Jocko Podcast - 374: Know Your Strengths, Know Your Weaknesses, Know Your Attributes, Know Yourself. With Rich Diviney

Episode Date: February 22, 2023

Rich draws upon 20+ years of experience as a Navy SEAL Officer where he completed more than 13 overseas deployments – 11 of which were to Iraq and Afghanistan. Through his career, he has achieved multiple leadership positions – to include the Commanding Officer of a Navy SEAL Command.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 374 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. I found myself in a C-130 lumbering through the sky at 20,000 feet one late spring night. When you're inside an airplane or a helicopter, the sensation of height is muted. As far as the physical senses are concerned, you might as well be standing in a small wobbly room or sitting in an uncomfortable chair. But once we reached the right altitude, I was in the tail, standing on an open ramp, staring into a pitch black abyss, and getting ready to throw myself into it. Did I mention that I hate heights?

The fear response is an interesting thing. There are some basic physiological reactions common to most people, an increase in pulse and respiration, dilation of the pupils. but others are idiosyncratic. Mine? I yawn. I know it sounds weird, and I used to think it was too. But what I now know is that yawning is just my body's way of trying to re-regulate my breathing, take in more oxygen and access my parasynthetic nervous system.

Of course, the outward appearance of this suggests the complete opposite of fear, which is handy when you don't want people to know that you're nervous. But I was. I was nervous every time I got ready to jump. I was practicing the most difficult level of skydiving. High altitude, high opening, or hay-ho. You jump from around 20,000 feet, count to four, then pull the cord. The parachute opens at about 19,000 feet, which means there's a long flight to a distant landing zone.

This training is done during the day and at night, with nighttime proficiency being the goal, which is why I was standing at the back of that C-130 yawning in the black sky. Several things make jumping from that height more difficult. One is how cold it is up there. Average air temperature differentials are approximately 3 degrees per thousand feet. This means that if it's reasonable to 60 degrees when you board the aircraft, you can expect the air to be a bone-chilling sub-zero temperature when you jump out. There's also very little oxygen at that height.

At sea level, the air is almost 21% oxygen. At 20,000 feet, it plummets to less than 10%. With air that thin, you're at risk of altitude sickness, which includes a myriad of symptoms ranging from dizziness, fatigue, and headache to massive confusion, shortness of breath, and complete loss of consciousness. This means you have to jump with an oxygen canister and mask, and that's on top of full combat gear, ballistic helmet,

and, because it's pitch dark, night vision goggles. That's a lot of equipment to juggle, which only adds to the list of skills needed to survive a hay-ho jump. Yet I'd mastered all those skills. I'd made dozens of hay-ho jumps, yet my nerves quickened every time I stood at that open ramp. And none of those skills mattered if I couldn't force myself out of the damn door. in times of high stress and great discomfort skills aren't enough that is where attributes come in that right there is an excerpt from a book called the attributes 25 hidden drivers of optimal performance written by rich divinny and the book focuses on uncovering attributes required for

success in any endeavor and also how to evaluate and improve those attributes and the author rich divini is a retired seal officer served over 20 years in the navy deployed over a dozen times 11 of those deployments were to iraq or afghanistan he served in leadership positions at every level and also ran the assessment and selection for the maritime component of the joint special operations command, which we call J-Socq. And it's an honor to have him with us here tonight to talk about his experiences and lessons learned. And of course, we'll dive in to these attributes.

Rich, thanks for coming down, man. Thanks, Jago. I honored to be here. Yeah, glad to have you. I know we ran into each other in some unfortunate circumstances. But glad we were able to link up and get the opportunity to pass on some of these lessons. Some of these hard-earned lessons that you have, which includes being in the most uncomfortable position with gear strapped all over your body on the back of a C-130 in the middle of the night. Good times.

Good times. Let's just, before we jump into the book, let's jump into just how you ended up here, how you ended up there. So where were you born? You're a Connecticut kid, huh? I'm a Connecticut kid. And it's actually surprising how many team guys that I discovered when I went to steel training, how many guys are from Connecticut. No kidding.

Yeah, a lot of big populace. I don't know what it is, maybe something in the water. I always found it rare. I don't know. Whenever I met a guy from Connecticut, I was like, whoa, right on. All I know is that when I first joined up within the first few years, I met at least a dozen or more dudes from Connecticut. And I was like, wow.

Did you ever hear that thing that when they researched? who could make it through buds. They were trying to figure out the thing that they figured out. There was two things. And it only improved the chances of making it through buds, like almost, almost an immeasurable tiny amount. But it was wrestlers and people from New England. Have you ever heard that?

I heard wrestlers. I didn't hear people from New England. I also heard rowers. And I have a theory on that one, too. But we can talk about it. What's your theory on rowers? So, well, it says wrestlers and rowers. And what I think one of the primary attributes required,

if there's one most important. attribute required to get through buds. It's compartmentalization. It's ability to assess your environment, immediately prioritize what you need to focus on, and then focus on that until completion. And so you think about a rower, and I never rode competitively, but I've talked to many rowers. A rower is someone who's sitting in a boat and is part of a team and has to literally just row until they puke. And if they even break their rhythm for a second, they mess up the whole team. So it's literally a selfless sacrifice in a in a team effort that they just have to gut it out until they're done. I mean, it is kind of one of the most intense compartmentalization

moments, I think. What's the average length of one of those races in time? Oh, I have no idea. Are they doing 2,000 meters? I'm sure it's like sprinting in terms of they have different distances, but none of them are short. Yeah. You're going to have to keep it together for a long, a longer period of time. And to not, to even dip a little bit is going to affect the team, which is fascinating to me. And, of course, wrestlers, I think, you know, and I would actually put any fighting discipline into this category, this idea that you are in a ring with another human, so it's a highly uncertain situation. And you have to compartmentalize and you have to basically adapt to everything you're seeing.

And you are often being viewed by the external. So to give up in any capacity is going to mean injury or, I guess, least favorite or least favorite, or least favorite, or least favorite, injury or embarrassment. So I think those sports I talk about, I typically don't talk about attributes in the athletic endeavors because most sports are fairly certain environments, other than a few. And the few that I do talk about are fighting sports, climbing in some cases. Rowing is pretty certain, but I think compartmentization is definitely affected in that one. Sure.

Yeah. So you're born in Connecticut. What did your parents do? Dad was a lawyer. Mom stayed home with kids. Professional. She was a semi-professional pianist. So she used to spend most of her days practicing piano.

Which was either really cool or really annoying. Well, you know, it's funny. Yeah, it was, I thought it was annoying. But then I had friends come over. I was like, man, that's a really nice background. And I recognize I do love classical music. I don't, you know, I don't over index on it, but I do have a love for it. And so, yeah, it was nice.

But yeah, really nice childhood, twin brother, older sister, younger brother. And was there any military in your family? No, none. My dad was a private pilot, so he'd go flying on the weekends, and so he'd take us all up. And my twin brother and I got hooked from the beginning. You know, he'd put us in the right seat, and we'd help him steer the aircraft.

And so my two favorite books growing up were Chuck Yeager's Autobower for Yeager and the right stuff. And I read those books. I mean, a dozen times. And all I wanted to do was be a fighter pilot. And I, well, World War II fighter pilot. That's all. But we had this bent on joining, well, first Air Force. Then we found out that the Navy guys land on ships.

They were like, well, that's really cool. Right. So then it was Navy all the way. This was pre-top gun. And Top Gun just made it even worse. Yeah, there's a wild thing. One of my buddies, Dave Burke. Good deal, Dave.

Yes. They have this thing where they call it, getting aboard. And basically there's some people that can't do that. That last thing, which is land the boat, land the plane on the boat. And he had this one buddy that decided to go in the Marine Corps instead of going in the Air Force and he made it all the way through training was an F-18 pilot. And the last thing that he needed to do was get aboard. Yeah. Couldn't get a board. And so if he would have been an F-15 pilot in the Air Force or an F-16 pilot, he would have been good to go. But he couldn't get aboard is just like that last little thing. I remember reading an article, Navy Pilot. Of course, I was absorbing as much as I could back then. And the Navy Pilot was quoted as saying, imagine putting a postage stamp in the middle of a large rug, turning out the lights,

and then jumping and landing on that poacher's stamp with your tongue. That's what it's like. That's pretty good. What sport? You said you didn't row. What sports did you play? I tried everything when I was a kid. Back then you could.

You didn't have to start it. They didn't put like a baseball glove on your hand and you were born. It's the only sport for you. That's right. You're going to be a champ. I'm depending on where you grow up nowadays, you have to start. If you don't start early, you're not going to make the high school team, right?

So anyway, I tried everything growing up. When I got to high school, I decided I loved ice hockey, but I couldn't skate well enough to make the team. So I decided to play lacrosse. I felt like it was kind of a land version of ice hockey. And so I walked on the team freshman year, never having played. Played four years and was captain by the end of my senior year. That's legit? Yeah.

So that was that the only sport you played? I mean, I did track. I did track in the winter to get in shape for lacrosse. But that was, yeah, that was about it. And then when, are you thinking about the military? So this is high school. Are you thinking about the military? Oh, yes.

Yeah, we were bent on Navy. And so we were the kids in, you know, we were the kids who had pictures of jets, you know, in our, in our notebooks. I had it all over my room. Pictures of Tom Cruise? Not so much Tom Cruise. But, yeah, jets. And, yeah, so it was, yeah, we were known kind of those who knew us in high school. they knew that Divini boys wanted to go into the military.

And then so then your plan was to obviously be a pilot. You have to be an officer. So now you know you've got to go to college. Yeah. And when did you end up going to college? So went first year to an aviation school down at Embry Rittle. Oh, in Florida. Yeah, Ember Roodle down in Florida.

My brother went to FIT down in Florida. The plan was let's get our, let's start learning out of fly or maybe get our pilot's license and go OCS. But after about a year there or half a year there, I realized, well, first of all, I realized getting, you know, paying $20,000 a year to get your pilot license, right? It makes sense. So I, I majored in avionics, which I wasn't good at at all. My brother did get his license, but we also realized that the doors, after the top gun kind of surge, the doors for slots for OCS were closing. So we're like, no, we should probably find an RTC unit. And so we both applied to Purdue and then transferred up to Purdue. And I joined the RTC unit, earned a scholarship there. My brother

did not, but he went, well, after some years of kind of figure out what he want to do, went Marine PLC, joined the Marines, and then flew Harriers for 20 years, yeah. So at what point did you realize you didn't want to be a pilot? It was never I didn't want to be a pilot. It was after the first Gulf War, there was a Newsweek article I saw, and it was basically had a guy's face on it, was camouflage, and said it was like special operations forces, right? And so I opened up this article, And it was about seven pages, and it talked about all the spec ops units, so Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines. Through those seven pages, there were probably 20, 25 pictures of guys doing different things, like underwater in the snow, skydiving, desert, jungle.

And I recognize that out of that 25 pictures, like 20 of them were seals. They were just in different environments. And I was like, who are these guys, right? And so I started reading about them. And then as I went to school, I still hadn't made a decision when I was an art. RTC, but ultimately I said to myself, well, I know I can be a pilot, but I don't want to, I don't want to wonder if I could be a seal. And so, so I went that direction and fortunately got a bill it. And then how did you, I mean, this is what, so what year is this? This is, well, graduated

96, so this might be 90s. Yeah. Not a lot of seal stuff. Did you, how hard was it to get a bill it? Well, it was difficult. I mean, they were only, they only, my year, they only accepted 11 ROTC guys nationwide. And I think, and it was like 16 Academy guys. And so, I was able to link up with a guy in Connecticut who was running, he basically, he'd just started a program where he just, he was a retired reserve seal, Captain Bissett, and he had helped a couple guys get through the, you know, get to the pipeline. And so I linked up with him. He started, you know, helping me with the physical test, which I, ironically, back then I did, I think I did 11 pullups for my, for my test, which, which, which, I mean, I wouldn't even, you know, gotten close to making it today. But he also, I think what he really did was, uh, introduced, me to some active seals. I drove down to D.C. to meet with a captain down there, got a recommendation. So I met with them. They gave me recommendations. And then he helped me put together a package, which I then gave to my RTC unit because they didn't really know how to do the seal thing. In fact, during our summer cruises, there was something called minibuds. And I remember, you know,

being at my unit, going to my unit officer and saying, hey, can I go to minibuds? He was like, oh, well, let me look into that. And so a couple days later, he said, oh, you know, there's no more billets for minibuds. I was like, oh, okay, check. And so I went on a normal Navy cruise. In fact, I went on a ship out here in San Diego, and one day threw on my whites and just walked into the Bud's quartered. I could say, hey, can you show me around?

But ironically, I get to Buds. I realize that actually there were billets. There were extra billets for RTC that he didn't know about. So extra Academy guys got to go that year. So I never got to many buds. So this was like 1996, you say. I remember there was a time period where they were recruiting guys. It's like the officers were just kind of like off the charts,

you know, Ivy League guys that rode crew and were captain of the football team and all this stuff. And then they kind of backed away from that because they had these guys that were basically, there's several issues that they were running into. I'm sure we could run into the attributes of what it was. But a lot of them were just, they were just there to do four years and get the qual and then get out and move on with the rest of their life. And other guys just didn't have any common sense type thing. And so they, they kind of opened up, I think they opened up their minds as to who they were recruiting.

So it sounds like, you know, we're laughing. You're saying you only did 11 pull-ups. And it's one of those things where, you know, you look at a bunch of guys and this guy can do 50 and this guy can do 42 and this guy can do 38 and this guy can do 11. Well, quite frankly, being able to do pull-ups is not necessarily mean, translate to any part of being an actual seal and being a seal officer for sure. Right. And so, you know, obviously you must have had some other characteristics that they looked at. And thankfully, they did because, you know, I was also talking to a guy that worked at Buds a little while ago. And, you know, he was basically talking about the fact that sometimes guys that are, like, for instance, bad runners.

He was like, yeah, you know, a guy can't keep up with his boat. And he just gets run out of the boat. And that's it. He's done. And he says, and you and I both know, and we all know, like, being a good runner does not necessarily make someone a good seal. No. No, you know, it's fascinating. I think you can agree with this because you were actually in the pre-war seal teams longer than I was.

But when I got to the SEAL teams, you know, 97 or so, I went to the SEAL teams and I recognized that all the, quote, best SEALs were, or those who were considered the best SEALs were all the best PTAers. They were the guys who came up, you know, first on the runs and all that stuff. And PT was kind of the measure at the time because we'd have these massive team PTs every day, which was good from a morale standpoint. I think that's, you know, that's something we lost in the war. But what I recognized is when the war started, all those guys started to disappear. I mean, it didn't, you know, the guys who were actually good at war, good at the job, there's measurements left, right? And so I think you're absolutely right.

I think the default tends to be physical because it's a measurable and you can see it. But we all know those dark horses, man, you know, you got to, but this is, you know, this is why we have a fire in the gut ward at Buds, right? Because, you know. I don't think they have it anymore. Oh, really? Yep. Okay.

Oddly enough. It is odd. Yeah. Yeah. anymore. Yeah, yeah, you know, when I got to team, so I went to, I got to team one. And I would say there was a little bit of a, there was a little bit of a line between like people that were good at running. And, and then there was people that were considered to be like good team guys. And those, sometimes the good runners were also good team guys. But sometimes the team guys weren't

great runners. And it really boiled down to like how good they weren't doing the job of being in the field and that's what counted and although I think from like maybe senior leadership would look and go this guy's our best runner he must be a great seal and yeah that certainly is not as we both know and laugh like just not as two non runners here yeah we can we can testify right I've never been I've never been accused of winning running race I was I was goon I was goon squad I first got to buds I was goon squad and I was literally on the weekends practicing my running on you know on the beach on the soft sand because I really hadn't done it. And slowly I got up to the edge of the pack of the back and then into the middle. But I was goon-squarted a lot. So were you, so how prepared were

you? What information did you have going on? Well, you know, I mean, books back then were, you know, hard to find. Brave men, Dark Waters, you know, Or Kelly wrote a couple. There was one called the Commandos, which was probably the most recent, it was kind of the time, the most recent book and it kind of outlined hell week. So I had a sense of what was going on. The Be Something Special Recruiting video. There you go. That's all you need.

That's all you need, right? Ultimately, I think I can say I wasn't prepared enough. But, you know, when I got there, I just, I recognized, I just had to do what I needed to do. And even the O-course, I mean, you know, again, on the weekends or after work, I was going to practice the O-course. I was running on sands, you know, just to get going because I just have to have to do it. So and what I knew I could do, I think one of the things I recognize that buds fairly quickly

was that it actually wasn't about the physical. It was about just keep going, you know, and you almost come to this sense that, hey, there's only so many push-ups that someone can make me do until I can't do anymore. And at that point, they're going to make me get wet. I'm like, okay, so I'll get wet, you know, and I'll cool off and I'll go do more push-ups, right? So you almost come to a recognition that you're going to get to zero and just do what you can at zero. And I think that's what that's what they're looking for.

They're looking for that recognition and that almost that comfort in the fact that's, yeah, I'll just keep going. Even if it's slow, I'll just keep moving. Not going to give up. Was there anything that was especially challenging for you? Well, running was probably the most challenging, especially beach running. Yeah, I would say, yeah, the water stuff, I always love the water stuff. So if there was anything, so drownproofing was pretty much my favorite thing to do. Oh, okay.

Because it was the time that no one was screwing with you. Yeah. So I remember they'd have dog and ponies. And, you know, as the Bud's class, they'd have, they'd say, hey, we need volunteers to these dog and ponies. I'd always volunteer for drownproofing because it was the time they'd leave me alone. You know, for 30 minutes, I could just bob in the, in the pool. And pool comp and everything, you were just good in the water.

Where did you grow up swimming? Yeah, I grew up. Yeah, I grew up in Connecticut right on the Long Island Sound. So I was always a water rat. So, yeah, everything water related, I was comfortable doing. I had learned to scuba dive in college just deliberately and just recognized I just loved I loved being in the water underwater so pool comp yeah it wasn't an issue for me I mean

obviously I had the normal stress for it but I was able to get get done the first time yeah it's weird if if you're lucky enough to have that comfort I mean some of some dudes are just petrified of every water evolution and usually they don't make it I mean it's not a good way to roll into it you're petrified of drown proofing, petrified of life-saving, petrified if not tied. That's right. Just having that hanging over your head all the time. Well, especially if you fail a few times and then you have to do it, you have to wait the weekend and then do it again. But you know, but you bring up a good point because I think, you know, a lot of people, and I'm sure you've had this, they've described seals as

fearless. And I can't stand that description because it's not, none of us are fearless, you know, because, you know, courage requires fear. And all of us have little things that we're like, we're, we're, we don't like it. You know, there are team guys who love skydiving and they hate diving. There are team guys like me who love diving and I don't like skydiving, you know. Climbing is nothing, I would never climb on my free time, you know, or bungee gym, right? But I think every single one of us, we learn how to move through it. And so you hope that every guy has something they like about the job. But regardless of who you're talking to, that person had to move through some fear. Yeah. There's some stuff you're going to have to just suck up at some point.

Totally. Well, and here's another thing because I've always, you know, and I got asked by, this was a while ago, a bunch of sailors, they wanted to be seals. And so I was on a ship. I did one ship deployment as an L&O. And they said, hey, sir, could you just give us 30 minutes and talk to us about being a seal? So I said, sure. And I got them all in a room. It was about 10 of them. And I started it by saying this. I said, listen, I want all of you to know, okay? When you're a Navy SEAL, when you're doing the job, okay, there's never any cool music playing. and there's no like girls on the side or beers.

It always sucks, right? The teams will take the fun out of everything. If you're diving, it's cold, it's dark, it's dirty. If you're skydiving, it's nighttime, you're waddling out of there. Nothing is ever cool. The coolest part is at the end when you look back at what you did and you're having a beer or whatever. But you have to get that into your head.

And I think Buds slams that into your head day one, right? You come in with this mythology and you're like, oh, cool. And then suddenly you're like, holy crap, what the hell is? this. And so I think that's a number one. Supporting that whole premise is the fact that it's in Coronado, California. That's right. What you're driving into, if you ever get the chance to go to San Diego, you drive over to Coronado. As you drive over this beautiful bridge, you look down in Coronado, it literally looks like a movie depiction of a little heavenly neighborhood. Yeah. And it almost is with a hotel there. And it almost is. It almost is. Just this beautiful place.

Sunny beaches or a sun's out, beautiful beach. And somehow they can take that. And make it suck. Well, I mean, people think Southern California water is warm. That's true. You know, I actually went on a run this morning. I hit the beaches at my West Coast ritual. I always go down to Coronado and take a run. And so I hit the beach at 5 a.m.

I was like, okay, cool, 5 a.m. No one will be on the beach, right? I get there and immediately realize that it's high tide, right? So I was like, okay, it's cold because it's cold. It was just cold. It was 45 degrees this morning. So I start running. Within the first hundred yards, the waves crash over my feet.

The sand is soft, right? I was just like, I started laughing because it was just beautiful. beautifully miserable. And I think that's what you really start to, you start to relish that stuff. So, hell week, you get done with that. You get done with pool comp, get done with land warfare. So you get done with buds. Yeah. Yeah. Did you get rolled at all? I got rolled from the, so I didn't, technically I started with 209. I did their, their end dock. But before 201 classed up officially, they're like, hey, there are too many officers in the class. We're rolling, we're going to roll the three slowest runners. of course. So I got rolled to 210. So I never classed up with 209.

So I started with 210 and I graduate 210, yeah. And then where did you go from there? What team did you go to? SDV won in Hawaii. But at the time, classic budgeting, you know, we graduated April 98. And there were no, there's apparently no money to PCS officers. And so like, hey, we're going to keep you here and you'll do your SDV school. Because back then it was in San Diego.

So we waited. We just lived in apartments until summer. that year did SDV school, went to jump school, and then I checked in January 98 to SDV Team 1. And then you get out there, did you want to go to SDV because you liked the water? Did you actually put in for it? Well, so, no. My plan was to, but when you go to Buds, as you will testify, especially back then, everybody was like, don't do SDVs.

And so I got worried about SDVs. So on my dream sheet, I put two, all East Coast teams, because I was. I wanted to go to these kids. And I got SDV-1. So, but I wasn't upset. I was like, okay, this is cool because I did love diving. And I love that, I love that aspect of it. And to be able to have done that, I thought was pretty froggy.

And then you get there, you get put into a platoon? Like, how's that working? Yeah, it was a little bit, we were a little bit delayed. There was a platoon that was already formed up. One of my, you know, my best friend, he's an admiral now. He and I were kind of put in holding. Got to do an exercise with one of the platoons, went out of the best. Middle East did an exercise and then platooned up a little bit late, but did one platoon and the

deployment out to the Middle East, you know, kind of went to the Middle East quite a bit back then. We're out there and we were actually out there in Bahrain when the coal, the USS Cole got hit, so we actually did some response to that. So yeah, did one deployment as an AOIC there at SDVs. And then what was the next stop? Seal Team 2. Yeah. So I was, I always wanted to go to the East Coast and specifically Seal Team 2 because all the books back then, you know, were older books, so they focused on one, Steel Team 1 and Seal Team 2. And so you say you got to, you just,

you and I just missed each other at Steel Team 2. Yeah. Because I got, I left there in 2000, the spring of, yeah, the spring of 2000. And I checked in January 2001. Check. Yeah. And is that word, did you go straight to a platoon commander?

No, yet again, I was delayed. I would did a, I, the only way I could get Seal Team 2, you know, interesting. So my buddy and I would call the detail for, detailer from Hawaii and both of us want to go East Coast. So he gets on the phone. first. He's like, I'd like an OIC on the East Coast. And the guy's like, yeah, I have one a teammate. He's like, cool, I'll take it. So he's like, my buddy's here. So I got on the phone, yeah, I want an OIC on the East Coast. That was my last one. You missed it by a phone call.

He missed it by a phone call. But he said, you know, if you want, you can do an L&O. You know, back then, we were deploying guys on ships on both carriers and Marroutatoons, and they usually put a seal officer as an L&O on those ships. And so I said, I said, listen, can I go to SEAL Team 2. He said, yeah, you know, you need to do an Illinois. I said, I'll do it L&O, but I want to do a carrier. I don't want to do a bark. Because I always loved aviation. I just want it. He said, deal. So I went, checked in, and then did a, did my first deployment with the John F. Kennedy battle group as Illinois on that carrier. Dude, this is crazy. So my platoon at SEAL Team 2 was the strike platoon, and we went on the USS John F. Kennedy.

There you go. The last conventional carrier. There you go. Yeah. It was actually turned out to be a great deployment. I mean, I'll see 9-11 happened. Is that while you were on deployment? No, in fact, it was before we deployed. We were actually getting underway for Comp 2X on 9-11. I haven't heard the word comp 2-X in a long time. It just said shutters. I know, I know.

Echo Charles, these are big, like, fleet exercises that you're doing. The whole fleets out there, all these ships, and you're going to get tasked with all these missions, and it's just like an operation complication for two weeks. That's right. That's right, yeah. And the battle group got underway on the morning. morning of September 11th.

