Good Life Project - Mark Divine: From Navy SEAL to Warrior Monk

Episode Date: October 2, 2017

Mark Divine never thought he'd be a Navy SEAL. He was being groomed for the family business. Then, a chance walk by a recruiting office turned his world upside down and offered him a path to claim his warrior calling. Mark graduated as honor-man of his SEAL BUD/s class 170. He served nine years on Active Duty and 11 years as a Reserve SEAL before retiring as Commander in 2011 and stepping into the world of entrepreneurship. He co-founded Coronado Brewing Company, launched the acclaimed SEALFIT program that provides transformational personal and team training experiences, and developed the Unbeatable Mind training, an integrated warrior development academy for the mind, body and spirit. Divine is also a New York Times bestselling author of The Way of the SEAL, 8 Weeks to SEALFit, Unbeatable Mind and Kokoro Yoga. And, he hosts the Unbeatable Mind podcast.Today's episode takes us on a deep dive into his story and also his lifelong commitment to developing not just the physical body, but the mind and spirit as conduits to strength, achievement and resilience. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Because I started to experience some intuitive moments, and in those moments I could see and feel myself as a different type of person. And when I tried to put a word to it, it just kept coming back to warrior. Today's guest, Mark Devine, is not who I thought he'd be. When I was out in Encinitas in Southern California, I had a chance to swing by his SealFit exercise location, about a 20,000 square foot location, where he trained some pretty high-level people.

And as we found sort of a yoga studio off on the side, which is where we recorded this, actually, so you hear a little bit of a different microphone quality. That explains why you probably a little bit of an echo or slightly different. We sat down and I found a guy who had started in life in sort of a preordained path. He was kind of destined and expected to join the family business as generations before him had, and just, you know, continue on that way. He made a radical left turn that he didn't see coming, his family didn't see coming, and he decided to become a Navy SEAL. In a family where actually, you know, like their, the military path wasn't exactly looked upon as the way that, you know, you would move up in the world, he made a really radical departure.

And that profoundly changed his life. He rose up the ranks, became a commander and a very well-known person within the SEALs and also within the military. And during this whole time, he had actually started practicing martial arts and sitting Zen from a very young age in his 20s and developing a very deep exploration of mindset practices and stillness. And this informed a lot of what he was doing in the military. And it awakened him to the idea that beneath everything, beneath the ability to not just survive but thrive in the toughest environments in the world, some of the most extreme circumstances, it really all came down to mindset. He started codifying a lot of his ideas and integrating these completely different worlds into a methodology he calls Unbeatable Mind and a book by the same name.

And then training this methodology, not just to SEALs, but to elite military teams and to elite level athletes and people in the executive and corporate environment. So when I had a chance to sit down with him and really deconstruct where did all this come from, I was amazed to really see how he pulled disparate worlds and ideologies and philosophies together to create something truly impactful and unique. Really excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here.

It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch Series X is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum.

Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight Risk. We are in your location in Seal Fit in Encinitas, California, which is this sort of legendary facility. But this is where you are now.

I want to take a step back in time because you have a really fascinating journey. It seems like you're an athletic kid from what I've researched. You went to college and then you went to a little bit of finance, accounting. Was that like, what was behind that choice for you? I think frankly, what was behind that choice was lack of any other direction in my life at the time. And I grew up in a family that had a family business that's been around for over a hundred years. It was formed in like 1895 or something like that called Divine Brothers. And they make stuff, you know, like just stuff, big machines and whatnot. And, you know, what I now call background of

obviousness or boo, my background of obviousness that I was completely oblivious to, but other people, you would have easily picked it up, was that I was being groomed to be a business guy by my family. It was very, very subtle and it wasn't overt and they weren't even conscious of it, right? That was my family upbringing. And since I didn't have a lot of clarity as a young man about any other path, then I adopted that, which is actually pretty common, right? Pretty common. So at Colgate, I had a lot of friends who were just these rockstar brains, you know, 4.0 economics major type people. And they were all heading down to New York and getting jobs with, you know, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs and these types of places. And I thought that sounds pretty interesting. But I didn't have the GPA.

I tried, but I didn't get hired by Goldman or Morgan Stanley. But I did get hired by Coopers and Librand, which is now PricewaterhouseCoopers. And they're a pretty good company. And so they had a program. I don't know if they still do it. They had a program where they were taking liberal arts graduates who had no accounting background out of elite northeastern schools. Colgate being one of them, but they also drew from like Princeton and Harvard and Yale and Brown and Williams and places like that. And they would bring us together. And so all the big eight accounting firms at the time participated.

There's now only four of those big eight available, but Cooper's and Libran was one of them. There's a bigger four. Yeah, bigger four. There's a bigger four, exactly. And they sent us, or we had to simultaneously get in by our own merits to NYU Stern School of Business. So I had to apply and I was actually conditionally approved because of the job. My grades were like right on the edge, but I did really well at NYU. So we went to NYU to get a master's in science and accounting. 90% of us then waived that degree and transferred into the MBA program because we really wanted an MBA. So I ended up with an MBA in finance.

So the whole package was, hey, go down to New York City, get hired on with a really well-known firm, but you're going to be an auditor. And I was like, okay, well, I can suck that up for a few years. I can learn, you know, I don't even know what it was at the time. It turns out being an auditor was about the last thing I needed to be doing in my life. It was, it was ridiculously painful for me. Not the way you're wired, huh? No, it was not the way I was. I was a complete misfit in that, in that profession. And I think my bosses knew it too, you know, cause they didn't complain too much when I told them I was going to go be a Navy SEAL. And they're like, okay, don't let the door hit you in the ass, you know. But to be fair, it was a phenomenal experience because over a four-year period, you know,

I got my MBA in finance. I became a certified public accountant and I worked at, you know, 30 or 40 really neat clients, many in the financial service industry, many who don't exist, like Drexel Burnham Lambert and the Solomon Brothers and Payne Weber. None of them are around anymore. Big names back then. It was not what I was meant for. And, you know, I tell that story in my book, The Way of the Seal, how that process was really important for me to go do something that was so painful in terms of my professional

career that I had to like step back and say, what the hell am I doing? Yeah. I mean, it's funny because when people hear stories like that, I have a very past life as a big firm lawyer in New York also. And every once in a while, people ask me, well, do you regret it? And my answer is always no, because it was so critical in every decision I made after that. And it sounds like you would probably answer similarly. Yeah, definitely. It's the law of contrast, right? So I had this extreme experience that said, okay, that's what corporate life is like. And my friends who stayed, they did very well, but they lived that life day in, day out. They didn't find it as painful as I did.

