Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Former Navy SEAL Teaches Team Resilience | Pete Naschak

Episode Date: March 8, 2023

Former Navy SEAL Command Master Chief, Pete Naschak, details what it means to be a resilience shepherd, how high performing teams operate, and the importance of an adaptable mindset.More:Pete served for 21 years as a Navy SEAL, where he held various operational & leadership positions and participated in military contingency operations around the world. Now, Pete has taken what he learned as a leader of one of the most elite & high-performing military units, and founded Performance Activation – a company specializing in leadership development, mission enhancement, team performance, and resilience training for top tier companies, pro sport teams, and individuals. Pete and I have had the pleasure of working together at companies like Nike, Red Bull, Under Armour, and Microsoft – I’m always fascinated by his insights and approach to helping others thrive. Most importantly, I have an incredibly high regard for Pete as a human. He is resilient, optimistic, a great teammate, a problem-solver, and truly authentic across any environment. We cover all of that in this conversation, and how these concepts can be applied to building great individuals, great teams and deeply resilient organizations._________________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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That's the optimism, the realistic optimism. You aren't trying to convince yourself you aren't struggling. What you're trying to convince yourself is that the struggling is fine. it's part of the process, and it'll end sometime because you're not going to be struggling as much anymore. It's just the next step. Okay, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Gervais, by trade and training a high-performance psychologist. I am really excited to sit down

with my dear friend, Pete Naschak, for this conversation. Pete served for 21 years as a Navy SEAL, where he held various operational and leadership positions and participated in military contingency operations around the world. Now, Pete has taken what he's learned as a leader of one of the most elite and high-performing military units and founded Performance Activation, a company specializing in leadership development, mission enhancement, team performance, and resilience training for top-tier companies, pro sport teams, and individuals. Pete and I have had the pleasure of working together at companies like Nike and Red Bull and Under Armour and Microsoft, and I'm always fascinated by his insights and his approach to helping others thrive. Most importantly, I have an incredibly high regard for Pete as a human.

He is resilient and optimistic. He's a great teammate. He's a true problem solver and authentic across environments where I've seen him challenged by some hardships and times that are incredibly difficult as a human. Now, in this conversation, we talk about how these concepts can be applied to building great individuals, great teams, and deeply resilient organizations. So with that, let's jump right into this week's conversation with Pete Nashak. Pete, I'm so stoked to sit here with you. So thank you for coming in. And more importantly, thanks for the long relationship we've had as a friend. Yeah, definitely. No no i'm super excited i mean i don't know where it's going to go today but hopefully

it'll be in a good place yeah well that's the thing you know like who knows where we're going to go but i want to start with resilience shepherds yeah being a resilience shepherd this is a term that you've coined it's's a concept that you have written about now. And when you shared this concept with me, I was like, oh, there's something here. And so can you just take a quick run at describing what a resilient shepherd, from what I've found researching some different teams, and again, this is in the team resilience space, which is different than individual and organizational resilience. So a resilient shepherd is really an individual who's not in a leadership position, who influences positively the resilience phenomenon, the team shared resilience phenomenon. So it's people that tend to just be in the mix of that team who can, by their actions, and typically there's a few characteristics that they have that then change the way that team functions as a unit and can

manage adversity. I love the concept because, we've been talking about resilience as an individual skill, a protective factor, you know, a characteristic that you can develop even. And you just added to it, which is saying, no, there's somebody on the team that is taking care of the team from a resilience standpoint. Yeah. Okay. So can you make it concrete, like maybe an example that you've seen it or when you first noticed it and you're like,

oh, what is this? Well, I mean, really the idea was coming through because a lot of the team research, which there's not much out there because team resilience is a newer area of research, probably maybe 10 years. So in the academic world, that's early. Individual resilience has been around since, you know, for 50 years plus. And it academic world, that's early. Individual resilience has been around since, you know, for 50 years plus. And it's been something that's been very focused. And that's why we hear a lot about individual resilience. But, you know, I got interested looking at it because in the team, they constantly pointed to the people or the person that would influence the team resilience phenomenon was always a leader. And I've been in some bad teams. They had bad leaders.

You know, there wasn't shared leadership. There wasn't a transformational leader. And so, you know, they still were resilient. We still handled adversity well. So it wasn't because of the leader. It was because of the team and how we influenced and interacted with each other. So there had to be something more than just leadership that makes resilience work.

Okay. So you slipped in there, bad team, good team, kind of narrative there. And so what you slipped into that a good team is transformational and a good team is one that shares its goals. So what did you mean by those two things? So the idea is that, I mean, a group of great people is not necessarily a team. 100%. Because the team needs to be interdependent.

They need to have a shared goal that they're trying to work towards with each other. And there's accountability to each other for that shared goal and for their tasks and the things that they have to do to get there. So that team environment is, again, different than just a group of great people. So let's start with the interdependent piece, right? So I can't be successful without you being successful as well. So I'm depending on you to be able to make sure that my responsibilities or my promise to the team can be met. Yes. And that's like, that's the special aspect of a team. And so how that interdependence works is really important because if you look at individual resilience,

again, what we always hear about, having a network of people is hugely important. It's one of the best pieces of being resilient is that you find that individuals that have a good network tend to do well through adversity. They have people to lean on, to look at, to get advice from. But when you make decisions for whatever goal you're trying to reach to get through adversity, they're on your own. They're your decisions. People are just giving you input. You make the

decision. Okay. So wait, let me pause you there. So, cause you're taking this in a really interesting way is that, so we went from interdependence. Okay. And then you say that part of resilience is being able to mobilize your community. Yes. Right. Okay. Which I love, I love that insight alone, which is that part of resilience is being able to roll with hard times, being able to put your foot in the ground and adjust to advance yourself, not just get knocked back and come back to the same place, but actually to advance, right? That's how I think about resilience. Yeah. Okay, cool. And again, because that's the way we look at it from an individual point of view as well, that positive outcome, which says you've been resilient, you've gone through adversity, you've faced adversity,

and you have a positive outcome on the other side means you've been resilient. And for individuals, we think of it as growth adaptation in some way. That's where all the research and that's where people have gone to. is that they've mobilized their external resources and they've mobilized a set of internal resources to be able to adjust or adapt to the adversity, the challenge, the situation. Absolutely. Yeah. So I think that we just want to make sure that, or I just want to make sure that that idea of externalizing, or I'm sorry, mobilizing external and internal resources is at the foundation. And you're saying, yes, okay, but interdependence, we take it a level deeper, right? So it's not just me figuring it out and making a decision and adjusting,

but a great team has an interdependence, which means your ability to adjust, your ability to mobilize your external and internal resources to the challenge that we're facing is going to directly impact because we're interdependent on each other my ability to do my job yep and okay because this is a complex systems view of how we're functioning so the lower level say the individuals coming together are then now influencing the group phenomenon. So it's, the fact is you can have a team full of really resilient individuals. It doesn't mean you're going to have a resilient team. So that's, and that's one of the interesting aspects of team

resilience is that it's not an aggregate. It's not just, let's add up everyone's resilience and say, okay, we're a plus nine on the resilience scale because everyone's really resilient. It doesn't work that way because in adversity, a resilient individual might be looking after their own needs, which are detrimental to the team's shared needs, which then that shared goal suffers because individual goals become more important. And that self-resilience that can be too strong in some cases and pull away from the team if it's not done in a way that is now supportive of the team's shared vision. I was working with a multinational large firm, large business, over 200,000 employees. And they're kind of working through some adversity right now. And I didn't introduce your concept because you haven't given me permission to do it. Maybe now I can introduce it to them.

