that. But we never left the physical behind. I would characterize my approach as integration. And so we try to integrate it on five, you know, little capacities of human development or five intelligences. And we look at physical capacity as one of those lines or one of those domains. So the other four would be mental. And then, you know, of course, the way we define mental is a little unique. And then the emotional, you know, emotional awareness, emotional power,
Starting point is 00:11:46 intuitional, and then what I call Kokoro, which is, you know, we have an event named Kokoro, which is heart. So you could also kind of loosely characterize that as your spiritual strength. Okay. And then so there's a concept that before we, I want to roll back time a little bit and understand how you got interested in the mind and how you got interested in the functions on how to train the mind. But before that, I'd love for you to bounce off this statement that as humans, there's only three things that we can train. We can train our body, we can train our craft, and we can train our mind.
Starting point is 00:12:23 And I have an asterisk next to if we can train our soul and we can train our mind and I have an asterisk next to if we can train our soul or train our spirit and I have an asterisk because you know when I study some of the ancient texts and wisdoms like there are thoughts about training the spirit but I'd love to hear how you think about that first part of the statement and then the asterisk that I have. Okay. I agree that you can train your body and your mind. I think there's a lot of detail that we can discuss about what those mean. What does training of the body mean?
Starting point is 00:13:00 What does training of the mind mean? And of course you can train a craft. That's the easiest. The easiest is the skill the external skill um the body of course you know we want to train our movement patterns our ability to coordinate the actions of our and the movement of our body through space and time in relationship to other physical structures you know in sports in sports, other bodies in motion. And the ability to connect the core with the extremities. And then a little bit even deeper, this comes more from kind of yoga,
Starting point is 00:13:35 the ability to really be aware of the spine's alignment and the movement of the spine and the integrity of your core's ability to hold structure with your spine, and then to extend movement through your extremities, whether you're squatting, running, jumping, pushing, pulling, throwing. So to me, the training of the body is a highly refined craft that in and of itself requires great awareness and attention to detail, which are mental capacities. Which is why one of our core principles with seal fit is that where the body leads, the mind follows. Where the mind leads, the body follows. The two are inextricably linked. So training the body in and of itself does train the mind to some degree. And this is why you see somatic practices like Tai Chi and Qigong and martial arts and yoga being so steeped in movement
Starting point is 00:14:27 because you're moving through the movement being ultra aware of the positioning like i just described with your body and movement of the body and precision of that and keeping your mind focused on those movements trains concentration and then learning where to put your point of concentration through the movement, again, whether you're catching a ball, throwing a ball at a target, or trying to place your foot in the exact right alignment so that your structure in warrior one pose is perfect, as perfect as can be, that trains focus. So now we've gotten this notion that through the movement, we can train focus and concentration, which are two distinct mental tests.
Starting point is 00:15:16 And then developing more discrete awareness of your body's position in time and space and the relationship to other bodies and relationship to other objects requires great awareness. And so it's almost this notion of mindful movement comes into play in that we're expanding the awareness field of our mind, our ability to take in information, which is another distinct function of the mind. So I personally believe that training of the mind begins with training the body, which is why we lead with that with SEALFIT and with our training and why it's the first of those five domains. Now, here's another really critical piece. When we begin to now separate training of the mind as a distinct function separate from the body, what happens is because we're not linking the mind with a movement or a task like craft building,
Starting point is 00:15:58 all of a sudden our mind gets a little restless. And we have difficulty finding that focus and concentration and maintaining our awareness because our mind especially in the West has been trained to be associated with some outward activity and so here's a big problem with a lot of mental training is that they want you know people want to just go straight to training the mind and say okay sit still and we're gonna train the mind mind by practicing mindfulness meditation or zen or concentration or something like that. And those are all very valid, but the body-mind system is too restless. And so you're caught up in the thinking processes, which are important, but they can get in the way of training the whole what we call the whole mind and so what i believe is that through the refinement of the movement of the body through
Starting point is 00:16:51 creating um health and and i guess a balance in the body or homeostasis then then when you sit right in silence to begin to do the inner work so you turn your attention from the outer to the inner, then your body isn't going to be in discomfort or agitation or wanting to move and jigger and jat around like it does for most people, which is going to be radically distracting for your attempt to cultivate the mental skills. In this way, we can use the linking of the physical movements physical training for the mental training with the breath and so training the breath will bridge us from movement as mental training to stillness as mental training so this is still training you know the outer level of the breath is training your physiology
Starting point is 00:17:49 so that you can control your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system, which as you're aware, that's one of the big aspects of kind of sports psychology training is to control your nervous system in that regard. But it also has the benefit of being a deep concentration practice that as you still your nervous system you're also bringing your mind into greater focus and slowing down the quality quantity and the directionality of the thoughts we're slowing down i say the quantity of the thoughts so you can take greater uh have greater awareness over the quality means negative is a positive are you in a state of anxiety about your task your order or your mission or are
Starting point is 00:18:32 you in a state of optimism and positivity about it so that's the quality of the thinking and also the directionality back to our idea of focus what are we what's the target where we focused on are we distracted are we focused so through the training of the breath we can then get deeper into the beginning stages of mental training and i would still constitute breath training as body work does that make sense even though it has a distinct effect on our mind. Yeah, I do too. And the way that... Okay, so I know from
Starting point is 00:19:10 when we first met and watching what you've been doing from a distance that you have an appreciation for mindfulness meditation. And, you know, I don't have an understanding of how long you've been practicing or what that practice looks like. But what you have just said is I'm nodding my head to all of it.
Starting point is 00:19:33 And the nuances that you've just articulated, I hope that people can recognize how thoughtful you are on the difference between concentration and focus. And those two are different. And the importance to use the body to understand how to use strategies to become more aware of thoughts, and the intimate link and the separation between the two, between mind and body. Now, the thing that I don't hear many people talk about breathing work as being physical, and let me just add one thought to this and see how you respond to it. And then I want to come back to that asterisk in a minute, is that the reason I think it's body work is because it forces your attention
Starting point is 00:20:17 to focus on something that is physical. And there's physical sensations with the breathing, whether it's around your nostrils or it's the expansion of your chest. And then what it does is if you can lock on that one thing, just the breath, just master the inhale, then just master the exhale or the pause in between both, that you begin to notice when your mind wanders. And now that now it has become an awareness training and become a mental skill for focus training. And mindfulness, in my experience in training, is a focus training. It's not a relaxation training.
Starting point is 00:20:50 It is a focus training that helps increase awareness of thought. That's well said. I think a lot of people have a misunderstanding of mindfulness. Even the word is confusing because you know we're really not trying to fill our mind up with anything, right? We're trying to trying to clear our minds so that we can be more aware, more present. And so we're trying to shift our thinking faculty from active to passive. There's five ways that in my world that the brain works. And we'll go into the whole idea of what I think a mind is
Starting point is 00:21:32 versus the brain. So obviously objectively the brain is an organ and it's the executive agent of our ability to make meaning in the world. So whether I'm a quarterback and I'm trying to make meaning out of what's So whether I'm a quarterback and I'm trying to make meaning out of what's happening in this game I'm playing, then it's predominantly my brain that's creating that meaning, right? I've got the visual impressions and spatial awareness
Starting point is 00:21:54 and I've got memory associated with the craft building that I did, right? Which has greased the groove of automatic actions versus having to think through, okay, I've got to raise my arm and bring the ball by my ear and I need to give it a slight spin or whatever the actions are. Those aren't thought about.
