Modern Wisdom - #354 - Rich Diviney - Perform Like A Navy Seal

Episode Date: August 5, 2021

Rich Diviney is a retired Navy SEAL Commander and an author. The Navy Seals are one of the most hardened military groups in the world. During 13 tours and over a decade of service, Rich researched and tested his favourite ways to improve and enhance the mental and physical performance of himself and his unit. Expect to learn how to immediately move your system from a sympathetic to parasympathetic state, why optimal performance is preferable to peak performance, why understanding the relationship between skills and attributes is crucial, how to cope with fear and much more... Sponsors: Get over 37% discount on all products site-wide from MyProtein at http://bit.ly/modernwisdom (use code: MODERNWISDOM) Get 20% discount & free shipping on your Lawnmower 4.0 at https://www.manscaped.com/ (use code MODERNWISDOM) Extra Stuff: Buy The Attributes - https://amzn.to/3l9vqoM Check out Rich's site - https://theattributes.com/  Get my free Ultimate Life Hacks List to 10x your daily productivity → https://chriswillx.com/lifehacks/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://www.chriswillx.com/contact Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's happening people? Welcome back to the show. My guest today is Rich Divini. He's a retired Navy Seal commander and an author. The Navy Seals are one of the most hardened military groups in the world. During 13 tours and over a decade of service, Rich researched and tested his favourite ways to improve and enhance the mental and physical performance of himself and his unit. So today, expect to learn how to immediately move your system from a sympathetic to a parasympathetic state. Why optimal performance is preferable to peak performance, why understanding the relationship between skills and attributes is crucial, how to cope with fear and much more. It's pretty interesting to get someone like Rich, who obviously has that time that he's spent in the field testing these strategies on the ground, but now he's also

working out of, I think Andrew Huberman's lab, he's doing studies and research to really try and dig into the biology, the physiology, the psychology of exactly what's happening. So he's got both practical and theory combining together. It makes for a really powerful insight. Before I get to the other news, don't forget that this Monday the Modern Wisdom Reading list is going live, a hundred books that you should read before you die. It's taken me six months to do, it's nearly 10,000 words, and there will be a ton of books that you have never heard of in that list. I always get asked what my best books are that I recommend for fiction, for nonfiction, for personal development, and just for stories and bedtime reading. All of them are in there, and you'll find out where you can get it this Monday, either on my Instagram, at ChrisWillX, or on the introduction

to next Monday's episode. So get ready, right? It's going to be very fun. But for now, it's time for the wise and wonderful Rich Divini. Rich Divini, fuck up in the show. Don't worry my friends, it's good to be here. Thanks for having me. You are a fucking badass, man. You did buds at 22 years old, the SEAL team selection. That's right. That's right. But I'm not as bad as the sun guys.

I had an 18-year-old in my class. I mean, so I went through as an officer. So I went through four years of college and then went to buds. And so, but we had guys who had just gotten out of school they don't want to join the Navy and And they were 18 I had one 18 year old dude who was my class and this guy was he was one of the fastest runners You've ever seen I mean he was a freak and he was a smoker like an avid smoker and I remember he'd like be puffing a cigarette and then We had to go for a run and he beat us all on the run

I mean but he he was just that I at one point, and I want to get gross right at the beginning of our show here, but we were running on the beach as a class, right? And he had to go to the bathroom, really bad. So he figured he'd just sprint ahead, you know, but ahead of the class, run into the ocean because it was on the beach, go to the bathroom, and then as the class passed, he got back with us, right?

That's how fast he was. He was just ridiculous. ridiculous but 18 years old unbelievable. Is that the youngest that you can do that? Yeah because uh because in the in the states you have to be at least a high school graduate have high school degree or diploma and that's usually around 17 18 years old and then you can go and and then and then if you join the Navy right after high school say you're 17 you go through your regular Navy boot camp and stuff. So by the time you hit the beaches of seal training, you're 18.

But that's still insane. So you can have those kids in America, though, the ones that jump ahead a few years, you've got some child prodigy chess grandmaster that decides he wants to be in the sales at age 14 or something like that. That might happen in future. I would assume if someone's that far ahead academically, the seal teams with the note

there's not their first choice. I don't know what that's going to happen. So what's it like, you're 22 years old or you know, you're with someone who's 18. What's that like? Being going through something that grown men with hardened military experience for a lot of time, more life experience, more emotional stability, so on and so forth. What's that feel like?

Are there any interesting lessons you think from doing it so young? Well, you know, it's interesting. I think, and I don't know the exact, there's an age limit. In other words, you can't be any older than, I think, 29 or 30 if you want to be a seal. Now I think that has to do with some of the just the physical aspects of it. I mean, it literally breaks your body down. You have to be young to do that because you're just bursting with history. I mean, there's a, in sealed training, you do obstacle courses, right?

And there's an obstacle course there with a bunch of high obstacles you climb up and do stuff. There's one obstacle called the slide for life. And it's about a, it's a four story tower that you climb up to the top of. And then connecting at the top of that tower, there's a rope that goes all the way down about 150 yards down to the, to the sand, right? And you're supposed to climb on top of that rope and then slide down that rope to get down off that four story tower.

It's called the slide for life. And of course, I'm like me who hates heights. It's always, it's tough to do. You just have to focus and do it. Anyway, there was a dude in my class, I remember who jumped on the rope at the top of the tower, slid down only a couple feet and then fell off the rope and fell like almost four stories into the sand, right? And this dude's like, he, I was like holy crap, what just happened? It's like 10 seconds or so, he gets up, he brushes himself off, and then he's gone. You can't do that when you're, you can only do that when you're young, because your body just is so resilient. So I think one piece is that you have to be young because of just the

physicality of it. I think, you know, the seal teams and special operations holistically I think the SEAL teams and special operations holistically thrive on members who can think through things, can utilize some experience and some knowledge and kind of apply that to problems and solutions. So, going through the training young like that is actually I think necessary because you kind of get through that Crucible that sees if you have these innate qualities and then you go to a team and then you're just a learner I mean you're a new guy for a while and so you're surrounded now by experienced dudes who whereas they may not be as physically Resilient as you are at that age. You're still there the guys you're listening to and so I think I think that was the lesson

You it was kind of do this up front. I mean, you certainly get bonded with people. I mean, at 22 and 18, they're not too much difference, you know, age-wise, you know, but you get bonded, you start learning about people, you get, you form this bond with people, with people who just go through the shared experience. And of course, that experience, whether it's the people

in your seal training class specifically, or guys who've been through 20, 30 years ago, right? You all have that commonality. I'll talk to guys who went through, there were seals in the 50s or 60s. And we joke about the same stuff because we've all been through that. And even now, I'm the old guy, right?