So all the news reports said that there was a strike battle group that got underway within hours of the attack, which is hilarious because it wouldn't happen that way, right? It happened to be within hours. And so we actually steamed right up to the East Coast off the East Coast of Virginia there. I flew off and went to the teams to check in to see what was going on and, you know, get a sense of everything. And then you guys did that, but then did you go on a normal deployment? Yeah, so I got back from there.

platooned up as an OIC and started that work up and then of course then Iraq was kicking off and so because we were our platoon did pretty well in the training our CEO sent us to Iraq and when was that? What year was that? That was 2004 yeah

2004 yeah oh so I remember when you guys showed up you guys did you guys go up north did you guys so we started up north and then and then came down south and we took over the security mission yeah we started Yeah, so. I had a very lucky career.

I got wrapped that up and went home and a few months later you guys were doing the security. Yeah, yeah. And then so how was your workup when you were a platoon commander? It was great. It was standard, you know, did the, well, obviously the individual trainings, all the guys went to the schools. Then we did our our platoon training, did all our schools. And back then it was all, well, as you were.

remember they had just implemented the NSW 2000 Force 21 I think it was called brilliant idea we didn't know that it was going to be so brilliant right because it just set us up to deploy in such a perfect way but they hadn't they hadn't changed the the training program so we did all the regular blocks you know you know mobility diving CQC all that stuff and and then went straight to when we went out there we went straight up to Mozul and started there. So I remember that because we didn't see you guys. So you guys literally turned over with us. I was a team seven.

And you guys arrived in, well, I went home sometime around April. Yeah. But you guys, I think you guys might have showed up. I might have high-fived a couple guys that I knew from Team 2. Yeah. And then you guys rolled straight up to Mozou right after that. I think you guys had people that stayed down in Baghdad as well. Yep.

I think. Yeah, we had some L&O guys who stayed down, which was also fortuitous based on the fact that we all after a few, after about a month and a half, all went down to Baghdad to start running that PSD mission. Did you guys chop under the Team 1 CO? No. Or it was your Team 2 CO on deployment too. He was on deployment with us.

Okay. And so what happened was the Team 1 CO stayed out west to continue running direct action and our Team 2 CO ran the PSD mission. Got it. Yeah. So both COs were deployed. Got it. Okay.

Yep. Now I'm, now I'm remember. And also the I remember this to the Marsock like debt one the first Yeah first marine showed up yep and that was cool too because a bunch of those guys I had done when I was an enlisted guy I did two Back-to-back arg platoons out here at team one Wow and so we knew all these force recon guys and a lot of us force recon guys became the debt one guys So we high five with those guys as well and Had the good times yeah so so that deployment you do a little bit of Direct action stuff up north.

Yeah, a little bit of DA up north, only about a month and a half. And then get drawn down to PSD. And yeah, that was a deployment. And that was the focus for the teams for, I think, a year and a half before they were able to pass that off. Yeah. Yeah. The mission was there was a bunch of Iraqi leadership, government leadership, that everyone in the country, well, a lot of people in the country wanted to kill. Yeah.

And they had to keep those individuals safe. I mean, from a strategic level, those guys. had to stay alive. And so this was an incredibly important mission. I mean, it was the highest level. It was the mission. The most important mission in the Iraq war at that time and was to keep these, was there seven of them, right?

Seven, yeah. The PM, the president, a couple others. And yeah, and then, yeah, seven with seven different details. Yeah. It was, it's funny, I was on a call about a month ago with, well, retired now, General George Casey. And he was out there in charge of the whole effort. I was telling him, hey, I was out there.

And he's like, yeah, I remember you guys. All you wanted to do, all I kept hearing is get us out of this mission, get us out of this mission, which made sense because, you know, we can only do it for so long, and that wasn't our primary medal. So, but again, you know, it's this idea. I think SEALs, spec operations, special operations holistically are designed to do what you have to do. I mean, you could adapt. You can mod.

You can, you just, hey, what's the job? Okay. We'll do the job. And we might complain in bitch and moan, but we'll still do the job well. And that's what we did. Yeah, I've always talked about the fact that, you know, and we're getting better now, but when you and I were in, especially at that time, there was no doctrine on anything. Right. And so you would know how to do a direct action mission because some other guy had come back and taught you how to do it.

The Vietnam guys taught us how to do raids. Like, it's all was word of mouth. And occasionally you get some photocopied thing with some weird stick figures on it about what your patrol formation could be. But it was all, it was all like word of mouth. And then you'd go out and you'd do it and you'd adapt. and you'd figure it out. And so we didn't have any doctrine, which can be a negative.

Right. If you've got some kind of a mission that you probably should have some baseline to do, and yet you can't pull out a book, whereas like the Army can pull out, what is it, FM 7, tack eight, infantry, platoon, and squad. There it is.

Here's everyone's job. Here's how you actually get the mission. Here's where people's fields of fire. It's all laid out for you, which is awesome. Yeah. The issue is when you have something like PSD, you know, security for a bunch of,

of high value people and there's no, there was no book on that. No. There was no doctrine. No one had any doctrine on that. Well, the only doctrine,

again, the only thing we drew upon was that our specialized unit had been doing it up in Europe for a few years. And we had some guys who were from that command who were like,

oh, we know how to do this. We know, we've done it before. And that's why we were tapped to start doing it because those guys started trading all of us and they were familiar. So yeah, you're right.

I mean, the doctrine, I think officers, And I think they do a little bit more of this, but it would, you know, officers who could come in with a better understanding of just field maneuver and battlefield stuff, right, is advantageous. But at the same time, this ability kind of come in almost with an infant's mind is something we do pretty well. Yeah.

It takes a certain level of open-mindedness to go, oh, here's the biggest strategic mission that you've got in the country. Cool, yeah, we got it. Yeah, we'll do it. And to pull it off, I mean, think about that, all the, thousands and thousands of movements, of individual movements of these individuals over a year and a half into hostile territory where there's so many people trying to kill them and they all made it. They all lived.

And that's a pretty amazing, pretty amazing job for all the boys. And like you said, seals don't want to be on defense. Right. And the crux of that job is you're on defense. You're on defense. Although what people don't understand is the offensive nature of that job. I mean, there's so much preparation in planning. And I think one of the reasons why the guys did it so well is because we just look at environments differently.

We're always hedging our situation to the best of our ability. We're comfortable with uncertainty, but we'll get it to whatever percentage we can in terms of looking ahead and certainty before we say, okay, that's the line. We've got to be good here. And so for me, it was a real education on the offensive nature of that type of mission. Of course, when you're in the moment, you're on defense, but you've offensively prepared the environment so that you are hedging your bets in your advantage, which is pretty cool. Yeah, the shift of the mindset from this is a defensive mission. How do we make it? How can we be offensive as we possibly can?

And I remember we actually, when I was at Team 2, we did training for this. We actually did like some scenarios where, oh, we've got to protect this guy. And I remember, you know, having conversations with guys that had worked with other units and their, what they were taught, wasn't they told us this? So like, hey, when we worked with these other units that do this for a living, here's what they would say. Oh, you collapse on the, on the person that you're trying to protect. It's a very defensive mindset. And he's like, what we would do is, oh, there's a threat. We would attack the threat.

You know, it's like the opposite mindset. And he said, you know what? When they would play it out, you know, with ammunition or whatever, the people that were going on offense and attack the threat would do better than the people that were just trying to surround the principle and get him out of there. You do want to do that. But if you've got guys that are attacking the attacker, it ends up being a better move. Yeah, you get into their utaloupe.

I mean, you get it, you know, as soon as someone, if an enemy is an attack mode, and suddenly they find that someone is getting into. their space, it puts them on the defensive. And so I think that's a really cool mindset and strategy that, that, that, you know, we applied. Yeah. Yeah. So you get done with that deployment. And what, what's next?

So then I screened for the maritime component, the specialized unit for, for the joint special operations command, the maritime component screened and got, got accepted and went to that selection. And how was that selection for you? And I enjoyed it. I mean, I, I, it's about nine months. I enjoyed. So I would describe that, whereas Bud's, the primary responsibility is to not quit.

There's a performance. I mean, you have to be able to perform in what they're asking you to do. But I just like, I love the, I love the precision. So I grew, so growing up, you know, I said my mom, classical piano, my dad, John Denver, I love all of it, but I started getting it a metal. And it was probably in the late 80s. I heard Master Puppets for the first time, and I was, I had been listening to, like, you know, Motley crew and things like that, and I was like, I just want something heavier.

There's got to be more. There's got to be more. And I heard Master Puppets and Justice for All, and I heard those guys. And I realized, well, I guess I realized this later in kind of this mental autopsy that I loved the, what I call precision violence, precision aggression, and the way these guys played. And I love thrash metal, but, I mean, with that. the palm muting and the fact that you could hear every single chug on that e-ccord. And it was just so fast and so precise.

And that's what I felt like when I was doing this kind of hostage rescue level CQC. It was just so fast and so precise. And so I just realized I love it. And musically, I love it. I mean, the rappers who do it, you know, who rap fast and precise, I love. If it's a country, if it's a banjo playing fast and precise, I love it. I mean, I just, anything fast and precise, kind of violent, you know, precision aggression, I love. And I love the challenge.

It was, you know, I enjoyed it. I met Metallica just like in passing. And I walked up to James Hetfield. And I told him this story, which was that when I got to SEAL Team One in 1991, there was a big stereo system in the weight room. And it was, had the old school five-disc CD changers. Nice. Yeah.

And it was all the Metallica albums were in there. And it was lock shut. It was the only thing you could listen to. Perfect. It was like, yes. Perfect. I knew that's what I had made a good decision by joining the day. Yeah, right.

Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, they, so my, so the training reminded me a little bit of that. Just this, this very precise aggression, which I love, because I thought seals were always that way. And obviously, underwater, it's a little bit different, but I thought we were just designed differently in the sense that, yes, we, we deliver violence, but we do it every single time you move every single time your trigger finger moves it's with a thought it's it's thought through and I um I really enjoy that that level so so then you get done with that with the training yeah

and now it's time you're your get put into a squadron you start going on deployment yeah and and what are those what are how many those what's your what's your opt tempo like yeah back then it was um it was a nine month cycle three months three months uh three months training three months it's called alert and then three months deployed and then rinse and repeat. But because the war had started, it was basically, you know, well, I guess prior to the war, it would be basically six months of training, three months alert. And then it became three months training, three months alert, three months deployed. And so the training cycles got crunched, and it was just very fast and tough.

tough but cool because the op tempo when you were there was so intense but yeah I did I ended up doing two deployments as a troop I did a toy and I was kind of the opso for the squadron and I had two deployments as a troop commander there were those were those Iraq or Afghanistan one ever one well two to Iraq one Afghanistan yeah and then what what time frame were these this was 05 through 08 yeah oh five oh yeah so you and I may have crossed over there too I'm sure we did I'm you know in trying to think through it I mean we may have crossed paths here because I

even when I was running training I came out here and I we probably sat down in some of the same training conferences to talk about stuff right but yeah you never know yeah yeah so so you're out on those deployments how's that how's that from a leadership perspective it's um I mean you're learning the whole time and I think uh I think you try to when you in any in any seal platoon um especially as a new officer, you go in there. And if you're not willing to just listen first, you're going to be screwed, right? Especially when you have guys who've just been there, done that. And so to go in and listen first and watch and hear the expertise, and it was almost like

getting into a machine that was already moving, and you just try to say, okay, how can I help this move better and faster? And so it was a tremendous lesson in leadership for me, because that's what I recognize that you have to be a part of the machine. It's not necessary. I mean, I think, I always say kind of leadership is not a position, it's a behavior, right? And I talk about this concept called dynamic subordination, which is really decentralized leadership. And the story of this kind of me thinking about this comes after I left the teams. I was talking to a bunch of executives, and they asked me, I had a flip chart next to me. And they said, hey, Rich, can you draw the task organization, what the task organization looks like for a high-performing team?

And so I was stumped when they asked me that because I had the models in my head was like, these models don't apply. I had the pyramid model, of course, and I was like, well, that doesn't apply because, you know, that's too slow and bureaucratic. The flat model, which was a mild rebellion to the pyramid, and I said that doesn't apply because, you know, in a flat model, first of all, it's hard to know who's in charge. And second of all, because it's flat, something can happen on the right side line that doesn't, it's not seen or heard by the left side line. So it gets siloed. Information can get silent. And a high-performing team, information never gets siloed.

So flat model was out. And then I had the Robert Greenleaf, servant leadership model, where the leader is the upside-down pyramid leader sits on the bottom. And I always tell people, I was like, if you're going to land on any one of those, philosophically, that's the one you can land on. It's a good one. However, it's still not a high-performing team operates because, you know, high-performing team burden is distributed. It's not all in one. So really in frustration, I basically drew a blob on the board, an amoeba. And I said to the group, I said, where do you think the leader sits in this blob? And I got answers like, you know, front, back, top, bottom, center. I said, all of you are correct. The leader is wherever the leader needs to be in the moment. And this is what I call dynamics coordination, which is literally this idea that, you know, a team understands that issues and challenges and problems can come from any angle at any moment.

And when one does, the person who's closest to that problem and the most capable, immediately steps up and takes lead, and everybody follows. And then it swaps. It's also also called alpha swapping, that alpha position swaps. And so I know you and I as officers, we were pretty much in charge of every op we were on, but didn't mean we were always being supported. In fact, it was usually the opposite. We were supporting other people. And sometimes the environment would shift and they'd have to support us, right? But it was really, and this really hit me when I was actually in training, and I was watching close to quarter combat training, because in close quarter combat, you'll see a group of four guys outside a door.

And they'll go, you know, number one man, number two man, number three men, number four men. They'll go in that room. They're suddenly clear, everything be all clear. Well, the next threat might be close as the number four man. So guess what? Number four men becomes number one man. And so you see this. And so no CQC run is ever the same, you know.

And it's just this just amazingly beautiful. violently beautiful dance between leadership positions. And I think that's what I recognized the most and fell into quite, quite, you know, quite well, because that's kind of how I liked leading. But, you know, funny story, first deployment as the troop commander. I'm in Afghanistan. And we get this, we get this, it's our first mission. And it seems fairly, fairly good.

Compounds not too far away, easy drive there, relatively easy. So we get this thing planned out. And as we're planning, we're getting little things like, you know, change the crypto or this thing didn't line up. Hey, the gear we need is not there. So these little things, little ticks. And, you know, little enough, you just brush them aside, right? But they're adding up. And I'm kind of keeping a count in my head.

And so we start rolling out and now we're driving. And the first route fouled, right? So we have to go second route. That's fouled. And now we're like, okay, wait a second. You know, okay, we could probably get this third route. We get the third route. Okay, finally park.

Now we're a little bit late. Timelines are a little bit skewed, walking towards the target. Finally, we're walking towards the target, and we start hearing whistling. And we had just read a couple days before some intel on a unit that had been ambushed, and they had heard whistling. So I stop everybody. I call my troop chief. I'm like, hey, I'm not feeling good about this one. You know, I've got, there's too many ticks.

And fortunately, he was a great guy, and he's like, I agree. And so I always joke on my very first op at that command as troop commander, I called the CEO. who was a ranger back at the basis that, hey, we're turning around. We're quitting the mission, you know. And I actually wrote a blog on this. It's okay to quit, but just never give up, right? Because if you're seeing this situation and you're not paying attention, and I realized it was really good for me to understand that.

That's my job as the leader. I mean, because so many guys who do so many phenomenal things, if I'm not keeping abreast of all this stuff. And, of course, there were some guys who were pissed, and, you know, you have to take that hit, too. But that's my job. And it really taught me. I think in the hundreds of missions I did, I turned around on three.

And everyone felt like I was quitting. And everyone was hard. And on everyone, we had guys who were pissed off and upset. But I recognize that that's the job, you know? Yeah, I used to have the, we used to joke about it. So when I was a platoon commander, when I was a troop commander, I called it go-go criteria. Because, you know, in the SEAL teams, they have no-go criteria. If you don't have this many vehicles, it's a no-go.

If you don't have this air support, it's a no-go. If you don't have comms with this people, it's a no-go. So we have all these no-go criteria. So my joke would always be, for me, it's go-go criteria. We're fucking going, right? But the interesting thing was there was, same thing. Like there'd be a mission where it's like, hey, we're going. Okay, cool.

Hey, we actually just lost the air cover for this part of the insert. Okay, we're going. Hey, it looks like the army that was going to support us with their vehicles for QRF for the first half an hour. they're not going to be on station for an additional three hours. Okay, we're going. Hey, the whatever L&O for that unit that was supposed to be here for the brief. He actually didn't show up. You know what?

We're not going. So eventually you've got to make that call of, hey, you know what? For me, it was just the universe trying to tell me that this was not a good op. Well, and you and I, we've read these after-action reports of these tragedies that happen. And these strategies never happen with one big thing. It's always a series of little things. And so hindsight is always 2020. And I think if we're not as leaders understand that,

we're looking for those number of ticks. And no one knows how many ticks it takes. You can't say, well, it's 10 ticks, right? No. It's just what the tick is and how does it affect the mission? And then eventually, what's your no-go versus go-go? And I think that's one of the jobs. Yeah, the other, as far as the leadership goes,

I've had this conversation with so many civilian companies. And one of the ways that I would explain it to them is, you know, we are on an assault and we go over the wall. And there's a guy that's in charge of opening the door. He's a breacher. And guess what? Whatever he tells me to do as the breach team leader, I'm going to do it. I'm the overall guy in charge out there. I'm the ground force commander.

All these people out there actually work for me. And when he says, hey, step back 10 feet and go around that corner, I say, Roger. that. That's right. When the point man says, hey, we're going to shift to a different route, I say, cool, Roger that. When my vehicle commander says, hey, I'm going to bump up and, you know, and get up on this corner here, I say, cool, Roger that. So you're constantly, people are going to lead what they have control over. And that's what I actually want, as I want everyone on my team to be a leader and step up and make things happen. Yeah. So that's like, it's like a school of fish or a flock of brown. I mean, we were literally a mebo. We're not, we're not this, this hierarchy or line. And that,

the position, all the position tells you is what your, you know, your responsibility circle is, you know, for making shit happen, you know, so, and I think that's important. Yeah, yeah. So you do these deployments and then at some point here you get tasked with running the selection for this J-Soc group, this Navy J-Soc group. Yeah, not before I volunteered to go back out to the teams. Oh, okay. So one of my great mentors, you and I both know them.

and he was he was he's now retired but he was my CEO at seal team two and then he was also a deputy there he had been my seat at L's CETO 2 and he had been at that command and and I just loved him so much and I saw what he get back and I didn't I wanted to make sure I stayed in both communities kind of or both both both venues I volunteered to go to seal team 10 as ops exo and you know the other component was my wife was she pretty much when he was a group commander he would well no when I did it he was deputy commander before he took group commander yeah but we're tracking on the yeah yeah but my wife was also sick of sick of the command someday i'll have him on here we have we've got some good stories to tell oh my goodness yeah he's yeah what a phenomenal guy um but my wife was also sick of the command and she basically

back then um i mean they wouldn't even let wives near the compound i mean she you know she had to drop me off at the at the fence and i don't walk in and so she just she was pretty pissed off and she sat me down she's like Listen, you know, I don't think I can take you staying there. And that's a pretty big thing because, because, you know, typically, especially as an officer, if you leave, chances of you're coming back are, you know, you don't know. You know, it's a gamble. And so, but I, you know. How long had you been married for at this point? We got married in 01.

So this was, this was now 08. So you got married when you were, when you got to Team 2 basically? Yeah, so I met her in Hawaii, though. And then I got to Team 2. She moved, she's from Pennsylvania, but she moved from Hawaii back to Virginia Beach. And we had two kids by then. So she's already pissed, bro. You took her out of Hawaii and brought back to Virginia Beach.

So I tell this story. It's funny. It was probably 07. And I was, yeah, 07. And I came back from one of my deployments. And it was very successful deployment. And, you know, and my wife's pretty sick and tired of hearing how awesome her Navy SEAL husband is. She's at home with our one-year-old and our three-year-old.

And it's a couple days I've been home. You're just a freaking loser. Total loser. Total loser. And I come home. And so I'm at home, I'm doing some projects. And I hear her from the back of the house. She's like, hey, Rich, can you grab the...

She's doing something with the kids. Can you grab the Q-tips? Now, admittedly and embarrassingly, I didn't want to drop what I'm doing. So I'm just like, I don't know where they are. And then she's like, no, they're in the bathroom. It's like, okay, I better drop what I'm doing. So I kind of regurgently drop what I'm doing. I go to the bathroom.

I step in the bathroom. I'm like, they're not here. and she's like, they're in the closet. I open the closet door. They're not here. She's like, they're right there on the shelf in the closet. I'm like, I'm telling you they're not here. So now I hear her footsteps.

I'm going to prove her right, right? Her arm comes from over my shoulder, grabs the cutips, puts them in front of my face, and says, they are right here. And as she's walking away, she's like, it's no wonder you guys haven't found bin Laden. She's like, you're like, you guys are probably going in these caves and you're just sitting there. You have male eyes. You're not seeing anything. Which ironically, I say ironically, it was a female.

I mean, he's a team, but a female who found them, right? So we just wanted to have them. The wives, seal wives are badass. They really are. And I know you could testify that. Indeed. But yeah, so it was 08. Volunteer to go back out to Team 10, did an ops, ops, an XO deployed with them.

So that was about a two-year tour. And then. And how did you like that? I loved it. Yeah, I loved it. Love the CEO. Love the Master Chief. Love the team.

Again, you're back on, you know, six-month deployments, which are rougher. But I recognized the healthy nature of seeing both sides and staying connected. And of course, it helped on the home front. But then was asked to go back to run training. And at that point, they changed the command. There was issues of the command. Actually, NSW holistically had started to do a lot more for the families and the wives.

bring the families in, they said, which there's a great concept, right? And so, so it was a, it was a better, it was a better situation. And I was happy to go back and, and went back in, um, uh, early 2010 and and took over selection. Yeah. So this point when, um, you take over selection, this is kind of the, kind of the beginning of this book that you end up writing. Yeah. And, uh, with that, it's probably a good time to, to just jump into some sections of this book. Um, Well, I'll just jump into it right here. Here we go. You say this, I learned about attributes the hard way, on the job, and under pressure from the top.

In 2010, I was in charge of training for one of the premier special operations units on the planet. Our command selected candidates from other spec ops teams, men who already proven themselves to be exceptionally skilled and committed. One Friday afternoon, I was sitting across a small table from one of those men still sweaty in his fatigues from a long day of training. He was a Navy SEAL with eight years of experience behind him. seasoned warrior who'd completed dozens of missions his record was saturated with glowing reviews and recommendations from his superiors He was also recognized as a mentor to younger less experienced guys and he'd been promoted at every Available opportunity often early so you're sitting across the table from this stud on paper he was perfect But three weeks into a nine-month training program we already knew he wasn't gonna make it the selection and training class had just finished a week of close quarters combat exercises or CQC you've seen it in the movies and on TV

A SWAT team or a squad of soldiers busting into a building, staring down the barrels of weapons. They're waving around. One of them shouting clear every few seconds. The Hollywood version is much noisier and sloppier than reality, though. In real life, CQC is a complex sequence of movements, the exact order and timing of which have to be improvised in a fluid, high stress environment where mistakes can be fatal. The lead man focuses only on the door and waits for the signal a squeeze or a word from the second man. Then he goes to the door and turns left or right, sweeping his sight line down the wall, 90 degrees. Toward the center of the room.

The second man goes the opposite direction, left to the lead man's right or vice versa and does the same visual sleep. The third and fourth men keep alternating directions, each of them scanning the room for any bad guys who need to be neutralized or good guys who don't. All of that happens in a few heartbeats. The guy sitting across from me had in his career cleared more rooms than he could likely remember. But each special operation team had its own habits and techniques, and we needed him

to learn our particular ones. The candidate at the table had started strong, but after the first, week or so, things began to get a little shaky. Little mistakes morphed into bigger ones and his confidence was taking a hit. He knew he was falling behind and he tried to like hell to catch up. He stayed late, walking through scenarios, practicing techniques, asking instructors for feedback. None of it was working. One of the most highly trained warriors in this world, a man specifically recruited for

this specialized unit just couldn't keep up. What was I supposed to tell him? That at least he wasn't the only one, that more than half of the other candidates washed out too, that wouldn't do. No matter how gently words came out, you're not good enough is a hard blow to anyone's ego, let alone a guy of his caliber. And then there were my superiors.

There's a high attrition rate for candidates who want to get into special operations units in the first place, and that is by design. About 85% of prospective candidates, for instance, don't complete basic seal training. But we were recruiting men who'd already proven themselves to be among the very best special operators. When only about 50% of those guys

made it through our training, commanders farther up the chain, understandably wanted to know why. On that day in 2010, I didn't have any satisfying answers. I told this highly experienced, highly decorated, and highly competent seal, the only thing I could. I'm sorry, you just didn't cut it. He wasn't happy either. So that's sort of you figuring out, why is this happening? what can I do better here? Yeah, rough.

Rough and disingenuous, especially as a, I mean, you know, the leadership was obviously needing some answers and wanting some answers, but as cadre, I mean, you just, we could do so much better. And I think the collateral effect of that was that these guys were leaving, these guys would leave and go back to their, the regular, to their teams. And they didn't feel good. And they were, they hated where they just came from. And so we were looking at a, um, a.

a real problem in the community of, of, of, of hurt feelings. And I say that. I mean, I don't mean that. Well, like animosity. Animosity. Yeah. Yeah. So, so yeah, my leadership said, hey, Rich, take a better look at this.