Starting point is 00:22:13 Those come out through automatic responses because they've been honed through kind of a memory process um at any rate so the mind the brain through our neocortex is our thinker judger analyzer and that's where we get most where that's where we spend most of our time as a thinking human being unless we've been steeped in you know some other tradition like you know eastern buddhism or something that, we're going to spend most of our brain time in the near cortex. And that's experienced as kind of outer and left hemisphere. So when I experience thinking, it's your frontal or prefrontal cortex. Right. Even though some of this is still very unknown and mysterious, some of the information about left and right hemisphere is still valid in that rational thinking is
Starting point is 00:23:27 experienced in the left hemisphere. Right hemisphere is more irrational or sub-rational. And so you literally, when you develop these skills through mental training, you can begin to feel where activity in your brain housing group is occurring. When I'm thinking, like right now, I'm experiencing my consciousness in this kind of frontal lobe and generally in the left side of my brain. It takes a little bit of awareness to start to feel that. That's the first. The second function of the brain, and this is again pretty obvious, is memory.
Starting point is 00:24:03 It's difficult for most people to distinguish between a thought and then memory access because it's happening on a near simultaneous basis, both the access and retrieval and the storage of memory. But it is a distinct function, and memory is more in your midbrain area. And I'm not like a super brain expert, but I do know that it's experiencing, you know, the memory function is somewhere in the midbrain. And so when you're accessing memory, you know, this is why sometimes you look in a certain area, you look up, right? It's kind of your access memory, whether you're
Starting point is 00:24:37 thinking about the future or the past, right? You're not going to access memory about the future, obviously. So that's going to lead us to the third distinct function of the brain, right? You're not gonna access memory about the future, obviously. So that's gonna lead us to the third distinct function of the brain, which is imagination, or our visual acuity, which allows us to imagine something that didn't exist. So that can show up as fantasy or fantasizing, can show up as distinct imagining a future or an outcome, like winning the game.
Starting point is 00:25:03 And then the visualization capacity is to practice in outcomes. That's where practicing skill visually comes in. So when part of honing a craft is both the physical doing and the mental or visual doing, then they both have value. And that's been proven through many, many tests. And then the fourth is dreaming dreaming and dreaming is little understood right now you know it's beyond the scope of our call here but dreaming is not accessing memory and it's not thinking and and it's not active visualization either because again that's a
Starting point is 00:25:41 that's a conscious process dreaming is subconscious is subconscious. It's below the level of what we know. There might be some connection to that spirit you talked about or latent actions from the day or things being worked out at a subconscious level. But dreaming is just a fascinating thing. We tend to think that, like, here's a thought puzzle for us, right? We believe that we let light in through our eyes and that light is, you know, kind of what allows us to see within our mind's eye. If that's true, then how can we see in our mind's eye with our eyes closed or when we're dreaming? Um, so it's a really fascinating and amazing process. And the fifth, the fifth is I think where we can really begin to understand and experience the wholeness of our mental capacity.
Starting point is 00:26:28 And we call that direct perception. So the ability to just be present. Now, in direct perception, we basically checked out of the linear time continuum. We're not rationally thinking about the past in excess of memory, and we're not projecting ourselves into the future with some image or fantasy. We are right here, right now, just taking information in and completely aware of it, but being not attached to it. And that is essentially what mindfulness is trying to get us towards. True meditation, like the term, it seems like you're pretty aware of this, the term meditation
Starting point is 00:27:10 is just a catch-all for a large array of progressive practices that get us deeper and deeper into control of the mental space and the ability to move into this directly perceiving present moment awareness at will and experience higher and higher states and stages of consciousness, such as you would experience in what the yogis call samadhi or the Japanese Zen monk would call satori or enlightenment. But here's the problem. As you alluded to and we talked talked about earlier that's a mastery skill it's a mastery skill to train yourself to be able to just go to direct perception at will with an intention with a breath with an idea with a notion okay and so that's the
Starting point is 00:27:58 like the taoist master who just sits down and just goes and just drops right in to direct perception it has an experience of what they call touching the void which is the like you're in master who just sits down and just goes, and just drops right in to direct perception and has an experience of what they call touching the void, which is like you're new in the matrix. Because you're basically altering the concept of time and space and just getting into universal field of intelligence. That can only happen through the perceiving mind. The perceiving mind is also a direct conduit, almost like you're dropping a drill bit down into your heart and your belly to access the rest of your nervous system and body's intelligence,
Starting point is 00:28:44 so the heart mind and the belly mind and what i mean by that is to be aware at a much more refined level of what intelligence your heart mind and belly mind and nervous system are telling you are trying to convey as opposed to having a vague hunch or you know having a feeling that you know someone's sad or something like that, but being really, really connected to that heart center, which, as you're aware, most Eastern traditions say is also your spiritual center, but also the belly. So the neurological processing power of your heart and your belly can be experienced and trained by training your mind to access the perceiving state and getting out of the rational linear mind which is experiencing your outer cortex so
Starting point is 00:29:37 new corporate so all this you know and i'll shut up because i'm kind of going off along in the tooth here but all all this is a progressive training practice, like you alluded to. It starts with learning how to concentrate, right? And then as you mentioned earlier very precisely, when you start to learn to concentrate, you become more aware. You disconnect from yourself as the thinker and then you become the observer and you this they're kind of a first waking up moment where you realize that you are not your thoughts but
Starting point is 00:30:10 you're bigger than thoughts you can take perspective on your thoughts and then you can take perspective on you taking perspective on your thoughts and take perspective on you taking perspective on other people's thoughts and your perspective on those thoughts. And so your awareness starts to grow, grow, grow. And you have these altering shifts of reality where all of a sudden you go from through egocentric to ethnocentric to world-centric. And you're able to, like, experience life in much more fullness. But that can't happen unless you can first concentrate and then separate from the thinker and begin to then manage and curate the thoughts. And you do that through mindfulness by saying, oh, there's a thought and it's not something
Starting point is 00:30:50 that is useful to me right now. And so I'm going to get rid of that and go back to my breath or concentrating on my candle or my mantra or my Bible verse, whatever it is, whatever is your object of concentration or subject, because it might be another human being. And then once you can control the quality, quantity, and directionality of the conscious thinking process, then we can also shut it off and or shift focus to working on specifically improving our memory, working on specifically improving and enhancing our imagination skills and our visualization skills,
Starting point is 00:31:30 and working on accessing our direct perceiving mind so we can connect with our heart and belly and expand our intuitive and emotive awareness. Brilliant. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentous. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical limits, or simply trying to be better today than you were yesterday, what you put in your body matters.
