High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 692: Be Unstoppable: Lessons in Mental Toughness, Leadership, and Team Success with Alden Mills

Episode Date: July 21, 2025

In this inspiring episode, Dr. Cindra Kamphoff sits down with Alden Mills—former Navy SEAL platoon commander, championship rower, best-selling author, inventor, and entrepreneur. Alden’s life is a masterclass in resilience and reinvention. From overcoming childhood asthma to leading Navy SEAL teams and building a $95M business with the Perfect Pushup, Alden shares how the unstoppable mindset shaped every chapter of his extraordinary journey. Alden is the author of Be Unstoppable, Unstoppable Teams, and Unstoppable Mindset, and was named Entrepreneur magazine’s #1 virtual speaker. In this episode, he reveals the mental strategies that helped him turn adversity into advantage, failure into fuel, and vision into impact. You’ll learn: Why being “unstoppable” is a choice—and how to practice that choice daily The story behind the mantra: “No one defines what you can and can’t do” How Navy SEAL leadership skills apply directly to business, family, and life The CARE Loop framework and how to build high-trust, high-performing teams The 8 essential actions from Be Unstoppable, including “Plan in Pencil” and “Understand Your Why” Alden also unpacks how setbacks have fueled his biggest comebacks and what mental toughness means at the highest levels of performance. Whether you’re leading a team, building a business, or chasing a personal goal—this episode will help you unlock your unstoppable potential. 🔹HIGH PERFORMANCE MINDSET SHOWNOTES FOR THIS EPISODE 🔹 Learn more about Alden Mills and his books🔹 Request a Free Mental Breakthrough Call with Dr. Cindra and/or her team🔹 Learn more about the Mentally Strong Institute Love the show? Rate and review the podcast—and you might hear your name on the next episode!  

Welcome to the High Performance Mindset podcast, where we help you master your mindset to gain the high performance edge. My name is Dr. Syndra Campboth, and I'm so grateful you are here to listen to episode 692 with Alden Mills. In this inspiring episode, I sit down with Alden Mills, former Navy SEAL platoon commander, championship rower, bestselling author, inventor, and entrepreneur. Alden's life is a master class in resilience and reinvention. From overcoming childhood asthma, to leading Navy Seal teams and building a 95 million dollar business with the perfect pushup,

Alden shares how the unstoppable mindset shaped every chapter of his extraordinary journey. Alden is the author of Be Unstoppable, Unstoppable Teams, and Unstoppable Mindset, and was named Entrepreneur Magazine's number one virtual speaker. In this episode, he reveals the mental strategies that helped him turn adversity into advantage, failure into fuel, and vision into impact. You'll learn why being unstoppable is a choice, and how to practice that choice daily. The story behind the mantra, no one defines what you can and can't do.

How Navy SEAL leadership skills apply directly to business, family, and life. The Care Loop Framework, and how to build high-trust, high-performing teams. The eight essential actions from Be Unstoppable including Plan in Pencil and Understand Your Why. Alden also impacts how setbacks have fueled his biggest comebacks and what mental toughness means at the highest levels of performance.

Also, do you love the show? Please leave a rating and review and you might hear your name on the next episode. All right, let's jump into my interview with Alden Mills. Alden Mills, thank you so much for being here on the High Performance Mindset podcast. I'm so grateful that you're going to spend some time with us, so welcome to the show. Cindra, it is such a pleasure. I love your energy and I love what you talk about on this show. So let's go get some people unstoppable today.

I can't wait. And I want to actually start with a question related to your own mindset transformation. So I'd love for you to tell people how you mentally shifted from being an asthmatic child to a champion rower to a seal. And tell us about your mom's mantra and how that impacted you. Well, the transition, you know, that little transition you talk about was really easy. I just popped a couple of pills and then overnight just happened. Right.