Cause I went through in the mid 90s, and now you got the new guys, I'll talk to seals today, currently, and they all been through that. And even now I'm the old guy, right? Because I went through in the mid-90s. Now you got the new guys. I'll talk to Seals today, you know, currently. And they just been through training. And we can bond because we've been through the same. That's shared experience as the common denominator, which is really cool. It seems to me learning a little bit about you that based on what I knew about the Seals, I knew that the guys were really, really smart, but it seems like you were very well-read as a kid. You were doing visualization and manifestation and stuff. That didn't strike me as the

sort of person whose first port of call would be to go into the seal team. Is that real for me? Is it common for someone who's got these sort of academic inclinations to do that? Well, you have a mixture. I mean, again, I don't think there are any dumb guys. I mean, we would joke. I would, of course, as brothers in arms, we'd call some of our members dumb, right? But you had a kind of a spread. I would say that spec ops guys tend to trend

towards the more intellectual, well-read kind of guys who just kind of think differently. Because again, the job of special operations, I always said that the Navy seals and that job is not like the movies in the TV shows. It's not like a bunch of door-kicking folks who just run in and shoot guns and all that stuff. They're masters of skydiving. The job is really to be a master of uncertainty. It's to be able to drop into an

environment that's deeply uncertain, unknown, and volatile. So in the military, you call it VUCA, V-U-C-A, volatile, volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous environment, so VUCA environments. The job of a seal is to drop into those and immediately start performing. And so to do that requires a level of, well, an ability to calm oneself and think through uncertainty, challenge and stress, but also a level of, um, of knowledge and experience to be able to or open-mindedness or whatever you call it to be able to say, okay, what can I apply to this environment? And that takes a lot of learning. I mean, I, I, there were, you know, because it's so hard to get to seal training in the first place, and the officer path is even more competitive than the enlisted path. I had guys in my class.

There was a one guy in my class. He, he had a, a college degree in rocket science. And he, he, he enlisted in the Navy to become a seal, right? So, so yeah, very intelligent guys, mostly, they, very intelligent guys mostly. There are some of those just big dumb guys who you have carried the big weapons, and we love them too, but we tease them all the time. But for the most part, yeah, a more intelligent force you'll find in ION Special Operations,

which was the Navy SEALs, the Army, or even in the UK, SPS, SAS. I mean, they said, amazing, we work with those guys all the time and we're so similar, right, because it attracts this type of mindset, which is, I think, a little bit more deep thinking. What was some of the differences between you and the British Special Forces, if you notice Sunny? if you notice, honey. Um, I mean, very few. I would say that they're better drinkers, but even that.

We still went toe to toe with them on that. No, I mean, you know, I mean, very transportable. I mean, or kind of similar because again, you're talking about units that have incredible, incredibly tough selection criteria. The job is to do incredibly tough, dynamic, complex things and think differently. And so we would get on with those guys and whether it was the Brits, the Germans,

the Italians, the Israelis, I mean, all of us, it was always cool because you just, I mean, you know, the difference was accents. That was it. Well, the thing is, you guys, no matter where you're from, the end goal is the same. To be able to drop in, to deal with the uncertainty, to deal with the ambiguous situation, and they're given the fact that everyone has the same genetic or almost exactly identical genetic starting points, there can't be an unlimited number of iterations that you can go from one point to the other.

You guys need this outcome. So it kind of makes sense that you're going to have a framework that everybody feels a little bit of homogeneity with. Totally. And I think that some differences might be environmental, like the Navy seals and the SPS guys and the German comp swimmers, they're a little bit more similar because we're water, we kind of water focus, whereas the SAS, the Green Berets and the GSG guys in Germany, they're kind of the land guys at the Army Navy.

So you have the Army Navy stuff, which we always tease each other about, but ultimately we're all friends. I mean, we all think we're highly, highly of each other, so it's really cool. What was some of the big lessons that you took from dropping into these environments? So, you know, the experiences that most normal people would have going into a client pitch in an office or something, the volume has been turned up to 11 from that, right?

Like, everything. Stakes are higher, the pressures higher, the pressure is higher, the immediacy of your decision making has to be higher. What was some of the lessons and the learnings that you took away from that? Yeah, I think most of those came probably after the fact, or maybe as I gained more experience, as I got towards the latter part of my career,

and I began to have the opportunity to look back on what makes us who we are. And I think the biggest lesson is our ability to deal with stress challenge and uncertainty, to be able to process it in a way that allows us to think logically through it. And that's born, well, first of all, it's born of attributes. What you come to the game with, obviously, because you can't make it through training without some of these innate qualities. But then that's hyperdeveloped inside of a career, especially those guys who go to combat, right?