But so one of the things that a person brought up, and he's a high earner, one of the highest earners. Yeah. And we're having this conversation about this particular team being matrixed and siloed, right? Like two or three people work together, another two or three people, and a third two or three people are working separately. And so one of the highest earners says, look, we've been processing this a little bit too long and

I'm just going to tell the team what I'm going to do. I'm just going to get mine. Okay. Yeah. And this is the highest earner, right? This is the one that is producing a healthy amount. And the team lead at that point said, you can't be successful without everybody else. And he says, I know how to game the system. I can. And she said, no, it's not going to work. These are different times now. We are cross-dependent on each other. And he says, again, I know how to get mine. So it's a bit of like, okay, so it's, you're nodding your head because you know those individuals and you also know that even as interconnected as modern business is, and this organization is highly interdependent, that there's still ways that people can just say,

I'm going to take care of mine. And so how would you have responded in that moment? Would you just let it play out and watch the tension and then do something with the tension? Or would you have talked about resilient shepherding or? Well, I think, I think in that case I would have discussed, I mean, with that individual, maybe on the side, but I want to find out why is he going into self saving, right? Like why is his, his needs more important than everyone else's and then floating the whole boat so that you know let's say yeah so in that case and and i think that's an interesting one because again when we were talking about team versus group that's exactly a perfect example like let's say a sales team

they could be amazing individuals but they're really only working for themselves and their own commission necessarily right they have kind of a shared mission together, but they aren't interdependent in any way. So they can look after themselves. They can do what they need. They can fight for that sale and make as much money as they want, you know, unless they're going to try to be interdependent and work together to make a sale and make things happen. Finding Mastery is brought to you by LinkedIn Sales Solutions. In any high-performing environment that I've been part of, from elite teams to executive boardrooms, one thing holds true.

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deal for two full months for free terms and conditions apply fighting mastery is brought to you by david protein i'm pretty intentional about what i eat and the majority of my nutrition comes from whole foods and when i'm traveling or in between meals on a demanding day, certainly I need something quick that will support the way that 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 Fondue Mastery. In fact, our GM Stuart, he loves them so much. I just want to kind of quickly put them 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.

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mercenaries that are great? I'm using that word provocatively. Yeah. Well, I think it depends, right? So I think you don't always need to have a team, let's say. You could have a group of people it's what's the goal what are you trying to accomplish let's say the like like the way i i look at it from from the external i haven't worked inside this group but let's say usa basketball when

they sometimes brought together the stars and the first few games are not working well a lot of times they don't play to their potential because they're working as kind of individual stars coming together. And they may talk team. They're not acting like team. They haven't really created that tie-in and understanding roles and everyone fitting in and filling in and really building the system of how we need to function as a unit for that shared mission. They might be coming in and just playing really well on their own. Okay, so that's something that I see people do under stress. They start their annual kickoff and say, hoo-ha, here we go.

We're going to be great, and we've got these lofty, ambitious goals, and this is a great team. And they kind of lock arms, like, let's go get it. And then as soon as stress hits the system, they start to unlock their arms. Yeah. And that's where the resilient shepherd tends to keep them, keep them tied together, tied together. Okay. Through certain things that they tend to do or their characteristics. And, and I think that's, what's the interesting part is that in those moments when teams are starting to fracture, the resilience shepherd can step in and provide the necessary psychological boost or the optimism boost that ties them back together

and they start coordinating cognitively, behaviorally much better. And then the team capacity rises to handle that shared challenge. And again, I mean, remember when we're talking about the team space, we're talking about a shared challenge. It's a shared goal, a shared challenge. It's not like I broke my foot, you know, and I have to deal with my foot, team adversity is something that affects normal team process. Yes. So that's an interesting insight for sure. Anything, any stress or challenge,

anything that disrupts normal team functioning could be considered an adversity. And when you look at individual resilience, for example, it's anything that disrupts healthy functioning, one's healthy functioning. So that's adversity. So you can, how, like the, the severity of it or the type, you know, whether it's acute or chronic or different issues, but, but it's still how you deal with it. And the type of positive outcome you come with is now more determining what's happening and what type of resilience you're displaying. So let's pull apart the word adversity for just a minute, right? Because what if I don't see it as adversity and I see it as an opportunity to solve, to

be closer to you, to I see an external or an unaccounted for variable that enters our friendship or our teaming or the mission that we're on. And I'm like, oh, this is great. We're going to solve this together now. And it's not adversity then. In a group environment as shared in that team environment, a shared adversity might still be adversity for some, the way that they're looking at it. But that's where the resilience shepherd, that's one of the personal characteristics is that positive emotions. They have an optimism. To them, it's something that can be solved. They see it as a problem. It's obviously a problem because they have something to solve,

right? We can solve this. This is an opportunity. But they don't see it as a massive adversity. They don't see it as a major problem that is impossible to deal with, and they start falling apart. So their ability to then look at things like that and maybe say that in the right way will change that. Did you just say I said it in the wrong way? No, no, no. Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. But, you know, so they're saying the right thing in the right way at the right time that then everyone now feels a little bit better and now they start problem solving. So they cognitively and behaviorally change as a group to now move forward as opposed to sit and panic okay so part of a resilient Shepherd is that they can see a situation and frame

it yeah as something that is not a a threat that we're a dire threat but maybe it is a threat but we're gonna figure it out or maybe it's an opportunity or they see it as a challenge as opposed to a threat. Right. A realistic optimism. And another characteristic is this idea of emotional control, right? They know how to remain calm, not spin up or spin down or spin in any direction, just look at things and just stay level so they can start making the right decisions and not get caught up in too much emotion, right? do you feel like you can control your emotions most of the time i mean not always and i think i think when i was in the service when i was in the seal teams i was much

better at it because it was a daily practice to control emotions not get too spun up in any direction because mission had to had to be right? And the more, I would say, emotional you get, whether highs or lows, too far in any direction, you're not thinking straight, you're not making the right decisions, and you're getting distracted. So, you know. Yeah. So what ends up happening is when there's big emotions on board, we'll just use that as a kind of sloppy placeholder, is that there's a compromise to being able to think critically. Right. Right. So, and literally we can watch the blood flow patterns and we can watch how things work in the brain. And so I'm more interested in harnessing and facilitating emotions than controlling and minimizing. You know, when I think of control,

I think of like, put it in a box, control it. And I actually don't, you know, I've been at this a long time as you have. I'm not, I don't think I can control them. I think I can harness and use them. Whereas at one point in my life, um, I was like subservient to them. I was in service of my emotions and now I feel like I can work with them. Yes. No. And I agree totally. But, and I, I guess when I'm talking about emotional control, that was just a term that i used to explain what was happening yeah but it is that it's it's they they don't go in any particular direction too quickly right it's it's it's just a managed understanding and part of that is that optimism that starts feeding in some of it's their their personal resources the mastery their experience and what they've seen and the way that they approach problems just with hard work.