What's going on? And so I really had to start deconstructing performance. Yeah. As you do this, you say, you say here in the book, and obviously get the book. It's called The Attributes. I'm reading little chunks of it. You say this. figuring out a better way to explain why so many seemingly well-qualified canons weren't cutting it I decided I needed to examine our roots so I went back to the beginning

1943 and here you talk about World War II you talk about Draper Kaufman You know the the NCDUs you go through some of that history and a brief did you have you read by by by water beneath the walls I've read yes Outstanding yeah outstanding Ben what up Ben Mulligan go get Ben Mulligan's book Yeah trying to give him a shout out every time. Yeah awesome just an incredible job he did on that book. So you start looking at that. You say your Kaufman understood, though that being a strong swimmer who could sneak across the beach wasn't enough for his recruits. He needed men who could think on their feet, men who could adapt and flex as fast as the

environment did, men who had the ability to be aware of multiple aspects of their surroundings, could work together as a team and learn things quickly and do so while under unfathomable stress. Kaufman realized in other words that he wasn't looking for recruits who knew how to do the job, but rather men who could do the job. The difference in that single word between how and could is enormous. The required skills, diving, cartography, demolition, and so on, could always be taught. What Kaufman needed were men with certain innate attributes, traits that are hardwired

into each person's core. So there you go. That's what you started looking at. So I thought about at the time, you know, now it's 2010, I'd already been on hundreds of combat missions. And I thought about my own Bud's experience. And, you know, in Buds, we spend hundreds of hours running around with big boats on our head and hundreds of hours running with 300-pound telephone poles and exercising with those and freezing the surf zone. And I thought about the hundreds of missions I'd been on.

Never on one of those missions, or thousands of training evolutions. Never on one did I carry a big heavy boat on my hood or a telephone pole, right? So what they were doing to us was not training us in the skills to be seals. And so that's where I started to distinguish this difference between skills and attributes. Yeah. I did do one op one time. I did a training op in off the coast of North Carolina. We came across the intercost of waterways.

We ended up, it was low tide. Everything was a disaster. We're in this mud flat. We had to carry our freaking zodiac in the mud flat for like a long, long ass time. Did you put on your head? No, we didn't put on our head, though. We did a low carry. Low carry.

We did a low carry. Yeah. Yeah. So you say this. Skills and attributes get conflated all the time, yet they're inherently different things, right? Yeah. And again, you've got a whole section on this.

Skills are learned. These are some of the hypoids. Skills are learned. Skills direct behavior. Right. Explain direct behavior. So skills tell us what to do in known specific environment. So here's how and when to ride a bike or throw a ball or shoot a gun.

There's a target. that here's the skill that you need. Here's what to do. Here's what to do. Here's what to do. Here's what to do. Here's what to do. Here's what to do. Here's what to do. And then finally, because they're visible, they're very easy to assess measure and test. You can see how well anybody does any one of those things. And you can put scores and a resume. And this is why we get seduced by skills when we're hiring, right? But they don't tell us how we're going to show up and stress challenge and uncertainty. Because in an unknown environment, it's very difficult, if not impossible, to apply a known skill. And so that's when we lean on the attributes. And the attribute, and the attribute, they're innate, right? All of us are born with levels of patience or situational awareness or adaptability. Now, you can certainly develop those things over time and experience, but you can see levels of this stuff in very small children, which means there's a nature, nurture element. And then attributes inform our behavior. They don't direct it. So in other words, my son's levels of perseverance and resilience informed the way he showed up when he

was learning how to ride a bike, and he was falling off a dozen times doing so. And then finally, because they're hard to see, they're difficult to measure and test. It's hard to test someone's levels of patients or whatever. And so they're the most visible and visceral during stress challenge and uncertainty, which is what made our laboratory. My laboratory, whether it's a specialized command or even Buds, the perfect laboratory for seeing this stuff. I mean, Buds really ultimately is an attribute selection course.

That's what it is. You learn some skills, certainly, but... That's questionable. That's questionable. Really, SQT is where you learn if you really... And then you go to your team and you start really learning. But it's an attribute selection course. And so these attributes, these inherent qualities, are really what drive the

the distinction as to whether or not we can operate in these environments. You know, here's a funny story. I'm not sure if you heard this one because I heard it when I first got the buds because it obviously happened sometime before me, maybe even way before us. But the story goes, and back then, the story goes this kid shows up and he wants to be a seal and they basically say, well, you need to swim, you know, 50 meters. He's like, okay. So they take this kid to the pool and it's going to be 25 meters one way and 25 feet

back. And the kid jumps in the pool and sinks right to the bottom and starts walking across the bottom of the pool to one end and then walks across the bottom pool back to the other And he comes up and he's gasping for air, nearly drowning. And instructor looks at him and says, what the hell are you doing? And the kid, who's still gasping his breath, looks at the instructor, says, I'm sorry, instructor, I don't know how to swim. And the instructor pauses for a second and looks to the kid says, that's okay, we can teach you how to swim.

And it's because the instructor knew, if this kid had the attributes, the balls, I guess that could be an attribute, right? But to show up to Navy SEAL training, not knowing how to swim, teaching him to swim, the skill was going to be the easy part, right? And so the idea is, and, you know, we go into business. Obviously, I don't, you know, some skills are necessary just for basic entry, right? But if you want teams, if you want the highest performing teams on the planet, which are teams that not only do well when things are going well, they do well and things are not going well,

you have to look at attributes. And so in the book I talk about this dream team paradox where you hear it all the time. These teams are put together best graphics designer, best marker, best lawyer, whatever, best, best, best, and then they slowly turn, you know, and they go well when things are going well, right? But as soon as the environment changes, as soon as things go sideways, the team turn. It's toxic. And if you don't if you haven't built your team on the attributes, you're not going to have a team that survives. Yeah. I'm questioning if I should tell this story, but I'm going to. I think I've told before. So my daughter was having her birthday down at the beach and I ended up taking all of her friends and like organizing them into teams and having them compete against each other. Of course you think. And this was at San Diego State Beach as a matter of fact. And there's a river up there. And so.

I was having to do these contests. You got to drag this log. Because there's all kinds of fun stuff. You drag this log and who can do it faster. Who could build the tallest, you know, sand tower in five minutes, ready go. And one of the cool thing was that as I'm watching them, I'm like, I see like one person that steps up and starts leading. I see someone that doesn't care. I see someone that's lagging.

I see someone that will do whatever they're told to do as soon as they're told to do it. I was like, this is a freaking little seal platoon of eight-year-old girls. Right. This is crazy. Like the same exact humans. Yeah. But then the funny part is my daughter. I said, okay, you guys go across the river.

Whoever can bring the biggest rock back wins. And so my daughter, she swims across the river. They're also going to cross the river. And everyone's grabbing, you know, rocks that are the size of a baseball, maybe the size of a grapefruit. My daughter, this is my middle daughter, Rana. She picks up like a legit rock that is, you know, like a small bolt.

and she starts back across. And clearly she's not going to be able to swim with it. And I'm watching. I'm like, well, this is going to be interesting. And she just like, like this kid that you're talking about in the pool, she just goes and her head just disappears. And, you know, five seconds go by, six seconds go by. Then her head pops up and she's,

she barely gets her head mouth out of it, grabs a breath of air, goes back down, keeps walking, comes back up and grabs another breath of air, cups walking. And then finally, like, her head rises up on the other side as it gets more shallow. she walks up and just drops the thing at my feet, known victory. And she wasn't, she didn't win that, did she? She wasn't the first, was she? Oh, no, she was freaking won, like, by a heartbeat.

She was like, you got the biggest rock. It was like, known victory. She dropped it, like, whatever. Yeah. I got this. I was like, okay. Yeah, you definitely won that one. It's totally, it's, I mean, this is, this is where a lot of teams hiring,

they get, they get confused. They conflate these things. And they think someone with the, with the best skills is the best person. And this is why I think you can pick certain environments where just attributes show up more than skills. And, you know, obviously, it's back opposite as an environment like that. This is where I talk about, like, different sports. And in many sports, skills take predominance, right? But things like fighting, you know, and I don't fight.

You know, just I know people who do, and I, you know, I look at it with interest. But you can't predict necessarily what the other person. It's uncertainty. So there's attributes, there's adaptability, there's perseverance, there's all these things coming to play. climbing would be the same thing. And so I think this is where you start. I'm really, if I'm obsessed with anything, I'm obsessed with who we are as human beings at our most raw,

because that's the real us, right? And we always hear it. You know, it's when the shit goes down, the real us shows up. And I'm like, okay, who's that? Because we had the great gift in our careers of understanding who that person is and understanding who that person and all people around us.

And that allowed us to be the teams we were. I mean, I know you would agree. I mean, I knew my guys, I mean, I could see. a silhouette and I knew that guy. That's how well we knew each other because we'd seen, we'd lived each other at the most raw. And a lot of people don't get that opportunity. And you don't have to go through seal training to do it, right? It's just understanding these qualities. Because these attributes, when we fall back to like our most raw, it's what these attributes are what's running. So we should know what we're high on, what we're low on.

As you start talking about attributes here, you say this, but the rights stuff by Tom Wolfe basically meant things hardwired into skills, into skilled pilots that allowed them to function at the highest level, no matter how badly circumstances went sideways. He meant in these three words attributes. That's what the right stuff means. And then it's the things you talked about. They're elemental. They inform rather than direct what you're going to do.

And attributes are difficult to assess, measure, and test. And that is the truth. And that's why, you know, like, you don't know, they don't know who's going to make it through seal training. No. In basic seal training, they don't know who's going to make it in despite. And listen, there is a, there is an element of if this guy does great on his PST, the physical standard test, if he does great on it, it, it does indicate that this

guy had the discipline to work out. He had the wherewithal to stick to a program. So it does indicate some of their attributes. Sure. But it's not necessarily. also people that are just really good athletes and they like to work out and therefore they show up in great shape. Every single seal has a story of the guy in their class that was, you know, an Olympic this

or a whatever college athlete, that, and they just quit. Yeah. You know? I think if you and I went to Buds and this is just a hypothesis, there's no way we'll be able to prove this, but we could sit down with a class of candidates getting ready to start and we could interview each one of those candidates about what their journey was to get there in the first place, right? I think that the guys who have the longest journey, the toughest journey, we could say

that is probably going to make it through, you know, because I think this is, these are, because they were executing attributes to get there in the first place. I always say, Bud's selection starts when you decide, you know. There's a lot of, there's a lot of attrition that goes on because people are like, oh, I wish I could do that, but then they stop there, right? And so, so there's a journey, whether you're enlisted or officer, to even get to the beaches of Buds. And then it's, then Bud starts, right?

And so I think the folks, and again, you know, there's always exceptions, but the folks who have practiced these attributes and developed the, and of course, we all have to come up, we have to, we have to enter the game with a little bit of a level, right? We all have to have a level of compartmentalization at day one of buds or else we're not going to make it. We'll hyper develop it in buds, but we have to have it. But there's, we could, I think every single one of us could tell stories from our past was like, oh, yeah, that was, that was grit right. That was that compartmentalized. I mean, when I was playing football in eighth grade, my dad didn't like, he didn't want my mom driving us around. So he's like, you have to ride your bikes everywhere. So my brother and I would have to put on our football gear and ride our bikes through town to get to football practice and then practice and ride our bikes home.

You know, uphill, all that stuff. Uphill both ways. Up hill both ways, right? But there's elements there that, you know, you're just powering through. And I think we could, you know, there'd be, you know, we'd never get it right. But, you know, I think we could we could pick some of the guys. Yeah. And we'd miss some of the guys.

We'd miss some of them too. Yeah. You know, it's, it really is crazy. the the demographics of people that make it and don't make it. Yeah. There's like literally, oh, this rich kid from wherever, uh, from Boston that grew up, we know with a silver spoon. Oh, he made it.

Oh, and this poor kid from the ghetto that grew up, you know, without a mom, without a dad, grew up raised by his, you know, his grandma who didn't have a job and lived off welfare. He made it. And you can also say, oh, this rich kid from Boston that went to a private school and had a silver spoon, he quit. Yeah. And this poor kid.

kid that grew up in the ghetto quit no like it doesn't make any sense it's one of the things I love the most about that training and one of the things I'm most grateful for it's because um I don't think there's a process on the planet there are very few processes on the planet that allow you such a zeroed out start yeah yeah I mean you hit those I remember literally getting there and I felt relieved because it it took so many people like I had to get interviews and recommendations just to get a billet right and I remember getting there I was like All right, now it's on me. And I felt relieved because now it was literally on me.

No one there was going to force me out. And we had this opportunity to zero out everything and just start moving through. And it's just cool. Yeah, Admiral McGuire was telling me that he would tell when he was the CEO of Buds. He would, before Hell Week, he'd say, if you guys don't make it through, it's because of you. Yeah. Like pretty much we're not going to drop you. Look, look, people get dropped, but vast majority of people, they quit.

Yeah. Very few performance drops. Yeah. And those are towards the end and all the time is in SQT, but very few. And those are, am I correct in saying those are attribute drops? I would think so because if you're talking about very basic, like, you know, I remember we had a guy who got dropped because he just, he was unsafe with his weapon. While being safe with your weapon has nothing to do with the skill of hitting a target. It has to do with the attributes of being safe with your weapon, right?

I mean, it's a situation awareness, it's adaptability. It's all this. I'm going to name off a bunch, right? That's what he didn't have. And so it's so buds, just like this training I was running, and we used to say, I remember briefing Olson when Olson was Socom. I said, sir, this training we run, it's nine months long, okay? But as an attribute selection course, the whole nine months, there are attributes that we're assessing that are going to take nine months to see.

How can I see someone's level of integrity, for example, if I can't watch them in a myriad of environments. I can't get feedback from their peers who tell me how they are out in town, you know, who tell me what they do, right? Who tell me if they, they just clean their stuff and leave, right? They don't help out. I have to, so some of these attributes do take a little bit of a long time to assess, but I think the beauty of buds and then this process is it is over a long period. And so we have all these, we have time and we have different environments inside of which to see these, because they can be, in some cases, contextual. And even the ones that we're naturally high on, sometimes we're just not.

Sometimes we're on an off day, right? And so even just one data point is not a decision point. You have to see it across some time. Going back to the book here, you talk about the kind of grouping these things together. You say the ones that follow are grouped into five categories. This is the attribute you're actually going to talk about in the book. Grit, mental acuity, drive, leadership, and team ability. That does not mean that any particular attribute is relevant in only one context.

for instance, empathy and accountability are not reserved exclusively for those in position of leadership, and open-mindedness certainly is useful regardless of whether one is especially driven. Rather, the attributes are organized on the page in a way similar to how they tend to cluster in real life. People we think of as gritty, for example, generally have healthy amounts of the four attributes in that category. But again, this is simply an organizing tool. It is entirely possible to have a sizable amount of courage yet not have a notable amount of grit. And that's an interesting dynamic, isn't it? So now we're going to get to this little second.

You start talking about the attributes themselves. I just kind of went through what the major ones are. And again, the detail that you give, you give stories around all these things, examples. You talk a lot about the neuroscience behind. I know you're friends with Andrew Huberman. There's all kinds of great information in the book. So get the book. but to hit some highlights, the first section is the grit attributes.

And number one, courage, the ability to manage fear in order to confront danger, difficulty, or pain. And you have this chapter is actually called Beware of the Fearless Leader. Yeah. That's a very good, you know, if you've ever worked for someone that it doesn't seem like they're scared of anything, you should be a little bit nervous. So the officer we've talked about, but haven't named, he told me that. He was the guy.

He said beware of the fearless leader. He's going to get you because he'll like to get you killed. He's the one that has the go-go criteria and no no-go-conser at all. Yeah, yeah. Courage is not an absent of fear, but rather the ability to function despite being afraid. This is you on a C-130 at the middle of the night at 20,000 feet getting ready to jump off. Fear comes 100% from the brain. This is your talking about Andrew Huberman.

Andrew Huberman, quote, it's a state of mind, which is why people are afraid of different things. Things. Heights might not bother you at all, but they make others uncomfortable. Or maybe you have a debilitating phobia of snakes or rats, both of which many people consider delightful pets. That's not to say, however, that fear stays in your head. Fear is considered by neuroscientists to be the subjective label that is put on the stress response, Andrew says. And stresses more than just a state of mind. It's a physiological response to our environment. but fear does start in your head. It begins with your brain, detecting a threat,

a process which happens in the amygdala. In very simple terms, the amygdala is a sort of tripwire for sensing danger assessing both existence and severity of a threat. So that's talking about what fear is. Do you think you got used to overcoming fear? Yes.

I think we all do. Yeah. We all do. And again, it's this idea. And so there's a couple ways. So when we start talking about the physiology of fear and the rise in our autonomic arousal system, when the things start, you know, our breathing starts getting rapid, our vision starts to focus in. We all of us have, well, I think we're wired.

First of all, our courage circuits are wired. So our courage attributes are wired, so we're slightly above boiling point. If we were to say boiling point is the average or our autonomic response trips, I think most seals ours trip a little higher than boiling point, right? which means it takes a little bit longer for us to get that response. But even when we do get the response, we also, I think, unconsciously train ourselves to manage our physiology in a way that keeps our frontal lobe online. So what happens as we approach amygdala hijack or autonomic overload, our frontal lobe starting to take a backseat, our limbic brain, our lizard brain starting to come forward, which when we reach full autonomic overload, we're acting without thinking. It's a lizard brain just survival.

So this is advantageous for certain things, right? When we touch a hot stove, we don't want to have to think about pulling our hand away. You know, our brain takes over or pull our hand away. In most environments, however, we want to think through challenge and stress, right? We want to think through the environment. I think that's what we do. We manage our physiology. We keep our frontal lobe back online, and we're able to start thinking through the process.

And so, and I know all of us have this. And it's funny, you know, again, I've lived in Virginia Beach now for, you know, 22 years. Same house, by the way. And I have a seal who lives across the street for me. I have a seal who lives down to the right and a seal who lives down to the left. I remember my wife saying, you know, I'm so glad these guys are here because if something happened, I could go to them and they act like you act. And I'm like, what do you mean? She's like, well, whenever something happens, they just calm down and they just start working the problem.

And this is what we practice doing. So we don't have less fear. We have just practiced the process of moving through the fear. Every time I jumped out of an airplane, I felt fear. But I just knew the, I knew and understood the process of going through that. And part of that process is we understand what to focus on in the moment. We don't overwhelm ourselves. And we basically, and so I'm writing the next book right now.

The next book is called Masters of Uncertainty. I'm going to basically walk through this process. But it's the idea where we say, okay, out of all of this, what do we focus on in the moment? How do we move our horizons? You know, we pick a horizon that we move to. And oftentimes we pick the appropriate horizon so that we can actually move. And it can be anything. It can be the next 10 seconds.

In surf torture, it might be 10 seconds. You know, in Hell Week, it might be, I'm going to make the next, I'm going to do the next meal. But we pick whatever that horizon is. And so it's interesting. I was having lunch with a couple of guys who I served with in the squadron. And, of course, we did a ton of these hayhos together. And we're talking about hayho. And we're talking about, like, being on the ramp and it's unknown DZ.

And, you know, for the audience, an unknown DZ is like, basically you look at a map and you're like, oh, that looks like a good. And you don't have any other, you know, intel on it. It's like, okay, that's where we're landing. And you're hoping it's good. So there's some stress involved. And I remember he was, and my body was like, yeah, you know, we're on the ramp, and I can remember it be an unknown DZ. We have this mission ahead of us, all that stuff.

And there's only one thing I'm thinking about, just one. I was like, what's that? It's like, nail the exit. You know, that's the horizon. Nail the exit. And then once you nail the exit, the next horizon is, okay, pull my shoot. Okay, that's the next horizon. Okay, what's the next horizon?

Get on heading, right? I mean, so, and we are trained to think that way, and we do so in almost all areas and elements of stress, challenge, uncertainty. That's what we do. And that's what combat is. And we know that. Yeah, no, I mean, in the very first book that I wrote about leadership was like, we call it prioritize and execute.

Like, what's the biggest priority you've got right now? Right. That's what you need to focus on and get that thing done. Yeah. If you try and focus on 14 different things that are all going sideways at the same time, you're going to be a disaster. You're not going to have the resources to get it done. You won't probably likely have the cognitive capacity to get it done.

It's going to be a problem. Yeah. Well, and there's neurology, right? What you're doing by doing that is you're deliberately engaging your conscious mind. You're deliberately bringing your conscious mind back in, your frontal lobe, back online to focus and make a decision move, focus, make a decision, move. So I love this. So this idea of, and I know Huberman and I have talked about this, you know, at nauseam, but this idea of we have this, we kind of have this big picture. So you talk about stepping back, which is exactly what happens.

We step back. We open our aperture. We start, we say, okay, what about this environment can I control in the moment? And then you pick something and you go like this. And you focus in, you do that until completion, then you go back out again, and you ask the question again. And one of the things I loved, again, CQC was such a great laboratory inside of which, because CQC is this just extremely rapidly. You're going into a room with big focus, then you're focusing in, you're shooting, you're going back out. Then you're focusing, you're shooting, and it just goes one after the other, after the other.

This is exactly what we do in all environments. And anybody can do this. And this is going to be what I talk about. And this is how we become Masters of Uncertainty. Because Master of Uncertainty is not, oh, I know all the environments. No, it's not about training into environments. It's about training the process by which you operate in an environment. And that's how you start moving through chaos.

So did you go through the Navy Free Fall School? No. Fortunately got to go. Well, I don't know, fortunately unfortunate. I went to Yuma. Okay. So I went through the old school Navy Free Fall School after my first platoon. and it used to be the better you did, the less jumps you got.

Because you just didn't have to repeat jumps. So if you screwed it up, you got to do it again. You screwed up again. You got to do it again. And I did fine. I think I screwed up one jump. And I had 19 jumps at free fall school. And so I'm totally incompetent, right?

I mean, basically completely incompetent. Just enough to get yourself hurt. Yeah. And so then I'm in, then I'm jump back into a workup. And now I'm going through workup. We go to land. We go to the way. So now it's been.

So I've done 19 jumps probably in whatever two weeks and then I I don't jump for I don't know how long it's a long time long time don't jump like like a year probably like a year no jumping and then then I get on a jump and we're like where like where there was a guy there that was very experienced jumper and we're we're just doing a jump at the command we happen to get a bird like hey you guys want to jump yeah well hell yeah haven't jumped in freaking A year you know I only have 19 jumps yeah I want to jump so we get on this bird and we go up we're supposed to be jumping at Whatever they're 12,500 feet normal jump you know and there's there's a ceiling right there's cloud cover and

And and and so all we can't get up to 12 5 and so you know we're like oh we're gonna go down low we're gonna take it to whatever six still not coverage so now I'm like okay So now we're down to five we get down to five we get down And finally, and this guy is a great guy. He's like a guy from the Special Operations Command. Great dude. You know, he's a Master Chief. And so he's like, hey, guys, this is it. Like, we're, there's just, we got to get down low.

We're going out at whatever it was. We're going out at 2,200. And I was like, which just, let me, that's usually pull out. Yeah, it's like 45. I mean, it's usually 4,000 is pull out. So now you're going down. And I was like, I was like, what? And you know, we're friends.

You know, he's a master. But like we're friends. I'm like, I go, what are we going on? He's like, 2200. Just a hop and pop. And I was like, he could, and it was actually not just me. There were several of us that were all in the same platoon, all that just gone through free fall school a year before,

all of a sudden experience. So finally, I go, like, what do you mean hop and pop? And he's like, hey, go out, get stable, count to two and just pull. And he's like yelling in the aircraft. And he's, you know, just got a smile in his face. He's trying to be cool. And I was like, Roger that. He goes, you've never done one of these before?

And I was like, negative. And he's like, what about you guys? They're all like negative. And he goes, hey, don't worry, guys, you'll be fine. Just don't Ziggy the exit is what he said. Just don't Ziggy the exit, which I'm thinking like, I mean, I can barely get out of a freaking aircraft at this point. So anyone out. I didn't Ziggy the exit.

I'm still here, still alive. And that's all you're thinking. Yep. Yeah. Nail the exit. And then you'll worry about the two counts. That's what made me think of it was you said the guy's thinking just like, just get, just don't. Ziggy the exit.

Yeah, that's right. Which is pretty good instruction, man. Just don't Ziggy the exit. That's a good piece of advice. So after fear, perseverance, constancy in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success. You know, it's one of those things. Seems real obvious, right?

Yeah. You say this. If courage is the ability to effectively move through fear, challenge, or discomfort, then perseverance is the ability to keep doing it over and over again. To persevere, though, does not mean simply to endure. Every challenge, every uncomfortable situation and fearful episode has its own contours. Some might require only stoicism, a quiet suffering until the moment passes. Others might call for an active, aggressive response.

Those are two, you know, you get those situations where, dude, you're just hanging on. You're just going to like suck it up. Yeah, yeah. Well, I talk about there, I break, that's one of the attributes I break into a couple different things, right? And so perseverance is actually a combination of both persistence and tenacity. and with a little mental fortitude thrown in the mix, right? But persistence is, hey, I'm going to do this thing, this same thing, until it's accomplished. I know it's the rock.