There is in fact a difference between spec operators who spend a career and they never get the chance to go to combat, because that happens. In fact, that's the majority of guys, maybe not now, because we had 9.11 happened, we had the war at terror, and the guys who've actually been to combat. I was just having this morning, I was just having coffee with, so Hank from the book. You read about, I just had coffee with Hank this morning,

we were just talking about this idea that, that the training ground buds, basic underwater demolition sets, seal training, which is the crucible inside of which you go through to become a seal, that's just the ticket to get in, right? And then if you happen to have the chance, like we did, to go to combat, that's when a lot of the testing begins, because that's when it's real. I mean, you go to Buds and you can kind of say, well,

they're not going to kill me. I mean, I remember saying that a couple times, because I was like, oh my God, this is really tough. I was like, well, they can't kill me. I mean, that's not their job to kill me. So in combat, it's different. You are in a situation where the gloves are off. And if you do something wrong, death could be the result. And so I think the big lesson is the ability to hyper-develop your sense and kind of process by which you deal with and walk through stress and

challenge and uncertainty. And it's very similar. This is a similar to all spec-offs folks and probably regardless of country. But in my neighborhood for example, quick example, because my neighborhood across the street from my house, there lives a seal down the road to the right, there's another seal down the road to the left, there's another seal, right? And I remember my wife saying, hey, I'm really glad these guys are in the neighborhood because if you're gone and something would happen,

I know I could go to these guys and they'd act the same way you act. And I say, what do you mean by that? It's like, I tell them and they do immediately calm down, they start working the problem, right? Because that's what we do, and you hyperdevelop that ability, and that translates to every context of life.

I mean, when COVID hit and we were all quarantined, I felt myself kind of like, okay, yeah, what's next? How are we gonna, how are we gonna step through this? There was not really a lot of stress or anxiety because it was kind of like, let's just walk through, let's just feel this out. So I think, I think that's a huge lesson that everybody comes away with.

How many deployments did you do? Oh boy, I did about seven to Iraq, I did about five to Afghanistan, and I did some other ones around the world I can't really talk about. So I mean, overall I did about 13 plus deployments throughout my career, yeah, 20-year career. So after you've done that, and actually while you're doing that, you begin to reflect on some of the lessons that you've learned. And then what's this mind-gym thing? What happened with that? Yeah, so the mind-gym, the reflection happened really, most a lot of the reflection began when I was doing that.

So what happened was I had the opportunity to get to select and be chosen to go through the selection process for one of our very specialized seal commands. And at this particular command, they took seals from other commands and then you went through your own selection process and you were part of this one. Hang on. So you've got the hardest guys that have gone through one of the most difficult selections and then you put them through another, even more difficult selection. Tell me about that. What's that about? Well, it's so that they can actually do the job required by this specific command.

And there's still about a 50% attrition rate. And so I was there for a little while and then they put me in charge of the selection process and the training process for that command, which is really where I began to kind of reflect because I said, okay, this is cool. I get to look back and look at it from kind of a 50,000-foot view. So there are a couple of things that happen in there.

First, one of my jobs when I took over that position was to look at operator resilience. How effectively were we performing on the battlefield? And how effectively were we actually being able to come back and be resilient, be antifragile, kind of heal ourselves? That reintegrate back into life. That's a great way to put reintegrate and grow from it.

And so on that angle, on that pathway, I was also, I kind of, I and a couple other guys really felt like we were, we were fine from a physical standpoint. In other words, bench pressing more weights or running the mile faster wasn't going to get us any better, right? It had no applicability to combat. Where we thought the gains could be made was our brain, was our mind, and how we could better develop a relationship between our brain, our physiology ourselves. Understand ourselves, understand our internal mechanisms and develop that relationship. So the mind gym was really an exploration in some things, some techniques, some equipment so that we could start exploring that relationship.

How can we more effectively hack into our sympathetic and parasympathetic systems? How can we go from a sympathetic response to a parasympathetic response almost instantaneously because that's recovery. I used to call it micro recovery. How can we recover between gun fights? Because when you're shifting your physiology that way, you are changing the chemical and biochemical response in your system. Sympathetic response, especially high stress ones, is going to induce cortisol into our

system. Which again, is a necessary chemical, but also damaging to a degree if it's in your system long enough, and it shuts down other kind of critical factors in your system. When you're releasing cortisol, for example, I mean, very simple things. Your hair stops growing, your nails stop growing, your immune system starts to operate in different ways. You stop creating saliva, which is why we get dry mouth when we're stressed. But there are some things that your body basically begins to cipher energy to very critical components and elements of your system, all necessary for survival and stress. However, our body bodies also designed to shift

to the barisynpathetic. The parisynpathetic system is the recovery, the rest of recovery. That's when we begin to make DHEA, for example, in our system. DHEA is a rebuilding chemical and neurotransmitter that not only repairs the damage done by cortisol, but also starts to,

it's a foundational elements of testosterone and estrogen, for example. So, we can, in fact, through breathing, through visualization, through certain visual techniques, we can actually hack into, we can deliberately move our systems from sympathetic to parasympathetic. So, we started exploring some ways that we could help operators train to do that. And that was the inception of the mind gym. I don't know where the mind gym is at this time

because I was in charge of it for maybe 18 months and I moved on. But it was certainly a cool process to kind of think through and talk about while we were there. So not everyone's going to need to be able to calm down in between two gun fights or between dropping out of some vehicle into a combat zone. But let's say that someone has just had an awkward conversation with a boss or a really

bad day at work and they've got a 10 minute drive home or maybe a walk home or maybe they're sat on the bus. What would be your favorite strategy that you could give someone or one of your favorite strategies? Look, here's something that you can do to get yourself into a mode where you're going to be able to be with your kids to be with your use of that. Well, there's two parts of that question. I'll hit the second part first, okay, because I think it's important.

There's the recovery part, which is what you're talking about. And that's, can I kind of effectively come off of this hike, this stress, and kind of start to rebuild my system, get myself to a different framework and reflect appropriately. I mean, visually, a visual tool immediately, if someone can use it, if they're feeling this, is open gaze, right? This is like when we get stressed, we start to focus or people's dilate. So if we say, for example, look at a horizon or look at something and then just open our gaze, which means we start to notice our periphery.