Now, the reason that I found it painful, because I truly believe this is because I was built to be something different. I was built to be a warrior. I just didn't discover it until I was 23, 24 years old. And it was my Zen training. You know, I'd gotten into a martial art right when I went down to Manhattan, a place on 23rd street, Sado Karate, S-E-I-D-O, Grandmaster Tadashi Maknamura, who is an enlightened Zen master teaching zen through karate that's the way I look at him and so he got me to sit down on the zazen bench and to begin meditating at 21 years old what are they what a blessing right so he slowed me down and and got you know took me through the process which was difficult you know for me at that age to sit and meditate. But I really trusted him.

And so that process of turning in and looking at the being of Mark Devine as opposed to the doing of Mark Devine really is what allowed me to open up the space to be able to see that contrast, that, okay, this career I'm heading down, which is going to end up with me back at the family business is going to lead to some breakdown down the road because I did not feel a sense of passion. I didn't feel any sense of purpose toward it. I was just going through the motions because it looked good on paper and to society and the degrees and the MBAs. I mean, there was a lot of ego attached to it, but it wasn't my true self speaking. You know, it wasn't my Dharma my dharma, to use a Buddhist term. It was just me going through motions that were expected of me.

Yeah, it was sort of a reaction to the outside proclamation of this is how you shall live your life. Yeah, and my parents thought everything was great. My peers thought I was doing really well. And there was just all sorts of positive reinforcement coming externally. But internally, I was getting a lot of negative reinforcement. You know, I was finding it difficult to wake up every day and say, you know, get excited about going to work, you know. And so I would get up and work out instead and then go to work and just gut through until I could go to the gym at lunch and then finish up my day so I could go to the dojo,

right? It was interesting. But it was the moments of silence on the bench, and then we would do these weekends at the Zen Mountain Monastery in Woodstock. And the head monk there, his name is Dido. What an interesting guy, a former merchant mariner, covered with tattoos, changed smoke cigarettes, but he was this enlightened monk who was a fascinating guy. You can't tell from the outside looking in who's got the juice and who doesn't.

I learned that long ago. So, yeah, that, I mean, we could talk more about that later, but that was what really caused me to take a hard look at what I was doing and why, and then to ask better questions, such as, if not that, if this isn't it, you know, not just being a CPA, but if this isn't it, you know, not just being a CPA, but if business isn't it for me at this stage of my life, at least, then what? Obviously, I wasn't going to be a professional athlete because that ship had sailed. What else was there for me? And so instead of, I was wise enough to stop there. And instead of looking at career

possibilities to replace it, I started, I stepped back even further and said, well, what is it really that I'm passionate about? And what is the sense of how I can make an impact in the world? Right. And so at a young age, without even understanding and having never studied, you know, like spiritual traditions like yoga or Buddhism, I started to ask, what is my purpose in life? Why am I on this planet? Why did God put me on this planet? You know, was it just to be in commerce or do something different? Do you think you would have even had the inkling to go there had it not been for the Zazen training? I don't think so because everything was externally focused

up until that point, except for times that I would be in nature doing like a long hike in the Adirondacks, which is where I grew up, or, you know, long, I was drawn to endurance type activities. And so there were periods where I would love to hike alone, you know, through the beautiful mountains and get to the top of a mountain, just sit there. And that would be akin to like an absorption practice. And so in some of those moments, I think I fantasized about something different, but there was no structure to it. And the fantasy quickly evaporated and I went back into my role, my pre-apportioned role as a business guy in the divine family. So it was the process of sitting daily on that bench and taking it seriously, you know, minimum 20 minutes a day, 45 minutes on Thursdays at our meditation class,

and then at least two weekends a year where we meditated, you know, eight hours a day, and we did karate for eight hours a day. It was really fascinating. And so I can literally now look back and see a progressive process where my mind changed and my attitude changed. And I began to look at the world very differently. And including that is my role in the world and, you know, the what and why of things. And so it was that process, I think, that opened me up and propelled me in the direction that I went. So let's talk about that direction because you've got this background at this point. You're going through the process of awakening, discovery, realizing that this is not it,

and then asking the question, if not this, then what? So you have a universe of possibilities out there. So how do you go from the universe of possibilities to SEAL? The specific thing of being a Navy SEAL, I think everyone's path is going to be different. My path was pretty fascinating. I didn't know I wanted to be a SEAL or a military guy when I started this process. I had no real military upbringing. My dad briefly was in the army, but it was because he had a judge say, join the army or go to jail. So he wasn't... There fan of the army actually.

And so there was just no dialogue. And it was another one of those kind of unspoken things was business is the main thing. If you go into education, nah, you're not, you know, you're kind of off a beat. And if you go into the military, well, you do that if you got nothing else to do. That was a very kind of common upstate New York attitude, right? Business was, and commerce was the main thing, right? So I was, you know, had all those layers in me, so I didn't think of the military. Anyways, back to your question. So when I started to sit on the bench, and I had the first epiphany was that this notion that I am this cacophony of thoughts and these thoughts are leading me into this business world. To be able to separate the thinker from my sense of self was like the first door that I went through. And so then when I was able to sit on

the bench and begin to examine my thoughts and my thoughts were constantly of how I really am miserable and how I don't like what I'm doing. And I could, I could see the ego in there about, you know, the, the, the constant, you know, like little voices said, yeah, but I'm getting an MBA. Yeah. But I'm getting a CPA. Yeah, but I'm getting a CPA. Yeah, but I'm earning really good money. Yeah, but my parents want me to do this. Yeah, but so the yeah, buts and the what ifs started to have a pattern to them. And I could see that pattern.

And I realized that pattern wasn't me either. It was just kind of how my thoughts have organized my life and then showed up in this recurring pattern that led me to be a CPA and an MBA and, you know, all this kind of how my thoughts have organized my life and then showed up in this recurring pattern that led me to be a CPA and an MBA and all this kind of stuff. But it wasn't me. There was someone else in there. And so going through that first door and opening up that space was a huge liberation for me.

And I could have stopped there. I could have stopped there. But I had a sense because I was still uncertain of what to do, that if I asked better questions in those moments where that space had opened up, that I could get some insight. Because I started to experience some intuitive moments. And in those moments, I could see and feel myself as a different type of person. And when I tried to put a word to it, it just kept coming back to warrior. Right? Warrior and leader.

Those are the two themes. Were you surprised by the word warrior emerging? Yeah, because I was not a military guy. And I've just started my martial arts training, but I never really had any exposure to that. It wasn't something we talked about. It was surprising. And, but I was drawn to that. I was drawn to that warrior archetype. And I don't think it was an external thing. Yes, there was the karate, but I just started that. I was only a year into it. It was like a yellow belt when these insights started to happen in these moments of silence. I began to ask, well, what is that?