Like, yes, of course, that doesn't ever happen like that. And I was very fortunate that I had a leadership coach as a parent. And the exact scene, which I still can remember like it was yesterday, I was 12 years old. I had been bedridden for about 30 days with my third bout of pneumonia. And they thought I had had spinal meningitis, ended up having spinal tap, which was a miserable experience. I didn't have that, but I got sent to the big city of Wistah, Massachusetts. Now, if anybody knows Massachusetts, Wistah is not actually that big of a city. And there, that was sent to a lung doctor, and this guy looked like an old Danny DeVito. He had this shiny bald scalp, but white wispy hair and thick Coke bottle glasses where his

eyeballs actually looked bigger than they were. And he constantly looked like he was smelling sour milk. His face was all messed up. When you went into his office, his doctor's office looked more like a laboratory. You had these different devices that you were going to blow into or inhale into. One had a ping pong ball to keep in between, and he had me going through all these tests, and he was marking them on a chart. Mom was right there with me, and after a little while, he held up a hand and he said, I see

what the problem is here. Why don't you come over to the center of my office in this little desk, right? We sat down, and he wasn't talking to me. And he flipped chart and he said, Mrs. Mills, you see this line right here? This is an average 12-year-old boy's size of his lungs. Yours lungs are down here. You see, his lungs were smaller than normal size lungs, he says in his New Age Nasally New England accent. And then he flips the chart again and he goes, you see this line here?

This is how much force is coming out of his lungs. Your son's way down here. You know why? Because he's got asthma. You see, he needs to have medicine for the rest of his life and he needs to lead a less active lifestyle. I suggest the game of chess. My mom saw my immediate reaction, right? She looks at me and she goes, Alden, why don't you go wait outside in the lobby? I'll talk to the good doctor from here. I'm outside and I'm having a full pity party. I'm accepting my fate.

I'm trying to get my head wrapped around the idea that I got to learn chess. And mom, she comes back out after talking to that doctor, and she's in the offensive mom position, right? That's hand on her hips. She nudges one of my feet with her foot and she says, what's wrong with you? Like mom, chess, how am I going to learn chess? I'm terrible at checkers. She drops down onto a knee and she had these long French cuticle nails. She dug them into my forearm, like the velociraptor claws. She said, you look at me. Nobody defines what you can or can't do but you. Now I'll get you that medicine, but I want you to understand that.

You hear me? You decide what you can do." And I'm wincing in pain, and before she released, she goes, now, you say it back to me. I said it back to her, but I only said it back to her so she'd stop digging her heels in, right? Yeah. And I didn't get it that week. Dad hopped on the mom bandwagon of you define what you can or can't do.

But after a couple of months of trying out a couple of different sports, getting used to the medicine, you started deciding this is what I am going to do. That philosophy started off with trying a couple of different sports, which I was terrible at, scored on my own team against these sports, basketball and soccer. But over time, it gave me courage to try out for another sport, and then another sport. And then finally I found the sport of rowing. And I found out that, hey, I could be pretty good sitting on my butt going backwards for long periods of time. It's just work. And then rowing took me to the Naval Academy, and then the Naval Academy took me to SEAL Team, and then SEAL Team took me to entrepreneurial endeavors. And entrepreneurial endeavors took me to where I am today. And each of those

was a confidence build to the next. And coach people, that's what I'm really after, is finding a place where people can get the confidence to push themselves out of their comfort zone, to start to realize they are their best form of leader. There you go. That's a line to your question. I love it. Well, I think what your mom said to you is so powerful. No one defines what you can and can't do. I think that's such a powerful statement for each of us to continue to remember that it's

really up to us. It sounded like maybe unintentionally the doctor was lip trying to limit you in some way. How do you think that has been your guiding principle throughout your life? Without question, that guiding principle is what started me off down the road because at a very early age, and by the way, the guiding principle is dealing with our three controllables. That is our thoughts, our thoughts, and our beliefs. And that principle became my... Hey, I get to decide what my limit is, not somebody else. And then that decides what thoughts I'll create, and then it decides where I'm going to put my focus. You see, focus determines direction. But a thought is neither helpful nor hurtful until

you give it energy, you give it energy through focus, and then you have a belief that powers your thought, right? And they work in a loop. And that statement became, I started developing the thoughts, putting my focus, developing beliefs focus developing beliefs of what do I want to decide I can or can't do. And it started with rowing and every time you'd get to that point of I'm not sure I can go much further, I would go down another route of developing an outcome of well, if I quit now, am I comfortable with quitting? Do I like the outcome of that? Or do I like the idea of, okay, if I take a little more pain, would I like the outcome of winning? What's that feel like? Those are outcome movies and I write a lot about it.