It's the stone cutter approach. I'm going to tap on this rock a hundred times because I know on the hundred first tap, it's going to break. Tenacity is, I'm going to try something. If it doesn't work, I'm going to try something else. If that doesn't work, and so you don't want a tenacious stone cutter, right? You'll never get the rock cut, and you don't want a persistent car mechanic who just checks the belts and checks the belts and checks. But what perseverance allows you to do is it allows you to modulate and between those two. And we all know that any environment might require either. And the kind of the

mental fortitude pieces, can I decide which? But yeah, it's this ability to just keep stepping through and modulate yourself as you go through. You know, you get into this at some point in the book, you know, and I wrote a book called Dichotomy Leadership with Laif, Leif, and it was the idea that if you take any of these, what we weren't calling them attributes, but if you take any characteristic of a human and you take it to an extreme, it's probably going to be a problem. Yes, 100%. And, you know, one of the examples that I wrote about leadership strategy and tactics is this is something that when I was running training, we'd put these guys like in a hallway, you know,

and at the end of the hallway, there'd be a barricaded shooter. And the platoon commander be like, two guys go. Those two guys get shot up with paintball. They're dead. Two more guys go. Those two guys get shot up with paintball. They're dead. Two more guys go.

Those two guys get. And you'll have those guys stuck in that mindset of, number one, they've been trained to never quit their whole life. Like, don't quit, don't quit. And all you have to do is step back, like, two feet, look around and be like, oh. And, you know, sometimes I have to be like, hey, man, how many more guys are you going to send to their death? Do you think there's maybe another way to get to that room besides this one hallway

that you're in right now? And it was amazing how tunnel visioned people get and experienced guys, you know, platoon chief, like, the guy's got 15 years in. Like, two more go. Two more go. You're like, hey man, flank this dude, man. Just go outside, throw a grenade in the window, do something else. So that the idea of, and I think when I wrote about it in leadership strategy and tactics,

I think it's called the chapter like when to quit. Yeah. You know, like, this is not working out, man. I guess you might want to try something new. Stop what you're doing. Might want to be tenacious versus persistent on that one. Yeah. Another one.

Adaptability, the ability to quickly and calmly adjust to changing circumstances and situations. And you have a little ode to the frog here. Chapter 6 is called be like the frog. Adaptability as amphibians, frogs are built to live a double life. If it isn't safe or suitable on land, they can hop into the water. Nothing to eat in the pond, wander out and land and grab a bite. Frogs have adapted to environments on every continent except Antarctica from low-lying deserts. to the slopes of mountains at 15,000 feet.

In the Australian outback, the water holding frog can wait up to seven years for rain. Damn. Thanks to their cold blood, frogs can change their body temperature to adjust the temperature to the surroundings. And their legs provide a mobility that is extremely advantageous, allowing them to leap up to 20 times their body length. The evolution of frogs, of course, is classic Darwinism. Survival doesn't necessarily favor the strongest. fat lot of good that did the T-Rex,

but rather those life forms that are most adaptable. This is the same for us. And therein lies the secret to making through buds. It's not about being the strongest, right? You have to adapt yourself to whatever's going on. So, I mean, we're all team guys are high on adaptability, I think, because we can just, the environment changes, and we just, okay, how do I adjust?

You know, you don't fight it, you adjust to it. Yeah, I should have. brought you this book. I think I did four or five podcasts on this book called the psychology of military incompetence. And it's written by this guy who is a World War II guy who became a psychologist and he wrote this freaking awesome book. But one of the main dynamics of the book is that when you look at the military from the outside, you know, if you're a young sort of person with an authoritarian mindset and you like things to be a certain way,

you look at the military and you're like, oh, that's the place I need to be. People will have to listen to me. Everyone's going to look the same. Everyone's going to have to wear the same stuff. Everyone's going to have to do what I tell them to do. It's a really promising looking environment when you have an authoritarian mindset. And that authoritarian mindset in garrison works out really well. We're on the drill team.

Yeah, in the drill team it works out well. But man, when you don't have that open mind and the adaptability and you get in a combat where all of a sudden things aren't going to go the way you want them to go, it's going to be mayhem. Yes. And you can't, and people that have trouble adapting to it are. are going to be not good combat leaders. So there would always be some of those folks rolling to buds. A lot of times, I shouldn't say a lot of times,

but I've heard stories of guys that were prior Marines, prior Army, you know, had, and squared away like these guys, infantry officer or a special operations guy from the Army, whatever. But those environments, the Marine Corps and the Army, they're going to favor someone that has a little bit more authoritarian mindset. Yeah, yeah. And they show up the buds and they're like, this is freaking mayhem.

Right. And they don't even, they don't like it. It's too crazy for them. Yeah. It's too chaotic. This is not all army guys. It's not all Marines. I'm just saying, I've heard stories of guys.

I like, oh, what, that guy was, you know, that guy was a freaking, a platoon commander in Iraq in the army. What happened? They'd be like, a dude who, he just, he just, it was too crazy. Yeah. It's a structure thing, right? So I talk, you know, we'll probably get into cunning. I mean, but this is team guys.

We all hate rules. You know, I mean, and so we actually like lack of structure in many cases. It can be our downfall. It has been. As leadership, as leaders in the teams, we have to actually monitor that because it can go awry quite quickly. But it's this looseness that we approach environments to. Because, again, one of the things that you learn, and I always say, people ask me a lot of times, how do Navy SEALs stay humble, right?

And I say, well, listen, there are some seals who aren't very humble, but most of us, for the most part, are humble dudes. And I said the biggest, the primary reason is because we're in environments that will kill us, right? I don't care what kind of swimmer you are. The ocean will kill you if you turn your back on it, right? Same with jumping out of airplanes of 22,000. I used to tell my guys, you know, Somalia, a nine-year-old with an AK-47 and just pulled a trigger and just happens to aim, we'll kill a 35-year-old expert Navy SEAL in a second with an unarmed shot, right? So in a world where the environment requires deep humility, and the ocean is just a perfect example.

I mean, look, you surf, right? I mean, when you get churned up by a wave, what do you do? You relax. You just let the, you kind of, you go with it. You don't fight it. You adapt to the water, right? And so I think this is a huge asset in any type of uncertainty. And just like you said, any of these attributes over-indexed is a bad thing.

Too much adaptability means you're a limp noodle, right? And so in fact, what we're trying to do right now in the work we do with organizations, we're taking each attribute. And we have about 46 now. And we're actually defining, okay, what does too much look like? What does too little look like? Because it's a pretty cool project. Yeah, that's, at my company, we do the same thing.

We do a balance assessment. And like, where are you out of balance? Yeah. Do you micromanage to a point where people have no say in what's happening or are you too far in the other direction where now no one knows what's going on? Right. And we do that with every characteristic of leadership. So, yeah, balance and not being extreme.

That was the bummer about our book, Extreme Ownership, as we put the term extreme in the title. So it's still the assumption. So people are like, oh, yes, we've got to be extreme. It's like, no, actually, we'll run another book to make up for that. Right, right. Next one, resilience, the ability to rapidly return to one's baseline, emotional and mental state after a stressful, traumatic, or even triumphant event.

And you've got a story in here. get the book to read the story about your buddy Hank who was who was wounded badly in Afghanistan and you just talk about his resilience um yeah you got to meet hank just an awesome guy i was trying to i was actually i was reading about i was like who is this guy i was trying because he he was your troop s ea yeah you may know him i'll talk go offline but uh but yeah yeah i was i was figuring i mean he's got to be i mean if he was in for the same time period he's got to be around my time frame, actually. Yeah, he was.

So we'll talk offline about that. But you have a great story about him, obviously a very inspiring story, and it's a legit story of resiliency. But this is an interesting way of looking at it. You say this, imagine your life represented by a line plotted on a page. Line moves from left to right,

from the past into the present, extends a little bit more with each passing day. If your life was uniformly calm and pleasant, neither aggravating nor exciting, the line will be flat and level. We'll call that your baseline. And it's where you're at. It's where you're most comfortable, emotionally, mentally, and physically.

But the line is rarely flat. Of course, it undulates rising and falling in irregular wave to mirror the highs and lows of your life. Occasionally, the line spikes representing your greatest achievements. And sometimes it plummets. Maybe your spouse divorces you or maybe you get fired. It's difficult to function in either of those deep troughs or at those dizzying peaks. What you want, what you need is to return to the baseline. to that state of pleasant calm that's neither aggravating nor exciting.

That's what it means to be resilient. And you got a story in here from one of your skippers who... Who you know, who I will say, because we mentioned him on the McCraven, Pete Van Hoosier. I mentioned him when McCraven was on. I mean, one of the best officers. And I was so fortunate. He was my CEO when I was running training. Got it.

And, yeah, he used to talk about the two-minute rule. And, you know, he said, my grandfather taught it to me. And, you know, something bad happens, take two minutes and just, you know, wallow, swear, whatever you need to kick the dirt. You know, feel sorry for yourself. After two minutes, get back to work. Something good happens. Celebrate, rest on your laurels, pat yourself on the back. After two minutes, get back to work, you know.

And again, people say, because I've put this on social media, I've gotten some people's like, well, it takes a lot more than two minutes. There's a lot of things in life that take a lot more than two minutes to come back to baseline from. But the two-minute rule allows you practice in those. small tragedies, you know, that you might have and practice the resilience muscle. And again, resilience is not necessarily growth or growth to grow from something like that. It takes a little bit more effort. And you can kind of, you can up that baseline. Some other stuff that Huberman and I were working on as well. But resilience, if you can get back to baseline, you know, then you are, you're getting yourself back into a steady state where you can not start making

decisions again. And I think that's another thing that Navy SEALs do very well as we get better, we get ourselves back to baseline. Sometimes to our detriment, because if we come back, because we might come back from a low so fast that we don't allow ourselves the appropriate healing time for that to happen. But, you know, again, sometimes we have to. If we're in a combat environment, you know, we have to get back, right? But resilience is also often conflated with perseverance, you know, but resilience is not perseverance.

Perseverance is moving through and going through. Resilience is snapping back. It's that rubber band stretching and then going back to the original shape. So would it be a, how does this play out? I'm imagining what the answer is, but when you have someone that's really good with perseverance but not really good with resilience, so they're in a bad place, but they keep going?

Yeah, they keep going, but what happens is they slowly fall into entropy. So if you imagine, so the way you look, if people are imagined that line and that sine wave, and a nice sine wave that kind of goes up and down and stays with that line center, someone who does not, is not resilience will, that curve will slowly go down and that line will so it will fall into entropy. Whereas if you can become anti-fragile, you can actually get that line,

you can actually have that curve start moving up and that line starts moving up, right? Yeah. So any one of these, one of the cool things I, you know, was exploring and continued to, and the way I actually distinguish these attributes is can they exist independently of each other? So can you be perseverant without being resilient? And the answer is absolutely yes. Can you be resilient without being perseverant? Yes.

So, but, and there's, there's manifestations of each of those, those combinations. Yeah, no, that's kind of what I thought. That's why I said, I can imagine what the answer is. And the reason I think this is because I think you and I both have known guys where they're going to keep going. Yes. But you can see that they're not, they're not where they should be. They're going to keep going.

They're going to keep going on deployment. They're going to keep working. They're going to keep driving forward, but everything's falling apart. Yes. I think, I think out of all the grit attributes, resilience is where a lot of team guys fall. short and you actually see it in the civilian sector with very high performers. And there's a reason. The reason is because high performers, to include team guys, love the, love the feeling of getting the shit done. Oh, God, I got it done, right? What's the next thing? Okay, give me the next thing.

And resilient, what other things resilience requires is a recovery. It requires an assemblance of recovery to get back to baseline. If you maximize that recovery, you'll get to antipugility, but you at least need enough recovery to get back to baseline. A lot of top performers fall into the trap of not recovering. And we know team guys are pretty bad at that. Next set of attributes that you talk about is the mental acuity attributes. Mental acuity is basically a measure of how sharp the mind is. It has little do with education or even raw intelligence.

It's not a matter of how well read or quick-witted you are. Rather, we're focusing on the ability to effectively absorb and understand information to concentrate, focus, and remember. You give some definitions in here. This is via Huberman. Yeah. We talked a lot while I was putting this one together. I'm sure you did.

You've got scripts. Think of these are the lines of code. Your brain is constantly writing to make sense of the world. You've got patterns. These are collections of similar scripts that build familiarity and certainty in our environment, such as every time I touch a hot stove, I get burned. Patterns are how we learn. categories, the hippocampus, which is in charge of long-term memory groups, patterns into

categories for easier retrieval, using a stove, climbing a tree, driving my car. And then context, these are broad versions of the categories, cooking, climbing, driving, and they can be applied to a variety of environments. For example, and I thought this was a great example, if you jump on a tractor or slip it into a go cart or take the wheel of a boat, your brain will recognize that context. as driving. So these are... It gets complex.

It's funny, you know, you write a book. And I recognize I wrote that book and afterwards, I was like, oh, this is pretty dense. And you have people who resonate with some of the details. My wife, right? She's like, there's too much neuroscience in here. I don't like that part, right? Other people like, I love the neuroscience. I think when you talk about those definitions, it speaks to mostly that task switching

capability. Our brains are focus points and we're hopping between context and categories all the time. ultimately these attributes just describe how we process the world around us. And they're my favorite because I think even though I would say compartmentalization is the number one thing you need at seal training, it's really the mental acuity attributes that start defining how you perform in stress, challenge, and uncertainty. And so when you start going through those like situation awareness compartmentization,

task switching, how is our brain working in those environments and how quickly and effectively are we able to do certain things? and there's pros and cons for both. The one you just mentioned, the first one of these situational awareness, the ability to absorb and process meaningful information about our current environment. Yeah.

And man, this is... In short, vigilance, right? Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, you get into, and you get into this as well. The fact that... Here's what you say.

As with any attribute, extremes can be detrimental. Like I said, you get into it yourself. You know, I wrote a book about it. This book has it as well. Extremes can be detrimental. Too little situational awareness risks obliviousness to real danger. Too much hyper or hypervigilance can wear out the nervous system and perhaps even mask an underlying paranoia. So this is the seeds oftentimes of PTSD for those of us coming back from the combat. I mean, I'm someone who literally walks around New York City. I love New York City, right? I walk around. I notice everything. I notice dark alleys. I notice hands. I notice faces. I notice cars.

you know, everything. My wife's not next to me and she doesn't notice anything, right? And now, again, let me just make sure I set the context. All of us have all of these attributes. The difference in each one of us are the levels to which we have each, right? So adaptability, right? You and I would be a level eight. Environment changes around us, we shift, okay? Someone else might be a level three. It's difficult for them. They're still adaptable, it's just difficult. So, and if we were kind of line all these up like a dimmer switch on a wall, we'd all have different dimmer switch settings as to where these things fall, which starts to speak to our performance. Okay.

So there's no judgment in this, right? It's like judging your hair color. It's just who you are. So when I say I'm, we all, seals tend to be a very high, high situation or us. We're pretty vigilant. And when you go to a combat zone, as you know, you're wired. I mean, you get high, I mean, everything, you just notice everything. You're on key.

And so when you go home, if you can't turn that off, that's when you're walking around New York City. It's like, okay, there's a guy like two feet behind me. I can't, and you can't. It's like, okay, it's going to be okay. Right. So I've made, I had, I took deliberate efforts a lot of times to just freaking relax. What, what efforts did you take? Just to, just to recognize where I was being too hypervigilant and say, don't worry about it.

It's going to be fine, right? And, and in some cases, just enjoy the moment of obliviousness, you know, put my headphones on maybe a couple times, which is hard for me. Like I'm like you. I don't run with headphones because usually because I like the environment. But I see people running with headphones on the street. I'm like, what the hell are you thinking? I mean, you're going to get hit by. I'll put one ear in.

That's it. Yeah. Two ears. I've never, I, no, that's not happening. It's not happening.

It's not happening. My sons do one, do the one earphone, get a headphone. But anyway, I think situation awareness, again, too much is hyper sees a PTSD too little. Well, I mean,

you're not going to notice stuff. And that's, it's important to sometimes. Yeah. It's weird too. I was thinking like your wife, if you, you're in New York City, she's with you. Her vigilance is way low, but I bet you walk out of the grocery store at night to your car, which is far across the parking lot.

You're not thinking that much about it. Your wife, the other hand, you know, walking out at night from the grocery store to the car, she's probably more vigilant than you are just because there's a, she probably perceived threats higher. Yeah, threat. I think threat definitely affects this. And this is where it gets, attributes get interesting because context matters. And I think the best way to describe this in a general sense is where you default to, you know. And I just default to notice things.

I mean, it's just who we are. I just noticed. Actually, Huberman and I were joking about this. We were traveling, well, before COVID, we were traveling to do a talk. And so we happened to be traveling together. And we show up and I'm just like, okay, we got to go here, here, here. I know what's in my bag. I know.

I get through security. Like everything is just, I just know. I've thought through everything. And I think I did TSA pre-check too. Meanwhile, he goes through the regular security, and I walk over to see where he is. And his bag is completely opened up. The security guards ticket.

You know, there's protein powder and all that stuff. And we were joking about that because we're just constantly thinking that way, you know, noticing stuff. So this is the one that you've mentioned already several times, compartmentalization. The ability to effectively chunk an environment or situation into meaningful pieces, then focus on that. which needs immediate attention.

And again, in the book, Extreme Ownership is, we call this prioritized and execute. You've got to focus on what's happening. Compartmentalization is a three-step process, assessment, prioritization, and then focus. So, you know, for me, it was prioritized and execute. It's interesting, one of the stories that I tell in the book is, Seth Stone was the platoon commander.

I was task unit commander, and we're out doing vehicle, immediate action drills. and when the guns would the guns would start shooting, the targets would pop up, he would like lock up. You know, this is just we're in our workup. Yeah. And I'm watching him, and he's not making a call. And so I took my Sharpie magic marker and I, like,

we got done to the run. And I was like, hey, bro, next time I want you to do this. And I wrote one, like on the windscreen or the windshield of his Humvee, I wrote one, relax, two, look around, three, make a call. I said, when you hit those guns start shooting again, just follow these steps. Yeah. And he's like, Roger that. Yeah.

And so then sure. enough you know I'm like sitting behind him in the vehicle the targets pop up in the shooting starts and I I'm looking at him and I see him like you can't hear anything because the 50 Cal is going but I look at him and I see him like take a breath and exhale I'm like okay cool he's got step one he's relaxing and then he looks around he opens the door looks at the vehicles behind well okay there's two and he gets on the on the horn and makes a call and I was like there you go that was kind of the original version of prioritized execute and and and also taking a step back like you got to take a step

back you got to relax and look around and make a call and that's what that's what you're talking about here. Well, and compartmentalization doesn't work without situation awareness. I mean, and so what you're talking about is that stepping back is you're stepping back, you're getting a situation aware again, and then you're compartmentalizing, and then you're getting a situation away. This is that out in motion, and they just work in tandem in the best way. Yeah, it's such a freaking cheat code.

Oh, my God. It's such a cheat code. And again, another Seth Stone story. So he broke his neck during workup. I remember hearing that, yeah. And so now he can't do land warfare. But I'm like, hey, bro, let's, you know, come out. I'm going out to do FTCs with your guys.

I'm going out to watch him. I said, come out with me. He's like, oh, of course. So we're standing there and his guys are pinned down. We got the laser tag system on. And his guys are pinned down in this ravine. And he's like, let me help him. And I was like, no.

And we're literally standing like a foot away from these guys. And it's so obvious what call needs to be made. It's just completely obvious. And no one's making the call. They're all looking down their gun and yelling and screaming and just, it's just chaos. And finally, you know, go ahead, help him. And he tells him, hey, do this eye at or whatever.

And he looks at me once they're out, he goes, man, it's so easy from way up here. Yeah. And I was like, bro, look where we are. I go, you know what this was like for me when we went through a workup together? I said, everything was like this because I was never freaking staring down the barrel of my gun or the sights of my weapon like freaking freaking out. I was just like looking around. Oh, yeah, there's an out over there. Cool.

I see the bad guys. We don't want to go in that direction. Hey, let's do this maneuver. And it's just really easy. It's like a freaking superpower. Yeah the detachment that's right that's right um so you go into this compartmentalization and also worth noting you say this is an endless process compartmentalization is not static if you silo your thoughts into a tight box and keep them there or sorry as if you silo your thoughts and

keep them there it's ever changing the script is constantly updating with information and we actually have a word for this in the military target fixation yes right this is like oh you're gonna prioritize and execute, but then you forget about everything else. Now you've only got one thing you're looking at. We call that target fixation. And it's not going to work out well. Not a job of leader. Yeah, leader should not be doing that.

The multitasking myth. This is chapter 10. Task switching. The ability to shift focus among tasks or contexts. Most people believe they can multitask. Most people, in fact, believe they're very good at it. In one famous study from the University of Utah, a statistically absurd but remarkable markedly confident 70% of participants thought they were above average in their ability to

multiple things at once. They weren't, and you aren't either. When people try to do several things at once, almost everyone, a full 98% according to the Utah study, gets worse at each individual task. Another study at Stanford found that people who habitually multitask actually do more poorly over time. So this is, this again falls into compartmentalization. because if you're not prioritizing and executing

and you're trying to do a bunch of things at the same time, you're actually going to fail at all of them. And a recognition that we just, we can't focus on more than one thing. I mean, we just can't. And so, again, people will be listening to this podcast and say, you know, Rich and Jocko, you're full of it because I'm listening to this podcast

and driving my car, right? It doesn't count if you've relegated that task to your unconscious mind. You can do that because you don't have to think about driving your car. But if you're listening to this podcast, driving your car and someone swears in front of you and you have to take evasive maneuvers,

you'll have to rewind in the last 15 seconds of the podcast because your brain will have hopped And so there are some people who are really good at this, you know, who can go from the email to the conversation to this to that and go all around and just hop really effectively. Other people, when they hop or get hopped, it takes them a while for their brain to kind of engage in that new activity. And so it's really just about understanding where you are. I just realized I do something, Echo Charles. You're not going to like this because I've probably done it to you before. I don't doubt it.

So let's say we're rolling. you and me rolling jiu-jitsu we're struggling right and all of a sudden I just like start having a conversation with someone or like I or like I go or you know like we're rolling and all of a sudden I say to someone that's else that's carrying on a conversation somewhere else and I go I say uh you know actually no there's no class this afternoon yeah chime in and I'm doing that I literally do that psychological warfare yeah to let you know that whatever you're doing right now I'm not even thinking about it's kind of a joke yes I know that Okay, I just made sure you do that.

I was fully aware of your intention, too. So it kind of like mitigated the effects a little bit. It's like the ultimate cool guy thing. Yeah. But a lot of people do that. And it's kind of like, because some jujitsu is like that. I feel like I just kind of gave up someone like. I know.

Now you know the gap. He's not the only person I do it too. Yeah. Well, I already knew he did that. He does other stuff too. It's way more mean. But it's a, but jiu jihis is the kind where sometimes you can do that. Because a lot of it's just natural, you know, muscle memory or whatever.

And so you can see, you know, especially in the early rounds where you're warming up or whatever, like people do it. And that's kind of the reason he'll do it because it's kind of like, oh, I don't even have to think when I roll with you. Just relegate to the subconscious right. I don't really see what you're doing. That's what you do. That's what you do it. Yeah. That's good.

That's what made me think of it when you're like, oh, you can drive a car. You'll have to rewind the 15 seconds. So you know you had to think about it. I don't know what you do it. So now watch next time he does that stuff, I'm going to like go hard or whatever, increase his sense of urgency. Work the gap. Yeah, you got to interrupt his little psychological thing. Yeah.

There you go. This is the one, between that one and compartmentalization thing you talked about for buds, for basic steel training, it's just like, oh, you just need to focus on whatever you're doing right in front of you right now. Right. You need to effectively move your horizons. And the focus of this one is the task switching. So recognizing that you can't do two things at the same time, you need to focus on this one. And if you have to focus on the other thing, go ahead and focus on that other thing. gets, this is where it gets fun and a little bit complex, is that the people who do this very well

and what we've seen in our environments can, um, can compartmentalize while keeping a little bit of situation awareness to the environment because, because as they, as we monitor the environments, at least, and actually, Huberman will, will testify to this in terms of the human brain, can't necessarily focus on two things at once, but it can keep awareness of a second thing while you're focused on one thing. And so, and so we keep awareness because if, if in that awareness, the priorities change, then we task switch, right? And we say, oh, now the new priority, we're coming off of this, even though it's incomplete, and shifting to a new priority.

So they can dance, these attributes can dance with each other. And I don't know what the optimal levels are for, you know, a seal or someone, you know, depending. I would imagine fighting is the same way because you're constantly gauging the environment. And you might be focused on one move, but you're gauging what's happening. You may have to shift or adapt, but these types of exercises can allow for a good practice of these. One of the things that I think it's really useful to be able to do is like press into an issue. And this is what I used to tell the young SEAL officers that were going through my training.

I'd be like, hey, you might need to get in there and solve a problem. Don't stay there. Right. Like get in there, look in that room, look in that building, look at that, what that squad is doing. Make the adjustment and then get back out of there. And now I, with the OODA loop, when people fail with the OOOO loop, it's because they get stuck in one piece of that. Right.

They're looking around too much. They're not making a decision or they can't figure out what decision to make. Or once they make a decision, they don't act on it. I also do this whole leadership loop of decision making. And the final point that I make is don't get stuck in any one of these things because then you're stuck in that one thing. Yeah. So the ability to press in, look at a problem, solve the problem, give a direction, give a solution, and then get out of there is, is a key to anything that you're doing really from a leadership perspective.