You know, what does it mean to be a warrior or a warrior leader? How could that be fulfilled in this world? And so, you know, I would just kind of meditate on that, like contemplation, you know what I mean? And get home from these sessions on Thursday night where I would do the long, deep sessions. A lot of these insights happened when I sat for longer than 20 minutes. So my daily practice was every morning I would get up and I would sit and then I would go for a run or something like that. And then I would go to work, right? And then at lunchtime I would go to the gym and then I would go to the dojo. Pretty much five days a week, if not six. But on Thursday nights I would stay at the dojo

and we would have a meditation class with Nakamura. A small group of us were religious about it, so to speak. And we would sit for 45 minutes, then have a little talk afterwards. It was phenomenal. And so it was usually, you know, late in those sessions that I would drop off into, you know, some sort of space that I lose sense of time and space, and I would have these insights like epiphanies. And so in one of these, I was asking,

and usually they were powerful when I would ask a question. Like you're planting a seed. Yeah, like planting a seed. So it's not unlike saying, starting a yoga class, set your intention for the class, and then maybe you cultivate that during the class in the moments of silence. Well, I think I was kind of instinctively doing that. I would be pondering something. And so one of the things I pondered was if warrior is a theme in my life, there's a lot of ways I could be a warrior.

I can be a warrior as a CPA, but what am I passionate about? Right? I've said that word a few times. What am I passionate about? Like what fires've said that word a few times. What am I passionate about? Like, what fires me up? What makes me feel like my hair's on fire? And, you know, what kept coming back to me was adventure. I loved adventure. I loved extreme activities, extreme physical challenges for some strange reason. Right? It's just kind of the way I'm built.

I love really challenging myself physically and mentally. I love being outdoors. I love really challenging myself physically and mentally. I love being outdoors. I love fitness. Not necessarily sports. Like I said, I was an endurance swimmer and I did triathlon and stuff, but I really liked the challenge of it as opposed to the competition of it. And so one day, and this is where synchronicity comes in. So I started to get really clear about what I was passionate about,

and I had this sense that I was meant to be a warrior and a leader, but I didn't really have any clue how to actualize that in the real world. One day, I was walking home from work, and I just took a different route than I normally take, and I stumbled across a Navy recruiting office. There was a poster outside. I wasn't thinking, I'm going to go across a Navy recruiting office and there was a poster outside. It wasn't, you know, I wasn't thinking I'm going to go to a Navy recruiter. I was just walking by and there it was and it was the poster that stopped me in my tracks and the poster had the words be

someone special written across the top and it had images of Navy SEALs doing their thing. Guys jumping out of airplanes and locking out of a submarine. And they had a little guy in a sniper hide that you could barely see. And I was just transfixed. I was like, whoa, what is that? Didn't even say the word SEAL on it. What is that? Right? That's cool. And so I went into the recruiter's office and I asked him, I said, oh, they're the Navy SEALs. You don't want to do that. They're a bunch of maniacs. But I was smitten right then.

That's it. The warrior leaders, athletic, adventurous, risk takers, extreme challenge. I had never heard of them. And so as I got into it, I was just, that was it. Once I started learning about who they were, there wasn't much information. This is 1987. We didn't have all the movies and stuff. But once I got into it, I was convinced that that was it.

So, you know, when I was ready, I was kind of shown the path, I think. If you're at a point in life when you're ready to lead with purpose, we can get you there. The University of Victoria's MBA in Sustainable Innovation is not like other MBA programs. It's for true changemakers who want to think differently and solve the world's most pressing challenges. From healthcare and the environment to energy, government, and technology, it's your path to meaningful leadership in all sectors. For details, visit uvic.ca slash future MBA. That's uvic.ca slash future MBA. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever.

It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations,

iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday, we've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun On January 24th Tell me how to fly this thing Mark Wahlberg

You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die Don't shoot him, we need him Y'all need a pilot? Flight risk So interesting how you plant the seed And then I've had so many conversations I'm sure you have also

Where the seed is planted And it's just many conversations. I'm sure you have also where the seed is planted and it's just kind of there and it's growing and it's opening. And there's this moment of serendipity, you know, and then you got to ask yourself, is that really like how serendipitous is that truly? Or is this, there's something, it's something happening here. Honestly, after all these years, I think it's something happening, right? You know, the world is so much more understandable, right? Than we can imagine. And the linkages between the physical and metaphysical are very real. Yeah. But they're subtle and we missed most of them, right? So these are, these are instances where I couldn't miss that. And in retrospect, when I look back,

I'm like, aha, yeah, that was, that was a moment of synchronicity or something happening where I was either being directed or that moment was kind of like set up for me. Now, I could have chosen to ignore it or I could have chosen to go into it. And I chose to go into that. And it was the right door to go through. What did it feel like when you walked through that door and showed up the first day? Because I guess the opening experience is really, it's the initial training. I had to go through officer candidate school first.

Okay. Yeah. So my path was, because I, it was, I still hadn't finished my MBA, nor had I passed my CPA and I was now a brown belt at the Sato School. So I'm not a quitter, right? And I looked at this and said, okay, I'm going to be a Navy SEAL, but I'm going to finish what I started. And so it was a little painful, but I committed. And it took me about 18 months, and I finished my MBA, and I got my CPA, and I got my black belt in karate at Sato. And all of –

And the whole time this thing is not letting go. No, it wasn't letting go. But I was actively training for it in my mind. So I didn't really need to shift my physical training much because SEALs, especially back then, they were looking for endurance athletes. And I just crushed their screening test standards. So they said, you know, you need to do a minimum of like 55 pushups in two minutes and 55 sit-ups in two minutes and swim, you know, a certain amount of 500 meters in a certain amount of time in the combat side stroke and run a certain amount of time with your boots on, you know, for a mile and a half. And you needed to be able to do 10 or 11 pull-ups, something like

that. Like these are, they call the physical screening test standards. And I, you know, I just blew those away, just blew them away. And so my scores are really good. I knew that I didn't have to do much, you know, much different in my physical training. But so I said, well, what's going to make the difference for me as the mental training, picking up where I had learned what I'd learned from Nakamura and to add visualization to it. And we didn't really do much work visualization in the Zen practice, but I had in my former career as a competitive swimmer at Colgate University.