Now, I started writing about it in Be Unstoppable, and then Unstoppable Teams, and also Unstoppable Mindsight. It's very important to understand the consequences of an action that you take and what that outcome will be. And can you really get comfortable with that? You know, Alden, one of the reasons we're connecting today is because your niece connected us. I was speaking at her company and she said, I had to meet you. I was like, oh my gosh, I read his book many years ago.

That was your first book, Be Unstoppable. I'd love for you to define what unstoppable means because you talk about being unstoppable as a choice. Can you unpack what that means, especially as it relates to adversity? Yes. And by the way, I'm honored that you read Be Unstoppable. And Be Unstoppable is coming back out in its third edition this month. Awesome.

Cool. And to get to Unstoppable, let me tell you how I got there in the first place. The genesis for writing Beyond Unstoppable was because a dear friend of mine was the first Navy SEAL to die in Afghanistan. When you go do a series of SEAL missions, you have to write a just in case letter. An just in case letter is given to the next of kin should you pay the ultimate sacrifice, should you die for your country. And the idea behind that is so when they hand over a flag, there's a letter in there and the letter comes from that person who's just died. I had written three of those letters, but they were to my mom,

my dad, and my brother. I didn't have children. When Neil died, he had an 18-month-old son that was getting a letter. And the reason that inspired me to write the first letter was Jennifer, my wife, was pregnant with our first child, which was at the time we didn't know it, but became our first son of four sons. And so I would write these letters before each child was born. I'd write a Justin Case letter, kind of go through what Neil had gone through. And by the fourth one, my wife suggests, why don't you turn that into a book? And for a long, long time, I was trying to figure out, well, what do I want? What's the goal for this book for my four boys? And the goal was for them not to give up

not to give up on going after their dreams. And over time, the word unstoppable came up. Now I want to stress the word unstoppable. It has the word stop in it. And if you're going after something new to you, which is what a dream is, right? Inevitably, you're going to be stopped. In my opinion, you can't be unstoppable without first feeling what it's like to be stopped and back up and keep going and find the will to keep going, right? All of us are imperfect. We can't do it all. We're going to stumble. We're going to fail. We're going to... I often get on stage and people will hear about all these things I've done, and then I will say, yeah, and you know what? I've failed way more than I've succeeded. But you don't hear about that. And today you're going to hear about the failures because it's the failures that give you the strength and the fuel to go be unstoppable there.

And that's the genesis of the word unstoppable. And when people read any of my books, I want them to understand that writing it from the position of helping you do something new to you. Now, what's new to you may not be new to me, but what's new to me might not be new to you. It doesn't matter. The point is, I want you to be unstoppable about growing, about growing your limit, about

growing beyond what you originally thought was possible, about growing what you can define that you can or can't do. That is the idea behind Unstoppable. Thank you so much for sharing that. I think I just recorded this 30 second video the other day on my Instagram and LinkedIn social media channels that talked about how so many times we'd listen to what other people think we can't do and we might have a dream and then we listen to naysayers and they say, there's no way. For example, Alden, I was at the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.

So I was a runner and I was running the marathon and that completely changed my life, helping me realize, hey, there's only one life and I need to really go after my dreams. And one of my dreams was to work as a mental performance coach for the Minnesota Vikings. I live in Minnesota. That was really scary at the time and I thought there's no way that I can do it. Whenever I would tell people, they would, like, what? You didn't play football. How are you going to do that? And so when you think about relentlessly going after your dreams and being unstoppable doing

that, how do we actually do that? And what role does not listening to the naysayers play in that? So let me tell you a brief story. Perfect. us not listening to the naysayers play in that. So let me tell you a brief story. Perfect. When, well, brief is an Alden brief story. When you show up to SEAL team training, they don't put you directly into SEAL training. They make you do the exact same fitness test you had to do three times just to get into