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Starting point is 00:34:22 You spell it F-E-L-I-X-G-R-A-Y.com and use the code FindingMastery20 at FelixGray.com for 20% off. And the concept of the watchmaker's watchmaker or the observer's observer has been around for thousands of years. And as you're walking through the way that you're understanding how the brain the mind and the subsequent training to be able to enhance both work um what is the purpose for why are you so interested in this i'll tell you why i am but like what brought you to be so curious about how the mind works and i know that you've started obviously from, you know, having an interest in the physical training, but you've migrated to something into the more
Starting point is 00:35:11 intangible space, which I find to be flat out fascinating because we can't see it. And it's so freaking complicated. The mind and brain are so nuanced and complicated that I get really nervous when people don't have a sophisticated understanding. They've taken a weekend course and now call themselves some sort of expert. So you've been just a level set. How long have you been interested in the mind? And then how long have you formally been studying and training it? And what led you to be so interested all great questions all great questions um i'm 53 i would say i've been training in some capacity the mental domain since i was probably 15 or 16 what got me interested in was mother nature um i grew up in upstate New York and I came from a stable but somewhat chaotic
Starting point is 00:36:09 family. And I was in a very rural area. Mark, I can't believe you said that. You and I, we have the same story so far. Okay, cool. So you're going to appreciate where I'm coming from. Nature was my friend. Nature was my escape. And the Adirondack Mountains are just stunningly beautiful. And I used to just, like, go for hours at a time. I'd run up the mountains. And when I'd get to the top of a mountain, I would have these experiences of aliveness. I was in that perceiving state where
Starting point is 00:36:45 through mental exhaustion, as you know, one of the aspects of crucible training, which is one of our training modes, is to mentally exhaust the thinker so that you just rest in this perceiving this radical awareness. You know, before you keep going, it is the crudest tool we have, I think. It's super effective. Say it again?
Starting point is 00:37:08 It's very effective. Yeah. So let me just exhaust you. I'm not going to use a laser. I'm going to use a hammer. And I'm going to hammer you until you finally say, okay, I'm done trying to solve all the problems. Let me just be here because this is the only thing I can attend to because my heart's pounding. I feel like I want to throw up. And if I just sit still for a moment i'll be okay you know and so yeah so you
Starting point is 00:37:30 use that as a particular tool that you walk people through my go-to tool yeah but nice thing about doing it in nature is nature has this magical way of opening you up, right? And so to use that blunt force tool of just exhaustion, but to be exhausted on a mountain top overlooking an expansive, incredibly gorgeous six million acre park, you know, led to some pretty unique peak experiences at a relatively young age. The second kind of component to that early formative years of mine was, and this is related also to me loving the outdoors, was I got into endurance sports, yet another escape, right? And, you know, to give my mom a ton of credit, she really, you know,
Starting point is 00:38:17 was an athlete and she, like, wouldn't take no for an answer. So I became a competitive swimmer and then in college a rower, you know, rowing crew and then a triathlete. You know, I ran triathletes only for a few years, but then later in the SEALs, you know, that whole thing was like one long triathlon. And those sports, in particular swimming, like as you know, swimming is a really interesting thing because you begin to get really aware of your breath because there's a large part of the time you can't breathe because you're underwater. Your face is literally in the water. And if you try to breathe, you die.
Starting point is 00:38:53 So and I was a breaststroker. And, of course, we practice all the strokes. But I began my practice of breath control as a competitive swimmer. And swimming for, you know, three hours a day, it's a very solitary endeavor, right? And so you can, you know, if you're the type of person who just can't get out of their mind and you're swimming and you're just, you know, looping and obsessing, that's torture. And so I essentially did an early form of mindfulness
Starting point is 00:39:23 through my swimming practice, breath control, right? And then my body-mind is getting into a deep state of kind of like flow. And so an hour would go by where I'm doing sets of hundreds or two hundreds. And it would not seem like an hour. It would be like 10 or 15 minutes. And so anyways, that was a form where, you know, back when we were talking to you, where the the physical training can train the mind even if you're not aware of what's happening. Like it may not be intentional. I also happen to have a very good swim coach at Colgate University where I went to school.
Starting point is 00:39:57 And I'm fast-forwarding just a couple of years but not too far because I was in college in college at 18 18 through 21 or something like that and I continued my competitive swimming and running and and my swim coach um this was now in 1982 or 83 was an early proponent of using visualization for sports performance sports practice and so he had me with a stopwatch at night can try to visualize my 200 meter breaststroke this is something I tell the story in my book the way of the seal how you know I it was very difficult for me I mean I started off and I mentally jump off the block and you know within two or three strokes I'd be thinking about something it's my girlfriend what was going on that day or if I need to do tomorrow and I almost
Starting point is 00:40:46 quit I tried to quit and coach uh coach Benson was named encouraged me to continue on and kind of like see what happens like he was kind of curious too so I decided that you know he probably knows better than I do and so I continued my practice of visualization I couldn't do it every single night because I was living in a fraternity. That was a little impractical given our routine. But I did it enough, like three or four times a week with enough discipline where I began to get better at it. And when I started to notice that,
Starting point is 00:41:18 and as you're aware, it's hard to benchmark development on the inner domain, right? But it's much easier with physical training can you benchmark strength development or you know your capacity for work can be measured well in the inner domain it's really subjective and so one of the ways is to kind of journal and to to read back over journals and you're like wow i've changed but another way for me was I literally could you know one month I lasted like 20 seconds before I fell out of the visualization and started thinking and was you know honest about it and turned off the stopwatch and then the next month I was last I lasted you know a minute
Starting point is 00:41:59 and a 200 meter breaststroke was roughly two-minute race, maybe a little bit more. And then guess what? After about nine months of training, I was able to swim the entire race and hold that concentration, hold that visualization for the entire thing and experience every single stroke, all the turns, all eight lengths and when i stopped the watch right the time as i you know every time i was able to finish the entire race the time began to settle in on a very very narrow range until it kind of like settle in is on one time give or take a few hundredths of a second and that was roughly three seconds faster than my best time in the pool. And not to belabor the story, but that all happened my sophomore year. I was really, that was my big year.
Starting point is 00:42:53 And I was a slam freshman, just kind of getting oriented. My sophomore year, I was really into it. And then I did a long shot. And another neat story, which I won't get into now, but I got into, I got selected to go to London with the economic study group. Largely because the professor leading it was a swimmer, and we had some nice interaction at the pool, and I wouldn't take no for an answer. I was a good full percentage point below the GPA requirement, but when one of the students failed to show up at a critical meeting, he turned to me on the wait list and said, Mark, you're in. Anyway, that's a short version of the story.