I had a swim coach who was kind of on the cutting edge of sports psychology and had taught me to visualize my race. And I had some really interesting experiences with that. So every day when I would sit now, instead I would sit not just to meditate and contemplate about my life, I would sit and go through a process where I would take myself into a deep state of acceptance or readiness or whatever you want to call that, deep state of concentration. And then I would visualize myself going through SEAL training and just crushing it and dominating it and being healthy and being a good leader and all the, what I could imagine the type of person I needed to be, to be a Navy SEAL officer. So every day I practice it in my mind. That was really cool because about a year,

nine months is more accurate, about nine months into that process where I said, I'm going to be a Navy SEAL. And I begin, so I still had the, you know, working still that routine. I told you every day I got up and ran and then I go to work and then I go to gym and then I go to the dojo, still finishing up those three major goals that I had. But every morning I would practice in my mind being something else, becoming someone else. Nine months into that, I had this profound shift where it suddenly felt like my destiny. It felt like it wasn't a wish or a hope or a desire, but I had shifted over into this was an absolute guaranteed thing, that I had already won this in my heart and mind, and I just needed to continue the process of going through the actions, you know, in the world. And what's really cool about that is when that happened,

when that shift happened, I still hadn't gotten in. The Navy still hadn't said you're accepted. But about a week later, talk about another synchronous moment, a week later, my recruiter called me. He's like, Mark, congratulations. You got your billet to Officer Canada School with a guarantee to go to SEAL training afterwards. And I said, great. He goes, you don't understand how rare that is. Like there's only two people they're going to select this year from the civilian world. And so it's to this day, it's very, it's the most challenging path to get into the SEAL is to go from a civilian career in your mid twenties through Officer Canada School to SEAL training. But those guys tend to make exceptional officers

because they've got that real-world experience. The other path is through the Naval Academy or the Reserve Officer Training. And there's not that many SEAL officers to begin with. I think maybe 10 or 11 a year get through the program. So anyways, it was quite an honor, and yet I already knew it was going to happen. And then he calls and tells me, and so I was like, cool, there's another indicator that I'm on the right path. And then I, so I finished

up my MBA, CPA, and I got my black belt all literally in the mail, all the MBA and the CPA got in the mail, the certificates itself in October of 1989. And I took my black belt test at the end of October, became a first degree black belt. And then I was on a bus to Newport, Rhode Island for officer candidate school in November of 1989, checked into my SEAL training class 170 in April, March, the end of March of 1990. What I'll say is that when I checked in and stepped across the quarter deck, I had the sense that I had been there before and I'd never even been to California before.

But all that work of visualizing it and just living it in my mind had prepared me. So I had a great sense of confidence that I was ready for that. And you're, I'm placing your age now, you're at that point 26, 25? I was 25. I turned 26 in SEAL training.

Did you have any sense of how extraordinary that type of mental, spiritual, intellectual process was at that age, let alone any age? No. Do you now see how extraordinary it is? In fact, I'm very passionate about teaching it. Yeah. And our program, I don't want to jump too far ahead,

but I was so intrigued with that process because going through BUDS was easy for me. I tell a lot of people it was fun and easy. And out of my class of... BUDS just for this. BUDS is Basic Underwater Demolition Seal Training. It's the hardest military training on the planet, right? 185 very, very fit, very qualified men in my class classed up, started on that day with me.

19 of us graduated and I was the honor man of my class. And it wasn't because I was better than any one of them. It was all the mental training that I had done. And so, and I just took it for granted, but I give, you know, I give Mr. Nakamura and my swim coach a lot of credit for, for planting those tools inside of me, but I had to figure out how to work them and combine them and that was, I don't know where that came from. It was just dumb luck. Yeah. I mean, that's what I'm kind of blown away by because it's, it's extraordinary. You know, it's interesting. It's like you're wired in a way where somehow you gravitated towards wanting to learn and wanting to go deep into these processes. And then to also to commit to a daily mindset cultivation practice in your early 20s without some sort of, it's so unusual. Without having to go to a monastery.

Right, right. Especially with, you know, because it's based almost entirely on just being and breathing and creating space and having faith to a certain extent and a really long-term perspective and releasing expectations. Not the way your average 20-something is wired, let alone anybody at any point in life. Not to mention the incredible distraction of all that stuff. Work, school, CPA. Right, and being in New York City. Girls. Right, in your 20s.

Yeah, I mean, it's really, when you zoom the lens out and look at that, it's extraordinary. Yeah, I think I was disciplined. You know, I think I was disciplined. And I also believed, you know, I think that's the power of a mentor. Like with Nakamura and even my swim coach, these guys were really good people. They were people that I wanted to trust. And so I did trust and they were trustworthy, right? And so I looked at particularly Nakamura, who I consider like

my first true mentor. He had the character traits that I aspired to develop as a warrior. Probably the most profound being his humility. And it was so rare. And honor, right? The way that he honored every individual, every student, every situation, his parents, right? The Sato community and the way that people honored him and the respect. So honor, respect, humility, and trust, right? I learned these values through osmosis and through observation and also through his dialoguing. I didn't just learn what they meant. I began to live them. And so when you combine, you know, the visualization training and say, okay, I can become in my mind the person I need to be, because how else do you create anything in your life unless you first can imagine it, right? But if I can imagine what it's like to be an elite Navy SEAL officer, and I can follow the physical path, because I know that there's a physical path,

I've already got those skills, so I don't have to worry too much about them. But if I could win in my mind before I go to BUDS, it's going to be a lot more effective than showing up at BUDS and hoping to win. It wasn't until much later that I read Sun Tzu and I'm looking and there he is right there. He says the victorious warrior wins in his mind before he steps foot on the battlefield. And everyone else steps foot on the battlefield hoping to win. I was like, wow, fascinating. I guess I'm a victorious warrior, you know? And so that, and even that whole notion led even more energy to me to this belief that i was i was meant to be a warrior there was some energy that i'm kind of like it could be karmic energy that i'm trying to play out that this is my life's purpose and path was to learn and grow

in this area right learn and grow in this area as right? Learn and grow in this area as a warrior and to lead and teach others. Now, the warrior goes through the archetypal phases. So you have the warrior athlete. So in my 20s, I was a warrior athlete. And then when I became a SEAL, I became a warrior leader. And then as a more senior officer and a business guy, a warrior statesman.

And I'm heading into the warrior monk realm. And I think a lot of people would say that with my unbeal mind and my Kokoro Yoga program, that's really the archetype that I'm starting to express most powerfully as the warrior monk. Yeah. And it's interesting to associate that word with those other qualifiers. Because I think most people wouldn't associate them with probably the first two. Because our society is so militant they think warrior equals military right and i also think the warrior immediately translates to i lead with violence

right which is not it's so different than what you're talking about here's my take on that the warrior is the last to pick up the weapon but in order to be the last to pick up the weapon he's got to be extreme extremely proficient with it weapon, he's got to be extremely proficient with it. And the first weapon of the warrior is the mind. Because most altercations, if not all, can be avoided or diminished or, you know, circumvented like an Aikido, right? Let the energy go by you. We don't have that level of sophistication at a cultural or structural level in our world these days. And so the warrior arts have been kind of reduced to learning how to clash and destroy other individuals, cultures, or civilizations.