training. It's push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups, a run and a swim. And it's condensed, but it's exactly the same one, right? And they make you do that test the day you show up. And they go, yup, check. You're physically fit enough to be here. And then they marinate you for seven weeks and they put you in this pre-phase holding cell, right? And you're not started training yet. And at the end of the seven weeks, they make you take the test one more time. Now, this is the fifth time you're taking it and it's exactly the same one again. And by the way, you're

stronger now because you've had Navy SEALs gently training you because they don't want to break you before training, right? They want you as physically fit as possible. But before they have us take this final fifth test, they have us all standing out there and we're listening to the lead instructor of first phase. Seal training is broken into three very creative phases, first phase, second phase, and third phase. And in first phase is where most of the quitting occurs. And this guy, he talks like this and he stands out in front of us and he goes, you all interested in knowing the secret of Navy SEAL training? And we're all nodding our heads. He goes, well, come on, break ranks, 122 of us.

We're about to take this fifth test. We passed it four right? And he goes, well, that's secret. It ain't complicated. It is hard, but it ain't complicated. You just have to decide what you're going to think about. Think about the pain of training or you're going to think about the pleasure that training can provide you. And he goes on and he goes, you know, I know for a fact over 80% of you have been thinking about being a seal on a sunny day. And here's the rub. You see your country, she don't need seals on sunny days. She needs them on scary days.

When it's cold, then it it's dark and it's wet. Oh, and that crack over your head. Well, that ain't thunder. That's somebody want you dead. How bad you want to be a seal on that day? You know, we're all standing around nodding our head. And he goes, uh-huh, you know what my job is? It's to create a conversation in here that's going to drive you to make a decision. What you're going to think about, the pain or the pleasure? So you do yourself a favor. You think long and hard before you take my next little PT test, could you pass it?

Well, you're coming to my side of the compound on Monday morning, 0500. The reason I tell you that story is because it's exactly what we all have to deal with. We're not prepping the audience here to get ready to go to SEAL training. I'm letting people know that we all have this conversation. It's the first leadership decision we all have to make. It's the leadership decision of all the different voices. And I catalog a bunch of the different voices in Unstoppable Mindset, my third book, but the two main voices are a negative or a positive. The negative I call minor.

Sure. Minor. And the negative comes in all? The negative I call minor. Sure. Minor. And the minor comes in all kinds of negative flavors. You know how hard this is going to be? Why do you think you can do it? You're terrible at pushups. You're not even that fast of a runner. You have asthma. You shouldn't even be here, right?

It's just, and by the way, it isn't just that voice. It's listening to other people who said, you're never going to make it here. Why do you think you should be here? By the way, most of those people who tell you that stuff, they've never done it themselves. Or they've failed, right? Those all fit under that whining voice. And then there's the other voice.

The other voice whispers. It especially whispers at first because you don't really have the confidence yet. And I call that voice the winner. And that voice will say things like, go for it. Yeah. Go over it. Try again.

Do it a different way. You can do it. Now the best way that I like to describe this decision matrix that's going on in here is I want you to think of it like the wheel of fortune spinning, right? Except instead of all the different slivers of saying bankrupt or dollar signs, it's essentially split into either I can or I can't. That's your leadership decision that you're dealing with first, right? Henry Ford, one of, it's one of my favorite all-time quotations, he's quoted with this quotation, but I'm sure a couple of others, pundits have said it, and that is, whether you think you can or you can't, you're right.

And that's what we're after here. It's about leading the conversation that I can go be that Vikings performance coach. I can get on stage and inspire people to do what you do, Syndra. I can create a high performance podcast that's going to be in the 0.5% of all podcasts. Those didn't happen by accident. It happened because you put intentionality behind it and you kept saying time and time again to yourself, I can do this. I can do this. Even when everybody else said, no, you can't, or you failed the first 20 times, but you kept getting up saying, no, I learned for a little bit from it. I can't, I can't. And by the way, that's all leadership.