The minute, and this is another thing I've been saying a lot lately, the solution to the problem is not in the problem. Like you can go in there to figure out what the problem is and then back out and find what the solution is. Because most likely when you're in that problem, you're not going to, you're not going to see the solution. You're in the fishbow. Yeah, that's like when you're up in the catwalks. You know, you're watching when you're watching other people do CQ, see, oh, it's like so easy from up here. When you're watching somebody do an eye ad, you're like, oh, there's the out over there. Or that's where they should flank to.

You can actually get there while you're doing it as long as you exercise that detachment and taking a step back and looking around so important. This is what, again, the advantage. I mean, again, I think you would agree with the war sucks on all levels. but the advantage of being able to be in combat or be at these units where we're learning this stuff. If you're not doing this as a leader, you're out of the game. You're going to be outrun. I mean, you have to. You recognize that this is your job.

Your job is not looking down the gun and shooting. I mean, I maybe kicked a couple doors when I was out in Iraq and Afghanistan because my job was tasking a commander. I was running the environment. And my guys expected me to do that job because they said, hey, you do that very well. well, right? So the job is to maintain that awareness so that the guys who have to be target fixated for a little while can do so and understand that their backs are covered. Yeah. Learnability, the ability to observe, process, and apply new information to a current or future context.

Among the mental acuity attributes, the most important is learnability. It's a sort of catalyst that allows those other cognitive traits to be put into effective use. If we didn't have the ability to update and adjust the scripts, our brains are constantly writing or apply and remember the appropriate patterns and templates that is to learn, then compartmentalization and task switching would only help make us make the same mistakes more efficiently. So if you're not looking at what's going on and actually adjusting to what's happening, then it doesn't matter if you're compartmentalizing. You're not learning adjustments. Well, and I would say this is actually one that I admit that I'm a little lower on because the people who are really high on

learnability are the people you can tell how to do something once or show them once and they got it right they just they pick up things really fast and I for me what well it was buds but probably more of the selection when I was going through it and we finished a day of training and there'd be guys they're clean their gear and go drinking I'd have to stay back and like think about what I did and and I'd make the same mistakes a couple times and so it's really it's an adjustment to where you are but if we're not if we're not able to recognize where we fall on this particular attribute, it's going to be tough to actually metabolize these lessons. I think something that I learned watching when I was a young guy and I'd see guys that were older

than me, you know, with experience, they'd have two platoons or five platoons or whatever, and they would be, this is the way you do it. Something, whether it was a room entry, whether it was immediate action drill, whether it was, how to put your weapon at high port, low port, whatever. There was a way that they had been taught, and in their minds, that was the only way to do it. It was the only way to do it. They usually couldn't articulate why their way was better.

They would usually use their rank or their authority, their experience to say, no, I've always done it this way. This is the way we learned. And I remember, I have to try and remember where this kind of lesson solidified, but I remember thinking myself, I'm not going to be like that. And there is definitely 100% more than one way to skin a cat. Like you go into a room, you can do 28 different things. And they can all be right.

Like you can go, you could go left, you can go right. There's a bunch of different ways to do things. And to get stuck on one way and not ever make adjustments. To me, that's a lack of learnability. 100%. Well, so when I got to SDVs, you know, Again, late 90s, we had, as you recognized when you're at Steel Team 2, a bunch of the old Vietnam guys were still in the teams, great dudes, most of them running training.

And I remember we did a, we did an island trip as SDVs because we were going to deploy out to the Middle East. And so we're doing this insane, like seven-day hump or whatever, and they're contacting us and things like that. And they're contacting us in open terrain, middle of the desert, right? And they're like, okay, peel right, or peel left. using Vietnam, like, channelized tactics in an open desert. And I remember thinking, that doesn't, it just doesn't compute right now.

I mean, are there other ways to do that? And in fact, the teams sort of see that too. I remember you probably remember IMT, the whole IMT stuff, right? That came from, or at least when I saw it, or it would seem to be born from this idea that, hey, we need to start learning how to move in a different way because, yes, some of these channelized tactics are great. They work for jungles, but, you know, we need some different tactics. But this is the dinosaur mentality we always, you know, are combating.

Yeah, there's been some, there definitely was some strange evolutions that happened. And I mean, literal evolutions. You didn't go to OCS. I went to OCS and when I went to OCS, they had to polish your, you got to issue these belt buckles. They're brass belt, they're some kind of brass, right? And they came with this coating on it that meant it didn't erode. Right. It just stayed beautiful and shiny.

Yeah, yeah. And when you got it issued to you, they would make you polish that thing until, you until that enamel came off and now it could erode. And I remember thinking myself like this lost its, this law, this got lost somewhere. Yeah. The Iads.

So as you know, at our land warfare on the west coast, the desert training facility, there's areas in there that are closed terrain. Yes. You can go and you can do jungle tactics and closed terrain. And what happened is some things over time, they lost,

they got lost. And I'll give you a great example. When you're doing, for instance, like a peel right. And when you do a peel right, you ever seen that thing where it looks like you're doing a pirouette, they call it, which is like a dance move, you spin around? Yes. So you'd be, like if you were going to peel right or if you're going to peel left and it was your turn to go, you would turn the opposite direction. Turn to the right to spin around. Yeah, like an about face.

And so if you're on a range in America, there's almost no place where you can do what you're actually supposed to do. And the Vietnam guys, no, this got, I missed this for like my first platoon. I was like, I didn't really understand. I said, hey, why are we doing this spin? And guys, it's for safety. And I was like, okay, I didn't really understand why this was safer. Maybe you're kind of high porting or whatever. And then a Vietnam guy was, you know, I asked a Vietnam.

I was actually I think it was Roger Hayden and I was like why do you spin like this why don't you just get up and go and he goes oh if you weren't on a range right now if you were if you had 360 degree you would when you got done shooting at the target you would then turn to your right and dump more rounds on your flank then you would turn behind you and dump rounds behind you to make sure that you're not getting someone behind you and then you tag your next guy and go. So what it looks like when you can't shoot is it looks like you're just spinning for no

reason. And so I've explained that to many, many people over the years. Like, oh, here's what's actually supposed to be happening. You're supposed to be doing this. So what happened is when you got guys that went from like doing the closed terrain where you can move because you're behind cover and concealment. Well, when you're in the desert, it's a long way to travel.

And so what do you do? Well, just kind of going through the motions. So in order to go through the motions, just get up and run. And that became a thing. And it's like, that doesn't that feel right? Well, it doesn't feel right because it's not. Now listen, if you're at,

if you have distance and you have cover fire, sometimes it does the right thing to do. And you can, you got guys putting down massive cover fire. Hey, get up and move. We're trying to get out of there. But yeah, there's some of those things that over time,

they, the next thing you know, you're polishing the enamel off your belt buckle. And things just get lost in translation over time. That's one of the negatives about not having doctrine like we talked about earlier. No one to say,

hey, the reason that you spin like that is if you were in a real contact in a closed environment, you'd be dumping rounds so that you're not getting flanked and you're not getting anyone coming up your six, which is what, you know,

there's, when you're online in a gunfight, everyone's online facing in one direction. Yeah. So somebody's got to occasionally dump rounds behind you make sure no one's crawling up your ass which is going to be a bad scene I'm I'm really appreciative because I never knew that so I've I've I've learned that now after 21 years in the Navy yeah and again I got lucky like caught that and I always had those questions you know like

wait a second why are we doing this wait why does that what's that where's that come from and yeah usually there was a reason and unfortunately sometimes it would get lost in the translation over time which is which is terrible yeah and then a lot of lessons we relearned in the R war. Right on. What do we got next here? After learnability. Drive, I think.

The drive attributes. We all have needs, and the drive is how we try to fulfill them. If you're hungry and thirsty, to use the easiest examples, you are driven to find food and water. Those are admittedly much easier task now that we can satisfy this needs by opening the refrigerator and turning on the tap. But for many millennia, eating and drinking, required expending a considerable amount of time and energy.

The more driven among our ancestors were the least hungry and thirsty. There are two kinds of human needs, intrinsic and extrinsic. Explain those to me. Intrinsic and extrinsic. Well, it's from Dan Pink's book, Drive. So the intrinsic needs are those, you can almost talk about physiological needs. I mean, the drive to drink is from a physiological need to, to, to, to, to, to, because you're thirsty, you need water. Extringic are those, you know, I need to make money to pay my rent, right?

So they're just coming from the external environments. But yeah, drive, the drive as opposed to grit. I mean, grid I would define as that ability to kind of set and pursue those shorter term or acute challenges and objectives. And then drive is those longer term challenges and objectives. I mean, what makes up the driven person? What are those attributes? And there's some counterintuitive ones in there. So self-efficacy a belief in one's ability to achieve a goal especially when the path is uncertain or unknown and you have this chapter titled this chapter about self-efficacy is titled mastering the pivot you say like some other attributes self-efficacy can be Dissected into components it's a combination of confidence initiative and optimism I like these little I like that As soon as I read that, I was like,

that's a good way of explaining it. It's not as simple as I got this. That's usually bravado. Self-efficacy is thoughtful and serious. It's, I know I can do this because I'm willing to take the first step. And even though I don't know yet all the answers or how this will unfold, I'll continue until I'm successful. And then you go through talking about confidence,

talking about initiative, and talk about optimism. Yeah. And it's really interesting to try and, you know, if you're, If you're entering any kind of pursuit in life, and you think, all right, how confident I'm about this? Can I take the first move?

And in order to take that first move, you've got to have that optimism that you're actually going to make it happen. You do. And so we throw those other attributes into our mix when we're doing this stuff with organizations, because all these attributes are meaningful, but they can be inert by themselves. You know, I talk about in the book, I've always wanted to be a pilot. And my dad was a pilot, my brother was pilot. I know pretty much at this point I could fly an airplane.

I know everything about flying. I've been through ground school a couple times. I mean, I know everything. Again, I got my brother's sim and I could fly the thing, right? I've never gotten my pilots license. I'm confident I could fly a plane. I've never gotten my pilot's license, right? So there's lack of initiative there.

And so initiative on its own is frenetic energy. I mean, you just, you know, oh, I'm just going to go, right? But if there's no confidence, if there's no optimism, you're just expending energy. And then optimism on its own, I mean, you and I could plant gardens and say every day, that weeds are not going to grow. And sure, you know, sure enough, three weeks later, weeds will grow. So optimism on its own can be inert. And so it's really the combination that makes up the self-efficacious person.

And if you have an optimal level of that, you will, that adds to your drive quite a bit. There's got to be, we had a friend of mine, Travis Mills on this podcast, and he's just a freaking, probably the best human ever. I don't know. You think Travis is the best human ever? Do you know who he is? He's a quadruple amputee from Afghanistan. I've heard of him.

His attitude is bar none better than anyone I've ever known. I mean, just absolutely freaking awesome guy. And we were talking, you know, we're going through his life and his history. And he joined the Army. And, you know, we're talking. And, you know, he, like, was a stud in high school freaking football athlete. Just a stud. And he's a beast of a human.

Just a total stud. And I kind of was like, hey, man, why didn't you go and like, you know, like, why don't try for special forces or do you go ranger or anything like that he goes man I didn't know if I could make it and like this guy is I mean I was the most average person like it was average high school kid across the board like average to low average in every thing that I did I was just like but for some reason I had this idea like oh seal training toughest training in the world why not let's go I bring it and you have a total stud like Travis being like I wasn't sure if I could make it so It's like he might have had a little negative on the optimism.

Right. You know? Right. Yeah. There's a balance. But there's also we can, we'll throw a little cunning in there. We don't like rules. So don't tell me what to do.

There's some rebel nature in there that I think causes guys like you and I to try for seals. And we'll talk about this. There's a little bit of narcissism too. Yeah. Yeah. I have a question. Go. So like Travis Mills, you mentioned the Travis Mills thing, where he was.

like kind of a higher level, like a high level athlete, like in high school and stuff, and got used to it. And we talked about this about Buds too with Jason Gardner a little bit where he was talking about, you have high level athletes who are really used to being high level and winning, winning, right? So, but then they go through buds and they start losing

and then it shatters them, right? Yeah. And then you get someone like how you just said, like you were just average, so you're kind of used to taking L's, you know? I'm ready for a beat down. Oh, yeah, ready for that beat time. So do you think that it's like,

like, if you kind of consider like, why is that? So it's kind of like the, the high level athlete, so to speak, is used to a certain standard of what winning is. I wouldn't even say winning. I would say, and again, I think it's a level of performance. I mean, the high level athlete designs his or her entire day and system around being 100% for the moment, right? It's this idea of peak performance, 100% for the moment.

And so when they come into an environment, you know, and so when they come into an, environment where 100% doesn't exist or they say, oh, great, you're 100%, we're going to take it out of zero. They're just not used to it. And so I think a lot of the div one athletes who go and don't make it are just not used to being at a performance level of not 100, let alone zero. I was like, you know, we love to be 100. But like if someone came to us before admission and said, you know what, my shoulders

kind of 90%. I think I'm going to sit this one out. We're like, what? It's more like telling a guy that like has a freaking broken leg like, hey, bro, you cannot go. I'm sorry. No, I've gone good, bro. I'm good. You know what it is the difference between rugby players and everybody else, right?

Seals are more like rugby players. But yeah, I think it's that. It's a level of performance. So like the, and not to put too fine of a tip on it. But so like let's say someone who's so used to winning and so used to performing at their best, more or less. It's almost like their level of standard of what they would call. success in their mind is like so high. So anything below that threshold is kind of like, oh, I might as well not even exist in this environment. I think you're on to something.

Again, we can't, we can't dig in the minds of these folks. But this is again, I, you know, I keep on saying fighting. Like, fighting is a, is a sport you go into and you're literally going in and expecting to get hurt. You're going to go, I mean, the whole game is you're going to go from 100% down to whatever percent knocks you out, right? Or you're not got that other guy. That is a whole different mentality than a lot of other sports, right? And so I think these types of distinctions are really interesting to me. You know, you have to be careful. You don't put labels on things.

But I don't know. I like dissecting that stuff. Yeah, that's the scary thing too. Because whatever example you bring up, there's a counter example. Yeah. For every example, we're like, well, this guy was a stud and he quit. And there's a stud that made it. Yeah.

Yeah. And there's a stud that failed whatever. And he was like, yeah, cool. I got it. Like, and there's just a counter. There's just a counter to every example that you can come up with. Yeah. And I don't mean necessarily like the whole guy.

I'm just saying that element of their brain. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If we could figure those things out, then you'd start to be able to figure out who's going to make it through, I think. But you have to look at the whole, you can't just look at their life in athletics. You'd have to look at their whole life. I mean, because all those grid attributes, all those mental acute attributes, all those drive attributes, they're all executed in other areas of life, too. I mean, I talk about it.

I mean, seals are gritty. Yeah, but there are some gritty people out there who are way grittier than seals, right? I mean, so these contexts of life can be training and proving grounds for people. and athletics. That's why the top athlete might have had a whole different context inside of which he or she just nugged it out and was used to being at zero and then they make it. Yeah, that would make sense with the wrestlers

because they're cutting weights, day of, and all this like crazy starving themselves like that. So that would make sense for sure. And they still quit, by the way. Division one wrestlers go and freaking quit. Some do. That's what happens. Actually, I heard a story from one of the instructors

was telling me, like, they had a guy that was a total stud. Like just an awesome fast freaking strong just a stud and They had like they do things like put you on runs where they're supposed to be four miles but it's actually four point six or whatever Or they make you do a bunch of exercise before and and so they fail everybody they'll let they'll let three guys pass or whatever I be like she those guys did it and this guy like I think it was like first day whatever of first phase So he's gone through all the pre-training and then he failed They're like, you fail. And he's like, you got me.

I quit. They were like, well, okay. See ya. It's actually crazy when you think about guys that sign up for the Navy, enlisted the Navy for six years of their life. Tell their girlfriend, tell their parents, tell all the friends, I'm going to be a Navy Shield. And they show up there in the first day they freaking quit.

It's crazy. It is crazy. I think part of that's the mythos, though, because even reading about the training and you read about how old you go, you don't, You just don't experience until they hit the beaches that first day. I was telling some young guy the other day, you know, like, you know, his dad or whatever, someone was something. It was a family context, like a family had met me or like a father and son or something.

And the kid's like, he wants to be a seal. And I was like, yeah, you know, it's really hard. Most people don't make it. Most people quit. And he's like looking at me as if, bro. You know, I mean, what are you? Yeah. Look at me.

And I go, and most people look at me like you're looking at me right now. Like, clearly it's not going to be. I go, I go, everyone shows up there thinking they're going to make it. Yeah. And 80% of them ring the bell. So I wish you luck. Don't quit. That's my advice.

Yeah. I was in a group of, again, good dudes. A company were working for about 10 of us. And they were all, you know, talking about seal training. And almost all of them were like, I'd love to be a seal. I think I could do it. If I did, I think I could do it. And I looked at him and I said, listen, there's 10 people in here, okay?

About 85% quit. So the, and I already got through. So the odds aren't good for you. So you got 0.5 from one of you was going to make it. 0.5 from one of you was going to make it. So, all right, here's a topic I'm always a fan of. Discipline. Yes.

The ability to remain focused and steadfast to achieve a result. But what's interesting, this is called the chapter title is the self-disciplined loser. Yes. And what's interesting is Echo, when I talk about this, you know, people that have high amounts of discipline in certain areas. And they just don't apply it to other aspects of their life. It's that difference between what I call outer and inner discipline. So talk about them. Yeah.

And so the discipline I talk about in the book is really outer discipline. That's making, choosing or deciding upon a goal that the out of, outside world has a say in whether or not you accomplish. Okay, that could be a Navy SEAL, writing a book, becoming a best-selling author, being a great chef, whatever that might be. The outside world has a say in whether or not you can accomplish those. So the discipline required to accomplish that takes a different level. It takes adaptability.

It takes an understanding of you have to shift, you have to move, right? But then there's self-discipline. Okay, self-discipline speaks to those goals that the outside world has no say in whether or not you accomplish. So that's like me saying I'm going to eat healthier. and I'm in Vegas next week. Well, I'm at the buffet. The buffet's not going to throw pastries at me. Okay?

It's all on me. All right. Again, this is where it gets interesting because I ask myself, can these exist independently? I have known people who are highly self-disciplined. They have a routine. They work out of really. They eat right, blah, blah, blah. They can't get a long-term goal accomplished to save their lives, right?

I've seen people, I'm actually one of these who's, I'm highly disciplined. Like, I can get audacious goals accomplished, you know, and I'm good at it, right? My self-disciplines suck. I have to work on it. It was really hard for me, right? I always joke. It's like, I don't even like to tell myself what to do, let alone, you'll be told. The best is a balance, right?

But again, when you start separating these and seeing that they can live independently, you start really understanding your performance. And so if you have the ability to say, listen, I'm really high on self-discipline. Get really high self-discipline people love structure. They love routine. Guess what's going to happen if you try to be a Navy SEAL or be a best-selling author or be whatever you name the outside goal. your routine is going to get screwed with.

You're not going to be able to work out one day. You're not going to be able to eat the same thing you want to eat, right? So that's why they fall off. The really well-disciplined person, people have audacious goals, we're really good at adapting. We're like, oh, yeah, throw it at me. I'm good, bro, right? But now I say, hey, you've got to be structured. It's like, oh, don't tell me about structure.

I hate that, right? And so obviously the best is having a balance or at least understanding where you may fall high or on lower low on those scales so that you can affect, you can affect each side. or affect each side independently and get yourself to where you need to go. Yeah, I think, you know, sorry, I wrote a book called Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual, but I'll talk about when I'm talking to companies, you know, I'll talk about, hey, this is a dichotomy as well. And inside of a team, if you're overly disciplined as a team, all of a sudden, people don't, they stop thinking.

You know, we can only follow the rules. You know, the DMV in many ways is a highly disciplined organization. They're going to follow that rule. Oh, you're in the wrong line. Go get in that other line now. They don't go, hey, cool. Hey, cool. Hey, we can just move you over here.

I can do it this time. No, they're highly disciplined and therefore highly ineffective. That's right. So you can go, just like any of these things, you can take into an extreme and it's going to, it's going to cause problems. Someone, real quick, someone asked me about discipline equals freedom. What do you think about Chaco and disciplinary equal freedom? I said, he's absolutely right. I said, he's absolutely right. It's like the only thing that we have to add on the tagline is discipline equals freedom to be undisciplined, right? Because if you discipline yourself to a degree, you allow yourself the freedom to once in a while be undisciplined, you know, and that's the dichotomy. And it happens with teams as well. And this is the example that I give all the time is if we're out on a target and there's another building that needs to get taken down. And I can just look at you can go, Rich, go hit that building too.

And you'd cool, got it. You didn't need to tell me the people who are going to take or what method of venture you're going to use or what you're going to do with the people that you captured. You didn't tell me to that because we had discipline standard operating procedures, which gave us all kinds of freedom. So we have the discipline which gives us freedom to then move and maneuver quicker and then on a personal level This occurred for the first time I was at this a kid's birthday party Little kids birthday party and they had cake and or ice cream cake which I think that's one level up because cake won't a lot of times cake Cake is generally in my opinion dry okay right sure the frosting good but a lot of times the cake itself dry it's not that's not enough to bridge bring me over the edge.

I understand. Ice cream cake. Different story. Right? So anyways, the ice cream cake rolls out. The ice cream cake gets cut up. And I've slap of slab of that thing right on my little plastic party plate. And the grandma who, you know, this is like friends of the family, the grandma.

And she's from Germany. And she's like, Jock. I thought we were disciplined. And I said, ma'am. This is the freedom part, like you said. Right? Like Rich just said, you got to have that discipline. And occasionally when that ice cream cake shows up

with the ground up kind of Oreo scenario on the bottom, you know what I'm talking about? Yes. You know what I'm talking about, right? They make the crust of Oreos type thing. Yep, they did the right thing. They made good moves across the board. Mint chocolate chip ice cream in there.

So yes, we have the discipline. It'll give us freedom ultimately to do what we want. That's what we want. Was the tagline you added on? discipline equals the freedom to be undisciplined once in a while there you go yeah i guess i put i put freedom in the same category right in a way so there we go discipline next one um open-mindedness a willingness to consider and accept new ideas opinions or perspectives this is again coming from that book the psychology of military incompetence this is the

major downfall of leaders that have authoritarian mindset. Is their mind is closed? They don't want to hear your idea. Not only don't want to hear your idea. They don't want to hear the Intel report that just came in. That's saying something. They don't want to take the feedback from the guys that are on the front lines. That's how close-minded they are.

And this causes all kinds of problems. It does. And, you know, it's funny. I put open-mindedness specifically in the book to speak to optimal performance. There's another attribute called Curiosity, which I don't talk about in the book. And the difference between the two is really an activeness and a passiveness. Curiosity is proactive open-mindedness. I'm going to go, whereas open-mindedness is passive.

So that's you and I go into Thailand. And we meet our local friend. A local friend says, hey, I'm going to take you the most authentic Thai place. And you're like, cool. We're all good. That's open-minded. Or we go to Thailand. We meet our local Thai friend.

We say, take us to the most authentic restaurant, right? That's being curious, right? And so very interestingly, these can exist independently, right? So you can be curious without being open-minded. You can be open-minded without being curious. Being open-minded without being curious, that's okay. It's not too bad. You're just passively open-minded.

If you are curious without being open-minded, it can be dangerous as a leader. This is the seeds of conspiracy theory, right? I know what I want to believe, and I'm curious to find out why it's right, right? And the leaders who are curious without being open-minded stand the F-5. Yeah, it's bad. That's an interesting one. open-mindedness then can to some extent be a debilitary deliberate process this is what I like we just talked about this on one of our other podcasts where I was saying that having a

contrarian mind if you take it to an extreme obviously it's bad and I've worked for bosses I'm sure you did too they were contrarians and so it just became a drag everything was like oh there's another way to do this even if it didn't make any sense we're still going to do a different way. But I like this idea of open-mindedness making it a deliberate process. And what I said was being a contrarian, it's going to let you see the counterintuitive options that you might not see if you didn't actively try and say, okay, let me get deliberate about what's another way to make this happen. I just listened to that. I totally agree. This is this idea of the devil's advocate. And I always said, hey, I really wanted the occasional devil's advocate,

but it had to be a productive devil's advocate, not a, not a just a, you know, yeah, yeah, I had a boss that was very contrary on everything. It looked great guy, but, you know, eventually you're just like, yep, got it, yep. Wow, that's crazy, boss. Wow, that's nuts. Cool. Can we move on now? Right, right.

Next one, you've mentioned this one already cunning, the ability to consider problems and circumstances from unusual and unorthodox perspectives in order to achieve a goal or objective. the story that you tell in here is pretty cool and everyone on this podcast will appreciate it because it's about Chuck Liddell and basically you're talking to some of your guys and who could beat Chuck Lidell in a fight and everyone's like kind of knows the deal

you know if you train combatives at all you know if you go and this is at the time period when Chuck Lidl was the light heavyweight champion of the world and so if you've trained you know that Chuck Lidel is going to beat your ass because he's way better than you are and you got one guy that's like I'll take him And everyone's like, oh, what do you mean?

How could you take him? And he says, I'll take him as long as I get to dictate when and where we fight. Oh, what do you mean by that? Well, I want to fight him at 2 a.m. in the dark in the ocean down at 50 feet. And then I'll take Chuck Liddell. It's like, mm, makes sense. Yeah. That's your cunning. The cunning mind approaches a problem and immediately asks three questions.