But the highest level, the warrior is a protector, a sheepdog, someone willing to defend if someone who doesn't have that level of development comes after you, you know, like a violent attacker, the wolf, the ISIS, you know, individual. So the warrior doesn't, is not prone to violence, but is capable of violence and will use it under the right circumstances. And in the context of the military as a Navy SEAL, I was duty bound through my contract with my teammates, right, and my country to master violence and then deploy it in the protection and the defense of the country. And ultimately on the battlefield, that translated into getting the mission done and bringing my teammates home. It's interesting, isn't it? I've moved way beyond, I think, that level of the warrior,

and I'm really grateful that I got through that without destroying any other lives. People ask me, hey, have you ever killed anyone? And I smile and say, no, I'm very fortunate. I'm curious because it's funny, when I was just sort of learning more about you, I imagine that that has to be one question that people ask you all the time. And I'm less interested in your answer to the question and more interested in how you

perceive that question being asked. I think people have this fascination with what it would be like to kill another human being. They don't know. And so therefore, it's like a perennial question. Does it change you? My answer to that would be, if you let it, it will. That's why a lot of people suffer from PTSD, right? They didn't have the right mindset, the resiliency to deal with the stress of what it means to constantly be exposed to that kind of violence or to take other human lives in a situation like combat or war.

We were just having a discussion with my friend Tim Larkin, who teaches self-defense. I think you met him earlier. We were talking about that weapons like a gun or a sword or your hands are just simply tools. The violence comes from here or here, the heart and the mind. Now at a cultural level, you know, we're playing out a lot of negative energy. All of our cultures, right? All of our cultures are playing out this vast momentum of negative energy that's gone on for a thousand years. i know you're a spiritual individual so you study yoga and these things and and that's it's kind of part of that that tradition is that yeah we're

actually in the darkest age right the kali yuga and we're coming out of that and that dark energy requires you to learn the skills of defense right because otherwise you know you may not live very long, right? Or you're going to, you know, someone's going to attack you because that's where humanity is at right now. And yet there's some hope, and my vision is as well, and a lot of people who live around here on the California coast, which my parents would call the land of the fruits and nuts from back east, is that we are actually shifting into it kind of a new age we're shifting out of the Kali Yuga into another age which is you know going to be a little bit brighter right and it's going to evolve it's going to evolve

human beings at both an individual and a collective level to a higher level of consciousness and in this higher level of consciousness we're you, what I'm looking at trying to teach or what my vision is to teach this notion of the world-centric warrior. And I've been specifically using those terms, even with the SEAL candidates that I teach. It's like, you're learning these skills not to go play whack-a-mole with ISIS because that's not going to really get us anywhere. What we need to be thinking is you're a world-centric warrior and you are first fighting for humanity and then you're fighting for the United States of America, right? And that and operating out of that level of consciousness

will have a demonstrable effect on the decisions that you make in the battlefield, in the moment. And also you'll be committed to a self-evolutionary process that is deliberately trying to evolve or affect your own evolution. So that's what I teach to Unveiled Mind, is to take control of your own evolution. And these practices, like we were talking about,

the practices of breath and concentration and meditation and visualization, when combined with a powerful vision for the future and an ethos, which is kind of the boundaries to kind of guide you there, will have an accelerating effect or an accelerant effect on your own development as a human. Obviously, this presupposes that you believe that you can grow. And most people don't believe they can grow. It's like Carol Dweck says, growth mindset versus fixed. Once you believe that you can grow, then the next step is to say, why don't I take responsibility for that growth instead of just hope and wait for it? And so, you know, in people's mind is that growth program towards self-mastery so that you can serve boldly as a world-centric leader or warrior or whatever version of warrior you want to.

Yeah. It's so interesting the difference between growth and fixed and Dweck's work. And there's one of the things that I discovered, which really resonates with what you're saying, is that no methodology on the planet will be effective in helping you and your own personal growth and helping you make a difference in the larger scope of society until there's even the slightest belief in the possibility that it will work and that there is a there there. So we can have the best technology, the best methodology, the best philosophy, but unless there's like, you don't have to buy in a hundred percent that yes, but you've got to at least believe that, okay, so maybe this is possible.

Maybe something different is possible. Maybe a different way of being is possible in the world. Maybe a different world is possible. I don't have to buy wholeheartedly that it's going to happen, which is the place that you eventually move people to, but to at least start to take the first steps along a methodology or an approach of philosophy. And then watch what happens, right? And I think this is, I say this a lot about people who are drawn toward, you know, the biohacking and quantified self-movement is that this type of development is not quantifiable. What you and I are talking about is not quantifiable. Now you can quantify biometric neuroplasticity changes of this and that and the other thing, but those are just, you know, physical manifestations of states or level changes in your consciousness. What you're really looking for is a, is a genuine subjective shift. And when I train with unimpeded

mind, people tell me literally as early as 30 days of work, a genuine subjective shift in their experience in life, from one thing to another. And it's not like, there it is, snap your finger. No, it's all of a sudden, 30 days later, you go like, holy crap. Like, I feel really different. Like, my stress is being managed. My mind is starting to think differently. I may, you know, that space I talked about starts to open up so I don't react, you know, in the same way I used to. And now I'm much more present and in those situations that you used to, you know, go off on. And so then I said, great, there's your evidence, right?

Journal, reflect on it, but then just keep training. Just keep training day in and day out. And you're going to have times where you look back. It's always a look back. So you're, you're planning and training for the future to better your future so that you can be present. And then you can let that go and be present, but then you look back to do the reflection and the learning. And then that's where you see the progress you've made. And then you let that go and you just stay in the present to, you know, to do what you have to do. Yeah, I mean, that's why it's called practice.

You know, like not practice to be perfect, but a practice, a daily practice, a committed practice, which is so common now in the lineages that you've studied and more in Eastern-based philosophy. It's, well, of course, and it's so alien in Western society that this is the way that we grow and that we evolve. I'm always fascinated by why it's so different. Even as yoga hit the U.S., it came in the very early days, in the 70s, largely to this area,

on a metaphysical, on a very spiritual level. But as we hit the 80s, the 90s... Got reduced back to group exercise. Yeah. So I know you're somebody who has a background in Ashtanga yoga. So there are eight limbs, you know, translates to eight limbs. Only one of which is the physical practice.