And so those things tend to allow them to then not get spun up in the wrong direction and lose the critical thinking skill. So now they're thinking straight or they're thinking of solutions rather than thinking of all the problems and all the negatives. So framing something as a opportunity versus a threat, something where you can see the optimism and you can build from it. And then the second component or third component I'm hearing is that that resilient shepherd is not lost in their emotions. They're able to work with them and understand the emotions of others. Do you have any stories that come to mind

that brilliantly illuminate your experience when you're like, that person was a resilient shepherd? Or one, I'm saying that because I know you're a resilient shepherd. I've known you long enough to know that. Maybe, maybe sometimes, maybe not all the time. Well, I've seen you operate that way on some of the projects we've done and so um yeah very clearly so okay but like what are what are

some some like can you make it tangible because we're we're up in our heads yeah uh well let me let me give you a couple examples because i think these are interesting it's like so working with the team during COVID and... Sport or business? Sport. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, so working with the sport team during COVID and obviously there's a lot of issues

with how teams are being held back. There was restrictions, there was things going on. It was, you know, the Olympics were coming, maybe, you know, like no one knew, and this is a summer team. And so they're fighting through all that. And with that stress, with all the problems with training and testing and all the issues that team. And so, so they're, they're fighting through all that. And with that stress, with the, all the problems with training and testing and all the issues that they were going through, there was a few individuals that literally started saying, I'm looking after

myself. I'm here to do my own thing. And, you know, I need to take care of my needs and, and, you know, I'm about, I'm about performance and I don't give a crap about how you guys feel about it. Like his, his teammates. Pause here. here. What would you have done in the SEALS team? If a member said, if a member said that to one of the other members or said it to you when you were guiding? Yeah. So for me, cause again, everyone's going to handle things differently, but I would have pulled that person aside and had to talk with them. And that's what I did with some of these teammates as well in this situation was I had to talk with them and try to get them to understand that what they're doing was causing problems for the team and show them where it was happening. I don't care. Why would I care about them? They're not,

they're blowing it. They're dead weight. This is like, this is sloppy. You know better than this. This is not high performance and this shit has gone sideways and i'm telling you right now i'm not drowning with the ship exactly no it's and that has happened and that does happen and there's only so much you can do you can isolate you can pull them out of the system so they don't cause more problems within that ecosystem, that team, right? You can, in the military, there's steps we can take that you can't take in the civilian world. A lot of times we have more control over how an individual acts. We can force them to do things like work the weekend or not go somewhere.

There's punishments. We have coercive power, right? Whoa, whoa. Coercive power? Yeah, coercive or reward power, power right we have that as well but what does that mean so those those are the power bases from french and raven like basically you have like like legitimate power there's coercive power so coercive means some type of punishment there's something you can take away from someone in some way right reward is something you can give them they can gain you know legitimate is a position you hold that, like the military, if I'm senior, I have authority, rank.

I can make decisions that affect your life and your career. So those are the different levers that you have to pull in that environment, which you don't always have in a lot of sport or civilian environments. So it's different. So in some of those, it's just really about, I think, understanding, trying to get people to realize the damage they're causing and appeal to that and get them to shift somehow. Do most people want to be a member, a great teammate on a team?

Or do you think most people want to have a team in service of their needs their their goals yeah well what if let me kind of throw that question back at you what have you experienced in some teams whoa whoa whoa what are we doing here you think we just switch it all around here okay i think that um there's an invisible limit that um within within teams that they operate in a way that other people are in service of their own goals. And so it's a bad teammate. A great teammate is one that is there, they're taking care of their own stuff and they're doing it in such a way that they can help others be great. And so I think when we're layered to this, that we're social beings first and we're masquerading like individual agents, but we are social. You look at our brain structure, you look at how we operate, the most primal thing we have

is the fear of rejection. It's super primal. And one of the great ways that people feel that they're flourishing in life is when they have a sense of belonging. So I think we're social first and this whole make-believe world of business is in many respects, um, modern excuses to work together. And unfortunately, most people don't like it. You know, like, I don't know. I don't like it you know like i don't know i don't most people don't like how they um they adult and i think that's it you don't yeah you don't relate to that i think you like your adult life yeah i do i enjoy this stuff i mean i loved being a kid too i had a pretty crazy fun childhood but the uh well you can't say that to a psychologist and just kind of have that thing

run over go ahead come on yeah We're saying open it up. Yeah, I know. Totally. Totally. But the, you know, the. Totally, totally. But I'm going to say something else. All right.

Yeah. No, I mean, we've, we've talked about my childhood before. Oh yeah. Yeah. I was out in the, in the woods with my mom and got to experience and do a ton. And I grew up in Venice beach, which was a little messy as well. So my mom grew up in Germany during World War II and had a pretty intense life growing up. And then ended up meeting my dad on a street corner during the occupation and came to America. And so her perception on how things need to work.

So she had to take care of her father when he got injured in the war and the things that were happening and actually protect him at times and keep him hidden away and in the walls and find food for him and do a lot of pretty intense things that most people don't have to do. He was a soldier for which army? Yeah he was a conscript for the German army. Conscript? Yeah so I mean obviously they were pulling people in and he had a choice right so for a while what he did is he convinced the uh the army that they needed to train the soldiers how to swim he was doing this so he convinced him so he didn't have to go to the front to fight he was

teaching them how to swim so they could cross rivers deal with the ocean whatever they had to do right and so then there's a point where things got bad on the Russian front where he got pulled in and had to go forward and fight. And then he got blown out of a tank, and the front line swept across him, and his buddies went across the lines to save him, pulled him back, and then he was an invalid through the rest of the war. When you say invalid, what do you mean? So his leg was basically blown

up pretty badly and couldn't walk he had a had it amputated and and had a fake appendage okay got it so he wasn't able to firefight anymore yeah and so basically all his main goal was to keep my mom out of trouble and alive and keep her from getting pulled into any organization right um like nazi organization or anything like like the nazi youth or anything and uh and so they just moved around and kept alive and until the war was over and then in the area that they were in which was southern germany there was french soldiers there who didn't like ex-military and they'd execute him and so she was hiding him in a wall and taking care of him for I think it was almost a year a little over a year until the Americans came in and he could come out and because they were much more lenient so it's pretty intense

story and then all the things that happened I mean there's times where planes were shooting at her at fields because she was just a you know someone on the ground who's obviously an enemy and they just shoot at them just to and so she had to pull her like her young sister through fields and avoid being shot and killed buildings being blown off the top of her and so married and heavy trauma yeah right and sacrificed uh individual um pursuit you, for taking care of others. Yeah. Right. So you're in the woods with her. And what were we talking about that that was hard for you? Yeah. So big learning curve for you. So for her, my mom's the ultimate optimist, extremely nice, super helpful, has always helped everyone in the world and