The question it asks is, first, are there rules and boundaries? Second is, are they real or are they perceived? And the third is, if they are real, what happens if I break them? and then goes about looking at different ways. And that's exactly, it's one of the primary qualities of Navy SEALs is the cunning mind, is we, we are not constrained by rules and objectives.

Yeah, you have in here, cunning is a pejorative word implies sneakiness, deception, using trickery to an unfair advantage, but I'm using it in a broader sense as a neutral term. It might include deception at a given time, but not always. Rather, I mean an ability to disregard the unspoken and often artificial rules when appropriate

to consider objects and circumstances from unorthodox perspectives. This is a weird one in this day and age. Okay, so you're in Buds, basic seal training. And I heard two things when I went through Buds. One of them, if you're not cheating, you're not trying. And the other one, if you're cheating, you're only cheating yourself.

And I've, you know, there's been, obviously, you know, Buds is pretty high on the radar. as far as what's going on there. But that's a difficult balance, but there is, like, there's no right answer. You want to have guys, they're like, wait a second. A classic example, you know, the instructor will go out and say, all right, you know, you're doing log PT,

which means you're on your squad with six guys or seven guys and you're carrying this log. And I think this is in this book. I don't know, I read a lot of books. Is it the one, anyways, the guys, the instructor comes out. and says okay take your team run down around the berm and run back don't do anything that I don't do just do what I told you to do take your team run around the berm and come back and so all

the teams pick up their logs and run and one one leader says all right let's go guys and leaves the log because they didn't get told they had to take it so that's a person that's like thinking outside the box right good job right good job and I think you talk about in this book is the dragon, right? Yes. Go rescue the dragon who's guarded. Go rescue the princess who's guarded by the dragon. And what the seal mindset is, well, can we just avoid the dragon completely?

How can we just not even have to deal with the dragon? Go, you know, deliver a pizza to the princess and then sneak her out. Throw some slices of pizza at the dragon too, and he's all good. As opposed to going to fight the dragon where we take athletes. So what do you think? What do you make of that balance that they look? for and buds of someone that's going to break the rules without breaking the rules. Yeah.

So Hank and I talked about this. We're having coffee. And it was actually in the context of the recent controversy of the students that's still training using substances. And in the common thoughts for most of us is like that's, we feel like that's stolen valor, right? I mean, if you're not going to do it the way you're supposed to do it, then that's stolen valor.

But there's a reason, right? Because this is different than cheating. And what we came up with, right or wrong, but I'd like your thoughts, is that if you're cheating and it's hurting the team, it's bad, right? If you're cheating in a context to get the team to accomplish a mission, right? That's different, right? And what we were looking at in that conversation about substance abuse is you're doing, you're cheating the process by which we will understand that you can go to combat with us and do anything we need you to do, right? because you're giving yourself physical, whatever you're doing, right?

So you ain't cheating and you try in is about looking at the problem differently for the purpose of making the team successful. And there's no selfishness involved with it, right? And I think that's the key. Again, there's benevolent cunning, right? That's Oscar Schindler. There's malevolent cunning, right? That's Bernie Madoff.

I mean, so even being divisive or devious, right, you can do it in a benevolent way. And these guys who, I would be curious, I mean, the guys who ran around the berm without the log, they probably got beat up because, you know, the instructor's like, but they probably, you know, the instructor's probably like, actually, that's a pretty good idea right now. You know, because they're seeing,

they're seeing some different ways of thinking, as long as it's in service to the team. Selfish cheating is where we draw the line. I was at team two. We were doing CQC at whatever Blackwater is now called. Yeah, I can't remember it's changed. And they had this, one of the mount towns, they had like a facade. One side of the street was just a facade.

So there was only this, there was a street, a fake street. And then there was like a Hollywood for you, Echo Charles, like the front of buildings. But they had windows and doors and all this stuff. And we had some target that we were supposed to hit where we had to like go right in front of that street. And the few runs that we'd done already, the guys were hiding in those facades and just shooting the shit out. of us. So, you know, we're just doing quick iteration runs. And I'm like, all right, here's what we're going to do. And we moved a few guys, like the bulk of the platoon, just ran right down the field to the mount town and started doing the clearance towards the target. But we

sent like four guys ran all the way around the berm, all the way around to the back of the facades. And as we initiated the target, they just shot all the op four in the back. You know, just killed them all, like immediately. And, It was one of those things where they were like, hey, good job, guys. Like, we weren't watching our six and you kicked her ass. They were stoked about it. So what I wrote down was like that theory of kind of like the spirit of the rule. Like if you break, I think there's something where you have to judge like, wait a second,

are we actually doing something that's breaking the spirit of the evolution, like in buds, you know? hey, are we doing something that actually is just not the right thing to do? At the detriment of the team or at the detriment of true training, right? I mean, you know, yeah. Yeah, and what I thought you were actually going to say when you were talking about, you and Hank talking about doing steroids or whatever in buds, what I thought you were going to say, and I agree with what you said, but also if we're in a boat crew and I'm on steroids and you're not,

I can go a little bit faster. And now you're having to keep up with me and you don't have the benefit of being juice to the gills, as they say, which is a problem. Now, I mean, from what I understand, the steroids as a whole are not going to help you get through butts. No. And it's going to be a detriment.

Yes. So hopefully guys are hearing that message. What baffles my mind is the guys who are doing it, they haven't gotten it because it's not about looking good. It's not about winning it. If you can win things, great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a, even if, I mean, there's no score. I mean, the guy who wins nothing, but still makes it through, still becomes a Navy SEAL. What I was thinking about what you said earlier is like, hey, you can do, let's say you and I get dropped down. I'm juiced to the gills and you're not. Cool. You did

117 pushups before you went face first and hit the surf. I did 130, right? I did an extra 13 pushups. No one knows. No one cares. We both then up wet. I cooled off faster because I got faster. So my buddy who's running, who's in first phase told me a story. He said it was Hell Week and they were doing this evolution hell week. I can't remember it's called it. I think it's called a double up where they run, they have the class run two miles. And then when they have a certain time to do it and whoever fails that time has to do it right over, right, do it again right immediately, do another two miles. And he said this class, it was this class there were basically, apparently they got in word

and all that stuff. They were super prepared, right? They go to this two mile run. and every single person passes. It was like, holy crap, every single person except one dude. And this dude is like way far behind. He's struggling. And so the whole class passes and they're sitting there and the dude finishes and they're like, okay, you know, tell this dude who didn't pass. Okay, you know, go over there, get some water, you're going to do it again.

So he walks over to the class. The class kind of circle him, huddle around him. About a minute later, the kid comes back to the instructions, hey, I'm quitting. I'm going to do R. Right. So he quits. And so my buddy. goes to the class leader.

It says, hey, you know, what went on there? It's like, well, you know, we, I don't know, he just, we, we were all prepared to win that. And, you know, he, you know, he didn't live up. And we kind of, we felt like it was probably his time. He's like, my buddy's like, you guys are idiots. It's like, what? He's like, you guys could have been sitting around doing nothing while he ran another two miles. You know, did you ever think about that one?

Now you're going to get beat. So this is, this is thinking outside the box, right, in a different way. So it's this idea of are we breaking the paradigms of our thinking? Because this is what spec ops was designed with first base. And this is how we we conducted the war. I mean, I remember we were changing tactics all the time to try to stay ahead because, you know, we had to. You know, and so I think the cunning mind used benevolently and used in service to others is a huge asset. Yeah.

Definitely what the SEAL teams, and like you said, well, that's what's what. special operations is four. Yeah. You know, to look at a problem and say, hold on a second. What are those three questions you had? Those are three good questions.

Yeah. First question is, are there rules and boundaries? Yeah. Second question, are they real or are they perceived? Third question is, what happens if I break them?

If they are real, what happens if I break them? That's cool. Those are good. Echo and I just did four podcasts about the game. Game. Yeah.

We're just about the game. About all the different games that you're playing and life is a game and job as a game and Jiu-Jitsu is a game. and relationships as a game, all these things. But those are three really good questions. And we actually ended up talking about the infinite game versus the finite game.

And I know you mentioned that in here as well. But yeah, always checking things out and saying, wait a second, you know, why are we even doing this? That's kind of the contrarian mind that I have. I was like, why are we even doing this? What if we don't do this? It's healthy skepticism. And I think that really is a valuable asset, healthy skepticism. Powerful.

Now we get into the this one. The fun one. Yeah, you mentioned this one. It's all about me. By the way, a closing line of the book, Leadership Strategy and Tactics is, it's on you, but not about you. Narcissism,

the desire to stand out to be noticed, to be recognized. When I was lying on a California beach in the dark, the cold Pacific surf crashing over me at the miserable height of hell week, I was not driven by selfless service to my country. I did not lean on my deep patriotism and I was not inspired by a sense of sacrifice or duty. To be honest, none of those high-minded ideals were even the primary reason I wanted to be a

Nevy seal in the first place. All those are part of me, but of course, all those are part of me, of course, but they aren't why signed up for Bud's training. So why did I? For the same reason, every seal does to see if I could be a badass special operator to prove that I was good enough, tough enough, strong enough to be recognized as a member of an elite fraternity. In a word, I was motivated by narcissism. That's another one of those words that typically is considered pejorative. An excessive amount of narcissism, in fact, is clinically recognized personality disorder. But in the layman's version of the term, narcissism is one of the elemental engines of human behavior,

the innate attribute that urges us to strive, to succeed, to be noticed. healthy doses, it's important for optimal performance. Yeah. I got a copy of the DSM-5, which is the psychological Bible. I want to make sure I was looking at this correctly. In the DSM-5, they have a couple pages on narcissism and the disorder, and they have nine criteria in there that you read, like, sentences. And the idea is if the doctor reads these nine and five, and the patient, you can say yes

to five or more, then the patient is considered disorder, right? And so I started reading through these nine. And as I read through them, I did not have five or more, but I was not innocent of all that I was reading. And so I said, okay, I asked myself the question, why did it become a seal in the first place? And it was because, you know, all those things exist. But I wanted to see if I could do something very few people could do. And the idea, and the other thing is when you look at the neurology, the neuroscience of this, an infant that's getting recognized and adored by its parents, is getting bursts of dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin, all very powerful feel-good chemicals, right? it feels good to be recognized and noticed.

It doesn't change when we're adult-holds. So the thesis is it's the impetus to some very audacious goals that we set for ourselves. It has to be metabolized in a healthy way. And the way we metabolize it in a healthy way is we surround ourselves with people who tell us the truth. You can always tell the disordered narcissist because they surround themselves with yes men. People who tell them what they want to hear, people who put them on a pedestal. And it's interesting because those groups are very transient. So someone who can't bend the need for very long will leave eventually.

Well, that person who just left immediately becomes enemy number one to that narcissist. That's just the way it works. And so we can set, you know, a lot of people wouldn't argue the fact. And we could debate this, but that Hollywood is generally considered a narcissistic town. But you look at some of the most kind of the healthiest, most stable Hollywood actors and actresses. They are people who've surrounded themselves with people who, who they're just normal around, right? And so we just surround ourselves with people

who don't put us on a pedestal, who tell us the truth, who keep us humble. That's our teammates, by the way. That's our wives, if we marry the right person. And we can really use narcissism to great advantage because why else would I want to be a Navy Seal? Why else would I want to write a best-selling book? Why else would I want to be the best surgeon,

the best athlete, the best teacher, whatever that is? So the idea is understand our humaneness. Recognize our humanness. Don't ignore it. Don't pretend it's not there. Just recognize it. body it and try to metabolize it. You say this.

People who fall too high on the narcissism scale, however, can be dangerous. In a simple sense, those more narcissistic types favor the quick hits of serotonin and dopamine over the longer lasting oxy, what is it? Oxytocin. Oxytosin. They need those constant reinforcements because their self-esteem is either very fragile or very low, despite presenting as arrogant, they generally feel unsafe and insecure. They're extremely sensitive to perceived injuries from criticism or defeat and they very easily feel

humiliated or degraded. To prevent that, highly narcissistic people try to put themselves at the center of small, tight, sycophantic tribes. They are rarely loyal. Loyalty requires trust and a sense of safety, so their tribes are inherently unstable. Healthy members tend not to stay long and new ones that are let in only when they show the Deference. Those who do leave usually suffer a disproportionate amount of wrath from the person to whom they once deferred because defectors are considered enemies. So beware the highly narcissistic people in your sphere. Their energy and effort will, more often than not, be to prop up their fragile egos rather than to achieve shared objectives or serve a common purpose. They are by definition not team players. Yet if they sense you are distancing yourself, If you are not obviously on their team, they'll likely lash out diminishing you in an effort to inflate themselves.

Worst of all, narcissism doesn't show up clearly in the mirror. The more narcissistic a person is, the less likely it is that they'll recognize that behavior. This is one of the biggest things that we try and teach, you know, as one of the key components. The most important characteristic for a leader to have is humility. and the reason that we the reason that I found that we have to lean into that is because when you're working with people that are in leadership positions the tenant they got there because they have confidence right they got there because they they not did they have confidence they did well and were rewarded and when they got rewarded

they did even better and then they get promoted and then when they get promoted their confidence so they do well again and so they get this so we have a tendency when we're working with and it was in the seals like occasionally we would have a young officer that was over indexed in humility like just lacking confidence right occasionally that was way more often than not it was someone that was you know hey I already know how to do this hey I don't we did this my way like that was the normal and it's the same thing in the business world like you don't become the CEO of a big company because you were overly humble you got there because you were confident and then the more good decisions you make and more success you

have, the more that ego gets out of control, and that's when we run into problems. So that's a good one. Yeah. And honestly, like confidence, I almost tend to sometimes separate confidence because I consider arrogance the opposite of humility. And confidence and arrogance, the way I talk about those, when I talk about organizations is arrogance is, or confidence is I know I can do this. Arrogance is I'm better than you.

Confidence is internally focused and arrogance is externally expressed. And so obviously confidence is quiet. Arrogance is loud. Arrogance almost always comes from a place of insecurity. And so you can have a very, very humble. You can have a very, very, very confident person who's very humble, right? I mean, most of the masters out there that we've encountered are very confident, but also humble. And humility in my, in my mind is really just a, it's not a deference.

It's really just an understanding that I always have something to learn. I always, I have, there's always someone who can teach me something, and I'm open-minded to do it. I'm not necessarily right. That's right. Yeah, that's right. And so people, so a lot of these folks, again, if you look at the studies, a lot of the top, like, entrepreneurs, like they're very successful. They're a little bit higher on the narcissistic scale. But it's because those endeavors required a little bit of that to get it going, kind of kind of to spark that.

But if you want to keep on going, you just have to manage it. Yeah, and that can bite them in the ass, too. You know, we see these people, you know, self-destruct. because, yeah, it takes a level of confidence, leaning towards arrogance to get to like, hey, I'm going to take this money from you and I'm going to kick ass and we're going to create this thing

that's never been done before. I'll tell you've got to be, you've got to have some level of arrogance pushing in that direction. But then they grow to a point or they get to a point where all of a sudden I'm not listening to you. I'm not taking, like I said before. I'm so confident in what I'm saying.

I'm now into arrogance. Now I'm not listening to my advisors. I'm not listening to the market. Hey, people just don't know what they want. You know what I mean? Yeah, that's right. They just don't know what they want. I'm going to educate them.

That's when you have people just self-destruct, which is always crazy to see and unfortunate. All right. Time to roll into the leadership attributes. Leadership is not a position. It's a behavior and you don't get to decide if you're doing it well. I really like that. You don't get to decide if you're a good leader or not. Leaders are identified and defined by those whom they lead.

You can't declare yourself to be a leader. That's like announcing that you're funny. You might think so, but if you can't make anyone laugh, you're not funny. Whether you're actually a leader, not just a person in charge, is entirely up to other people. Great leaders, we're told again and again, are trustworthy. They listen and they care. They're selfless, authentic and accountable. Some of those answers describe skills.

Listening for one is greatly unappreciated skill, but most of them are attributes. There are five that are key to leadership, empathy, selflessness, authenticity, decisiveness, and accountability. Certain skills like time management, delegation, and listening will enhance those leadership attributes, but they are not critical. In fact, mastery of any particular skill is not required. So here we get into these leadership at attributes. The first one, empathy, the ability, whether deliberate or not to join the emotional state of another person to feel what someone else is, what someone else feels. Definitely important. I think it's, I think it's,

is and overlooked quite a bit. I mean, you know, I always define team guys, especially team guy leaders, but I think team guy holistically as the best guys having kind of an empathy dimmer switch. So we know when to dial it up and when to dial it down. And this just stems from this idea that we were out there doing combat. And in one second, you're, you're killing a terrorist. And the next second, you're caring for, you know, mother and kids, right? And so it's a dial. But if we don't, as long as we don't, as well, leaders take the time to feel what other people feel, then they will not feel care for. And if someone doesn't feel care for, they don't look at you as a leader.

What's interesting about these attributes is that, you know, when I got out of the Navy, so a good friend of mine, Simon Sinek, author, he linked me up with a great leadership organization called the Chapman Leadership Institute. So I went around teaching leadership and kind of their style and things like that. We'd go around the country, around the globe, and we'd get in front of these audiences. as we say, just ask a question, what do great leaders do? And we'd have a flip chart next to us. And we'd just have people yell out things.

And we just to make a list of about 25, 30 things. No matter where we went, the list was always the same stuff. It doesn't matter what country, what state, what generation, it was always the same stuff. And always within the top 10 were those five things. Selflessness, accountability, empathy. Empathy, a lot of times, was number one, you know, or number two. So it matters to take that time. And it does take time.

It does take effort. But when you spend time and effort, that's also a display of caring. A good friend of mine used to say, time is the currency of leadership. Because everybody has the same. And when it's spent, you can't get it back. And so when you spend time to help another, they will feel cared for. Yeah, and then even the pragmatic perspective of understanding what other people's perspectives are and it's so important.

Like if we're going to plan a mission and you work for me and I see some kind of resistance, like you don't want to do it or you've got some qualms about doing it. Like for me to actually say, wait a second, what does he see that I don't see? What does he know that I don't know? Even from a pragmatic perspective, that's like tactical, you know, empathy about what are you actually seeing is so important. And I always tell people, you know, I've got to, I talk about not making emotional decisions. Don't make emotional decisions, obviously. And I always ask groups of people, you know, who here's made an emotional decision?

Everyone raised their hand. Who here's made a good emotional decision? Everyone's hands goes down. So we don't want to make emotional decisions. At the same time, you have to put emotions into the calculus of the decision that you're making. Yes. So if my team is mad, I need to think about what we're doing. If my team is upset about something, if they're overly aggressive mindset, I've got to take those emotions into account when I'm making a decision about what we're going to do.

So it's not totally void of emotions, but you've got to understand what other people's emotions are, understand what their perspective is, and that's what empathy is all about. Well, and one more quick note. This is really important. Empathy does not require agreement, and we have to understand this. And our country could do right by understanding this. So here's an example. We were in Iraq, and we saw an unfortunate event that happens unfortunately too often. And it was like a 12 or 13-year-old kid attempted to fire a rocket-propelled grenade at a convoy.

And, you know, unfortunately got killed doing so because they can't have that happen. And I remember a bunch of us team guys at the end of the day were around a fire. Like we always do out overseas. We're around the fire just chatting and this thing came up. And we kind of said, well, let's walk this thing back for a second. You know, this kid, 12, 13 years old, he probably has no father. His father's probably gone or dead. He's probably probably him just taking care of his mom and his sisters.

No school, no loud music, no sports, no parties, no girls, nothing to get his testosterone out on. One day, the bad guys come and say, we will give you 100 dinar to go fire this rocket propelled grenade at this U.S. Convoy. Every single one of us, Navy SEALs, said we would be that kid. If we had been in that environment, we would be that kid, right? That is empathy, right? And that's empathy without agreement. We don't agree with what the kid's doing or what the kid did, but we can totally put ourselves in that person. in shoes. And so the act of empathy does not require agreement. It really just requires effort.

Well, that also reminds me of, you know, when I was in a leadership position in a seal platoon or a sealed task unit, I would look at these guys, these young seals that are 20, 21, 22, 23 years old and they would do some knucklehead stuff. Yeah. And I would always remember, yep, that was me. I was that kid. You're talking about being that kid. That's right. I would was that kid. So just remembering where you came from and remembering where other people are, people are and understanding where they're at.

That's what, that's what this, why this is so important. Such an important attribute for leaders to have, for sure. Selflessness, placing the needs and well-being of others above one's own despite real or perceived risk. You know, I had this, I was on a podcast with Jordan Peterson. and what I ended up saying was,

I forget what led to the conversation, but I was trying to explain what made a good seal. And, you know, I explained the fact that, look, you can be a great shot, you can be a fast runner, you can be a great diver, you can have all the parachute skills, but if you are the type of person

that doesn't put the team first, no one wants you in the platoon. Right. Period. And that's exactly what you're talking about here. Yeah. And there's a difference because another attribute is generosity. And we have that in our kind of a full attribute list. But there's a difference between generosity and selflessness.

And the difference is that risk factor, right? Generosity can be done without risk. And that's fine. It's great to be generous. Selflessness is at risk. You're putting yourself at risk in some way. And when people see you doing that, they tend to say, this is someone I want to follow. Yeah.

There's a whole theme that I've been talking about for the past couple of years when it comes to building relationships with people. What does a relationship consist of? Well, if I trust you, you trust me, we have a relationship. If I respect you and you respect me, we have a relationship. Contrarily, if you don't trust me or I don't trust you, we don't have a relationship. If I don't respect you, you don't respect me or not have a relationship. If you don't influence me at all and you're not influenced by me at all, we don't have a relationship.

I mean, if we have a relationship, we should influence each other. And the last one is listening. If I don't listen to you and you don't listen to me, we don't have a relationship. But the final one, which I just added the other day, and it's one of those ones that was so sitting in front of my face that it I didn't say it and that's of course Care which you know we've mentioned which is but the interesting thing and this kind of reflects on what we're talking about For every one of these if I want you to you to listen to me how do I make that happen? I listen to you. Yes, I want you to treat me with respect. I treat you with respect I want to be I want you to be influenced by me. I better allow myself to have an open mind and be influenced by you and the caring of course if I take care of you in most cases you're going to take care of me look if you're a narcissistic bastard or whatever there's always going to be people that you know I trust you and you screw me over I listen to you and you know there's a small amount of people out there in the world that are just oh their egos and they're they're just dented dented souls right they're they're terrible people unfortunately but for the most part

You take care of other people that take care of you. You show that selflessness and sacrifice, and they'll be willing to do the same thing for you. And this, by the way, is the only time you can use leadership as the noun. Leaders go first. They go first in behavior, right? You model the behavior you want to see more of, and then you reward the behavior you want to see more of.

If you want more empathy in the people that are in your span of care, you model empathy, and then you reward empathy. And that's the problem. If you don't understand that, You're not going to, because people will automatically, you know, they'll do what you, where the rewards, you know, flow. And they'll, they'll do what the boss does, right? If they, if they feel good about it. So that's the only time you go first as a leader.

Next one here, decisiveness, the ability to make decisions quickly and effectively. You say decisiveness is the ability to make clear, well-informed, and timely decisions. The last criterion timeliness is what separates the person with a high-level decisiveness from a person who merely makes solid decisions in any dynamic environment taking too long to make even a good decision is ineffective because the environment changes so quickly so this is one that i've i wrote about this one in leadership strategy and tactics and i talk about the fact that it i was decisive in the seal teams but i always cheated and the way that i cheated was i would make very small decisions very quickly I wouldn't try and figure out everything that was going on in the next four hours of a scenario.

I would figure out, okay, what's going on right now that I can see and I can get, we can make a move? And I'm going to do that pretty quickly. And then I'm going to pay attention to the feedback, run that OODA loop, pay attention to the feedback, and make another very quick decision. And that's a very, I call it the iterative decision making process. Lots of little decisions quickly. That's your compartmentalization loop going on too. I mean, it's really effective. But one of the thing I do want to highlight here, and I didn't say this earlier, a great way to determine whether something's a skill or an attribute is to ask a simple question.

That question is, can I teach it or can it be taught? If the answer is yes, it's probably a skill. The answer is no, it's probably an attribute. So someone could come up to us and say, hey, I want to learn how to shoot a pistol and hit a bulls. Well, we could take out someone up to the range and teach them how to do that in two hours, right? Someone else could say, I want to learn how to be more patient. We can't teach you how to be more patient. And so to develop an attribute you're low on requires a, it requires three things.

A knowledge that you need to develop it, a motivation to develop it, and then a deliberate, a deliberate effort to step into environments that test and tease and develop that attribute. So if you want to develop your patients, for example, go find environments that test and tease your patients. Whatever that looks like for you. It could be I'm going to deliberately go drive in traffic. I'm going to pick the longest line of the groceries for stand in. I always say have kids that'll develop your patients, right? But the reason why I bring that up is because I want to separate making decisions with decisiveness.