So we're not staring at anything anymore. That's been proven to start shifting ourselves into parasympathetic, coming off of sympathetic, breathing techniques. When we hold our breaths, the longer you keep your breath held, you start to feel anxious. We all know this. We start to feel like, oh my God, I got a breathe. That feeling of stress and anxiety is not in fact because our body is seeking oxygen. It's because our body is getting overdosed with carbon dioxide,

right? And so one of the ways you can start to bring yourself, shift yourself is to do what's called CO2 blow up breathing. This would be simply box breathing, but in a different style. So we say inhale for two seconds, hold for two seconds, exhale for four seconds, and then hold on that bottom for four seconds, right? That's CO2 blowout, that's some ways you can do it. And then I think one of, one of really important way, a cool one,

especially if we're driving home or on the tube or whatever and we are on the bus and have some time is visualization. Visualization, our brains apply different neurotransmitters and chemicals and biology to different situations we're in. And those situations that bring us joy and comfort and peace come with that, the reason why we feel that is because we're getting a burst of really cool,

powerful chemicals. We can, in fact, visualize effectively those same situations and induce that same chemical response. It's the same reason why when we think about bad experiences, we get triggered and we get bad chemicals. This is the root of PTSD. The root of PTSD is folks who continually get triggered by a memory of a bad experience. It's almost like they're reliving it, but they almost are because physiologically they're getting those chemicals. You can do the same thing with great experiences and great visualizations. One of the things I used to do is my boys are 16 and 14 now, but when they were little,

they used to nap, take naps on my chest. I used to just lay on the couch and they'd nap on my chest. What, I mean, such a wonderful bonding feeling when you can do that with a child. And so I used to visualize that, you know, and I'd start feeling what that felt like. And I'd get that chemical release, right? And so way we can start recovering.

So when there were recovery way, you can do those things. But there's another, I think piece of this that we should talk about that's important. And that is how do we, how can we more effectively march through an environment of stress challenge and uncertainty? And that, you can use some of the same tools to do that because what we have to understand. So, so we have to kind of get into what fear is. All right, fear when we're afraid, in our big deal, let's start to kick in and we start to get that fight or flight, what happens is our frontal lobe,

our conscious mind is starting to come offline a little bit, okay, and if the more afraid we get, the more, you know, big deal starts to get hijacked, we can actually get into what's called the big deal hijacked, which means we're just operating without thinking, we do something without thinking. That is our frontal lobe, our conscious mind is almost completely offline and we're just acting, right?

Not necessarily the best response when it's your job to operate when you're scared, right? And so the way we can translate this into regular life is first, we can deconstruct fear. Okay. The way we can translate this into regular life is first we can deconstruct fear. Fear is ultimately two things combined. It's anxiety plus uncertainty. When you have both, you can have one or the other without being afraid. You can be anxious without being uncertain.

That might be I'm getting a presentation next week to my boss and I'm anxious. I know my boss, he knows me, I know the presentation. I know what's gonna go on. So I'm not uncertain about it. I'm just a little anxious, okay? I'm not afraid, I'm just anxious. You can be uncertain without being anxious, okay?

Well, that's every kid on Christmas Eve, okay? So fear does not exist there. When you combine the two, fear starts to exist, right? And so the way you can begin, and when fear starts to enter into your system, that's when we start getting a big deal of response and our frontal lobe starts to want to go offline. So the way to manage that is to attempt to buy down

either one of those elements, either uncertainty or anxiety. The way you do that is first you recognize that what they are. Anxiety is internally focused. There's crisis, which is happening outside and uncertainty, which is all outside of us, right? The way we're processing it is stress and anxiety. So that's internal. It's an internal response and we can manage it by internal ways. Things I just talked about. We can do open gaze, we can breathe properly, we can get our breathing. That brings down our anxiety. So we're buying down with those, starts bringing that conscious mind back

online. Once we start doing that, we can begin to manage uncertainty. Now that's a little bit different because uncertainty is all external, okay? But the way you begin to manage uncertainties, you begin to ask questions about your environment and process the answers to those questions. So one of the questions is, okay, what about this do I understand? Out of all of this chaos, what about it do I understand? And that list might be really small, but then you say, okay, from that list, what can I focus on in the moment? And then you decide something and you move towards that, okay? As soon as you do that, you create a dopamine reward in your system, which allows you to do it again and ask the question again and then move again and get another dopamine response.

So, it's literally stepping through our challenge, stress, uncertainty, and moving through the stress. So an example would be in seal training, and I remember doing this, you spend hundreds of hours running around with big heavy boats on your head all day all night right and I remember being under that one of these boats and we're on the beach and I'm like oh my god I didn't know when it was gonna end it was miserable everything every part of my body was hurting and I said to myself okay there was this big sand berm that we're running extra I said I'm just gonna focus until I'm gonna I'm just gonna run until I hit the end of that berm okay okay that's what and that's what I did as soon as I did that, I created a dopamine reward. It was a meaningful step for me. And once I got that to a reward, I said, okay, now what I'm going to do?

I'm going to run to that, or I'm going to do that, I'm going to pick my next thing. And so we can manage uncertainty, first anxiety, and then we can manage uncertainty by constantly kind of looking at what that horizon, that next horizon is, making it as long or as short or as long as we'd like, right? Because it can be like, I'm going to try to make it to the next meal, or I'm going to make it the next 10 seconds, whatever meaning, whatever provides meaning for us, hitting that, hitting that goal, getting the dopamine reward, and then doing it that, all right? This in fact is what almost every one of us does unconsciously,

if we can think back to how we've made it through a really tough experience. We've basically chunked it in meaningful pieces that means something to us and we've just moved through. We've just taken it step by step and we've defined what those steps are. The patient going through cancer will say when they're going through chemotherapy, all I wanted to do was get through the next session, right? That was my goal, right?