supported them and did everything she could for them. And she would be, in my mind, someone that would be probably a resilient shepherd in a lot of ways, or at least the qualities of it. But she liked to go to the wilderness. She liked to take us there. She felt that, in general, the American systems and what she was seeing, kids were a little soft. They weren't like growing up with the right kind of resilience. And, and I mean, one of the things that she used to say to me is as we got older is that hardship breeds resilience. Like that was one of her phrases that she liked to use. She was right on with the science because part of the

science of resilience is intimate cousin with hard part of the science of resilience is um intimate cousin with hardiness the science of hardiness as you've obviously researched so she was right and the old kind of saying is like you can't build resilience without going through some shit yeah right and so but there is a whole science to hardiness yes and which is fascinating in many ways the three c's you you know, commitment, control and challenge. And so I'll use those same three C's from the research and apply them to resilience. So if you want to be more resilient, control what you can control, see it as a challenge

and commit to your purpose and or commit to seeing this challenge through. So those three C's are a nice little model. It's been around a long time, but they were first born out of hardiness. And so your mom is spot on on this idea like you gotta you gotta suck it up here a little bit buttercup yeah i don't know where that phrase comes from yeah yeah i don't know either but that's but it's a good one and that's kind of was her motto her mindset she she took us out in the wilderness one she liked to do it she wanted to do it so we just came along for the ride and we had to deal with it.

But snow, cross-country skiing. I mean, I grew up in L.A., in Venice Beach, and I spent more time in the mountains in the snow than probably the actual beach sometimes. But always taking us in the mountains, making us hike, making us backpack, you know, long miles, long days. And we would just deal with it we just had to learn how to absorb and adapt and figure it out and she had us cooking she had me catching fish for dinner and you know like we had to just make it work and so i mean that wilderness environment and just doing that a lot is something that stuck with me and i i, that's what I do with some people now with performance activation is doing those types of trips because being in that element, being out of your norm and being forced to kind of learn and adapt to the unknown and deal with it is super valuable.

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At the end, yeah. Yeah. So not to be cheesy by any means, but like from a mindset standpoint, from a psychological skills standpoint, from an approach to life standpoint, what are the things that to be a SEAL, to be a great operator in whatever you're doing, like what are some of those skills that you've found to be necessary to do well as a SEAL? And then also how they translate, the ones that translate into business. Yeah. I mean, that's such a, in a way that's a loaded question because it's, I think it's the same things that it takes to do anything you want to do really passionately,

right? If you really want to make something happen it's the same steps the same i think general pieces right like there's the seal teams getting into the seal teams obviously the buds training is is one of the hardest trainings in the world for a military and sas just came alive yeah yeah they did you know they just came alive green beret just came alive. Yeah, they did. They just came alive. Green Beret just came alive, didn't they? Yeah. They just said, what? Yeah. But I'm telling you, it's one of the hardest aspects about it is the water and the cold that you deal with. Constant water, constant wet, constant cold. You'll see people who are extremely competent athletes, very versed in wilderness. They've done a lot of other things, but that the idea of water and cold

and dealing with that and the way we have to deal with it is it will break people and, and they won't make it. Okay. So let me deconstruct what I hear relative to what I've seen in high-performing sport and business is that when the purpose is clear. Yeah. Okay. You got to check that one. Yeah. Right. Like you're going to wash out as soon as it gets really hard. You might be able to hang in for a little bit during adversity, but you're going to get deeply checked in this cold, adverse, wet environment that you are purposely manufacturing to see if they have the inner stuff to be able to manage through it. So the deepest anchor you can drop is purpose.

Yeah. Okay. A second deep anchor based on your, where we've been is optimism. Yes. Okay. And if you, and that, if that's built on hardiness, you really got something. So there's like purpose, hardiness, and the ability, the mental skill to say, hold on, stay in it. I'm okay. Let's go. It's going to, it's going to open up here. We're okay. This is what it takes. Right? So there's that kind of triangle there.

And then the thing that I think gets missed about elite sport as the translation of business, which I want to talk to you about in a minute, from SEALs, from operators and sport to business. I want to get that crosswalk together. The greatest athletes, the greatest teams, purposely design their days to get right into the cold, wet adversity of the whole thing. They purposely design their days to publicly do that every day. So we don't see practice on Wednesday in the NFL. We don't see practice on Thursday.

What we see, from the fans perspective is we see Sunday, but we miss that Monday, Tuesday is a day off Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday are purposely designed to get to that cold wet that you're talking about that really uncomfortable. Do I play it safe and small? Do I retreat or do I step into that place? That's difficult, but that's a But that's also an individual decision to go there and do that on a daily basis, right? Because you can pull back. And as you get really good in a sport or business or SEAL teams, you learn how to game a system and you can run at 80%. And it looks like you're doing 100. That's right. Right. Like, so that's the reality is survival, by the way yeah sometimes yeah but yeah it might be yeah because you're you're nursing something right yeah and and and there might be reasons for that but the reality is that that in the SEAL teams

like in and that's what Buds is doing a lot of times is just trying to see who are the people dropping back into that zone and then are they going to ramp back up into 100% and keep putting out? And I think it's, I mean, when you mentioned the idea of what it takes, right, that the exposure to something, so that purpose is there, you have a reason for doing something and it could be a myriad of reasons, right? There's many reasons why people join the SEAL teams, but the reality is that they're joining the SEAL teams and it's strong is that they're joining the SEAL teams and it's strong enough to carry them through the end. Most of the SEAL teams of making it to the actual team

is just willpower. I mean, BUDS training in the long run, it's simple in the fact that if you do what they say, if you do what the instructors say, they give you the standard, they give you what you're supposed to accomplish. And if you just knock it out and you suck up the pain and make it happen, you're, you're good. And if you don't, you deal with the consequence and then you go back and try again and you make it

happen the next time. So you adapt and you adjust quickly. And some of those pieces like that, that adaptation is what's important in those moments is how quickly can you keep adjusting to the adversity to overcome it and just get past it. I mean, there's, there's days where you're in buds training and seal training or in any kind of adversity or anyone who's doing something really hard or trying to do something that's really big that makes it hard is that they, I mean, you have to just take the next step. You have to just say that this pain is going to end at some point. Like that's the optimism, the realistic optimism. You aren't trying to convince yourself you aren't struggling. What you're trying to convince yourself is that the struggling is fine. It's part of the process and it'll end sometime because you're not going to be struggling as much anymore. It's just the next step.