Making decisions is a skill. You can actually teach someone to make better decisions and how they gather information. It's a skill that can be taught. Decisiveness adds a speed and efficiency factor to it. And some people are just higher on the decisive attribute than others. But no, it's rare. I don't like to be definitive, but it's rare that leaders are looked at as leaders if they are indecisive. some people I've served with and served under who were really great decision makers,

but it was a long, to get them there was a painful process. You're like, oh my gosh. I mean, and again, it just didn't feel like leadership. You know, it was wild that you and I both got to experience being pre-war and then living in the war, the 96-hour planning cycle. And that was, you know, what we, I wouldn't say it kind of entered into the scene in the mid-night. It became a thing where like this is and we probably eventually caught that you know it got passed down through the army and eventually made it into the seal teams and eventually got into a freaking lowly seal platoon where I was and it was like it's a 96 hour planning cycle And man I remember My boss when I was at seal team seven He's like how much time do you guys need to launch on a mission? You know, he's like expecting I was like 15 minutes

He was like what are you talking about? I was like yeah 15 minutes And I had a great relationship with my boss at Steel Team 7. I was like, yeah, 15 minutes, we'll roll. He's like, how can that be? I was like, tell me where the target is. Tell me the friendly unit that's in the area and what frequency they're on. And we roll. And we can make this happen.

Big difference from the 96 hour. I tell you, when I got to Iraq the first time, we started doing ops, I was so happy that that, because remember how many briefs? It was like, you had to do like seven different briefs and it was all like painstaking. And we get to our rack and it's like, hey, con up, go, con up go. And even the con-ups, in fact, that was actually a real challenge in combating complacency. The speed with which we could move really showed me, and it made me really think about, okay, we've got to make sure that we're actually thinking through things versus just snapping on what we usually do. But all that said, you know, I just, I didn't like the 96th cycle.

You know, for that, you know, the way to combat that, a good little protocol to come back, to, to, combat the hey we got into a groove and getting complacent is just as often as I could I would have my subordinates come up with the plan like oh you guys hey here's the mission come up with the plan and that way I'm detached I'm looking at it from a distance if they start throwing it up there too quick or you're just gonna see the holes in it that's powerful the other thing I was thinking about when you're talking about teaching skills versus learning or developing attributes an interesting metaphor that I use in jujitsu or when I'm teaching a move in jiu jitsu let's say there's 10 things that you have to

do right to make a move actually work in jiu jitsu there's 10 things that you have to do i can only teach you like five of them maybe dean lister can teach you six uh maybe a echo can teach you four doesn't have quite have it but there's going to be things that you have got to put yourself in that situation and you've got to experience yourself in order to get better at them So I think that when you were talking about putting yourself into these situations, because look, I know for a fact, and I know you do too, I would see guys over time improve in all these attributes. Sometimes they would, I should say, not always. But sometimes you get someone that is, you know, they're just not very decisive. They're just not.

But then you'd see you put them in that position. You talk to them about it. You can tell them a couple things like, hey, you need to, hey, figure out what three things you could do and pick once or one's the best. Like even that little help, it's a move that you can teach them that they can kind of start, that can become part of their personalities. And so you can teach some of it, but ultimately you've got to develop it over time. Is that, is that line up with what you're saying? It totally lines up. And it actually brings up a good point. And that is when we, I kind of often relate to us as like automobiles. Humans are like automobiles. We're all different types, right? Some of us are Jeeps. Some of us are SUVs. Some of those are Ferraris. And there's no judgment there because the Jeep can do things that Ferraris. can't do and the Ferrari can do things the Jeep can't do. But it behooves us to lift our hood and figure out what kind of engine we're running with. And there's no, again, there's no judgment on that. It also means that we don't necessarily have to be high on every attribute. In other words, I use stand-up comedy, right? The stand-up comic who's too high on empathy, it's not going to be

a very good stand-up comic, right? So being too high may be detrimental to what you want to do in your specific niche. But bottom line is, when you start looking at developing these things, if you find that you just can't develop something, that means you adapt and you adjust. I mean, and they can start playing off of each other. So I think I remember, in fact, I think I remember hearing one of your examples on one of the podcasts about talking about a guy who was not, I think he wasn't very loud.

Wasn't loud, yep. Wasn't loud, right? And so, and you said, hey, you encourage this guy. Hey, you've got to be loud. And he just just wasn't getting it. So basically he pulls the loudest guy over and says, hey, tell the guys to do this, right? That's adaptability. He's using his adaptability to buttress, his low,

whatever loudness attribute, you know, whatever. And so you can, some of these, so, so for example, low adaptability can be buttressed by high open-mindedness, right? And you can actually, you can even out your performance that way. That's why understanding these levels in yourself and your team is really important. Yeah, yeah. Guy was, that guy was a freaking smart guy and did a good job. I was like, yep, he just solved that problem. And that's why building complementary teams, when you know what your attributes are. and you're like, look, I'm not the guy you want doing paperwork, right?

I always find the guy in my platoons or my jobs that are good at paperwork. I'm fine that guy. Yeah. I'm going to take care of him. He's going to be my best friend because I'm not doing paperwork. Right. Right. Next one.

Accountability, taking responsibility for and ownership of your decisions, actions, and the consequences thereof. Extreme ownership. I agree with this very much. And by the way, a buttress to, decisiveness, right? You can't be effectively decisive if you haven't buttressed it with accountability, because you have to look at those decisions and say, okay, was that the right decision? What are we doing? Did we need to make a different decision? So incredibly important. You say in here in complex

environments, taking action is paramount. Even if the action is making a decision to do nothing, it's important to understand what you're doing and why, just as important as recognizing that any consequence of that action any consequences of that action are your responsibility you have to fully own those decisions being accountable and owning our decisions and actions serves several purposes one it requires that we understand why we're doing whatever action we've chosen which in turn helps us to be fully committed to it which i which i've lately i've been talking about this thing what am i calling it uh the explanation effort meter the EEM, the explanation effort meter, which is, if it is so hard for me to explain to you

why this makes sense, I should probably really consider if it actually makes sense or not. It shouldn't be that hard. Look, I'm fairly articulate. I've got a good grip on what I'm trying to explain. And if I can't get through to you, there's probably something wrong with my idea. Now, look, there's a chance that you just have a big ego and, you know, everyone loves their own idea the best. But if it's really that, if my idea is that much superior to yours, I should be able to explain that and articulate it.

And you should probably end up nodding your head and going, yeah, you know what, you're right. And if I'm expending all this effort trying to explain something and it still isn't getting landing with you and you're still not nodding your head, well, then why? How much effort is it worth? Because let's face it, you know, I've explained this to many people, you and me arguing about how to hit a target when, Neither one of us actually knows where the enemy's going to be, you know, how they're going to be set up. We've got ideas, but they're going to get a vote. And so you and I disagreeing and being combative and finally, I said, you know what? Shut up.

I'm in charge. You do it my way. And then we go on on a target where there's a, we have no idea what's actually going to happen. And you see this in the business world too. Right. This other person doesn't want to make that investment. When reality is, no one really knows what's going to happen. And if I can't convince you, you know, if that explanation effort beaters just redlined, just all I'm saying is, just consider, just consider maybe it might not be worth the squeeze.

Well, and the hack to that, the hack to that is if you encourage or you allow someone to make a decision to do something, it automatically makes them accountable, right? They own that in a way. You know, the other thing I tell leaders all the time because this is something that sometimes they don't quite get is that leaders, leaders, leaders can always delegate responsibility, but never accountability. And that's really important because I've had leaders who delegate both, and it's not good. I mean, it's not good. Something goes wrong and they back away, they push away. It's like, no, no, we're always accountable.

Now, I'm not saying that, you know, because some people are like, well, no, the people you're giving responsibility, they're accountable to. Is it, yeah, sure, yeah. But you are still accountable. And by you owning it, it just is the behavior you're modeling that they need to see more of. They will also own it in their own way. But we can delegate responsibility. We cannot delegate accountability.

Yeah. Another problem people run into and they want, if I want Rich to take ownership, so what do I do? I say, okay, Rich, here's the mission. Here's the vehicles I want you to take. Here's the people I want you to take with you. Here's the weapons I want you to use. Here's the route I want you to take to the target.

They go through the whole thing. Now that's the plan. Take ownership of that plan and go execute. It's like, that's not happening. One of my favorite Metallica songs. So one of my favorite albums is End justice for All. One of my favorite songs is I have The Beholder. And the line in that is you can do it your own way if you do it how I say.

Yeah, exactly. And that's like, yeah, take ownership of this. It's a song about oppression, by the way. It's awesome. And it's so easy to say, hey, man, hey, Rich, here's the mission. How do you want to do it? So much easier to say that. I don't have to get you to buy anything into anything.

And yes, is there a chance that you present to me a plan that's completely insane? It makes no sense. Sure. Yeah. But if we've been working together and I've been showing you how, we do this and I've been letting you run little parts of the operations prior to this, you're going to know what to do. Yeah.

And you're going to give me a decent plan that we're going to be able to run with. So give ownership. You go on to say here, purpose provides clarity. It's nearly impossible to truly own an action if you aren't clear why you're taking it. If you fully own your decisions, you will better be able to explain the reasons behind them. Being accountable allows us to look objectively and critically at the results of a decision which helps us assess the results more accurately and make the next decision more effectively.

If the mission plan ends up not working as well as possible, the accountable officer and men will studiously figure out what could have been done better rather than dismissing any flaws as the boss made us do it that way. Better decisions will be made next time and everyone will improve a far better outcome than repeating a cycle of grudgingly doing what the powers that be demand. Finally, taking responsibility for decisions,

and its results, immediately engages the learnability attribute. Remember, we human beings are wired to make sense of our environment. While much of that happens automatically and unconsciously, part of that process is very deliberate. And this is where the humility comes into mind too.

Because if you're not humble enough to be like, yeah, this was my decision and I made it and it didn't work, and here's what we got to do to fix it. Yeah. Well, the last thing else is you say on accountability because I don't think I mentioned it in the book, is that especially for leaders, accountability allows control.

It allows you to take, when you say, I own this, and sometimes I've done this quite deliberately, even though I know I had nothing to do it, I just take it, I say, I own this. This is my fault, right? I take the steering wheel.

And as soon as you place blame, you're giving the steering wheel to someone else. And so accountability allows for taking control of an environment and starting to steer it the way you want to steer it. Beautiful life rule. Yeah. A little extreme ownership. It goes a long way.

Teamability attributes. Is team ability a real word? Teamability is a word I took from NSW. Okay. Yeah. Although I think we missed authenticity, didn't we? Did we miss something? Yeah, I think we missed authenticity.

Okay, let's talk authenticity. The only reason why I need to say it, I need to mention, is because the guy I talk about in that chapter, Brian McCabe, he's a deeply authentic guy and he loves and has been to several of your musters. I'm trying to think of how I missed this. I told him I'd give him a shout out. This is the one that you, there it is. There it is. Sorry, I missed it. Authenticity, the degree to which a person's actions are consistent with his beliefs, values, desires, despite external pressures.

Is this who you gave the coin to? Yeah. And he held on to it for like, yeah. Yeah, that's a great story. Again, get the book, read the story, very cool story about the history of giving coins and what they mean. and all that, and this particular case is a pretty cool story. Among all the leadership attributes, authenticity is the most important for building trust.

Authenticity, by definition, can't be faked. It can't be copied. There's no template, no checklist of external behaviors or attitudes that are the model of authenticity. Being firm and taciturn doesn't make one any more or less of a leader than being easygoing and funny. What matters more is that person is authentically firm are authentically easygoing.

The simplest measure of authenticity is consistency. Very, you know, so, so important, right? And it's really hard to fake this stuff. Like, when guys aren't authentic, it's like really easy to see. And how, I mean, you've seen some of these folks, you know, and I will, I'll just say as an example, because I've seen officers who are, you know, sticky sweet to the senior leader who comes and visits.

It's just like apple pie and then they turn around. They're tyrants to the people underneath them. It doesn't build trust. It doesn't feel trust. Yeah. Yeah, that there's a, you know, that level of vulnerability there, you know, like, hey, you're not going to know everything. That's okay. And yeah, I always, I always, to your point, like, this one thing that's interesting about the podcast.

It's like, dude, you're on here for long enough. I don't know how many hours we have of doing this. It's a long time. The character, playing the character, after a while, man, it's just... The real use going to go out. So here's a interesting story. When I was doing this attributes work, I was talking to a buddy mine. He worked for one of the agencies.

And one of his primary jobs was to help people develop alternate personalities, undercover personalities. And I told him about the work I was doing. He's like, Riches is really interesting because when we help someone develop an alternate personality, we always make it consistent with who they really are. Because what we found is that even the best actors on the first actors on the planet can't pretend to be someone else for more than 30 days. You know, most of us can't pretend for more than a few days, right? We will always revert back.

And what I tell people in business is that anybody can pretend to be anyone you want for an interview process, right? But the idea is these attributes are who we really are, right? And if we lean on these, then our authentic self comes out. Yeah, I love telling people, intent has a smell. And so when you're, when you got some weird alternative agenda in the back and everyone can smell it and you don't think they can smell that's a weird thing you can throw a little deodorant on it you try and keep a little distance but everyone goes you ever know the person

you're like something just they actually say it you say something doesn't smell right yes right something doesn't smell right that's when you sense that lack of authenticity and man the boys can see through that shit oh yeah they look at that no no no we're not buying into this so yeah sorry i missed that one um glad you were on it and so what's the guy that came to the muster Brian McCabe okay yeah a couple times yeah right on yeah so we'll have to get him to another one yeah yeah I'll tell him to let me know and I'll let you know if he's coming so those are powerful events did you have a good time oh yeah he loved him he's been I think he's been to two or three right on we'll get him to another one we can make that happen we have the power

so now we get into team ability yeah again I think I took that from the teams I remember that being one of the attributes for seal candidates. Yeah. And man, that's important. It is. And it's weird to some people, don't get that.

Right. Like, you're literally joining the SEAL teams. Yeah. You may think it might be an important thing to be a good teammate, be a good team player. And this kind of falls back

in what you said about. Yeah, you can't say, I'm a good leader. 100%. The same thing here. You can't say, hey, I'm a good teammate. Team ability is about,

how well people work and play together, how deeply they connect and how effectively they collaborate, much like being a leader, you don't get to decide whether you're a good teammate. Others will instinctively make that assessment for you and they will do so based upon how well you perform and interact with them. Number one of these integrity, the ability to act in accordance with relevant moral values and social and cultural norms. You put a good, you throw a good tested people on this one. This is the one about the person that she did on a test. Is this that one?

Yeah, yeah. Tell us about that little dilemma. Well, I will misquote the dilemma, but what I will say is we have to remember integrity subjective. In other words, in accordance with the group, doing the right thing for a Cub Scout troop is going to look different than doing the right thing for an ISIS troop. And I would submit, and this makes people uncomfortable when I say it,

so I will say it, right? If you have a Cub Scout who steals $5 from his, is a fellow scout and you have an ISIS person who runs into a building with a suicide vest who's behaving with more integrity in that situation, the ISIS person in accordance with their group. And so the reason why this is important is because if leaders have not defined what do the right thing looks like, the group's going to sort it out. And we found this in the teams.

I mean, the team, sometimes those less well-run groups, loyalty will supplant integrity. And that's not right either. And so leaders need to be diligent about defining what do the right thing looks like for a group, for an organization, behaving those ways, right? Because if you're not going to behave it, you're sunk as well. And then that will define the integrity for the group. The example that you put in here is like a kid is cheating on a test, basically. And you see him cheating in a test.

And then you ask like, hey, are you the person that's going to tell on them or not tell on them? I think I said you've studied your ass off of this thing and you see this kid cheating. Yeah, and on the cell phone, yeah. And so then eventually you give the context of like, hey, so the kid cheated. You studied hard. He's going to get an A. You're, you know, he's going to pass, but you had to work for it. And then the teacher asked you like, hey, I think that kid was cheating.

Was he? And you put, you asked the question. But then when you put context around it, it's like, oh, his mom is sick with cancer. He's got to, this is the one test he's got to pass. He's already been offered a job. As long as he passes this test, he's going to be able to get his mom on health insurance. And he hasn't had time to study because he's been taking care of it. It's like, all of a sudden, it's like, oh.

Okay. That was an asshole for telling you. Yeah. Right, yeah. So I always try and break it down just like, do what you say, say what you do. Yeah. Like, if I tell you I'm going to do something, I'm going to do it. Yeah.

You know. Integrity. Next one, conscientiousness, the ability and inner drive to work hard to be diligent and be reliable. You give a story about here about, you know, a guy you, again, get the book because you've got cool stories in here. Lots of stories. It's a dense book. Yeah, consciousness matters in the context of a team because it fosters trust. This isn't an esoteric concept. No trickery of brain chemistry. It's common sense and you understand it intuitively. Think of the people in your life, personal or professional whom you trust. Odds are most of them are dependable, reliable, and hardworking in one way or another. It's fairly straightforward. Yeah, that one's fairly straightforward. And the interesting thing is, if you're one of those people, you get. get more work.

Yeah. Oh yeah. You always get more. Oh yeah. Totally. What's the, the, what's the saying in the teams here?

No, no, no good deed goes unpunished because you're going to get more good deeds. If you're a reliable team guy, you're going to get more shit to do. Yeah. Yeah. But these team ability ones are fairly straightforward.

I mean, they really are. They're not rocket science. And the reason is because we all know what makes great teamings. I was about to say, yeah, we all have to interact with people that are cool and people that suck. Yes.

That's right. Yeah. Humility. The ability to be self- aware and transparent about one's strengths and weaknesses. Humility is often stigmatized, especially in a high performance arenas. It can be seen as a weakness or lack of confidence, a modest or low view of one's own importance, as one dictionary puts it. As an attribute, though, humility means being transparent about your weaknesses. That's not the same as false

modesty or the occasional humble brag, but rather an honest assessment of one's abilities. That also means being vulnerable, admitting weakness by definition requires vulnerability, but it's critical in the context of team ability. One of the strengths of any high-performing team lies in understanding its weakness. Being open about your own weaknesses allows others to understand where they can help. Boom. Working with people that are arrogant gets old. Arrogance kills teams.

It really does. And arrogance, much like narcissism, is like a vampire staring in the mirror. You can't see it in yourself. And so I always tell people, be aware of it in yourself, because we're victim of it sometimes. and then if you are a leader and you see it in your, so actually, arrogance was always a trigger for me. I mean, I just hated, I mean, every time I saw it, it had just trigger. And I was actually with a buddy of mine, its name is Josh Waitskin.

Do you know Josh Whiteskin? Yeah, yeah. So Josh and I would have lunch in New York a ton of times when he was still living there. And we were talking about one time, we were talking about triggers, things that trigger us. And I said, oh, it's arrogance for me. And he's like, oh, it's interesting. He's like, when I see arrogance, I immediately think insecurity. And as soon as he said that, it clicked for me.

I was like, that's exactly it. And I recognize that I have to approach arrogance with empathy. You know, there's something about that person that's causing them to want to express the way they're expressing. And it changed my whole view of arrogance. That is so accurate. I just had a conversation with a client this morning, and they were talking about that. And I was like, well, this is ego. And he's like, well, I think it's insecurity.

I was like, yeah, well, you're right. It's insecurity, which then flares up as ego. Just like the dichotomy that I talk about, here you say there's a sweet spot on the humility scale and it's quite wide, but there is danger at either extreme in either too much or too little. A lack of humility often resembles arrogance. While that's almost always a byproduct of fear and insecurity, arrogance on any team is detrimental. It breeds resentment, stifles communication and as a result is brutal in terms of results. Too much humility, though, risks teetering into meekness. which in turn can lead to inaction.

Deference in the support of empowering others is necessary for optimal performance, but there are times when you need to step up and be the alpha. You will be the expert in the room, the one who's been empowered by the deference of others, at which point you will need to take charge and perform with confidence. Great leaders understand this balance. They will defer until they've squeezed every ounce of potential out of their team, but they will not hesitate to assume control when required.

Moreover, an overabundance of humility can also mask an underlying lack of confidence, a lack of confidence, real or perceived, inevitably will begin to erode trust, which in turn will undermine any team. Your own level of humility is difficult to assess. Humility is a strange thing, Sir Edward Holtz, a 19th century British politician once said, the minute you think you've got it, you've lost it. I love that quote. That's a very good quote. I've got a section in leadership strategy and tactics where I talk about leadership vacuum. And when do you step into the leadership vacuum? And I talk about giving it a little bit more time.

And the reason you get, and this could be like literally two seconds. But if you jump in when there's a leadership vacuum as soon as it shows up, other people haven't seen it yet. And they're ready to resist it or they already think they know what's going on. So I would always like there's a little bit of confusion. hear like some shouting, some yelling, like no one's really sure what to do. Give it a second. And then a little sudden you hear the quiet. That means people are recognizing it.

And then if you say, give it at a second, say everyone, you know, get to the ground floor right now. We're going to move out. Everyone's ready to be led at that moment. So that waiting, that's why I like that when you said defer until you've squeezed every out of potential. Like you want them to try. And they can't make it happen. It's like, all right, here's what we're doing. That leadership vacuum.

Let it, let everyone feel the vacuum, step in and make a call. That's what you got to do sometimes. Well, I used to tell my J.O's, I used to call the irony of leadership, right? I used to tell my J.O's, if you're doing your job correctly, you're working yourself out of a job. You're creating a unit that can operate without you. And that takes humility. And quick story about Hank and I, we were out in Iraq and we were talking about some of the stuff. And we said to ourselves, you know, if we're talking about growing all our leaders, and if we don't, if we don't do anything about it,

we're not walking the talk. And so we said, you know what we should do is we should have them. We said send them on an op without us. And so sure enough, we find an op. It looks pretty good, pretty easy, right? We're like, tell the troop, hey, you guys are taking this one here. Hank and I are going to sit back at the jock. And sure enough, they go.

And one of the troop chiefs take, or one of the team leaders takes the GFC position, another takes the troop chief position, they go out. Of course it turns kinetic. And it's like stuff's going down. And Hank and I are sitting in the jock and we're looking this and we look at each other. like, man, if this goes bad, we're done. Like, we are done, you know. But it's about, I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's being humble enough to then have the

courage to grow your leaders. I mean, if you don't, if you're not allowing them to do what they need to do and, and make decisions and, and, and have confidence in doing it without you, you're going to, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, the other, the collateral effect of that was that they got back and the team leader that had my job, the Grand First Commander, he takes his headphones off and throws them at me. He's like, I never effing want to do that again, right? Because of course, GFC, you're like, you have like 5,000 things going on. Um, so they have an appreciation for

what you bring to the team as well. Right. So, um, but, uh, but it takes humility, takes courage and humility. Yeah, that was, uh, something I learned from my, when I was in my second platoon, we had the best platoon commander ever, um, best guy ever. And like, he took over, we a platoon commander got fired and he took over and like the first training mission we did. He was like, I was a E4, actually. And he was like, Jocker, you're running this mission. I was like, E4. He's like, hey, you're the PL for this.

And I was like, and me and another guy. Yeah. Another EF, another E4. He's like, you guys are running this. We're like, totally stoked. But man, we learned. And that's what I did from then on. So by the time I was on deployment, everyone had run this. Our EFour, our new guys had run ops as ground force commanders in training.

Yeah. So when we get overseas, like the young lieutenants were definitely ready. that's what you got to do man and yeah well there's two things that are going on like man you just want to go out there anyways it's true it's true um

next one humor the ability to find the funny even last one laugh when times are tough humor is a powerful attribute the ability to laugh find this sliver of funny amid the tragic and the trying

can be calming comforting empowering and encouraging we've all heard the joke that broke the tension a one liner that smoothed the edge of fear, the wise crack that distracted us from nagging pain. I just had a vision in my mind. Imagine if they put like, imagine if they just were able to grab a compilation.

You know they have the YouTube things that are like best one liner for whatever? Imagine if they had like real team guy shit when things were going sideways and people are cracking the best. It's what I miss the most. It's what I miss the most. I mean the stuff that guys would say.

So a friend of mine, you'd probably know him. But anyway, he was telling me, I was talking about this. He's like, you know, we were on our way back from an op one time. And we were in the helicopter, and the helicopter started going down. Started like having a malfunctioning and crashing. We're sitting in this helicopter. And one of the dudes looks at us and says, well, I guess we're not going to have to clean our weapons tonight. And everybody bursts out laughing.

It's like, that's what I miss. You know, it's that dark humor. Freaking classic. Next section is about dynamic subordination, which we already talked about. Just of the fact that, as you put it here, leadership shifts wherever and to whomever the leader needs to be at any given moment. Those teams understand that information challenges and obstacles

can come from any angle at any time. And they're effective, meaning the teams are effective because the teammate closest to the problem can step up and lead while the rest of the group defers to that temporary leader. This is freaking decentralized command. Everyone on the team has got to be a leader. That's how we absolutely want things to go down.

Um, got a section here called the others. Everyone has all of the attributes. If any of the 22 I've described seem unfamiliar that you can't imagine that they're wired into. Trust me. They are. Remember attributes aren't exotic quirks bestowed only upon elite performers. They're a basic part of being a human being in their own mental. But you might have some that are like just as you use a dimmer switch.

Right. Some that are pretty dim. Pretty low. Might need to light a fire on some of these things. Yeah. There's three more attributes that you say you want to discuss and you say these three are important, but they're also outliers. None of them fits into the dimmer switch model because each of them has an opposite that can't be ignored. Most of the attributes can be measured on a straight line that begins at zero.

If you have low accountability or empathy or discipline, whatever, the dimmer switch will be at the bottom. Your level of accountability can't go lower than that. Negative accountability isn't a thing. But what if you have zero patience? what if you have less than zero patient, then you're impatient? So you get into some of these patients and impatience. Yeah, the idea, the idea was that these polarities can both imply success. So in other words, they're highly successful people who were patient.