Yeah, it is. Comes down to convincing other people that we can do something. And for you to convince other people that we can do something means you first have to have led yourself, which is what I call first level leadership. How you lead yourself directly correlates to how you lead others. When I get brought in to do executive coaching for teams, I'll often talk to the senior team leader. They're like, yeah, you got to fix my team. They all suck. I'm like, real? Everybody on this team sucks. Maybe we ought to hold the mirror up to you. Maybe we ought to be looking at you first, by the way. That's exactly what we do because a team is nothing more than a reflection of its leader. You have an internal team. You have

all those voices that I just talked about, right, without instructors like, you know what my job is. And how you lead that internal team directly impacts how you're going to lead external teams. impacts how you're going to lead external teams. And that is going to impact how you define what you can or can't do. I couldn't agree more because I see our mindset as what powers everything we do, right? It powers our emotions, it powers our decisions, it ultimately powers the legacy that we live. And I'm curious, you know, for leaders who are listening, and I appreciate what you said about like leading your internal team, right? But how have you seen the best leaders really get their team on board to go after something

big, maybe something courageous, maybe something that's a goal that's impossible? How have you seen, you know, your experience in the SEALs or your experience speaking or working with executive teams? What have you seen there? Well you have a couple of different things to deal with when you're helping a whole group of people do something new to them. And I make the analogy of crossing an ocean. You're crossing a horizon.

You cannot see the new destination. Right? So you've got to go past the horizon and keep going past the horizon with a leaf of achieving something new. Right? That's the metaphor. And to do that, the word is believe. You ought to get people to believe so they can achieve. So, getting people to believe is really critical to the whole thing. You'll hear this time and again, oh yeah, seeing is believing. That's not true.

The total inverse is true. You actually got to get them to believe before they can see what that outcome is. So how do you get people to believe is the question. And the question of that involves a couple of things from the leader's perspective. One, why are they going to believe in you? What is it about what you're doing that's going to convince them to say, you know, I've never done this before, but Syndra is saying, hey, we can do this. And maybe Syndra has done something similar. Maybe she hasn't done exactly the same thing, but she's like, look, I've crossed other oceans before. We're going to run into

these obstacles. And you call the obstacles out and say, look, they're going to happen, but let me show you what the obstacle looks like from an opportunity point of view. Let's look at the opportunity in that obstacle. So, you become somebody that's trustworthy that they start to believe in. When you get them to believe, that's where the magic occurs to give them that confidence to keep going. That's step one. Now, that's a really big question, and we can spend the next 30 minutes, if you want, going through the rest of those components, because that's the biggest leadership challenge there is.

Right. If you're not doing something new to the team, then most of the time we're just managing something. Leading is about taking a risk and not knowing what the outcome is. And it all starts with building the trust that then builds in the belief of why people will follow you to push them beyond what they originally thought was possible. Hi, this is Cinder Campoff, and thanks for listening to the High Performance Mindset. Did you know that the ideas we share in the show

are things we actually specialize in implementing? If you wanna become mentally stronger, lead your team more effectively, and get to your goals quicker. Visit freementalbreakthroughcall.com to sign up for your free mental breakthrough call with one of our certified coaches. Again, that's freementalbreakthroughcall.com to sign up for your free call.

Talk to you soon. Well Alden, I'm wondering about your book, Unstoppable Teams, and I know in that you talk about the care loop, and I'm curious if that relates to what we've been talking about and helping people believe in moving towards a goal that's really going to maybe seem impossible. Yes. So the care loop, the second book, Unstoppable Teams, which is a tagline or the subtitle is The Four Essential Act actions to high performance leadership.

Those four essential actions, I turn into an acronym called CARE. My belief pattern on that is based off of another one of my favorite all-time quotations from, this one's from Teddy Roosevelt, that says, no one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care. The formula for leading is this, to lead is to serve, to serve is to care. So how do you care? What are the components of care? We're going to turn care into the acronym of connect, achieve, respect, empower.