Starting point is 00:43:31 So I go to London, and I don't swim, of course. In fact, I did very little except try to stay in shape through running and some body weight stuff. And I came back that spring to Colgate, and I ran into Coach Benson. So now I'm junior year I've been out of the pool for practically a whole year and Benson says hey Mark we missed you this year oh by the way we got a big race coming up next weekend still consider you part of the team we could use your help you want to jump in and I was like okay you know that sounds good and I did it
Starting point is 00:44:03 more for him I didn't really want to do it part Part of me was like, oh, God, I haven't been in the water. So I show up at the pool. And it's a big multi-team tournament. And I'm on the roster for the 200-meter breaststroke. So there I am. I get up on the block. And I'm like, this is going to be interesting. I'm not going to care.
Starting point is 00:44:25 I'm just going to have fun, whatever. Because I haven't been in the pool. I really hadn't trained the team. I hadn't trained the team. And the gun goes off. I jump in the water and I just start hauling ass. And I had this sensation that I'd swum this race before. And I touched the wall and I look up at the clock
Starting point is 00:44:43 and I got the time that I had visualized. Come on. No kidding. Now, I was still like 18, 17 years old. So I didn't I was like, that's interesting. You know, I just kind of mentally lodged it as an interesting note. Right. So anyways, I'm still with your question about how I got into this.
Starting point is 00:45:04 So those were some formative experiences, nature, endurance sports, you know, learning, experiencing like long periods of flow during long swimming practice. And then having that really distinct experience of visualization training where I stuck with it for a long period of time and it shifted. Something happened. I don't know what. Still don't, you know. But anyways, it gave me some reference, right? It's like a trail marker. It gave me a reference.
Starting point is 00:45:35 So after graduating from Colgate, I followed my friends down to Manhattan. Most from upstate Colgate are from downstate. There's like this big stream of graduates who go down to the business school or get into the financial profession, accounting, finance. So I got a job with Arthur Anderson. Actually, I'm sorry. First it was Cooper's library and then it shifted over to Arthur Anderson. This is a group of people, one or two, a couple of us from Colgate, a couple from Princeton, Williams, Harvard, Yale. And they brought us all together and they called it the Big Eight Masters of Science Accounting Program in partnership with NYU. So the idea was that
Starting point is 00:46:18 they're going to send us to NYU to get a master's in accounting. We'll work as auditors. Two years later, after we have our master's, we'll be qualified to sit for the CPA exam. And because we're all from liberal arts schools with no accounting, we'll make more well-rounded managers and partners at these firms someday. And it actually bore fruit. The guy that I went down with is now managing director of Ernst & Young. He's leading the entire global company. He was meant to be the starting one. He didn't take a single accounting class in college, but got into it. It was really cool.
Starting point is 00:46:55 Anyway, it seemed like a great thing. It seemed like, because of my family, being in the family business and everything like that. It seemed like a good path for me. Because I was so committed to my athletics in college and my youth, I couldn't possibly see myself as the wasting away 30-year-old, 35-year-old or 40-year-old corporate student. And so I continued my training. Every morning I would go out for a pretty rigorous run. Lunchtime when my peers would go to lunch and have a beer or something, I would go to the gym and do some sort of interval training. And I had stumbled across a martial arts studio where I met my first true mental training master.
Starting point is 00:47:47 Okay, hold on. Pause for just a moment. Did you know that – so you knew what you didn't want to do. You didn't want to decay your physical kind of being at a corporate job in accounting, right? Like you knew what you didn't. Did you know what you did want to do? No. So – like you knew what you didn't did you know what you did want to do or so i was following kind of the pattern that was laid out for me that i was you know we were from a business family okay
Starting point is 00:48:11 getting an mba and cpa was a great idea so like oh go get the college degree and go get the master's and you know become you know it was become a doctor lawyer you're in finance or business, you know, pretty much the story of the 80s and 90s even. And still to a large extent today, even though that's starting to break down. And so that was kind of like what I call the drumbeat of my family and society that had patterned me to think, you know, my story was lining up with that story and I got this job. And so I tried like hell to make it work. And it is that the Zen master, okay, Tadashi Nakamura,
Starting point is 00:48:51 Kaicho. And I talk about him a lot because I really honor what he did. And what he did was he taught me how to meditate. Right? So back to my earlier discussion, it's very hard to meditate without having some movement involved. But the martial arts have figured this out in a couple of ways. One is through mindful movement by getting really precisely concentrating on the precision of the movement.
Starting point is 00:49:14 And so katas and, you know, getting more and more advanced. That's why, you know, from a white belt, you have a simple move, just punch, just learn how to punch and kick. But as a black belt, you're combining all these really intricate movements with the breath and precision of where your mind is focused and using the breath to project power and to calm yourself down and all these things. And it's progressive, like there's a training methodology that's little understood still to this day, combining the body body mind and spirit into one integrated training doesn't really exist in in our sports world and i didn't even understand that what was going on and furthermore back to this idea that hard physical training can still the mind much of our meditation occurred after getting our asses kicked for an hour on the treadmill
Starting point is 00:50:01 and then we would sit on a little zen called Zazen bench. And we would sit for five to ten minutes. And then on Thursday nights, we had an hour-long session. Now, those are the ones that cracked me wide open. So I was doing all my physical training, and then Thursday nights I would stay and stay for this extra class, this hour-long meditation class.
Starting point is 00:50:23 Do you remember the mechanics of yeah absolutely sure yeah so it was basically a beginning practice of zen we never moved beyond it because it was so profound and it was not unlike what i teach in my current box breathing practice as a beginning practice and so what it was was he had us sit and inhale and exhale. Nope, not controlling the breath. I mean, being aware, you know, maybe there's a little slowing it down as you calm down. But just inhale and exhale. And at the end of every, like, round, you count.
Starting point is 00:51:00 And so that's all you need to do. There's actually two things. There's the inhale, the exhale, and the number. But it's not one thing. It's not single-point focus. It's actually a dual focus. Inhale, exhale, one. Inhale, exhale, two.
Starting point is 00:51:15 Inhale, exhale. I'm already thinking about what I'm going to have for dinner on my way home from the dojo. If you get the two. If you get the two. If you get the two. And so then it's back to zero. Do not pass go. Do not collect your $100. Just go straight to zero again.
Starting point is 00:51:33 Of course, there's a lot of integrity involved here because most people are like, I do this with my Sealford Academies. And people are like, yeah, I got to 10. I'm like, no, you didn't. Something's going on. And you're just – you're completely unaware that you're actually thinking. You're still able to inhale, exhale, say one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, but the entire time you're thinking about something else. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep. It starts with how we transition and wind down.
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Starting point is 00:53:18 care of my body. I've been using Caldera lab for years now. And what keeps me coming back, it's really simple. Their products are simple. And they reflect the kind of intentional living that I want to build into every part of my day. And they make my morning routine really easy. They've got some great new products I think you'll be interested in. A shampoo, conditioner, and a hair serum. With Caldera Lab, it's not about adding more. It's about choosing
Starting point is 00:53:45 better. And when your day demands clarity and energy and presence, the way you prepare for it matters. If you're looking for high quality personal care products that elevate your routine without complicating it, I'd love for you to check them out. Head to calderalab.com slash finding mastery and use the code finding mastery at checkout for 20% off your first order. That's calderalab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash finding mastery. Mark, I can't tell you how long it takes people to get to 15 and 20. It takes,. Yeah. And so and when so we set a mark
Starting point is 00:54:27 with guys I work with to 25 like that we throw it out there like OK one day you know just kind of this kind of you know kind of alpha
Starting point is 00:54:34 competitive thing. And when they get to 20 they're like I can't I can't believe I cracked 20. But it's taken like months
Starting point is 00:54:42 months to do that. And so it's a it's a game of refocus, really. Yeah, exactly. And non-attachment and refocus. You notice that you're not thinking. You come back to the breath and go back to zero. So there's two skills you're training.