Why do we have a suicide problem? People with high purpose, they've got hardiness about them, they've demonstrated it, and they've got the ability to see what could be good. Why do we have... I don't know. I mean, that's a huge question. That's one that we ask ourselves a lot. I mean, ex-military guys who we see things happening within the military ranks yeah the veterans that are that commit suicide or even active and it is very

confusing sometimes i mean i i mean i have random theories that zero you know i'm not a psychologist i don't have a background in it but you know some things I think right now, which is scary to me is how sensitive I feel we're becoming as a, just in societies around the world, but also our society, but, and we're almost looking outside to find how people are hurting us. Like we're looking for how are we being hurt, disrespected, stepped on, crushed, and there's almost a sensitivity. And if you're thinking about that constantly and looking for how you're being abused in some way,

then you're gonna see it everywhere at some point. And so I feel like maybe there's something there that happens to some individuals. It could be a very small percentage, maybe a large percentage, but maybe there's there, they have high purpose. They have things going, they have the skills, they have the talent, but all they're seeing are roadblocks. All they're seeing is abuse coming from places. And then, and they stop figuring out how to take that next step they stop figuring out how to think this is going to end at some point and i'm going to be past it and i'm going to have learned or adapted or or figured out or change direction you know i one of my

favorite uncles committed suicide and essentially it just it just got too hard for him. Like, I mean, it breaks my heart even talking about it now and the wake of pain that is left behind is incredible as well. But think about the level of pain that people feel. I mean, I just want to speak right into people right now that are struggling, you know, really suffering right now is, um, this resilient shepherd idea is coming alive in a different way based on this conversation, because, um, nobody does this world alone. And sometimes we feel really lonely, even in a crowded place or even an intimate gathering and, um, connecting with people you know

like you know and there's lots of ways there's a 1-800 numbers there's 988 you know it's a suicide hotline there's like and but even telling some friends like i'm really struggling no no and i and you just see me i'm really struggling i think, I mean, that's a big one right there. Because what you're talking about is connectedness, which again, going back to the Resilience Shepherd, that's that fourth characteristic that I found truly important. And that connectedness is what helped the Resilience Shepherd affect others around them, right? Because they just had a general friendliness. It wasn't like they were out having beers with them every night and were best friends. They were just like, it was an at work thing. They just tended to just kind of know people, just say hello, ask them questions. People

just kind of generally felt like, yeah, yeah, they're a friend. And I'd ask lots of questions around what does friend mean? What kind of friend? And it literally was, they just kind of just saw them. They didn't even know why that they were just a friendly person and they were a friend. And even in a couple of teams that had an outlier, an individual that felt like they just did not belong in any way, shape or form, that was the one person that he said, yeah, but they're friendly and they're the friend and I can talk to them. And so it's that connectedness is critical and it doesn't take a lot. And that's what's interesting about those characteristics. Even something like connectedness is they're all trainable. They're all things we can do.

There's things that we can learn. There's things that we can do very easily every day to make a change in the environment around us, the team. And I think that connectedness sometimes with the veteran population, that's what gets lost. And they don't know how to reestablish that in their new environment sometimes. And they feel like the team is gone. That big purpose is gone. And then they start spiraling down and there isn't the right person around them to keep them in the right place. Oh, look at that. That's full circle to resilient shepherd. And it's not lost on me that, you know, you are one of the toughest motherfuckers I know. Like, and I say that out of all respect. And you say, I say that because you've been through some really tough things and you've

led men of men, you know, you've led operators that have done things that are traumatic for most humans. And maybe you've experienced trauma yourself and certainly some of your men have and people. And I think it's really cool that you're saying now we struggle, humans struggle. Yeah. You know, and you know, you don't have to give any details about it but how have you struggled uh i mean definitely losing people losing people who maybe a few have been to suicide who you never would have thought that would be the person that would do that right um and there might be exacerbating things like cte and other issues that we experience in inside the job inside the seal teams teams that are real.

You know, there are things you can't diagnose. You don't know until it's too late. But the reality is that there's like that's one issue is that sometimes feeling like, you know, if I was there, maybe I could have done something. Even though, you know, that's probably not the case. But the reality is it's just the feeling like that team connection that you should have been there, you could have been there, you wanted to be there. And so that's a hard one sometimes because they're close friends. I mean, a lot of times in the SEAL teams, in that world, we spend more times with our teammates than we do our families. And we know each other in ways that

families would never even know us. And so when you lose that and you lose that connection, you lose that friend, it's hard. 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. And that's why I've built intentional routines into the way that I close my day. And Cozy Earth has become a new part of that. Their bedding, it's incredibly soft, like next level soft. And what surprised me the most is how much it actually helps regulate temperature. I tend to run warm at night and these sheets have helped me sleep cooler and more consistently, which has made

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And maybe 99%, 95% of the population would say, oh, that would be traumatic for me, but it doesn't mean it has to be. Right. And it's also like the training thing, right? Like, I mean. The inoculation to those. Yeah. It's like thinking about the big wave surfer, like there's no way I'd surf a 60 foot wave,

but they've built into that. Yeah. They surf the six inch wave, six foot wave, 16 foot wave. And so for them, it's not traumatic. For me, it would be traumatic. Yeah. So why do you think it is that if I had just a handful of people to be in a foxhole, I would want you in the foxhole? I appreciate that. Yeah. So what do you think it is about you that I imagine I'm not the only person in your life that feels that way? I hope not.

Yeah. If there was others. Yeah. Yeah. So what do you think it is about you that that brings that forward? I don't know. I have been told that I tend to remain calm. Yeah.

I sometimes don't think I am, but I think people around me feel I'm pretty calm for the situation. Yeah. And level headed. sometimes I don't think I am, but I think people around me feel I'm pretty calm for the situation and level-headed. I think if I were to try to judge myself, I would say those are probably two of the things that I try to do the most is this idea of consistency. I try to be consistent. I try not to be different people all over the place, you know, like someone different with my family and someone different with my friends and someone different with my teammates. It's like, I'm pretty much the same person with everyone. I'm, I'm the honesty is the same, you know, the actions are basically the same. And I think in general, I'm, I can remain fairly calm and I try to work on that

and see if when things are going wrong, I try not to lose it. I think there's three things that you do really well. Just to sum this kind of deep trust up. Foxhole is about deep trust, right? Yes. Your ability is, you've got a range of experiences. And this is for everyone that's trying to build trust for other people or in a team. So your logic and ability, you've got range there.

And so check the box on ability and logic as one variable, meaning it makes sense, the choices you make, and you've got the skills to back it up. And the range piece is that you've got lots of reference points to be able to, for me, to go,

yeah, I bet he's seen a lot. I bet he knows a lot. And his logic seems to make sense to me right now, and I bet he's got the ability to back it up. Okay, so that's one vertical. The second is benevolence is that you have a way about you where you're like, I'm not in it just for me, dude. I see you too, Mike. And so I want you to win. I want us to win together, but we're in this together. So there's a benevolence that it's not just about your needs being met. It's about mine, you know, equally and, or maybe more, but my needs are going to be met as well. And the third is authenticity. Like you show up consistently across conditions. And so if you get those three things, right, I think you got that trust triangle in a really powerful place where people are like, oh yeah, I'll follow.

Yeah. Okay. You know, because of those three things. So if you're trying to build trust for other people, those I think are, are critically important. And if, if your trust is fractured by somebody, I bet it's one of those three that start to get shaky. Like I don't get your logic and I don't think you have the chops to back it up. That's one or i don't know she's all in she's in it for herself like it's only for her gains or like his game whatever not like i don't matter or they're different they show up in one environment and they're like this and another environment they're totally different you just it's one of those three usually yeah i agree no i i totally agree with that yeah it's probably pretty funny because i think i've shaken my wife's trust a little bit because i've gotten her into some situations which she probably didn't want to be in.