I talked on my buddy Hank, who's in the book, and he said when he was first kind of going through all of his stuff as a, as someone who lost both of his legs, he's like, he's like rich. Sometimes I was just like, it just make you the next hour. That's it. Just make you the next hour, and then I'll pick the next hour, right? So, but this is in fact neurologically what's happening

was we're managing it. So, I think long answer, but those are two pieces and parts of those questions that I think could help people. What about if you wanted to turn it on its head? What about if someone is too parasympathetic and they need to get themselves into a more energized state? If you got any strategies for that? Well, so breathing is a is a while focus in breathing, right? So you can if you focus on something, you're you're actually started you're starting to shift a little bit, but breathing is also something as well. You can breathe more oxygen. So Wim Hof has some great breathing techniques

where you're super oxygenating your system and you're getting more focused, right? And so I have to look at some of the breathwork stuff, but there's a lot of good stuff on breathwork that can take you either way. You can get recharged. I think deep breath that are fast will help you get more focused. Visualization, you know, in the active sense can help you get more focused. I mean, music is one thing that changes state, you know, and I love Metallica. It's one of my favorite, and I love heavy metal, but Metallica is one of and I love Metallica, it's one of my favorite, and I love heavy metal, but Metallica is one of,

and Metallica in some cases, relaxes me. It takes me off of this hill, but sometimes it fires me up too. I can use it for both things, but yeah, certainly you can use music to get yourself fired up as well. So yes, you can go reverse. Have you got any idea what would be optimal for someone

if they wanted to, let's say give a presentation. I'm thinking about like a common situation that someone's about to go into, that they're stepping into this environment, but they need to have the right amount of energy, but they also need to be calm. It feels like a challenging balance to go through here. Yeah, yeah.

While the way you define that state would be alert of it calm, right? And so that state would be alert at comm. And really what alert at comm is, and really the way our systems are designed, is it's almost a wave. It's a gentle oscillation between sympathetic and parasympathetic. In other words, it's not, you're not just one or the other. You're almost in a sine wave, going back and forth. And I think that's going to be different.

That type of state is going to be different in terms of getting there for every person. But you almost want to be just, I think, kind of a calm excitement, right? I mean, the good news is all of us as human beings can draw upon our own experiences to figure out what this feels like for us. Every one of us has felt this. We've felt the time where like, oh my gosh, I'm fired up, but I'm like really calm and focused.

I'm like, this is, I'm like almost in the zone. This is what Kotler talks about. That would be actually flow state. A flow state would in fact be that oscillation between the two, right? And so, and so my advice would be think back to situations where you felt that and ask yourself, okay, what are those, first of all, what was the situation, right? Because you could probably get back into it.

But what were those triggers that allowed you to get there and feel that way? It's almost like that feeling that you're just at the edge of your capability, but it's not too much and not too little to be born. That proximity zone, man, it's a hell of a dread. That's right, that's right. And so how do you get there? And I think anybody who's going down pathways for the first time, it's gonna take a while.

I use a public speaking as an example. I left the Navy and I hate it, public hated public speaking, you know, I just like, that's, I don't like the idea, I'm nervous and I said, well, I should probably do that. I should probably do it more because I should choose something that scares me. And so I started doing it. And the first year or two, I would say, of public speaking,

I'd feel those butterflies, I'd feel nervous, I'd be like, okay, I don't know, you know, but then I just kept on doing it. I did start clicking and now, I mean, I, you know, before going up on stage, it's almost like I'm excited to okay, I don't know, you know, but then I just kept on doing it. I did start clicking. And now, I mean, before going up on stage, it's almost like I'm excited to get up there. I'm not overly excited because it's not like, ooh, I want the applause, but it's, so there's a little bit of nervousness,

but I just feel more flowy in it. And I think it just takes practice, you know? So anything we want to do is just take practice to get to that state. I love the suggestion of music. It's staring everybody in the face. Like it's such an obvious solution. What is a song that gets you? Think about anyone who's ever done a one-wret max in the gym. You shouldn't have done it to silence. In fact, here's a cool thing for you.

So I have a buddy who's a British champion powerlifter, one of my best buddies. And he has a number of songs that he only uses for PR attempts. And they're like sacred to him. So he almost kind of accrues this mystical power. And if it comes on, if it's in the car, the radio goes off, if he's in a shot, I don't think this sort of music would be played in the record supermarket. But yeah, and that he keeps them sacred.

And it's because this is associated with a particular type of state that he wants to get in. Yeah, they're trigger points. And honestly, the good news is you can actually do this with your physiology as well. I mean, you can actually, if there's music, for example, it charges you up. Because again, I mean, you know, in a power-reliquing environment,

you're going to have music accessible to you. You may not have that same music if you're going to give a talk to your, to some people. This is a Metallica in the, in the whole way outside of the meeting room, yeah. Although, one time I did give a talk and they're like, hey, we're gonna play a song before you walk up. Do you have any of these things? I played Metallica, right? So they played Metallica, I was like, oh, that feels great, right? So, but the, the idea is you can actually, if you have that music that actually triggers you, gets that way, you can actually start to do things physiologically that help with that trigger.

I mean, you can, I mean, whatever it is, it has to be somewhat unique, something you don't do all the time. But I mean, if it's like, you know, pound your chest three times or do, I mean, snap your, whatever it is, whatever that physiological movement you can make, that's a little bit unique. You can start attaching that to that particular trigger and then you don't need music at all, right? You do it enough and you're going to get the same response without the music, right? So we can do this to ourselves. We just have to let you say. That's really looking cool. It has to be unique though, right? Because if it's like doing this, like I do this to my beard all the time, I can't. It has to, just like your buddy, he will turn off the song. If he hears it any other place, it's because he doesn't want to dilute that trigger. If you do, if you pick something with your physiology, it has the same thing. It has to be something unique

that you won't dilute accidentally by just doing it in everyday life, right? So. Yeah, man. So you talked about Stephen Kotler there. And we had him on earlier this year, awesome guy. Really, really loved his book. You highlighted difference between optimal performance and peak performance. Obviously, his was a primer on peak performance. And your new book, the attributes is drivers of optimal performance. How do you define the distinction between that? Yeah, he and I, he's a good friend. He and I, in fact, he and I met while I was running the mind gym. That's when I first met him and a lot of him. Yeah, in fact

His his previous book stealing fire is that if you read that first chapter is about me He and I wrote no way. Yeah, we wrote that chapter together. So So so we've talked a lot about this and I think he he would he would say he defines peak a little bit more broadly than I do Which is fair and he does some awesome work. The way I define peak, I just, I try to think about elemental human form and who are we at our most raw and try to get down to some very simple semantics because I think that helps people.