There are highly successful people who are impatient. And same with the other ones. And the idea is on a team, this is when polarities matter, right? The best teams have representation on either side, right? And my wife and I are great example. I am typically a patient person. My wife is typically impatient, right? That's worked beautifully in her 23 years of marriage, right?

Because when patience has been required, I step up. When impatience is required, she steps up. And so whether it's patience or impatience, whether it's competitiveness or non-competiveness, which really was interesting because I've never been a competitive person. You know, even when I was captain the lacrosse team, whether we won or lost didn't bother me very much. In fact, I used to fake being upset because I was like, it would probably look bad if I'm not, if I'm not like swearing or something. I thought that would be a detriment to me when I went to Seal Train because I go, oh, shoot, I'm not competitive.

But why I recognize is that the competitive mind tends to think in a finite game, right? It tends to place rules and boundaries in an environment because you can't win or lose unless you have rules that define win or losing. The non-competitive mind, there are no rules, right? We both know that combat or military operations, in fact, any type of teaming requires both polarities. Sometimes it requires running up the line and winning, right? Sometimes it requires thinking outside the box. And so those are two. And then the final two, which I thought were interesting,

I was really, to be quite honest, trying to figure out what it was about seals that distinguished us. And I was kind of landing on this vanity piece. I was like, is it vanity, right? And I was almost going to use vanity, but the problem with vanity is vanity typically centers around appearance, you know. And well, we know there are some guys

who really focus on their appearance. It wasn't the thing. And so that's why I kind of thought about this fear of rejection thing. And what I recognize is this is it here. This is it because every single one of us, who made it through buds. We have somewhat of an elevated sense of fear of rejection. We don't want to look bad for our teammates. We just don't. And it pushes us to do things. It pushes me to jump out of an airplane at 20,000 feet, which I never otherwise would have done, right? So that can actually

power you in certain good ways. Obviously, too much is bad, too little is bad. But then the opposite, right? The Asusi's, I don't care what anybody thinks. We've seen those people, right? These are iconoclass. They start their own movements. They're the people who's like, I don't care what anybody thinks, I'm doing this, and typically people start to swarm around them. So, so my wife and I are like this. Like, I have an elevated sense of fear of rejection. She doesn't care what people think. And we, we blend together beautifully, right? So, so these polarities should be looked at as, hey, if you can have each represented, high on either one is not a bad thing, have each represented, and you'll have a really balanced team. Yeah, and just paying attention to

where you're at, you know, a lot of, a lot of, what's the, uh, when someone's an alcoholic, and the first thing is like saying I'm an alcoholic. So the first thing here is saying like, oh, I have a high fear of rejection. I need to pay attention. That's right. You can over index on that. You can over index on patients.

You can over index on inpatients. So having that balance, balance, I guess we'd say. Now, you go into, you know, kind of getting close to the end here of the book. You've got decoding your palate. And what you say is you've got an online thing at the Attributes.com. and you've got an assessment tool. I actually haven't taken it yet. But talk us through a little bit through this tool and then how it works.

You go and fill this thing out? So the tool is for the first three categories, grit, mental equity drive. And the reason why it's the first three is because those can be self-assessed. We have just finished a leadership and team ability attributes tool. That is going to be a three, that is the 360. Because, again, you can't, you can't just assess yourself on how humble you are, right? or how selfless you are.

I'm the most humblest. Yeah, I'm the most humblest. The one on the website now is free for those three, and you can get a score. And the score really should be looked at as a starting point, okay, because whatever that score is, then the idea is to interrogate your own performance and say, okay, if I'm coming up low on adaptability, let me think about some environments where my adaptability was tested. The environment was changing around me. How did I do, right?

Okay, it was difficult. It was challenging. Okay, that makes sense to me. And so the assessment tools can allow you some sense on where you might stand and where your dimmer switches might lie. And it really takes some self-reflection to really get that dialed in. And then you've got this acronym to start to make adjustments to these things. You've got this acronym start, which is slow down, think, act, recognize results, and try new environments. I'm correct in saying that's the methodology to actually start to evolve and improve.

your attributes. Yes, because, well, I guess the part that comes before that acronym is place yourself in the environment where the attributes being tested. And then you're going to feel stress and challenge come on. So as you feel that stress and challenge, then you slow down. You think, you know, you assess your performance. You can use that acronym kind of like, okay, you think, again, this is what we just talked about, you know, engage your conscious mind, engage your frontal lobe to start examining

your performance in the moment, and you'll start to understand and develop it. Um, lots of good tools. Uh, and I'm just going to fast forward. Just kind of close out the book. Um, you say this. And again, this isn't the closing of the book. I'll leave that for the people that get the book. But for me to close it out, it says, we are a species that in only 10,000 years evolved

from cave dwellers to space explorers. Humans have the unique and brilliant gift of being able to imagine something and bring it into existence. We are only able to do this because of our grit, our mental acuity, our drive and leadership and teamwork. Understanding your attributes is one of the keys to unlocking your potential. So that's, you again, that's my rap to the book. It's not, it's not the wrap of the book.

But, you know, even there, you got to go back. That's like going back 2,500 years to Sun Tzu in saying that we have to know ourselves. And what you're saying in there is like, we have to know ourselves. And in this case, know ourselves through our. attributes. Amen. So that's the book. You say you're working on another book right now? Yeah. So the next one is called Masters of Uncertainty, which is really what I always define

seals as, individual in teams that could drop into complex environments and figure it out. And I'm going to, I'll lay it out in about six steps. Step one is understanding your attributes. Step two involves your identities, the identities we define ourselves. Step three is our beliefs, and that's kind of understanding yourself, because we all, all of us who do this habitually know those three things about us. And then the other three steps are, in fact, the tools, actually a lot of stuff that Huberman and I have worked on, the tools that allow someone to actually engage their own physiology to start stepping through that. And again, it's about a process, right? We can't, uncertainty by definition cannot be predicted.

And that's not what we do, right? It's like, oh, you seals, you're experts at, no, no, we're experts at the process, right? We understand when things go into chaos, we slow down. We start working through the process and start figuring it out. And it's not always pretty, right? Sometimes it's decidedly ugly. But it's the process. So I'm going to see if I can get that kicked out here by the end of the year.

How deep are you? How much have you written so far? I'm about a third in, but it's going to be a shorter. I'm going to take a – this attribute is a very dense book. I'm very proud of it, but it is dense. I'm going to do a much shorter version, so do it a little bit quicker. So you're a third done? What is it?

Tim Ferriss. Tim Ferriss. This is such a great quote from Tim Ferriss and you've written a book so you know this is true. When you're done with your book, you're 50% there. That's right. Yeah. Freaking nightmare. I know.

No, I'll say I'm getting pretty good at this point. Like when I'm, when I'm done, I'm feeling like I'm, when I'm done writing it, I'm like, I'm almost there. Yeah. Yeah. So people can find you like you do consulting. Yeah. You do speaking. all that's through the attributes.com.

Yeah, one-stop shop. You can check out all that stuff. And there, you also have social media. Yep, Instagram. Got Instagram, you're rich underscore divinny. Yep. You're on Twitter. Yes.

Do you engage on Twitter much? Not much. I need to do more, but as you know, we're, I mean, it's somewhat antithetical to our normal behavior. But, but yeah, Instagram, mostly LinkedIn. And then Twitter occasionally too. And you have Facebook as well. Facebook as well.

Yeah. It's all on it. And it could be all found on the website. Yeah. So it's all there at the attributes.com. And that's how people can find you, reach you, talk to you. And that's, I don't know, does that get us up to speed? Totally, man. This is a, this is good.

Good place to stop. Echo Charles. Yes, sir. What do you got, man? Questions from Echo Charles. You have your twin brother, identical two? Oh, that's right. I don't know.

Echo has a twin brother as well. Oh, yeah. You guys, you guys want me to leave? You guys want us to talk about. Special twin bond. I kind of want you to leave. Is he involved in any of the stuff that you're doing? He's not.

He flew for 20 years and now he flies for FedEx. But, you know, he's still a best friend. So you mentioned you yawn before like a competition or nervous. Is that a common thing? I used to do that too. And I thought I was like the only one. I thought you were just tired, bro. It's literally, it's accessing your trigeminal nerve, which is linked to your vaginal nerve,

and it's engaging your parasympathetic system. So yawning is I've heard, now that I've written it, it's funny, you read a book, and then people start saying, oh, I ya on too, right? So I've heard of, there's a bunch of people who've gotten back and said, yeah, no, I ya, I yawn as well. Yeah, because it's kind of like you wouldn't think that, right? Like you're nervous, you think you're going to be all, yeah, you're yawning. so I'm like, yeah, I thought I was weird, so I didn't say anything. Then I talked to Huberman, and Huberman was like, hey, that's why that happened.

Oh, thanks, buddy. There you go, boom. The world makes sense. Yeah. Who's born, who's older, you or your brother? I am, two minutes. Two minutes older. Did you, who's bigger?

Well, after Buds, I was. Yeah, we were fairly, well, we were fairly even. He didn't play lacrosse. He played like a year, but, but we were fairly identical. And then I went to Buds and, yeah, just, I got really thick. Was anyone born bigger, or were you the same? We were basically the same. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. He has two daughters. I have two sons. Oh, really? You beat the curse. Yes, I did. What's the curse?

The curse is if you're in the SEAL teams. And they actually say it about pilots too, right? Well, the curse in the SEAL teams, you're going to have girls for kids. That's the curse. And it's pretty freaking, it's pretty heavy. It's a pretty thick curse. It's a pretty effective curse. Yeah.

Is that it? Echo Charles? Yeah, that's it. No more questions. No twin questions. You know some secret code you got to like throw out there No jaco thank you psychological people right people probably ask you commonly hey what's it like to be a twin and I always say what's it like not to be a twin Yeah same similar

Yeah yeah you don't know any any different yeah some interesting dynamics can happen with twins right? Yeah, I would say So more or less explainable I think but yeah I saw something that if you are a twin and you marry twins like you each marry twins then your children are DNA wise brothers and sisters between the whole crew yeah so in a way yeah because they can't differentiate DNA right so the yeah yeah yeah so that would make sense that math I guess I didn't think I never thought about that part of it but yeah I guess the likelihood of you having twins goes up to or something like that I usually it typically skips a generation or it's It usually skips a couple.

So like my sons might have twins, right? It skips down. So who knows? Yeah, I don't know. We don't have any other twins in our family. I don't think that I know of. Who knows? Awesome.

Rich. Any closing thoughts? Hey, listen, I just, first of all, what you all are doing. And since the day one, I think the leadership stuff has always been sound. Like I told you, I think it's very simply put, and digestible. And I think I'm always excited when I can hear guys take military experience and translate it into ways that people can actually understand it. And it's not just, I want to sit and tell a bunch of stories because the combat part is, you know, it's tough.

It sucks, right? So we can extract some goodness out of it. So thanks for doing that and thanks for having me. I appreciate it. So I'm glad you read the, I was thinking about, you know, I knew you were running training on the West Coast and some of the ways you ran training that I heard was like, well, it's, I mean, He's testing out. I mean, if you, if a guys can't get a run done before getting contact or something's getting thrown into the mix, that is attribute training, right? You know, and I think that's, so it's, it's exciting that you, you read it and it resonates.

Good. Actually, I have one more question. Yeah. You know who Sam Harris is, right? Oh, yeah, I'm a big fan. Okay. Has anyone ever told you you sound like Sam Harris? No, but I consider that a compliment.

Yeah, yeah. Like the, I don't know what you'd call the tonality or whatever, but yeah, every once in a while. Oh, I didn't think that. There you go. I found that to be the case even with like videos I've seen of you. Oh, but even more so in person. Do you know what ASMR is?

Do you know what it is? ASMR. Yeah, it's like, yeah, it's well, it's like you can, but it's also just talking like this.

Like someone and it's like a weird thing on the interwebs. Yeah, it's like sensory and so sometimes they'll like brush hair or in they'll record it. Oh, yeah, yeah. I forget what Sam's for. Yeah. But anyways,

I was on Twitter when Sam Harris, used to be on Twitter, which he's not on Twitter anymore. But, and I said something to him, you know, like, oh, you know, we're making fun of each other, which we would normally do. And we, if you're on Twitter, we, Sam Harris and I had a long running, um, war on Twitter of me challenging him to intellectual debates and him challenging me to fights. Oh, that's hilarious. And so that was kind of our, and then what's funny is every time I'd say like, you know,

you're too scared to debate. me and then there'd be a bunch of people like uh-huh and then there'd be someone's like this guy jaco you're an idiot this guy's a freaking like take it seriously and then he'd chime back like he you know you'd love the debate so you didn't have to face me on the mats right and so be like what is wrong with you samaris you're an idiot uh so anyways long story short you know he's got a very calm soothing voice and I made some comment about him making ASMR but then it turned out that everyone says that about him but wasn't even it wasn't even new uh huh interesting

Because he does have a very calm. It's why his meditation episode is so great. I mean, it's very soothing. Yep, there you go. I sent him a book, so I don't know if he's ready. Okay. So Echo puts you in that category. Locally.

Or ASMR-ish kind of. Maybe if the attributes doesn't work, I would try that. Yeah, there you go. No one has ever told me I have an ASMR voice. No. That's not happening over here. Anyways, man, thanks for joining us. Appreciate you coming out here.

you know, more important, thanks for your service to the nation, to the teams. You were in leadership, your whole career, most of which was war. So thanks for going out there and holding the line, man. Ditto, brother. Thank you.

And with that, Rich Devaney has left the building. Echo pondering your personal attributes. You're over there? Yeah, I am actually. What'd you come up with? Well, actually, to be honest,

they did more than ponder just my personal attributes. I pondered like my kind of my life coming up. You know how you kind of reflect on like, hey, wait, what? Why am I first you first you start to think, oh, what attributes do I have and do I lack? And then you're like, why is that? Then you think of your childhood and like all this stuff. Where was I successful and why? And where was I unsuccessful and why kind of a thing?

So it's one of those. It's good reminder because the skill part, which dawned on me some time ago, kind of like a video game where you can just, especially now, Right, you can just think of a skill and be like, I want that skill and you can get it. Go on YouTube. Yeah, you exercise a little commitment, a little discipline. You can have that skill. Yeah, that's pretty awesome.

Just like that you have another skill. I mean, not just like that, but like you can have it. In fact, I'll even go one more and you can, you can have one of these real, like the real deals, life changing skill in like three, three to four years. Example. Like let's say I want to be a, I don't want to say a lawyer, but let's say I want to be a. marketer, maybe a web developer or a coder. Like I want to code. I want to do coding now.

You know, that's a hot, like, or I want to make apps. Yep. Or something like this, right? Do it. Yeah. Three years. You wouldn't even need three years, I don't think. Video editing.

Video editing. That's kind of what, that's factually what you've done. Yes. Didn't go to college. No. You haven't even done a course. Have you ever paid money? Yeah, I paid money for courses for sure.

Like Skillshare, but it's like a membership to, like, Skillshare for example that's like a membership thing so you can how much is it I don't know did you do it a lot no like I took what percentage of your knowledge came from that oh 0.1% okay so and it's glad you corrected yeah yeah I'm trying to be truthful you get the attribute of being a dip shit right now no the attribute of being very specific and precise yeah yeah yeah anyway and it was and actually you know what you even more right than I kind of indicated because it wasn't for video editing, it was for VFX, which is part of the video project.

Anyway, true, true, 100% was self-taught, right? You don't need, so anyway, anyway, the point is we think of skills as like something that you can get, which is true. It's even more true now, but the attributes is the thing that inform the skill as it were, which we don't, I mean, of course, I think we do think about that, but we don't think of it as something to pay attention to, you know? Where it's like, yeah, you can work on your weaknesses and that kind of thing, but it's like not in that specific way.

It was a good reminder. Yeah, and this ties into what we talk about at Eschlam Front when it comes to any. If I've talked about a bunch of the podcast, like, what is your tendency? Yeah. Yeah. As a person. Is your tendency to micromanage, then you have to know that about yourself. Is your tendency to be too aggressive?

You have to know that about yourself. Is your tendency to let your ego get in the way? you have to know that about yourself. And if you can pay attention to those tendencies, you're going to have a better chance of correcting the issue. And it's the same thing with these attributes. If you know, oh, you know, I'm not really good at this particular deal. So I can, A, pay attention to it, hopefully improve upon it,

but also get people on my team that complement my areas of weakness. And the part I thought is, and something I always like keep in mind to about like people who keep you keep around, right? Like you say it don't have. like yes men or whatever it like this kind of in the small way illustrated like how important it is like not to have a yes man so which one he was talking about some 10 or some attributes that are like vampires you can't see him in yourself well yeah ego was so yeah and I think a lot of them are like that to different degrees narcissism narcissism there's the ego there's like even like being um the quote

about humility the minute you've got it the minute you think you've got a humility you lost it yeah yeah I'm the most humble person in the world like no one's more than me, you know. You know, Coach Adam. Yeah, hell yeah. He makes a T-shirt that says the most humblest. Yeah. Kind of funny.

Yeah, so it's like the plan. But if you keep people around, whether you be family, friends, whatever, that will, and if you indicate to their, hey, I'm working on this part of it or whatever, you know, keep your eye open for this kind of thing, and they can kind of help you with that stuff. See what I'm saying? So it's like a workaround for the vampire attributes. Check.

All right. Well, while we're working on our attributes, which we will, let's also work on our Physical and mental capacity to do more. It's true. In order to get there, we're going to have to work out mentally, physically. When you do that, guess what? You're going to need to fuel that system. And I recommend you go to joccofuel.com get yourself some fuel.

It's true. The cleanest fuel. You know you can get different levels of fuel at the gas station? Sure. Oh, yeah, yeah. Like one's premium. One's okay. One's like, hey, bro.

that carola you know what I'm saying yeah they call that the regular yeah so you want to get the premium for your for your body you want to get the premium and there's actually a big difference like let's face it you can put the you can put the crappy fuel in your uh in your Mercedes if you want to you know they're gonna recommend against it of course and you can put the good gas into your carola might be a waste of money i'm saying you can get away with it both cases with your body though with what you put in your body you want to go with the clean the good think so to clean stuff joccofuel.com get yourself some protein look if you got to drink an energy drink don't just drink one of those energy drinks don't drink one of

the other would you would you in your little video you made what did you put extra legit yeah made by most drinks yeah made by most drinks energy yeah so don't drink that no it's got a bunch of crap in it that's gonna kill you oh jocco's being all great no you drink that much chemicals, that much sugar, that much caffeine, it's going to kill you. So don't do that. Get yourself some jocco, discipline, go. Get yourself some ready to drink protein. The ultimate go-to fuel.

So I got some elk meat, by the way. Oh, nice. And so I'm like, okay, yeah, this is some like the good stuff. You know, I make up my little, I got some recipes. Don't worry. I'll tell you about them. I'll tell you about them later. But yes, perfect, right?

I have, okay, I got the 50 grams of protein from the elk meat, right? Then I got the 30 grams with the drink. Yeah. They're ready to go. Oh, man, 80 grams, just like that. Boom. All good. You're good.

No bad. No catabolic going on there. No, sure. Staying out of that zone. Joint warfare, training in jujitsu. We talked a lot about fighting today. A little decent amount about fighting. You're doing physical stuff, man.

Joint Warfare. JoccoFuel.com. You can get it there. You can also get a vitamin shop. You can get at the military commissaries, Hanford, dash stores, Wakefern, shopwright, H.E.B.

Meyer, up in the Midwest. Something else coming online? GNC. Heard of it? Rolling into GNC, bro. Rolling into GNC old school. Iconic. Do you know specifically what's going in there?

I will have to give you the actual product list. Yeah. But, yeah, I don't have it right now. on me because I figure and I'm just all the only reason to ask is I when I used to frequent GnC from time to time I'd go in there for specific stuff so it would be what protein pre-workout and any kind of vitamins yeah yeah that's what GNC's for technically everything you just said rough general nutrient but no the energy drinks not so much right I mean I would grab one yeah you grab one but it's not really but energy drinks is one of those on-the-go

things not a like oh I'm shopping for more supplements yeah yeah but I guess it's a it's something yeah let me ask would you get fired up to go to GNC yeah like a little bit of a yeah yeah and I was like back in before online shopping was like super hardcore like it is now it was yeah it was good it was like a whole experience and there's a few stores that are like that where it's like you like you don't just go there just to buy it like a freaking CVS or something like This is you go and it's kind of like the experience so GnC go check that out Or actually I think around the 20th when this is coming out I think February 20th

20th 2000 23 in that GnC go in there and just buy just go and get some let's be like get some get some get in the you know the old thing you had when you were a kid and you get a new pair of shoes made you a little bit faster You know what I mean yes the running shoes new pair of kids Do you ever have kids no I never had kids? No I never had kids So you had kids or you got the converse one star. You got a pair of Chuck Taylor's. And then the Nike with the waffle. I had like the OG Nike with the waffle tread blue and yellow. Okay.

Bro back in the day. When Nike made one shoe, imagine that. Oh, damn. Nike made one shoe. It was this blue shoe. It had a waffle tread on it. That was the name of this tread. I remember the waffle tread.

I don't remember the blue shoes. So blue with a gold shirt. gold stripe back in the day when you got those you kind of like felt like you're a little bit faster I remember that same thing on a G&C back in the day like you're gonna get a little bit more jacked so roll into G&C get yourself some odd jockey fuel there we go also origin USA dot com you gonna need some American made look you're not you're not looking to buy these other companies aforementioned companies that are they're using slave labor to make their stuff right we're not doing

that we're not doing that we're not supporting countries that have tyrannical governments we're not doing that we're supporting america freedom we're supporting the workers in america we're bringing manufacturing back to america all that right there you can do origin usa.com jeans boots geese rash guards t-shirts hoodies wallets belts boots origin USA freedom that you can put on your body There you go. We're in the Delta 68's current. Oh, yeah, that's right. When's the last time you wore a pants to record the podcast?

Oh, I've been wearing pants, but I used to wear the camouflage fans. I don't know if I've ever worn pants to record a podcast. I mean, we're shorts, bro. Bro, I was noticing your uniform, your uniform. And it's funny because you, like, take off your slippers too. Yeah, yeah, be bare foot in here. Full-on Hawaiian style. Yeah, that's what we're doing, man.

That's good, darn. Speaking of Hawaiian style. Speaking of Hawaiian style. Okay, so, Jockwell's store. we're representing on the path I know I am Discipline equals freedom good There's a good

version shirt On the shirt lock coming out Oh really? It's just a hint Been a while Little heads up It's a good one It's a little bit more like subtle Okay

Either way Yeah you want to represent jocco store.com Also I mentioned the shirt lock Which is a new shirt every month Some cool like new designs every month People seem to like that one But yeah, look at that. Check that one out. We put on what you call like a, we call it a sneak peek.

It's like a little close up of part of the design. So you can kind of get a hint of what the next design is too, if you want to check it out before you sign up or whatever. But unless, go to jocco store.com. I like it. Subscribe to this podcast. Subscribe to Jocko Underground. We do what we do about a podcast a week on Jocko Underground, the U.G, as it's called.

And that way we can talk about whatever we want. And we have a escape platform. In case we get shut down for whatever reason, you know, we'll be there $8.18 a month. If you can't afford that, it's cool. We still got your freedom. Email assistance at jocco underground.com. Don't forget the YouTube channels. Don't forget psychological warfare.

Don't forget flipside canvas. Don't forget all the books, attributes by Rich Devaney. Don't forget about that one. And then all the books, Only Cry for the Living, Final Spin, all the leadership books, the way of the Warrior Kid books. What an opportunity to make a kid's life better. Make their whole life better, by the way. Mike and the Dragons. About Face by Hackworth.

I wrote the forward on the new one. There you go. A bunch of those books. Eschlamfront Front. We solve problems through leadership. Eshanonfront.com. Don't forget about our online training platform, extreme ownership.com.

This is how you get better at life. You don't get better at life by you read a book one time. Now you're good. Or you went to a seminar one time. Or you listen to one podcast. No, you've got to interact. So go to extreme ownership.com, take classes, ask questions, live interactions with me, with Laif, with the team. So we're doing.

And if you want to help service members active and retire, you want to help their families. You want to help Gold Star families. Check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got a charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's Mighty Warriors.org. And also don't forget about Micah Fink, who currently at this time, we just got reports from the field. He just killed a mountain lion with a K-bar knife. He is skinning it and making a loin cloth,

which he will wear on a 72-day retreat across the wilderness. Mike Fink getting after it. If you want to connect with us on the interwebs, don't forget Rich DeVinney to get in touch with him or what the services he offers. Go to the Attributes.com. And on social media, Rich is on Instagram, Rich underscore Divini, Twitter, at Rich Devini, Facebook, at Rich Devini.

Of course, Echo and I are there as well. Echo is at Echo Charles. I am at Jocka Willink. Be advised. The algorithms there. It's waiting to grab you. So just, you know, look out. Thanks to all the military personnel out there on the front lines, maintaining freedom

around the world. We appreciate what you're doing right now. And also, thanks to our police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, Correctional officers, Border Patrol Secret Service, all first responders, you maintain our safety for us here at home. We are grateful for that. And everyone else out there know your strengths, know your weaknesses, know your attributes, know yourself. See where you can get better and be better by going out there every day and getting after it. and until next time

this is Echo and Jocko out