Starting point is 00:54:59 Like you said, one is the noticing, like noticing quicker and quicker and two is holding your concentration without thinking for longer periods of time and so those two skills are trained simultaneously until you can very quickly notice when you're thinking and then the other part which is what i was about to say a little while ago, is that there's different types of thought, right? There's like the overt screaming, which is like the looped stories that we tell ourselves over and over. You've heard it. People say – I don't know what researcher came up with this – that we have like 80,000 thoughts a day or 60,000 thoughts a day, 80 percent of the same as yesterday. It's not quantifiable yet.
Starting point is 00:55:43 Not of course, but it's kind of a fun statement. It's like saying we use five percent of our brain not true not but it's a fun step at any rate um there's the loud thoughts and then there's the subtle thoughts and then there's the imaged thoughts and then there's the felt thoughts and so you could have someone say yeah i got to 25 and what they're saying is i didn't hear those loud thoughts but it's likely that there was some imaging going on and the felt thoughts so this is a you know a cultivation process like peeling an onion where you just go deeper and there is no there there that's right mastery is a progressive process of just integration refining the physical mental emotional intuitional spiritual until they merge as one and your
Starting point is 00:56:33 experience is one and then you know you feel like you're just beginning so your cup truly becomes empty and i think when you can get to that point where you wake up every day and you say you know thank god I have another opportunity to work on my mastery because I have got a long way to go right and you empty your cup to receive more you know now we're getting somewhere beautiful you've obviously been very influenced by the Zen traditions. And the sophistication in how you're describing what you're describing is very nuanced. And it's beautiful. I appreciate very much how you've come to understand what you're saying. And it feels as if you really have lived it and you understand it from an internal perspective. Here's the other thing, Michael, is I'm a warrior.
Starting point is 00:57:24 Part of the Zen practice for me was not just training my mind, but it also opened up the heart and belly where my intuitive and instinctual drives were able to be experienced. And that's, you know, through the process, I began to have insights about what I was to do as opposed to what I was doing. So, and I knew what I was passionate about. Obviously I was passionate about fitness and training and, and movement and adventure and running alone through the woods, uh, day or night. And I knew that I was not passionate about sitting in a suit and losing all my hair and getting fat and, you know, and, and crunching numbers. And those things are like distasteful to me.
Starting point is 00:58:07 And so the contrast of those two was pretty distinct. It was kind of stark and sitting on the bench allowed all these insights to come up to say that, well, there's a, there's a path for me that could take those things I'm passionate about and move away from the things that were distasteful. And I can still, I can find greater meaning in life. Okay. And so that's when I had this notion that I was a warrior and a warrior leader. And then, and then, you know, I had to kind of fill in the gaps of what, what did that mean for me? Right. What did that mean for me? How could I be
Starting point is 00:58:40 a warrior leader? Could I be a warrior leader in business? I think the answer is yes, and for a lot of people it is yes. But for me, it was no because I was so passionate about outdoors and adventure, and I was a risk taker and all that. And so that kind of led me more toward something physical, something adventurous. And so I started to think about how could I fulfill that in other means and that's when the military came up as an option and there were some other options you know like even just taking a year off and like becoming a ski bum and working on an oil rig you know as a roughneck it all kind of came up as options in my 23 year old brain said what what could I do besides this that is going to fulfill that growing sense of purpose as a warrior and passion for adventure and risk and and fitness and that's when i you know the synchronicity the beauty of synchronicities
Starting point is 00:59:31 is you know things appear to you kind of when you're ready to receive them just like they say the teacher appears nakamura was there for me when i was ready and then i ran into a seal recruiting office and just got transfixed by a poster they had that across the tops would be someone special. And it literally just, boom, it just landed with me. I said, yeah, I want to be someone special. And to see the images of guys jumping out of airplanes and locking out of submarines and doing dangerous, cruel things just radically inspired me. And that set me on the new path and and by the way what cemented in this notion of of um the power of mental training is i had all those experiences we've already
Starting point is 01:00:13 described and i was still only young 23 24 years old i got to seal training i turned 26 in seal training so i got there you know after offshore kentett School and all the other rigmarole, I got there when I was 25. And I had used my visualization skills that I had learned from Coach Benson to practice becoming a SEAL for a long, like over a year and a half period that it took me to, you know, from that thought that I want to do that to actually getting to SEAL training. It's about that, how long it took. And that pretty common. When I showed up at SEAL training, again, I had this sense that I had already won. I call it now winning in my mind. I had already won in my mind. What does that mean? I had such a distinct
Starting point is 01:00:59 vision for what success looked like that every day when I woke up, all I did, all I needed to do is align with that vision and keep that vision clear in my mind. And was that just swim specific or was that, did it have to do with life as well? Would you see? You know, as best as I could with the imagery and my, the reading I did to know what it took to be a SEAL. It was way harder in the 80s than it is today. People get trained by me and my SEAL teams. They can read my books.
Starting point is 01:01:34 There's tons of movies. So the kids coming to me today to be trained to be SEALs, they have a very precise mental image of what it looks like where I had to kind of concoct it but I had a video called be someone special which is a recruiting video I played it you know tons and tons of times probably 30 or 40 times and I just got that imagery and then I placed myself in that and I saw myself going through all the training literally just kicking it dominating it and um and kind of back to my early this is why i'm such so bullish on visualization is weird shit happens you know like stuff that we can't explain or study
Starting point is 01:02:17 because there was a point in time where i began to feel supremely confident. And I call it certainty, a sense of certainty that I was going to be a SEAL. And literally right around the time that I started to feel that, I hadn't even been selected. But right around the time where I started to feel certain, and I'm certain that that was because I was sitting on the bench and visualizing it every day for a minimum of 20 minutes. And that was the mental training. The recruiter calls and said, congratulations, Mark, you got selected,
Starting point is 01:02:48 and you're one of two people that are going to go from the civilian world through Officer Candidate School into the SEALs this year. Yeah, wow. Why 20 minutes? Well, it takes that long for the mind to really settle into a groove to where you can concentrate deeply using your visualization skills. That's my experience. Yeah, I find it takes a solid eight minutes just to even begin to settle in. And that's about average for me. And do you still have a mindfulness practice?