But that is probably 95 to 97% of the entirety of the practice in Western culture. So it's, I'm always so interested in why we grasp onto that and feel like, well, that's enough. When the juice, the beauty, the grace that emerges happens when you move beyond that, when the practice builds outside of that. Well, I think it's just the way the Western mind has evolved and been trained to think it looks outwardly right it's trained to look outwardly the dominant area of the brain is you know the prefrontal lobe the neocortex the rational decision maker scientific materialism is the main thing and everything else any type of subjective science or liberal arts is kind of diminished.

And we just never at a cultural level had any, besides maybe Christian mysticism and Christian contemplation. Like the Mertens. Right. But those really got sidelined. Yeah, very much so. And Christianity became more about an I-Thou relationship, which would be like born-a-grand Christian, or a church relationship. Yeah, instead of contemplative church relationship like the Celtics. Yeah, instead of contemplative. Instead of the contemplative.

Yeah, contemplative practices in the Christian tradition got sidelined, but they're very powerful, right? So we never, at a large cultural level, have any connection with contemplative traditions or practice until China invaded Tibet, and then Buddhism was basically blasted out into the world, like radiation from an atomic bomb. Like one of the most, I look at that and say, one of the most incredible gifts that the Chinese have given the world. And the Tibetans would probably not always agree with me, but I bet you, you know, if I had, was able to talk to the

Dalai Lama, he would agree that it was that moment where, you know, Tibetan Buddhism and yoga really got blasted in the world in the late 50s. And it was brought to the West through necessity, first through Europe and then into America and Yogananda and all these people were then encouraged. You know, a lot of the old sages said, you know, this is going to happen. The West is going to get exposed to yoga and Zajin Buddhism and Tibetan practices and Zen. And so they encouraged some of the younger teachers to go West. And so that's when we began to get exposed to it. And so what happened is the early teachers,

like Tim Miller, who was my Ashtanga teacher, the first American certified by Patabi Joyce and Iyengar, and some of the early people, they really bit into it in the full cultural context, lock, stock, and barrel, right? Like it was taboo to teach any of these traditions with any deviation from the way that they were learned from their master who happened to be either Tibetan or Indian or Chinese or Japanese in the martial arts. And even I learned from Nakamura, it was Zen. We put on our gi and we spoke Japanese and we counted to 10 in Japanese and our Zen lectures were in Japanese. And so what happened with me is when I went into the SEALs and I started to work with these tools and then I started to teach SEAL candidates, like I literally once did I, you know, the first time I taught them yoga and some of these practices using the Sanskrit terms.

And they literally were rolling their eyes and just like, what a flake, you know? And I stepped out of that and said, OK, no more. That's never going to happen again because these guys don't want to think like an Indian and they don't want like Hindu mythology you got to be the translator yeah and so I said okay yeah ah I've got to recontextualize this and I've got to break it down into its component parts because some of these things are way too complicated and they're not built for our generation you know this modern world and so that's where I've you know withbeatable Mind, I've taken a very practical set of tools that help me dominate SEAL training, survive as a SEAL leader, you know, become an exceptional special operations leader. And also translate it into the business world, you know, as an entrepreneur. and understand them as I studied these other traditions,

especially yoga and contemplation and Tibetan Buddhism and all these things. I love studying that stuff because I can see all these linkages, how their similarities are all there. So interlinked. So interlinked and realize that we're all talking about the same thing. So it's just given me more and more confidence that this set of tools that I'd learned early on and evolved are actually on the right path. And so I still teach them. The only place I teach them with any kind of connection

to that lineage is in our Kokoro Yoga program. And even then, we've taken Kokoro Yoga and brought it back to being a personal practice for evolving yourself along all eight limbs. And I've renamed the limbs strategies and tactics. Yeah, there's no Sanskrit. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday.

We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is?

You're going to die. Don't shoot if we need them. Y'all need a pilot? Flight risk. No. But I mean, it's so interesting, right? Because there's, because you go into the lineages, and like you said, very often, teaching wasn't didactic. It was transmission.

And the teachings were the teachings. The words were the words. It was what it was. And your job was simply to receive it and master it, which is a very non-Western idea. So it's interesting when you have a guy like you who can that the lineage is transmitted precisely as it was given to me. So let me, and then you have something, there's something inside of you that says, it's okay for me to be the translator and deliver it in a way which is different, but still preserves the essence of what it's meant to do. Absolutely. And I think that that's my dharma. That's my reason for being here is to step into the brink in our world. When the going gets tough, the warrior steps into the brink to take care of business. So my warrior archetype is saying, okay, everyone's got to do their part. One thing that I have a skill at is to translate these

tools and practices to a modern audience. And I've proven it through first with Navy SEAL candidates who then go crush training, like 90% of our candidates that we train deeply in these principles get through BUDS training and they like, check, we got it, right? Completely in control. They understand the game. You know, they don't fall into the mental and emotional pitfalls that lead to failure like the other guys. And then, you know, business leaders and entrepreneurs and even sports teams, you know, we've trained, you know, probably like 20,000 people since 2007 when we started and seen just some tremendous growth and breakthroughs and progress. And so it's really validated this approach and so it's and that's given me

such great feedback that we're on the right path and i feel like we're just getting warmed up the reason we kind of spun out in the three brands is because i realized seal fit which was the original business and i still have seal fit was a you know this adding the seal to the name was a limiting factor for me and it would and it's also a very physical approach, right? Like we enter through that third limb. It's the asana and the yoga practice. Yeah, it's the asana and developing mental toughness through hard functional training is what Sealed to the Name is. But there's a lot of people who just need to come in at other places, right?

So Kokoro Yoga brings people in who are like, I'm looking for a spiritual practice, but I don't want to go to a yoga studio. Boom. Come into Kokoro Yoga. You're going to learn all the tools of unbeatable mind through Kokoro Yoga brings people in who are like, I'm looking for a spiritual practice, but I don't want to go to a yoga studio. Boom. Come into Kokoro Yoga. You're going to learn all the tools of unbeatable mind through Kokoro Yoga as a daily practice. And then the executive says, well, I need to perform better at my work and I need my team to up-level themselves. So I'm looking for a program where we can all up-level ourselves for our professional success. And so that's a little bit of a Trojan horse too, because then we bring unbeatable mind into their organization and the individuals. And

all of a sudden they're like, why I feel so different. I'm like, yes. Right. Because you're evolving as a human being. You don't have to call it spiritual growth because that term, you know, this has been thrown under the bus quite a bit too. And these days, even the term human, like personal development has, because I've been thinking about this also, language to me is very important, especially when you want people to be able to step into that language. What's the language that you use? I mean, to me, human potential feels interesting, but it's still, there's a reaction to that. What's the language that you use to share these ideas in a way where people's defenses are like, no, I'm good? Well, again, I just kind of am authentic and speak a language that's very practical,

drawn from my career as a Navy SEAL officer and a business guy. And the fact that I am a Navy SEAL officer, retired commander, and I've started five or six businesses that have reached multiple million dollars, and that I've got a daily practice, and I can point to the daily practice as the reason why I was successful in those domains, then that does 90% of the work. And then because I'm able to articulate complex terms that usually used to require like a tome, I can articulate them in fairly simple everyday words.