Peak, if you define it, is simply an apex, right? And as an apex from which you can only come down. And the professional athlete, and it has to be scheduled and prepared for and planned for right? The professional athlete, plans and conducts himself or herself their whole week to peak for their event at the end of the week, right? The American football player does that all week so they can peak for the game on Sunday, okay? Nothing wrong with it. Not practical in everyday life and certainly special operations life. Because in special operations, you never know when the end is coming, okay, or when the end is even near. So we perform

optimally, optimal performance is how can I do the very best I can in the moment, whatever the best looks like in the moment, okay? Sometimes that best looks like peak, it looks like flow states and everything's clicking, it's awesome, right? Sometimes my very best in the moment, I'm going step by step, I'm head down, it's gritty, it's dirty, it's clicking. It's awesome. Sometimes my very best in the moment, I'm going step by step. I'm head down. It's gritty. It's dirty. It's hard.

It's ugly. That is also performing optimally. I think what optimal performance allows us to do is a couple things. First, it allows us to pat ourselves on the back for performing through challenge and stress. Even though I just did that and it was ugly as hell, we still did it, right? We used to joke, sometimes we do missions like,

man, that was not pretty at all, right? But we did the mission, I mean, we got it accomplished, we did the best we could with what we had, right? So it allows us to pat ourselves on the back when things don't feel clikky and flowy and pretty. But more importantly, it allows us to approach performance in a much more, I think, responsible and healthy way, right?

I don't need to be peaking when I'm driving to the grocery store, okay? I can basically manage my energy states so that I'm using exactly the amount of energy I need to in the moment, not too much, not too little, but conserving because when I need to peak, I have it. I can peak on demand. I can go up to a 10. But then once I stay there for a while, I know I can come back down. In some cases, I have to come back down to a 2 or 3. So I start to recover inside of my day. And I think if we think about our days this way, we can start understanding where we can actually inflict some of those micro recovery moments,

right? If you're at work all day and you know, hey, my afternoon meeting is usually a bear this morning, things usually pretty hard, but there's usually a mellow period in the morning or whatever in the lunchtime, whatever. You can start saying, hey, I'm going to modulate myself as I go. So that I know when I have to be on and peak and then I know when I can I can actually and then you if you get good at this If you practice it, you don't even have to plan it ahead, right? You say, Hey, I got a moment here. I'm going to take I'm going to take five minutes You know, I'm going to I'm going to take two minutes at my desk to visualize before I walk into my next meeting

I'm going to take Ten minutes on my drive home to listen to some really great music to get me in a great state so that when I get home And I can be right there with my kids and I, and I'm not bringing what I have home with me. And so I think if we looked at performance from an optimal standpoint, it allows us to be more human for the duration of life, which is inherently unpredictable. Yes, smearing that peak performance across time, right? Because you're totally correct, like the ability to move in and move out,

to speed up and to slow down, that is where the difference is going to be made. Because it's going to permit you, you need to match the output to the demands that's precisely the analogies to work out to fairly obviously, but, you know, if you're running a marathon, you don't go out at a sprint. That's right. And while you sprint in certain moments, right but you know, if you're running a marathon, you don't go out at a sprint. That's right.

And while you sprint in certain moments, right, you know, and I was working out with a buddy of mine. He was, he actually is a trainer. It was about a year ago. And he was making me push these sleds, you know, these weighted sleds. And it was over about, of course, like 50 yards or something. And he was timing. I said to him, I said to him, what are you timing?

He said, well, I'm timing your, I'm basically measuring aerobic versus anaerobic capacity. So I'm timing how fast, how much power you have when you start your push and comparing that to, without your power state as you get to the end of the 50 yards. And I said, okay, well, what are you, what are you finding?

What am I doing? He said, well, interestingly enough, you come out when you, when you push out initially, you basically start at the same pace that you finish, right? It's even the whole way. I said, well, how do you do it? He's like, I always start, and I'm like, I start really powerfully, and then I slow down

as I go. And I said to him, I had worked with a bunch of seals. I said, what do you find seals usually do? He said, seals usually are like you. They're much more aerobic in their approach. And it made sense to me, because the Navy seal, what you train yourself to do is you never look at a situation aerobically. You look at a situation aerobically because you never know how long you're going to be going. You know, if you start a mission, you have an idea

and you hope that the mission will have a certain duration, but you don't know what's going to happen. It could go for days, you know, so you train yourself to always think aerobically, and then that gives you the capacity to go anaerobic when you, you know, on demand. And I think we can think about life the same way. I did that today. I had a workout this morning and I pushed it far, far too hard.

And anyone that's done the acid bath crossfit workout, you know what happens, you cross that anaerobic threshold and it's just a ticking clock. It's like watching an asteroid very quickly come for you and you're like, there's a wall here. Okay, so we've distinguished between optimum peak performance and then there's also a distinction to be made between attributes and skills. Yeah, yeah. So this was the other part of when I was running that training in selection. I had to, I was tasked with more effectively articulating why guys weren't making it through,

why we were losing 50% of these top guys. Because the excuses we had, the explanations we had were unsatisfactory. There were things like, well, they couldn't shoot very well. They couldn't do this. These are experienced seals. Obviously, they could shoot. Obviously, they could do this stuff.

This is what I began to separate these things because there's a difference. When we look at performance, we often focus on skills. And the reason why we focus on skills is because skills are highly visible and they're highly measurable. So skills, just to break it down, are not inherent to our nature, right? We're not born with a bill that's shoot a gun or write a bike or throw a ball. We learn to do those things, we're taught to do those things, and they direct our behavior in known situations and environments, right? Here's how and when to shoot a gun, here's how and when to throw a ball or right-of-bike. As such, they're very easy to assess, measure, and test. You can see how well anybody does any one of those things.