You can't be taking your wife to the back country of Patagonia. How long were you out there for? That was nine, ten days. But massive snowstorms hit us. She was walking across, you know, a ridgeline. You know, not super narrow, but it was good. It was like maybe 10 foot wide, but we were being hit by like 70, 80 knot Gus. And she was blowing by me at one point,

I grabbed her and sat her down and I felt her shoulders shaking. Cause she was crying like, what the hell am I doing out here? And I was telling her, I told you it's going to be fine. It'll be good. Let's go. You know, is that how you manage it? Yeah. Yeah. So, okay. So in that moment, 70 foot Gus sheer on on both sides you're kind of tight roping a little bit i mean i'm dramatizing a little bit but it's up there it's enough to be yeah enough to be a thing and you you you felt that she was rattled yes physically rattled emotionally rattled and then what do you do in that moment i just stay level and just wait you got down to her knees yeah you got on well I held her in the wind and braced her as she, as she was down on the floor. And now I sat her down

and I braced her and shielded her. And, and we just talked, I just said, okay, we got this. It'll be all right. Let's, let's just keep moving. And you just focus on the next step again. That's just like the bloodstain, right? You just, what are we doing right now? Where's, where's the next point we're going to go? And I just said, let's just get to right there and we moved you know 10 feet to that spot and the next gust starts hitting and i just sat her down and held her and we just moved the next spot the next spot and then she's in a rhythm she's in a routine she knows where we're going and she just starts cruising right and and a lot of times i think that's that's what's worked in some of the events i've put on as well

with certain athletes that were having a really hard time. I was doing one recently where an athlete actually had a fear of water. They said they couldn't swim. They said they were okay. They actually had a phobia of water, and we were in an environment where we were getting in and out of water in very dark places and sometimes tight, and they were locking up like they were they were actually shaking like not able to keep eye contact and not able to speak

and so like a real phobic reaction and and it was really just a quick plan a couple options gave them the choice and we started a routine of just working through it. And by the end of a few days, that athlete was swimming a quarter mile on their own, making the choice to go into water when they had never done that in their life before. So it was a, it was an interesting process of just stick to the mission, stick to the focus, stick to the next, the next piece and just keep chipping away at that. And it starts softening the fear and the big issue and you start seeing that it's manageable. That's a great example of being a shepherd, a resilient shepherd, helping somebody adjust and

adapt to deep fear, call it adversity, but when someone's terrified. So one of the things that probably helps is that there's buy-in early. You get buy-in or you use imagination to imagine what it could be like later. Yes. I think that's critical for any resilience, for a team or for an individual, right? If you can see that there's a light at the end of the tunnel, if you can see that there's something that can happen or even imagine it, if you can see that there's something that can happen or even imagine it, then you can start getting there. Okay. Do you get loud and demonstrative? No. Let's go back to on the hilltop. Very rarely. There's a time you might, again, there's this idea of stress communications,

right? That's where I was getting to. Yeah. It depends on what's happening. You like, you start soft. That's why, you know, a fighter aircraft have a voice and it's more of a soft voice. It's usually not screaming and yelling at you because, because you want to start soft. You don't want to create panic. You're trying to create calm, enough calm to, to think like, like we were saying before that you want enough emotion, urgency not desperate right right and so so you're trying to talk in that mode but if they're not clicking and this is the same thing in combat a lot of times it's you make a connection it's eyes first if that's not happening you go over and you might have to make a physical physical connection touch a shoulder with eyes and then say what you're trying to do until it clicks so it sinks sinks in. And if that doesn't work, then you might ramp up the emotion

in the way I would do it personally. And that's what I tell some coaches too when I'm working with them with teams is make the emotion basically a way of creating a switch, getting the attention, and then give the information calmly. So you may yell like, hey, listen to me. And then you come out with a nice calm input. Yeah, there's the art. So you've got four levers that you're using, and the last being the

modulation of your voice. So I first learned this in, it was actually, we're doing some work with pilots. I was doing work with pilots and they were talking about the protocol if a plane's going down. Yep. And there's some assumptions that they can model about what happens for people when a plane is going down. And so I'll pick up the story right where the crash has happened and they need to get people off or there's an emergency to get people off.

Is it people bias or they default to friendliness or frantic? Okay. So they become passive or they become crazy, like fear-based and just trying to get, get themselves out and nobody else who cares, you know? And so when people are biasing towards friendliness and like, no, go ahead, you go when the plane is flipping burning. Right. No, no, go ahead. You know, no, that's OK. You too. Go ahead. That the flight attendants will raise their voice, sir. You know, and they'll tell you like they'll come over the top.

Get out now. Put your bag down. You know, and they'll just like get really aggressive in that moment. So they're using their voice in a trained way. Right. But I like what you did is come up and then kind of get right in and smooth. Yeah. So the information may have to be direct and hard, but it's, and it's, again, it's short and sweet communication. It has to be very clear and concise, simple direction, especially when people are in high stress, you don't, you don't say a lot. And a lot of times in some of those environments, depending on what's going on, like even that, even that individual that was going through the swimming issue though,

or the water issue, there wasn't a lot of accolades and, you know, support in that way, because it's, you know, sometimes that could be distracting and and in in for some individuals it might even be embarrassing it might make them feel little or small it's just really about this is what we got going on good it's working let's keep moving and then so not not not too much squishiness let's say around it sometimes because that may not be beneficial either it's just extra noise. So clear, concise, a couple inputs of success, like we're, yes, we're moving, it's working, this is happening, you know, and then, and then just keep focusing on the mission and what's next, the pieces. Finding Mastery is brought to you by iRestore. When it comes to my health, I try to approach things with a proactive mindset. It's

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We had Donnie Ecker on, which was the MLB coach of the year recently. And he's, he had a concept called 10 seconds of clarity. And so yeah, 10 seconds to make, you know, to get really clear when I was doing a bunch of work in MMA and heavyweight boxing and MMA fighting is that between rounds of 60 seconds. And so we, I would, I would have scripted with the athlete and myself in the corner. We do go 20, 20, 20. So the first 20 seconds, there was no information. It was just breathing. It was down regulation. So that first 20 is just that the second 20 is gathering information and the third 20. So this, so now we're asking them him, uh, would you see, would you feel, would you experience, right? Which was a question mark for some coaches. Like,

do we really want to, you know, we just got to tell them. So there was a call that the coach would make either turn that 20 seconds off or not. And if you got, if you value the information that the doer is experiencing, then you're going to ask. And I think that's mastery as part of coaching. And then the last 20 was clear directive, right? And so it was like, it was now, it wasn't not an alpha thing, but it was a very clear external voice about this is what we're going to go do. This is what you're going to go do. Yeah. Mission. Well, it's, this is the one thing you need to correct. It's a focus. It's a, it's a, it's, this is the one thing you need to correct. Yeah. It's a focus. It's a, it's a, it's, it's, it makes it simple for them to know, to go out and handle that one thing and, and the mission will get better. That's, that's awesome. When you're out as an operator or when

you were out as an operator and you're in a hostile territory and, or you're in some sort of some mission strike that, and you're with people that you really know, these are your teammates. How much communication during operations would take place? A lot. So how would you communicate? We communicate, again, it depends on the situation. There's a lot of variables going on, but if you can, you're communicating by voice. We do use hand signals. We know each other, hopefully enough. We've done so much with each other. We can just watch each other's bodies and facial expressions, and we know a lot there.