And it's a loop. They build off of each other. The goal of connect is building trust. The goal of achieving is setting direction. The goal of respect is creating contribution. And the goal of empower is building owners. Okay, so each of those and we went through just the first part about the belief which is building trust. Then the next piece is about setting direction and when you set direction and I talked about it earlier,

you want to get people to envision the outcome. I want to say, hey, let me tell you what this new island, this faraway land, going back to our metaphor of going across the ocean, what it's going to be like, why it's worth the struggle that we're going through right now. And one of the beautiful things about the human brain is we don't just visualize, we can envision. And when I say envision, I'm talking about bringing all the senses to bear. What does it feel like? What does it taste like? What do I hear? What do I feel? All of that is part of high performing teams.

People go through the envisioning process, and I do a lot with sports teams on envisioning. That piece helps people already practice the performance before they've ever actually done it. Those are the first two components of helping people push beyond their comfort zone. Awesome. Anything else you want to share about that? I will share as much as you want because I'll tell you one of the big challenges of team building isn't building trust and setting direction, it's creating contribution. And contribution comes from mutual respect. And that comes from inviting conflict in. And a lot of people aren't good with that. Especially team leaders who finally

got into their leadership position, they start thinking, hey, I got to be a dictator. I got to dictate, go through this, go through that. When in fact, they need to rely more on the team of saying, hey, tell me how to do this. What do you think we should do? The most powerful questions you can ask are, what am I missing? How can we be better? What do I missing? How can we be better? What do you think?

And when you start inviting in the conflict, when I refer to conflict, I'm referring to different points of view. When you start inviting different points of view in, and showing how you can truly listen, this goes down in different tributary, by the way. There are three ways of listening, listening and fix, listening to win and listening to understand. You are about listening and understand. You can really get to the other point of view and listen to understand that point of view, they feel heard. When they feel heard, they want to follow you even more. It's boomerang.

I agree with that. Mm-hmm. And when that happens, then you're set up for empowering and getting people to take the leadership mantle themselves. I'm curious as I'm listening to you, how you started as a SEAL, how did you use even the principles that we've talked about today? And then how did you transition to a SEAL, how did you use even the principles that we've talked about today, and then how did you transition to a speaker and author? So tell us a bit about your journey from that. Well, the transition occurred over... That occurred really over about a 12-year period because I was really focused on developing

fitness products like a Perfect Push-Up. Yes, I saw. We created a lot of different products and by the way, that's the overnight success that took 10 years. I did that for 14 years, but during that time period, I started really finding a passion for not just helping people train the muscles of their arms or their chest or legs, but the muscle between them. I started running up in the fitness industry against the biggest challenge wasn't who had

the best product, it was, how many people can you convince to actually endure the fitness challenge of working out? That was your problem. And to be brutally honest, the products are nothing more than a calling card to help people move their body. You don't need a product to move your body. What you need is the inspiration in your mind and the willpower to push through to say, okay, I'm going to push a little harder today. And I got really fascinated with that. And at the same time, I was dealing with the loss of my buddy and the birth of the four boys. And that's when Be Unstoppable came out. And right after that book came out, I got called by Sleep Number.

Okay. It was a company. Yeah. They're in Minnesota. Awesome. And the CEO, female CEO had read Be Un but when she goes, I love this book, you have to come speak to all 3,000 people in my company. Perfect.

Biggest speech I had ever done at that point. And that was your first one. That was my first one. Oh, way to get started with 3,000 people. 3,000. Amazing. And it wasn't just a speech, it was a workshop, it was a kickoff speech, it was a 90 minute. I did about three hours of speaking. And it was nerve wracking.

Sure. It was nowhere near perfect. Perfect wasn't even a concept, but I loved it. Awesome. And that set in motion the process of, oh, I think I'd do this again and I'd do it again. And then the speaking led to coaching and then coaching would lead to speaking and they became symbiotic together. And then over a period of time, I sold the business and decided, I think this is what I want to do full time. And that was 12 years ago.