What they don't tell us is how we operate when the environment becomes unknown and uncertain, when we're deep in challenge on certain new stress, because it's very difficult, if not impossible, to apply a known skill to an unknown environment. This is where we lean on our attributes. Attributes are more innate, or they are innate, right? All of us are born with levels of situational awareness, adaptability of patients, and of course, they develop over time and experience, certainly, but we can see levels of the stuff in small children, elemental human form,

who are we at our most raw which is what I'm interested in. And attributes don't dictate our performance, attributes inform our performance, right? So my son's levels of resilience and perseverance for example informed the way he showed up when he was learning how to write a bite, he's learning that skill and he was following off a dozen times. Okay, so they informed how we show up. And then because they're hitting the back of them, they're hard to assess, they're hard to see an assess and measure. You can't necessarily sit across the table in an interview process when someone's trying

to hire someone and assess someone's level of resilience or patience, right? They show up the most visibly, visibly during challenge of certain stress, which is what I the laboratory I had was such a good one because everything about sale training is throwing guys in stress, right? So, so what I did in the book was I said, well, this is, you know, I kept on getting questions from teams and businesses, hey, we keep on putting together these dream teams. Best salesperson, best marketing person, best lawyer, but whatever, best, best, best, put them all together, and it works for a little bit, but as soon as the plan changes,

or there's a turn, or things don't go as planned, or the team start to fall apart, they start turning toxic. And they said, what's going on? I said, well, it's quite simple, you're picking your team based on the wrong things. You're picking your team based on skills versus thinking about attributes. These attributes are what indicate our performance in uncertainty, challenge and stress. The good news is we have all the attributes,

but the difference in each one of us are the levels to which we have each. Adaptability is the one I usually use as an example. If 10 is high and one is low, I'm probably level eight on adaptability. What does that mean? That means when the environment changes around me outside of my control, it's fairly easy for me to go with a flow and roll with it. Okay, I just adapt. Someone else might be level three. Okay, which means the same thing happens to them. It's difficult for them to go with a power. Much less tolerance. Yeah. Much less tolerance. Again, no judgment on where we show up. All of us, if we were to line up all the attributes

like a row of dimmer switches on the wall, we'd all have different levels. Our lines would look different. No judgment there, OK? Because it'd be like judging our hair color. The idea is can we figure out where we stand on some of this stuff? So A, it can give us information on how we perform. And B, we can start making some decisions

as to whether or not we want to improve and develop certain attributes that we might not have a lot on, but we want more of. I had James Clears, a Tommy Cabitz in my head while I was reading it. And I thought of, you don't rise to the level of your skills, you fall to the level of your attributes. Yeah, I would say, I would add something, I would, so I would say, I would say, I would

add something because because there's a saying in the teams, you don't rise to the level of your, uh, in stress, you don't rise to, to, you don't rise up, you basically fall to the, to the base level, right? So, so this is why training and skills is important, but, but we have to not overemphasize it. If, if you can do something at a very unconscious level, if you train so much that you can do it without thinking about it, it's probably a good bet that when things get rough and ugly, you'll still be able to do that, right? That's almost like making a skill and attribute in a way. It's internalizing it so much that it becomes second-atured.

The boxer that's slipping punches without consciously thinking of it. That's right, but we have to understand that if someone is, for example, inherently unadaptable, okay, they can train a skill in a known environment, all they want, and become really good at it in a known environment. As soon as the environment changes though, that low adaptability is going to kick in. So they may in fact not be able to execute that skill as as definitely as they could in that no environment right so so there it's all interrelated and i thought about right in the book i i could talk about how these all interrelated to play but it would have been a thousand page book and it would have been published yet so so it's really just a basic intro on the reader saying, okay, how does this show

up for me and my life? And then if you are a business owner inside of a team, how does this show up for my team? Because the best teams are made up of attributes that mesh, right? And balance each other and support, mutually support each other. That's the best team. So to know this stuff is actually really good. We attempted to create a hierarchy at all. or are there some that you think are fundamental and enable others to come out of them? You've mentioned adaptability a fair bit. It seems like that would be more of a foundational type of attribute than perhaps some of the

others. Yeah, I did. I thought about creating a hierarchy, but what I recognized is that it was probably irresponsible for me to do that. Hey, I don't have any psychological background. I just think everybody's so different and so subjective. And the attributes play off of each other in very unique ways, right? So someone who is who has low adaptability, for example, but might be high on open-mindedness, they might be perfectly okay. That there's balance, because the open-mindedness helps the adaptability right.

Someone who is let's give them another example. Someone who is low on say situational awareness, okay. But high on well what's another one? Let's see, high on cunning or something like that. That could play off of it. Someone who's a little bit higher on narcissism, but also high on humility. Wonderful combination there.

So again, the problem with- I've not just seen in isolation, right? They're all very interrelated. That's right. Now, I don't want to dodge your question so I won't because I because if you put my back to a wall and said rich What are the most important? I would say from a human aspect and in life I would say the grit attributes probably are Are Probably edge out the other ones in importance in other words just to be a human in this world

probably edge out the other ones in importance. In other words, just to be a human in this world takes some courage, takes some adaptability, takes some perseverance, takes some resilience. Okay. The world changes. Everything changes over time. So that means we need to be adapt. If you're not adaptable, you'll be a dinosaur, right? Not a frog. There's going to be stuff that scares us all the time, right?

If we can't be a little bit of courageous, we're going to be sitting in our houses, you know, for the rest of our lives, right? So I think the grid attributes have already placed them. If I were to eat one or a set of attributes above the rest, I would eat that first set, that grid set above the rest, but that's the best I'll do. Just a little bit more scalable, right? It's just a little bit more diverse like that. Is there someone from your experience, have you met someone that comes to mind as the most gritty human or some of the most gritty humans that you've met any stories from back in the day? Well, so again, Hank and I were talking about this when we're having coffee. Grit is also subjective and we both, I mean, we both would say, I mean, you know,

there are people who are very gritty in certain situations, who in other situations fall into puddles, right? And who's to kind of place value on someone's ability to move through challenges, or stress? I mean, there are kids in the children's hospitals who are fighting cancer, who have more grit and their little finger than most Navy SEALs I've ever met in my life, right? I mean, so, yeah, I don't know. I think I've certainly met tons of people with tons of grit,

but I mean, their grit is everywhere. I think every human being has some of it in them, and there are stories abound of people who you're like, oh my gosh, how the heck did that person get through that? And you look at their ability to kind of gut it out, and you're like, I don't know if I could have done that. You really admire and through that. And you look at their ability to kind of gut it out. And you're like, I don't know if I could have done that. You really admire and respect that. So, so the answer is yes, I've met those people, but they're all around us and it's inside