And I try to avoid woo-woo language because I agree with you. People are like, eh, new age spirituality, and that's really kind of taken a lot of the hammer out of the... And you already live in Encinitas. And I live in Encinitas, yes. Yeah, so I'm a much more practical person. I use terms like evolve yourself,

take responsibility for your own evolution. You know, step up, you know, up-level yourself. And sometimes, again, I'll change my languaging depending upon who I'm talking to. My seal fit audience, you know, when I'm talking about developing mental control, I start with a simple process. Stop, think, act. Okay,

let's break those down. How do you stop? Well, how about let's take a breath, right? So now we're into the process of teaching breath control. What happens after you stop? Well, how do you think? Well, the first thing you do is you pause and then you shift out of thinker into the witness. Well, how do we do that? We've got to train to do that. How do we train to do that? Well, we're going to have to sit and do something called box breathing, and we'll practice it for 20 minutes a day.

And within 30 days, you'll be able to shift from thinker to witness so that now you can begin to take control of the quality, the quantity, and the directionality of those thoughts instead of merge with them and just react. Right. So it's like it's attached to desired outcome. Yeah and you're using language that they can understand correct you want to be you want to survive combat you need to learn how to think stop think and act properly and in the seals they call that the oodle loop observe orient decide act well let's simplify that stop thinking act how do we you know how do we pause in the middle of a firefight?

It doesn't mean we're still not acting. What we're doing is we're pausing the reactive mind and we're slowing time down because we're now connected to the witness, which is more of the, you know, your higher self is connected to the perennial universal consciousness, whatever you want to call that. And time is relative in that space. And so you can slow time down, manipulate time. I teach these skills called the big four skills, breath control, positive emotional and mental dialoguing, visualization, and task orientation, like how to choose the right task at the right time for the right reason. And these four skills, when you begin to train with them and master them, essentially are a flow activator. The state of flow is when you're not merged with your thoughts, but you're actually connected to your higher self slash witness self, the simultaneous mind,

and you're able to control the experience of time because you're able to slow down your thinking processes and choose very specifically and precisely, you know, the laser guided weapon thought that's going to solve the problem, going to move you to the next level. So that's very practical. And the Navy SEAL wants that. They're like, I want that because I want to survive. I want to come home. I want to accomplish the mission.

And then once they start practicing these skills, they're like, wow, not only are these great skills for combat, but I feel different. It translates to all parts of life. Yeah, all of a sudden I'm able to use this at home with my kids. And then they start to understand that this is a whole practice of evolution. And then they'll go deeper into my training or they'll read the book a second time looking for different answers. And they'll be like, oh, I see. That was a Trojan

horse. He drew me in. Right. But now it's too late. I'm in. You're in the matrix. Yeah. No, I love that approach. I'm a huge fan of it. It's something that I'm wired very similarly to you in that way. I'll create the experience that allows you to enter it. And because I just know that once the practice builds, that will become self-propelling in terms of you wanting to get into it. The practice takes over, not the person. I think the age of the gurus is over. The practice is the new guru. Yeah, I agree with that. You brought up emotion, which was the first time you brought it up in the conversation, which is interesting because from the outside looking in, you present as an astonishingly still, grounded, and cerebral person.

But you also get this sense that the emotional well runs deep in you. Talk to me about this a bit in the context of what we're talking about here. Well, I think emotional development is an outcome of a complete integrated practice. What I mean by that, a complete integrated practice, is that we're working on the individual as a whole and not its component parts, but we have to touch each component part.

And so we call it the five mountains. So physical development, physical movement, physical awareness, stress management, all that is part and parcel of our practice. We call that the first mountain. Many people need to start there because they're out of touch with their bodies. But some people who are really fit and have a really high degree of physical awareness, they don't need to start there. They need to start on the second mountain, which is the mental mountain. So the mental mountain is largely what I was alluding to before. Developing control over the monkey mind, developing the tools of the mind, right?

The tools of introspection, visualization, the perception, right? The perceiving mind, like learning how to differentiate between right and left hemisphere thinking, like just spending time on the bench or on the mat, really investigating the mind. Looking in, working in. So we actually call that working in. You got your workout and you got your work in. They're both important. That's the yin and the yang.

Then the third is the emotional mountain. So this, we often say for males especially, this is the most challenging and the one everyone avoids. When you are in tune physically and you begin the process or you're well into the process of the mental mountain, learning to use these tools, what you learn, what you find is that the same tools that are used to develop the mental mountain are used to develop the emotional mountain because the emotions are thoughts. They're just felt thoughts. Emotions are just experienced thoughts that you may or may not have attached meaning to. Oftentimes, you've attached meaning to, which is an emotion or a feeling that is flawed, right? And this is a whole realm of psychotherapy. And my wife's a marriage family therapist, so I know a lot about

the profession, even though I've never been formally trained. That profession, and it's a marriage family therapist, so I know a lot about the profession, even though I've never been formally trained. That profession, and it's a great gift that the Western world has brought, or Western society has brought to the world. I think psychotherapy is an amazing gift. That allows us to translate what happens in our past more effectively to release energy or to build energy, to release negative energy and to build positive energy. Because these emotional patterns are strictly energy patterns that have been rutted in or burned into our bodies. And so they come back up over and over and we experience them, we experience that feeling and then there's meaning attached to that feeling, which then spins into a mental process. And it can happen the other way around right you could experience a mental thought which evokes a concept or a belief system around fear or

something that is scary to you and then that's going to bring up the feeling of fear right so the processing and the tools of the mental mountain that we introduce in unbeal mind are used for the emotional mountain. And what happens is that you tend to get very clear about what feelings mean to you. And then you begin to detach from the meaning and objectify that emotion. And then once you've objectified the emotion, you can then begin to work with changing the energy around that. So we'll call that transmuting that energy. So for instance, the Navy SEAL, instead of experiencing fear when he's about to jump out of the airplane, what he'll experience is excitement and determination. Same physical

sensation will be interpreted because he's in control. It'll be interpreted as excitement and anticipation and deep determination to survive the jump and to accomplish the mission, right? Whereas lack of control and awareness in the emotional realm, you know, you could fall out of the plane and just freak out, you know, and I remember a story of one of my Navy SEAL compatriots who, just fresh out of training, his first parachute jump was his last because of this. He just did not have any control over his emotional being. Let me finish this up. The fourth mountain is intuition. And the fifth we call kokoro, which is a Japanese word that means heart mind. But you could also use the term the spiritual