We just understand what's happening by movements and how they're moving and what they're doing. And then there's radio. There's a lot of options, but usually everything has got a couple layers. So when you're communicating, this is an interesting thing in sport that I've been working with a lot of the teams and the coaches and some of these groups is trying to get this idea of communication across because a lot of it is not as clean, as concise as it can be, and it's not necessarily backed up so let's say on a rugby pitch their information may be coming in from the coach but only makes it to one or two guys deep because they're not spreading it across the field or they're maybe yelling it and someone's not really hearing it because they're not trained

to listen for certain things or they're not training themselves to listen for it, to really say, like, I hear that, I react to it. And there's no hand signal or something else that's like saying, this is now something I can not only hear or I know something's going on, it catches my attention, but I see a hand signal, now I can do something. sports could benefit from that part of the military is that this idea of backing up communications with something else right in the for the worst case scenario because if guns are going off and all this stuff you could yell as much as you want you're probably not going to hear anything so you yell and you're giving hand signals and people are looking for both those things we're looking for the hand signals and they're listening for commands. And then, and we react off of that. I was working with one team, world-class one at the highest level. And it was crazy on the radios.

Great, great. Too much. And it was great for the head coach. So the way the head coach would process things is more information, the better I'll get to the signal. Terrible for everybody else because it was the chatter was incredible. So it's a, it's a dilemma. Like what is the right model in that scenario is like help the head coach who's going to make the calls, you know, be in his best

scenario, right? More information, more information, more information. And again, I'll get out the noise, you know, and then what would happen is what people would say, no, this is signal. I mean, this is important. They would get louder and louder and louder and he's ignoring and gating it out or saying no no no and but everybody else was like i don't know i've got my i've had two dogs i think you'll appreciate this and this is like in my 20s and um one was a shepherd oh that's funny yeah about that and then you're not gonna like like how the story goes though. This theme just keeps rolling. And the other was a golden retriever and the golden is exactly what you would imagine. Kind of just kind of cruising, you know, we, this was a evening walk. I lived a couple of blocks from the beach and every night I take the two dogs out and the shepherds kind of

like got a thing. Like she was like, I don't know, like looking like a hunter type of shepherd. Right. And like, like really on, on, on high alert, the golden is like, and when another dog would come around, the shepherd would get pissed and like, stay back. Like, this is my, this is my guy. This is my little tribe here. And so there's a lot of psychology in here probably about me that, you know, like, and so the shepherd would get really pissed.

And so it would, it would be loud and aggressive towards the other dog. And when that dog would leave, it would turn on the golden. The golden's like, what the fuck? Like, we're just chilling. What, what are we doing? We're going to the beach. And the shepherd would just like, you know, hair up crazy. Like now I got to break my two dogs up.

This was almost every night occurrence and so the long story to get to a short point is that um the coaches on this team that i'm referring to they were like the two dogs turning on each other and then me i guess as the head coach of those two was like oh okay i see what's going on no problem but it was just it was a weird scenario how would you have adjusted if you were if you were part of that team? Well, we actually adjust all the time like that because it can happen. As a SEALs operator or as a? In the SEAL teams, we would adjust all the time like that because there are times where

people start using too much communication on radios, let's say, for example, because if it's too much, then when there's really an emergent issue coming out, then you're, then they're blocked because they're, they, they can't get through. They can't get that information through. So it's really about need to know information. It's what's critical for something to happen. It's, and it's, it's short and concise. Like I said, our calls and stuff are usually very clean, very simple, very calm.

Get the information out and it's done. And it's all, you only send the information if it's needed. You don't just send lots of stuff. And when it comes to radios, there is a thing that people like to do. And you see it a lot. They just start like talking on them a lot and throwing out stuff and making jokes

and doing stuff and just saying things and talking for a really long time on it and explaining these big, large concepts. You know, it's like, get it in your head exactly what needs to be said. And then you come on the radio and you knock it out and you get off because someone else may need it for something more important. And that mentality I think is, is important in some communications, business meetings, or this is what they don't do well. A lot of times they'll

talk around circles for hours and never get to the actual point of the meeting. Right. And then everyone's gone and the meeting never accomplishes anything because there isn't a concise way of approaching, of laying something on the table and dealing with it. So because people are often afraid to be the one that is calling somebody else out. Yes. And making it too personal. Right. And so if you don't get through the right type of storming, you can get stuck in storming.

And that is really agitating and not healthy for a lot of reasons. But if you know how to storm, you know how to confront, you address a situation and you move through it with speed. But not confronting or getting stuck in confrontation is problematic. Yeah. But that's the psychological safety aspect that we're talking about is people have to have comfort and the ability to just bring up an issue, bring it up very cleanly and simply and bluntly, and the team not take it all personal and start attacking and start

defending. And basically, we're bringing up something that needs to be solved and everyone can look at as something. How do you get ahead of that with teams? What do you do to get ahead of it? I mean, the biggest one is having hard conversations, bringing stuff up,

getting past a lot of those things that are sitting in the background, get them out of the way. And it takes practice. It takes practice of, of debriefing is another big one. This is inside the Olympic teams. There's a small team of us that have created this uh basically a coach the coaches program is called apollo and

we work with summer and winter um and and we we teach coaches some material but then we also go in the field and coach them in the field and watch how things are functioning and and because most of the time all of us you know someone tells us you should be doing this or this is a good idea to do in your environment. We're like, oh yeah, I do that. I do that every day until we're actually being coached and watched and just like an athlete.

But that is one of the big things is trying to get coaches to debrief more and debrief, like you said before, how are you feeling in the boxing ring? What are you seeing? Because if you as a coach can't make the connections on what's happening with them in the moment, they may not be seeing or feeling the right things, or you may not be seeing the right things. So you got to, you know, tie those two things together, create that linkage so you can know how to coach

the next step. So when you do a debrief, are there two debriefs that you do like a hot wash and a longer debrief is there always just one debrief basically basically that it's a so debriefing obviously in the seal teams or maybe not obviously but debriefing the seal teams is critical it's probably one of the most important things we do. I mean, we may have a mission. We come back. We actually get our team gear ready to go again because we could get called right back out for some reason. So our mission gear is ready to go again. Then we go in and have a debrief. Then we go have food, sleep, showers, take care of ourselves.