Starting point is 01:03:26 And I'll preface that by saying, I ebb and flow. And it's probably been about 20 years that I've been practicing. And today, this morning, I got to two breaths. And then I started over again. And I did that for about 15 minutes. And so I'm wondering, and I ebb and flow. Like sometimes, some periods of my life, it is like at the center. And I'd love to ask you why you do it in a minute. And sometimes it's like I'm doing more mindful eating and mindful movement and mindful conversations. And right now i'm definitely in so i'm just curious like where you are in your 30 years or so of mindfulness work
Starting point is 01:04:11 well i think mental training is meant to evolve as you evolve and the same practice isn't right for you at all times of the year or all times of the day there is a seasonality to it or all stages of your life um so the answer to that is kind of it it depends i do i i practice every day but i don't practice the same things every day the foundation for my practice is box breathing which is very similar to zen but i layer on some other additional training that's exactly how i do it yeah yes i start with the zen like practice to still the mind and then when i kind of drop in i begin a curation process which is mindfulness so i begin to curate and become very aware of what's going on in my rational mind and my emotional states.
Starting point is 01:05:07 And I begin to open up to the possibility or to receiving information. And do you ever prompt, or are you doing any prompts of questions or thoughts to bounce off of? That would be a different practice. So this practice is my core practice I'm talking about. I'm not setting a specific intention or trying to solve a problem. I'm just waking up. I call this my morning ritual. But I will say that I do reflect upon what I call my ethos.
Starting point is 01:05:37 I get clear. I do a gratitude practice. I get clear about why I'm on this planet, what my passion is and why what i'm going to do about it the long term and today and so with that then i go into and so i call it kind of like alignment so i'm connected to my my kind of heart center my my true essence my higher self then i go into this box breathing practice it starts out as. Then it turns out to be more psychological. And then it becomes into that curation I talked about where I begin to manage the quality and the direction of my thoughts. And I begin to reinforce the internal dialogue because I have some mantras that are powerful that I use.
Starting point is 01:06:21 And I try to align the feeling state with that. And so that's kind of like state management, but it's very precise. And then I'll go into a visualization. So the visualization will be about, you know, what I call my future me. So it's like, who am I and how am I going to impact the world? How am I going to serve boldly? And then I back it down to what I'm working on right now, you know, which is unfolding in the next year to 18 months. And then I dirt dive my day, which is go through my day. So that's my foundational practice every morning. And then when I'm working on something very specific, like a project challenge or something, or my vision is not clear, then I will get more intentional with what I'm trying to problem solve or learn or go deep on.
Starting point is 01:07:06 Another aspect of this is if I'm having a, you know, some sort of something tripping me up, you know, like a recurring pattern. You know, and most recurring patterns in our life are deeply rooted belief systems or, you know, emotional trauma or something like that. And we all have them. I call that our background of obviousness, you know, so we have a background. It's obvious to everyone else, especially those people we drop bombs around, but it's not obvious to us because usually it happened to us in a pre, you know, sometimes even pre-linguistic state or a, you know,
Starting point is 01:07:40 certainly not before our brains are fully developed. Right. And so those can those issues those loops those patterns will you know once i identify them i'll make that the object of my meditation and i'll use my visual skills in in memory skills in past state to go back to the source and to try to heal it so in this way you know i call it. So in this way, you know, I call it, you know, through this process of growing, using mental skills to grow,
Starting point is 01:08:09 but in order to grow, we got to go back and clean up our past. So growing up and cleaning up are kind of the same, part and parcel of the same process.
Starting point is 01:08:18 And you can't do it if you're not, it's, I mean, you can get some help with that. That's where a life coach or a sports coach or a sports psychologist or a therapist can come in. But most of the work is done, in my experience, by yourself.
Starting point is 01:08:34 I think there's three ways to do this insight-based work. There's inspired conversations with people that are a little further down the path than hopefully you are. You can do it through mindfulness and meditation, which is an observation without judgment and that path. And you can do it through writing. I think those are the three ways to be able to gain insight. And you have to do the hard yards. You can't read.
Starting point is 01:09:00 There's no hack to it. There's no seven steps. I'm so convinced that in this Insta gratification world that we're in that we're looking for hacks to wisdom. And there's no such. I'm with you on that. I'm an anti-hacker myself. something that is fundamental and let's not fundamentally alter the marble if we're trying to create you know um something that's beautiful from it and etched from it so all that being said um let's okay all right so i want to do some mechanical it's about 20 minutes it sounds like you're doing in the morning as well yeah and you've got some very specific steps that you do and then you do imagery which you're layering on your mindfulness practice you've got some very specific steps that you do and then you do imagery
Starting point is 01:09:46 which you're layering on your mindfulness practice you've got some intention uh that's baked in there about how you want to show up throughout the day and then do you it sounds like you're doing some goal setting or your visualization i'm sorry a vision setting you've got that as kind of a mechanical thing you do as well and then you're aware of your inner dialogue so you're doing some self-talk training probably monitoring throughout the day is that right well and then you're aware of your inner dialogue so you're doing some self-talk training probably monitoring throughout the day is that right those three and your breathing is probably hitting the arousal regulation pieces so when you get keyed up or you're scared or nervous or too switched on you've got your breathing as a as a backup to be able to to be more calm
Starting point is 01:10:21 what else are you doing there for the mental part of the training? That's quite a bit, what you just described. One of the things that I do is bring that. So I have my morning routine, which you just described, and I have an evening routine, which the morning routine is about preparing to win the day. The evening routine is to cement the win so the visualization the morning routine is a forward-looking visualization visualization
Starting point is 01:10:51 the evening routine is a backward-looking it's a recapitulation so that's a practice and so the reason for that is to eradicate regrets and to ensure that you're going to go into your sleep cycle with a light heart, let's say. And with learning the lessons and to appreciate the wins from the day. So it's not unlike, hey, what were my three biggest wins? But I'm not that formulaic about it. I really prefer to go back and review my day from the beginning to the end. Find the wins and appreciate them.
Starting point is 01:11:20 And find the lessons from the sticking points. And that's where journaling, like you said, you write writing through journaling or just noting things down is really powerful. So that's a practice. And then the other thing, Michael, is, and this has become more and more crucial for me, is to take, I call them the big four skills, is to take the four critical skills of, of controlling and managing the breath, managing the internal dialogue in your feeling states,
Starting point is 01:11:51 imagery, managing your imagery, creating powerful imagery, practicing imagery, and then task orientation. So those are, I call those the big four skills and bringing them into pretty much everything I do in particular,
Starting point is 01:12:05 my physical training session. So one of the hallmarks of my SEAL Fit training program is that we train the mind through the body. Yes, SEAL Fit is like saying Fit Fit, but it's also saying Character Fit and Mind Fit. And so we specifically train those big four skills through our physical training sessions. And our physical training sessions can be hard, or maybe it's a recovery day, whatnot. So we practice breath training, breath awareness, management of our breath. We practice managing our internal dialogue.