I love it. Well, what's cool about that story is you wrote the book and then the speaking came after the book because people enjoyed the book and loved the book, right? And then you just started following what you were passionate about, what gave you energy. That's actually how I got into speaking too. I was at the Boston Marathon bomb 10 years ago and it was like, just started to follow my passions even more and the things that I love to do and the things that gave me energy, right? And it's not an overnight success.

It takes hard work and believing that it's possible, sticking with your goals, having grit, right? And not giving up, even though it's difficult and hard. Cindra, that's why I'm on this podcast. I know. And that's why you wrote the books. I totally in alignment with you. One of the things I like about your book is the eight essential actions, like such as

understand your why and plan the pencil. Tell us about those eight actions, because I think people could use those to really think about being unstoppable and how to do that. Let's go back to the analogy of crossing our metaphorical ocean to our new place, because we're trying something new to us, right? Maybe it's you getting on the speaking stage for the first time, or how am I going to get to the island where the Minnesota Vikings are and coach them? There are going to be so many times when the wind, the waves, the water is going to push

you back. All right, now I'm speaking metaphorically here. It could be different people. It could be rejection. It could be failing to produce the result that you thought you could do or stumbling when you thought you were going to be great at it and you choke up or you freeze, whatever it is, right? Make a slew of mistakes. And I call that the wind, the water, and the waves in my metaphorical crossing here. the wind, the water, and the waves in my metaphorical crossing here, you're going to need some fuel. And where's that fuel going to come from to get back up, dust yourself off, pick yourself

up your metaphorical rocks, and set sail again? And the biggest fuel that I can offer you is it's going to come from this yang and yang, the two components of your y. How your y is split like a yang and a yang. And part of your y is purpose and the other part of your y is passion. Passion and purpose. I don't care which one comes first. You could be passionate about standing in front of sports teams and helping them go beyond what is possible, but until you get a purpose behind it, the passion is not enough. You can find lots of purpose, but if you're not passionate about it, you're not going to commit all of your agency to something. The goal here, and this is something you asked me earlier about, hey, tell me about some

things that you transitioned from SEAL Team that works in the civilian side. One of the things that works is the mantra of all in all the time. That is a key piece. How do you go all in all the time when you failed a few times, when the wind and the water and the waves keep pushing you back towards these rocks? Well, you have your why. You have this passion and you have this purpose. And when you start to really embrace what it means to you, that will give you fuel.

That may give you just enough fuel to take you to another one of the aid actions, which will be planning. The full planning in pencil also includes planning in 3D. I talk about planning in pencil because that plan is going to change a lot. Because that plan is going to change a lot. Don't get wrapped around the axle about the plan. Get focused on the goal. And know that you're going to run into a lot of different obstacles when you cross this new ocean of yours. You're going to hit rocks. You'll run aground. You might capsize once or twice.

You'll have to change the plan. No problem. But don't you dare change that goal. And the planning 3D, lay on words, is define it, divide it and do it daily. OK. And that to me is the key component divide it and do it daily. That to me is the key component when you're planning. Once you've defined it, that's your why, then you've got to divide it down to do something daily.

The hardest part of doing something new to you is the repetition of creating a habit of doing it daily. Crossing an ocean doesn't happen overnight. I mean, unless you're in a really, really, really tough boat, but it goes against my metaphor here, right? It's like climbing a mountain or you've heard this before. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. How do you climb a mountain? One step at a time. And that's the doing it daily component. And that's where I see a lot of people coming up short. They have a fantastic why. They got this amazing plan. And then they're like, wait, now I got to do the work? Won't it just come to me?

No, you've got to go make it happen. You need to get up every day. Even when it doesn't look like you made any progress, maybe you feel like you've been blown backwards, maybe you feel like you're dragging an anchor, and you got to go all in. Try again and try again. You know, all of those eight actions in Be Unstoppable, they spell an acronym and the acronym is called You Persist. Okay. You know, I... Here.