So the individual comes after team needs and the debrief, which is team learning. Then me as an individual, my needs come last, right? And it's critical because debriefing then is a short mission, big rocks. Like what are the big things that would have changed this mission, made it better, made it worse? You know, like what are the things we need to remember? Like what did we do really well and what didn't go so well and this isn't a thousand things in every little detail it's really like what are the one two or three things that would have changed drastically the environment and sometimes you're talking about if you're on a true high performing team you're

saying hey guys i got lucky yeah or hey everyone i got really lucky so how do we do it again yeah right that's the part that you're like hey we got lucky with this but is that something we need to do yeah you know yeah and so that's awesome so we do like today after this podcast uh me and my team will do a hot wash yep and we'll we'll hot wash on how we did on our prep what went well what we want to work on and it's those two things you, and would you add anything to that? What do you want to work on? Yeah. And we'll really like, what's the most important lesson learned? Like, what are you taking forward? Like, what are you doing with that? You know, because you can say,

yeah, this, this is, this is great. And this wasn't so good, but then, so what's next? Got it. What's the next step? Because if you don't bring it forward. Yeah. Okay. How does that change something? How does that adjust? How does that, like, what's that mean for us going forward and on how we're operating? Yeah, that's awesome. So really quickly, thank you for your insight and your time. And I know we're, you know, I want to honor your time, but I could spend a long time talking shop here with you. Um, the crosswalk betweens and or sport,

because you've gone from SEALs to sport and helping coaches and athletes, and just be clear, it's elite level on both of those. And then where are you finding the crosswalk into business falls down or is muddled? And where's that crosswalk interestingly stand up yeah well i think to me this idea of that performance piece is it it matters everywhere but i and i'm real careful on trying to go anywhere sport or anywhere and uh and say that this this is the way the seal teams work you should do it this way yeah because it's a very different mission it's a different it's a different need i mean just getting into the seal teams is a whole different process than being hired or even in most sports right like it's it's just not going to be the same so you know it

always sounds good it sounds cool but the reality is some things just can't happen the same way so so it's really more valuable for perspective saying that if things can happen a certain way in this environment, then we know you can find your solutions in your environment. So it's more about helping the same way that... So I would say it's more about helping teams and businesses, corporations. It's giving them information and then helping them understand how to adapt it for their environment, helping them understand that to adapt it for their environment, helping them understand that they have the solutions there. And really the biggest thing that I try to do when I'm working with companies or with teams is trying to show them how to find solutions on their

own. You know, consultants are sometimes trying to build a business model of being there forever and, you know, maintaining a good income stream. And I kind of have a build a business model of being there forever and, you know, maintaining a good income stream. And I kind of have a really crappy business model where I try to get them to not need me as fast as possible, right? Like you can do this on your own. Let's teach you some ways of getting there and then I'll see you later. And if you need me, sure, call me, but let's see if you can just build the capacity and the capability to be your own resilient team and just manage this on your own because it's there. It's just sometimes the breakdown of the connectedness and the communication, like that's what's holding us back. Okay. How important is mindset in life?

I think it's critical. I mean, when I have my bad days, it's probably because my mindset's off that day. I came into it with the wrong approach, the wrong thing bouncing around in my skull. And then how do you help people? Like, where do you start with people that, because you understand psychology well, like how do you help people with enhancing or building their mindset? Oh, I think that's, I mean, really it's just, I personally, so again, you're asking me how I help them somehow, but I'm really just trying to figure out what they need, what they feel like they need. I create a relationship with them. I try to understand what's going on there. And then I just try to find outside perspectives and

solutions that will help them see things differently in their own world. And again, but I am okay with laying it on the table and telling them I think this is wrong and this is right. Or I think these things are wrong for these reasons and ask them to try to tell me why it's wrong that I'm saying that. But, but I think the idea is that you have to sometimes help people with solutions because that's why they are asking for help. Sometimes they, they've probably gone through their head and try to figure it out on their own. And you can't just like sit back and try to let them find it out completely on their own. So I'm, you know, I kind of mix around depending on what, what we're doing and who I'm working with on what they actually need. Sometimes it's just the right questions and sometimes it might be a couple of blunt answers.

Take a few minutes to talk about Synaptic. This is a company that you co-founded. So this is a project that I watched you build this for the last decade, let's call it. Yeah, it has been 10 years actually. We just had the anniversary. Yeah. And so it's awesome i used it up at the seattle seahawks and like we so just take a quick moment to talk about synaptic simple if your camera lenses are foggy then the only thing you do is do surgery or something or lasik or get glasses to make it better they're just weaker yeah so the hardware let's let's let's let's call it hardware which may not be the exact term that some optometrists and ophthalmologists we use but let's say the hardware your eyeball is is got a problem and you need corrective lenses or you need lasik or

or you know like that's the only way you're going to solve that or contact lenses right what we are working on is how your system your system, the brain is processing the information it is getting. So whether you wear glasses or not wear glasses, you have great vision or not, not great vision, then that's what we're helping you is to work with that information better. I saw it work in sport really well. Yeah. And, um, you can make a case for folks that are not in sport to train their eyes as a 40 year old, three year old. Absolutely. We're actually, um, there's a lot of work in the medical realm for rehabilitation, but it's a, there's also, we're seeing it having high value in dementia. We're seeing it with

Parkinson's, with stroke, concussion recovery, physical therapy. Some of our devices are used there because what we're doing is we're training the sensory system a lot of times. So sometimes when we're using some of our tools, it's re-weighting from your eyes to proprioception and other senses to help you manage yourself in the world. So anyone can benefit from vision training and also sensory training because it's making your balance, your movement, your ability to process information. So what you're seeing gets processed faster and more clearly and more accurately. So your eye-hand coordination. It's been a couple of years since I've done anything in synaptic. I got to up my game.

And you've also got strobes. Yes. And the strobes are a great tool. Yeah, they're awesome. Okay. Yeah. got strobes yes and the strobes are a great tool yeah they're they're awesome okay yeah so the strobes what what we'll do is i'll i'll i'll talk to our people and put and we'll put a special on because the strobes is like a very easy tool that anyone can use and it's it's basically resistance

training for your vision system by a little funny mastery little yeah a little benefit yeah yeah we'll do some kind of discount that they can get on your site that's what's up okay thank you i i i cherish the time that we have um outside of when the mics are on and this felt awesome to be able to share this with with uh our community so thank you for investing and where can people are going to have questions and where can they find you where do you want to point them to so there's's performanceactivation.com. That's my consulting business. And that's where I do a lot of the performance work and I've done product development stuff and worked with a lot of good organizations through that. And then there's also synaptic.com, which is, that's the vision and sensory. But those are the two best places to reach out and talk and get in conversation.

Performance activation for you. Performance activation for me. Like if you're looking for vision training. So you can get everything from performanceactivation.com. Yes. Awesome. Pete, appreciate you. Love that you're in this world.

You make it a better place. And thank you for being a resilient shepherd to so many. I appreciate our friendship. I appreciate that, man. Oh, it's great to see you, Mike. It's always fun to sit down and I mean, this time it's just with microphones, but in the past, it's always, yeah, just always a good time. Appreciate you. Yeah, you too. 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. We really appreciate you being part of this community. And if you're enjoying the show,

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