mountain, but for reasons we've already discussed, I don't often use that term. So what I found is, generally speaking, if we start the training and go, we use the body to begin to train the mind, then eventually the mind training includes the body, but you leave the body behind, because then you sit in silence. So that's why it's important to move first and then to sit, because the somatic movement and the breath you know you're you're turning from outward to inward that's why when we teach physical training we teach these processes so that you're doing the training the mental training while you're doing the physical and it's a very different experience you know the typical crossfitter or you

know someone doing a high intensity training or on the treadmill watching TV, that's not it. You're all outward, right? So this is more like asana where you might be swinging a kettlebell, but that swing is no different than doing warrior one pose where your attention is turned inward and you're just managing your breath, managing your thoughts, and you're using that physical movement to refine the quality of your body-mind system and then to move inward. And then from there, we work on the breath, which is still a physical movement, but it takes us deeper in. It's the bridge. The breath is a bridge between the physical and the mental. And then we work on concentration. Notice that physical movement, asana is the third limb.

Breath is pranayama. That's the fourth limb. Concentration is the fifth limb breath is pranayama that's the fourth limb concentration is the fifth isn't that fascinating so patanjali had it all lined up right it's like you look at all those traditions that's it's it's so cool to see the way you've taken this and said okay let me reinterpret this and and share it in a way where it's going to go down easy with people who really need it in the world these days. Yeah, so powerful. I want to come full circle with you. So the name of this is Good Life Project. Actually, I want to ask you one other thing, kind of just piggybacking on the idea of emotion, because one, the way that you were describing it, one way to see, to receive that, I think, is we learn to strip away the emotion from experience and just be

calm. And someone might look at that and say, I don't want that. I want to cry. I want to laugh. I want the full sweep of emotion. How does that land with you? The more I do this work, the more I laugh and cry. I mean, I cry like a baby at the movies. It's kind of hilarious. I have to sit in the corner because I don't want people to see this big Navy SEAL commander like bawling. It's not about numbing. It's a mistake. We're not talking about numbing. It's the opposite of what we want to be doing. But we want to experience but be not attached to it. And we want to let the experience flow so it doesn't get trapped. Because you might have spontaneous joy

and you just let it go. And then it flows through you. It's like, here's a great metaphor. The emotion is like a cloud passing over the mountain. You're the mountain. You're not the emotion. Same thing with a thought. The thought is the cloud. So thoughts and emotion are the mountain. You're not the emotion. Same thing with a thought. The thought is the cloud. So thoughts and emotion are the same. It's the cloud passing. Let it pass. If you try to grab

on and hold on to that emotion because you want to experience joy all the time, guess what? You're just setting yourself up for when the suffering comes to think that everything's fucked up because you're suffering now. No. When the suffering comes, dive into it, but translate it effectively. Don't be attached to, you know, root causes because usually that's, you know, early childhood stuff and, you know, you just let all, you got to forgive all that stuff. Like I said, it's been the shift in this country also from sort of more Freudian analysis to CBT and now mindfulness-based therapy. Mindfulness and like emotional focus therapy, EMDR are extremely useful for this because it allows you to identify the early roots and to disassociate not from the feeling, but from the

meaning that you placed on that emotion. And then, you know, you should get angry, right? You should get angry if someone does something in just you, but you're not attached to that anger and you're not going to let that anger control you anymore. Yeah. It's like, I am angry. It's not, I am anger. It's so interesting also, because I'm sure you've been exposed to this so much, PTSD you brought up. So much of the work that I'm seeing going on in that space right now, Bessel van der Kolk and that are really saying, actually, we can't unwind what's happening in the mind unless we embody somebody, unless, like, we've got to bring the physicality and the movement into this because it's body deep and reverse engineer it out of that as well.

Yeah, we're taking some PTSD vets over to Greece in September and we're going to do the Spartan trial with them, meaning we're going to hike from Sparta to Thermopylae, where King Leonidas took his 300 Spartans. And we're going to pair these vets up with CEOs. And by the end of the trip, I'm quite confident that the vets will be serving the CEOs as much as the CEOs are serving the vets. But the point is that they need to get into their body and go through this process. You go through the five mountains in that progressive order, but if you can provide great meaning and context, right, to help these guys have another, a purpose, right? So we ultimately, you know, vets are seeking identity. They've lost their identity and that's a great cause. They also

have a lot of, you know, stress in their nervous system, but that can be dealt with through yoga, mindfulness, breathing techniques, not drugs, right? So, you know, drugs are the biggest destroyer of life in the vet community. 22 suicides a day, I think. It's an incredibly sad number. So you're right. Fortunately, there's a lot of movement toward integrative recovery practices with the vet community. And, you know, though no one has used these words yet, my feeling is that the mind and the body are one. Yes, we have a brain, but our heart is part of our mind. Our belly is part of our mind. Our nervous system and heart is part of our mind our belly is part of our mind our nervous system and spine is part of our mind ultimately our skin is part of our mind our body is a mind and so when we talk about a whole mind training the whole mind and elevating your

consciousness how could you not move the body how How could you leave the body behind? You need to reassociate and re-engage the body and then live it, live into the body, live through the body. So the mind becomes, every movement is a movement of the mind. All right, so we'll come full circle for real now. I think you and I could probably talk for days. I love it, yeah.

So, Good Life Project, if I offer the phrase out to talk for days. So good life project. If I offer the phrase out to you to live a good life, what comes up? I think it's to live a life that has like intense purpose and to be aligned in that purpose passionately. And then to develop an ethos that, and what I mean by ethos, it's, it's more than values, right? It's knowing where you stand in life. So you're not going to get pushed around and you're not going to, and you're going to make those tough decisions in spite of maybe some uncomfortable consequences, right? That's really the warrior's way. The step into the warrior archetype that everyone has is to do the right thing in spite of the consequences.

Now, as a Navy SEAL, that might mean you have to lay your life down for your teammates, and that's an extreme example. But for the everyday person, you know, the consequences aren't nearly that severe, and we usually blow them up to be greater than. And we have this saying that it's better to live a life of discipline than a life of regret. And so the ethos and knowing where you stand allows us to live a life of discipline and to make good decisions that are for the good of humanity, as well as the good of our country, as well as the good of our company, as well as, you know,

good of our pocketbook even. And that takes great discipline. So to me, that's the good life. Hoo-yah. Thank you. And as we wrap up, I want to give a final shout out to our awesome

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When ideas become conversations that lead to action, that's when real change takes hold. I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch,

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