I love it. Oh yeah, there we go. Noddle. You persist. It's the letter U persist. And when I create acronyms, thankfully the English language has lots of different words, I want them to have the meaning of what I'm trying to have you achieve. And the whole thing about Be Unstoppable, which is also a parable, is about how to persist because if you want to succeed at anything, well then you must persist. That's the acronym of the eight actions. Awesome. I like the way that you speak in terms of like it's super sticky, easy to follow and also like something that's memorable, like you persist. And of like it's super sticky, easy to follow, and also like something that's memorable, like you persist. And I know there's people who are listening that say, Alden, I just

don't have that within me. Like that persisting isn't innate within me, right? What advice would you give people who say, yeah, that's really difficult for me. RG Yeah. Agreed. It is. And guess what? I'd say go back and listen to the first 15 minutes of our podcast and let's go back to my job. You know what my job is? Creating a conversation in here. Nice. Now, what were we talking about with the conversation? Oh, that's hard. Oh, it's not me. I can't do it. Oh, I get to define what I can or can't do. Yeah. You're making that decision. And if that's the decision you want to make, then I want you to play out the outcome and

go make your outcome movie. Okay, I've decided I can't do that. Well, if I can't do that, then I can't do this. And then I'm going to be able to just sit here and I just have this nine to five hourly job and I'm just going to go through the rest of my life doing this. Is that what I want? Is that what you're accepting? Are you comfortable with that? Because if you are, then you probably shouldn't even listen to this podcast. But if you're not comfortable with that, then pay attention to what we're talking about in this podcast. And when I said, define it, divide

it, do it daily, I didn't say divide it into one massive chunk and try and eat half an elephant in a day. I'm not asking you to go climb a mountain in a day. I'm asking you to take, can you take one step? Just one. Can you do 10 minutes today towards your goal? Five minutes. Maybe your goal is to write a book.

Oh, typical books are 35,000, 50,000 words. Can you write a hundred words? Three sentences. Four sentences. Can you do that? If you can't do it, can you write two sentences? I'm not asking for a lot. I'm just asking you to take some action, because some action will snowball into more action. But if you can't even make the decision to decide to realize, oh, I just can't do that, I can't help you. Nobody can help you. You can't, Syndra. I can't. The greatest motivator in the world can't. They can't do it for you.

You've got to decide, I'm not accepting this. I'm going to get up and I'm going to take a simple action. I'm going to make a phone call. I'm going to send an email. I'm going to write those three sentences towards my book and make the first chapter table of contents. So that's what I say.

I appreciate that answer. And I'm inspired. You're very inspiring. You make me want to run through a brick wall right now. Stay connected to my goals. I appreciate everything that you've talked about Alden. Where can people find your books? Be Unstoppable, your second one, Unstoppable Teams, and your third one, Unstoppable Mindset. You can find them at Barnes and Noble and Amazon. and Amazon. Yeah, just go there. Be Unstoppable, the third edition comes out on 22nd of July, and you'll see it on Amazon. Awesome. Excellent. And where can people find more about your speaking or your coaching? At my website, alden-mills.com. Allden I so appreciated everything you shared today. I'm going to share a few highlights for

people. This is reminders. You talked today about three things that we can control our thoughts, our focus and our beliefs and how they're like a loop with each other. You talked about what unstoppable is and that it really is, part of it is about having a dream that you are connected with that you really, really desire. You talked about this negative thoughts in our head or this voice called your whiner versus the winner, which is more of the positive, I can do it. We also talked about your care acronym for teams to help them really think about the care loop. And then at the end here, we were talking about you persist and the importance of defining it,

dividing it and doing it daily and the importance of making small progress every day towards your goals. Thank you so much for being on. I know people loved our podcast today, so I appreciate you. I honor you for all the incredible work that you've done as a SEAL, as a rower, but also as an author and a speaker. So thank you so much for joining us here today. Sandra, it is my honor. You keep inspiring people. I love what you do honor. You keep inspiring people. I love what you do and go help them be unstoppable. Way to go for finishing another episode of the High Performance Mindset. I'm giving

you a virtual fist pump. Holy cow, did that go by way too fast for anyone else? If you want more, remember to subscribe and you can head over to Dr. Cindra for show notes and enjoy my exclusive community for high performers Where you get access to videos about mindset each week. So again, you can head over to Dr. Syndra That's drcindra.com See you next week