Starting point is 01:12:38 And basically, this can be done. There's both the individual and the team aspect to this, right? So as a team you know we hold each other accountable to our dialogue to our mental states and the coach you know our from the seal fit the seal fit coach is always cuing that always cuing the breath always cuing the dialogue and the mantras and then the imagery right so we practice imagery so part of our training is to brief and visualize just just like a SEAL would visualize the mission called dirt diving, and then to recap. So just like the morning ritual prepares to win the
Starting point is 01:13:10 day and the evening ritual cements that win in, the pre-event ritual for our training is to prepare to win the training session so that we get the most out of it. And the post-event ritual is to ensure that we learn the right lessons and then we move forward without any regrets. So that becomes an important part of our training. Every day we do physical training. There's not a single day in the SealFit method in our life when we're committed to self-mastery where we're not doing some physical training, some physical movement. Even if it's a recovery day, we're doing mindful walk or yoga
Starting point is 01:13:45 or something where we're integrating body, mind, and spirit. Is that like a three-minute prep or prime that you're doing? Is that a 90-second? No, it varies, but I would say five minutes. Five minutes. And then what does winning the day mean to you? Winning the day, so I learned this from Nakamura. I love this saying It's used to say one day one life
Starting point is 01:14:13 It is broken English right one day one like So the notion is that every day is an opera is a lifetime of learning Like it's like Buddha said you can find enlightenment in a single breath if you're aware, right? If you're present. So if you're present, then your day has a lifetime of lessons for you. Like everything is there for you.
Starting point is 01:14:37 The warrior knows that when he gets up in the morning, he may not see sunset. Right? Because we're committed to service. So it's mastering ourselves in service. And our service is to serve to protect in some capacity. Or to stand our ground. So not all warriors are carrying a weapon on the battlefield. But something could change.
Starting point is 01:15:05 It could be the death of our ego. It could be the death of our reputation because we stood our ground and got our ass handed to us. Or it could be our actual physical death because the warrior's out there on the edge, right? We're in the arena. So we know that when we wake up that we must prepare ourselves to win the day. And I got this notion, too, from Sun Tzu. And he has a really, really nice quote
Starting point is 01:15:26 that the victorious warrior wins in his mind and then goes to the battle. And the loser goes to the battle hoping to win. And so when you look at your day as the battlefield like a warrior would, because you never know where you're going to have, know some sort of clash and you can just you know take that as some sort of stressor or a jerk at work or you know a real altercation in the context of you know if you're a police officer or a sheepdog or a warrior on the battlefield and so in the morning you know we prepare for that by taking the time to really get clear about why we're doing what we're doing to see ourselves you know going through the, all the known inflection points, see ourselves, visualize ourselves doing it well. Our time with our family, we're doing it well.
Starting point is 01:16:18 We're not distracted on our iPhones and this and that. We're not blowing them off. We're there for them. Our time with our peers and our teammates, the brief for the mission, being on the mission and focused. We see ourselves doing really well. And so it just kind of prepares the body-mind system for what's coming. And also the known events, when you get to them in your mind's eye, and this all happens as you get good at it, you know, really quickly. It's not like I'm spending an hour visualizing my day. I'm just going, reviewing, going, reviewing, reviewing.
Starting point is 01:16:51 I see, oh, I've got a podcast with Michael. I see that going, you know, really well. We relax. We're transmitting knowledge. People are getting inspired. How are we doing? We're doing great, yeah, because we visualized it, right? So we can move on right
Starting point is 01:17:05 anyways that's that's what i mean by winning in your mind so you know um i think that the way that you've articulated um winning for the way that i think about winning is i have a way that i measure it and i want to share that with you and then i have a way that i prepare for it as well um i don't call it winning but i call like, what does a successful day look like for me? And it really does start with the priming effect of being prepared for the unpredictable and doing so in alignment with my authentic self. And so then I look for the moments, the inflection points, to use your phrase, that are important throughout the day for me. And then I see myself and feel myself. I don't know if you do the feeling part, but I feel what it feels like to adjust and to be present. And one way that I do that is through eye contact. And so how important is eye contact for you?
Starting point is 01:17:57 Well, you mean with another human being? Yeah. Yeah. I think it's important. It's not something I have been – it's not part of my teaching or practice. I will say that the way we use our eyes is. Okay, cool. Whether we're really focusing in on another human being or on a subject or object or whether we're allowing our eyes to be more broad and relaxed. And those will affect our mental states and where the energy is being – moving in our eyes or be more broad and relaxed and so and those will affect our mental states and where our you know where the energy is being moving in our eyes or in our mind yeah i love that awareness piece and so there's a nice little practice and i'll share it with you that if you you might find it interesting is when we make eye contact it is an honoring of another person and it touches a
Starting point is 01:18:42 fundamental uh idea i have about life is through relationships we become. And it's relationships with ourself, with our spirit, with God, with nature, with others, with our craft, with adversity, with challenge, whatever. It's through the relationship that we're becoming. And when we take a moment to look at another person in their eyes, we're honoring and having regard for that person. But if we go just one step further, and this is now a practice, is there's always a little white reflection, not the white of the eye, but like a little square box in the colored part of the eye that's a reflection from either sunlight or halogen light or whatever. And if we just kind of do a weird little thing and we remind ourselves that there's goodness
Starting point is 01:19:22 coming out of people, and it's just a little spotlight. Physically, it's just a reflection from outside. But it's a nice little moment to remember that I don't need to freaking protect myself all the time. I don't need to be all keyed up all the time. That the people that I choose to be around, there's goodness in there. And they're trying to get it out, and I'm trying to get it out. And shit, can we do something together that's really special today? And so it's a nice little kind of mindful expression for relationships. And I'll share it with you and see if you can play with that a little bit without like doing this weird
Starting point is 01:19:55 eye gaze with people because it starts to get awkward. But that being said, so the way I measure winning is goosebumps. So how many goosebumps? And I compete with people. You know, up at the Seattle Seahawks, there's a cadre of coaches that we compete on a regular basis. How many goosebumps do we get today? And so that's like taking the applied science of awe and presence and combining them to a physical manifestation. So when we get goosebumps, it's like a marker, like, oh shit, I'm in it now. Like, this is unbelievable. And so when we get goosebumps, it's like a marker, like, oh, shit, I'm in it now. Like, this is unbelievable. And so now we get this whole community of people that are applying the science of awe and presence. And it's like a backhanded way almost to increase awareness of our state. So I don't know if you can play with that. And I'd love to kind of see if you, you know, what your folks, how they might respond to that that's nice yeah okay
Starting point is 01:20:46 listen i want to honor our time and i wanted i've got like just a two or three more questions here do you have a spiritual framework that you operate from you know deity based god based or is it something else is it buddhist uh what do you have a framework that you work from? Yes, but it's not a religious framework. That frame, those frames are a little bit too rigid for me. I believe, I definitely believe that there's an unknowable higher power, higher intelligence that is somewhat of an organizing principle for life. I believe that that energy exists in all of us, in all around us. And we have a piece of it, right? So it's like the notion of, you know, spiritual energy, universal energy, universal consciousness is like the ocean.
Starting point is 01:22:00 And you and I are like an individual wave that's rising up. And, you know, we have the equal amount of wetness. But're very distinct and unique my wave is different than your one right and we're both going to crash upon the shore and recede back into the ocean where our water our uniqueness will then merge back with the one but it's definitely very influenced by my experiences through yoga training. But I don't have any real connection with the Hindu trappings of how yoga came to this country. To me, yoga is
Starting point is 01:22:44 a vast and ancient science of human development that found itself in the Hindu Valley. And so people kind of glommed on a lot of different cultural, some people think it's a religion. It's not. So I'm influenced by that.
Starting point is 01:23:01 And I'm also influenced by my early Christianity upbringing. And I honestly think that, you know, in a sense, if not in reality, that Jesus was a yogi. You know, it's fascinating when you read the teachings and read them with an open mind that they're almost identical right it's the nature of universal love and the fact that every individual has a spiritual being that they can connect with and then experience like radical awakening fullness enlightenment in essence every human being has vast potential, the potential to experience God or universal love or universal intelligence in and through the individual, which is very different than what the structures of the church try to teach. They teach a concept of God and a relationship to it. So there is an I-Thou relationship.
Starting point is 01:24:06 But most of them shy away from this notion that God exists in you and that you can actually taste it, touch it. So what are you doing with your life? And I don't mean that to be almost out of condescending. I don't mean that in any way. I mean, what is the purpose? What are you doing with all of the experiences and insights that you have? Well, first and foremost, it's my duty to master myself and to, as a warrior, to achieve my fullness. Yeah, beautiful.
Starting point is 01:24:41 Achieve my integration and so that I can fulfill the reason I'm on this planet. So fulfill my purpose. Which is? Which is to teach others to unlock their potential and to maximize their performance. So in a way, I look, you know, an academic and not doing the work that we're talking about here and not in the arena and just writing books. I do want to write books. I've got a lot of ideas, but I must be doing the work to be an embodied, you know, practitioner, so to speak. And I believe that my example is going to be more
Starting point is 01:25:25 powerful than any words, you know. And furthermore, the more I practice, the more I train, the more insights I have, then the more I can use my rational mind to help articulate them like we're doing in this podcast, so that other people can find some meaning and inspiration and then translate that into their own. Okay. So, gosh, Mark, we don't know each other, but it feels like we've had very similar young experiences, nature being a great teacher, and then working to try to understand ourselves just a little bit better so that we can give lovingly and purposely to others.
Starting point is 01:26:02 And the greatest way to do it is to be present and then to maybe teach some of the mechanics of how that presence has come to others. And the greatest way to do it is to be present and then to maybe teach some of the mechanics of how that presence has come to be. And so it feels like if there's a kind of archetype of people, like we would be the same archetype. And I have so much respect for what you've done. I see the spark in your eye. What's that?
Starting point is 01:26:19 I see the spark in your eye. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. And I have such respect for the warrior path. I don't know if you would, you wouldn't know that, but I have such regard for people that are able and willing to dedicate all, potentially all to a noble cause. So, you know, I want to thank you for what you've done. I know you hear that and you don't need it by any means,
Starting point is 01:26:42 but it's a beautiful conversation. And I know you're making a huge impact on people. So I have seriously 50 other questions I'd like to ask you. Maybe we can do it another time. Maybe we can do it over a bite to eat at some point as well. But where can we find out more from you? And where can this community get more connected to you? Thanks for asking.
Starting point is 01:27:04 And I appreciate you having me on the show. This has been a really nice conversation, I agree, and I look forward to more and to meeting you again in person. So Google Mark Devine, and because of all the SEO stuff that we've done through SealFit, you're going to find us or find me. But if you're really interested in the physical training, the more austere, gritty stuff, then SealFit, S-E-A-L-F-I-T, like Navy SealFit, but just SealFit.com. We've got a ton of really cool content and videos and all my blog and writing.
Starting point is 01:27:41 And then my mental training is found at Unbeatable mind.com, unbeatable mind.com. And, um, I have a book by that name that's available at Amazon. Um, so that the books that kind of addressed mental training precisely are unbeatable mind.com, which is really about the inner domain and then the way of the seal, which is about how to apply these skills for leadership and for performance and for execution excellence. So those are available at bookstores or in museums. There's a handful of athletes at the Seahawks that have read both of those. Oh, no kidding.
Starting point is 01:28:18 Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they've loved it. We've had great conversations about it. I get super humbled when I hear that. I was invited up. I'm actually going up to speak to the la rams in a couple weeks so i get to speak to the team and then go sit on the front line the irony is i um i haven't watched football in about 15 years and so but you and i know it's an athlete's an athlete yeah I think you'll appreciate it the speed of
Starting point is 01:28:46 the game and is phenomenal and I think you'll appreciate it and you know there's there's in all environments there's challenges and there's shine and there's wonder and there's you know some really tough stuff to get through and they will hopefully soak in what you have to offer so have fun with it for sure yeah okay good and social media do you have any uh social media stuff twitter instagram whatever we have all of that and um i i leave that alone yeah i don't touch it personally even though there's tweets coming with my name we have a lot of followers on our facebook page and all that but again a seal fit navyseals.com unreal Perfect. We'll put it all in the show notes. We'll get that sorted out. And again... One thing I'd like to offer your listeners,
Starting point is 01:29:32 because the Unveiled Mind online training has been really impactful for a lot of people. And so I asked my team to put together a free trial. And it's basically a monthly thing where you get a lesson with videos every month, which is pretty common. But because it's a program for mastery, mastering in service to others like we've been talking about, it's a 12-month program. So it's not like a quick eight weeks. And so the first month is chock full of a lot of incredible content. So I have a free 30-day trial, which is a great way to kind of say,
Starting point is 01:30:05 is this something for me? And you also get a lot of ton of great free content. And so that's unbeatablemind.com slash free trial if anyone's interested. Brilliant. And so just based on this initial conversation, I fully support that you can't be blowing it too far from what, if you are close to the center
Starting point is 01:30:23 of what you've been talking about today, that I would love for people to go over and experience it. And hopefully, if find value, you know, stick with it for your training. There's no hack. There is no shortcut. That's the anti-hack program. I love it. Okay, brilliant.
Starting point is 01:30:39 So Mark, thank you. And folks, if you enjoyed this conversation, punch over to iTunes, find us there, Finding Mastery, write a review. It helps build that base for us. So thank you. Mark, we're on findingmastery.net. And then we've got a nice little community. So findingmastery.net forward slash community. We've got this Finding Mastery tribe that's unbelievable.
Starting point is 01:30:58 And I know they're going to have questions for you. Would you be willing to just open up and you know answer some questions when we launch this sure yeah yeah there'll be some fun stuff there and then uh at michael gervais and on twitter and uh finding mastery at instagram so mark thank you so much look forward to our next time thank you okay brother take care bye Take care. Bye. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you.
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Starting point is 01:32:48 Lastly, as a quick reminder, information in this podcast and from any material on the Finding Mastery website and social channels is for information purposes only. If you're looking for meaningful support, which we all need, one of the best things you can do is to talk to a licensed professional. So seek assistance from your healthcare providers. Again, a sincere thank you for listening. Until next episode, be well, think well, keep exploring.

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