of us too. I got some buddies that are going through a couple of different fellas that made that are going through some challenges at the moment. And I'm watching it unfold. So I get the benefit almost of being able to iterate on these learning strategic learning experiences each time I have a phone call or a text message or whatever. And it's insane man. Like the the level of resiliency that they're showing is just like it blows my mind. But on the flip side, it's very domain specific. You can imagine a guy who is absolute, an animal on the field

of battle, but really struggles when him and his misses have an argument. So, not only the attributes themselves also independent, but within different domains, some of them interact in a different way. I've had this in my head ever since we started talking. Have you looked into behavioral genetics much? I haven't much, I've heard of it, yeah. But yeah, it's one of those things I have on my notepad to look into, yeah. So I think there's so much crossover between

what you're talking about here. So the heritability of particular traits, that manifest, so how much is your height dependent on your parents height? How much is your likelihood for depression or schizophrenia or penis length or like marital instability? How much is this heritable? And it maps so nicely onto the attributes and the skills model. They don't dictate, but they do inform. They do inform.

And you bring up a great point. So I wanna just go back to one point you brought up because I think it's important to hit and then I'll hit this next one. The fact that you said you're being on phone calls with these friends who are going through this stuff. That is the enormous importance, okay? Because a lot of these attributes,

they also are enhanced by help by others. Others help us be more courageous. Others can help us be more adaptable. Others can help us be more resilient, right? So, if you are someone who's going through something hard, go find people. Go find help. They will help you do it. And if you're a friend who has a friend going through something be someone who can help them right so so I think that's number one Number two in terms of the The kind of nature or nurture part of this. I think I think it's it's really important For us to understand the way I would say you know, I'm I'm all for Nature like how do I show up in the world? Okay, but the way I would say it is this all for nature, like how do I show up in the world?

But the way I would say it is this. We are all human, right? But just like cars, we're different, right? So there's some of us are Ferrari, some of us are SUV, some of us are Jeep's, okay? And there's no judgment, okay? Because the Jeep can do things the Ferrari can't do and the Ferrari can do things the Jeep can't do.

It behooves us to look under our hood and see kind of which vehicle we are because we may be a Jeep that's been trying to run our Ferrari track. No, that's south, man. No, that's south. Yeah, now the cool thing about this light that we have is that if we are a Jeep that's running on a Ferrari track, we can do that. We can choose to be a Jeep running on a Ferrari track.

But to run better on the Ferrari track as a Jeep, it's probably good to know what you can work on to run better on that Ferrari track. You can be a Ferrari track, running on a Jeep track. It's up to you. So what it provides, this know-dyself, what it provides is the ability to understand where you sit, what's your performance and how your performance looks in, whatever whatever niche that you've found, and then make some decisions. Do I want to, oh gosh, that's it. I'm in the wrong thing. I need to switch, or you say, you know what? I'm in the right thing.

I love this. I just know now why it's been such a struggle, and I know what those things I can work on. So I think you're right. Nature, nurture, we can put ourselves into experiences that help develop these attributes that we're low on. Sometimes experiences are thrown at us without our consent that help us develop these attributes that we're low on. And we can use these types of experiences to kind of get better at some of these things. So we just can't

we just can't develop or learn an attribute the same way we learn a skill. Okay, it's not it's not translatable. And then quick back of the envelope test for the audience members to decide whether it's a skill or a attribute, because they could get conflated, is to ask yourself, can I teach it or can I be taught? If the answer is yes, it's probably a skill. If the answer's no, it's probably an attribute, right? So the example would be Chris, you said,

hey, Rich, I want to learn how to shoot a pistol and hit a target, hit a bull's eye every time. Well, I could take you to the range and teach you how to do that within two hours, right? That's a skill. Or you say, Rich, I want to learn how to shoot a pistol and hit a target, hit a bull's eye every time. Well, I can take you to the range and teach you how to do that within two hours, right? That's a skill. Or you say, Rich, I want to learn how to be more patient, right? I can't teach you how to be more patient, okay? To develop an attribute takes self-motivation, self-direction, and it takes a willingness

for that individual to deliberately place themselves into environments that develop and tease that attribute, right? If you're someone who is inpatient, who wants to develop patients. But you have to, it takes one self. I can't teach you an attribute. You have to have a good one. You have to have a good one. You have to have a good one. You have to have a good one.

You have to have a good one. You have to have a good one. You have to have a good one. You have to have a good one. You have to have that's a great one, to develop patients. But you have to, it takes one self. I can't teach you an attribute. You have to do it yourself. Dude, I heard this guy on the show Ben Oldridge, he spent a year after he suffered with some really bad panic attacks and anxiety.

He decided to do voluntary exposure therapy essentially, but for everything, that this guy did hundreds of them, whether it was, he had a fear of needles, so he created an anti-bucket list, all of the things that he really didn't want to do. It had a huge fear of needles, so he worked himself up to getting acupuncture all over his face, had a massive fear of heights,

so built himself up to walking on one of those overhangs that's got a glass floor on it. It's like there's some huge towers somewhere. He ran a marathon. He climbed Everest inside of his house going up and downstairs. He went up and spoke to strangers in the street. He waited in a queue. He drove there's a ring road called the M25 outside of London, and he purposefully went and

just sat in the traffic just to get annoyed to develop his patience. So what you're saying aligns perfectly with that. I really want to dig into, you know, people are listening and I think I want some more compartmentalization or situational awareness or whatever. Can you just dig into those principles of somebody looks under the hood, they've done the self-inquiry. Everyone that's listening is radically sensible, that unbelievably keen to do this sort of stuff. What are the principles? I want an attribute or I find a deficiency of the other is a lack that I really think my life would be better if I was able to improve in this particular area. What are those three principles again? Can you give us some examples?

Yeah, in fact, I, so, so I will give you a general. I actually put workbooks on the website that someone can get, and they can actually, the atributes.com. Yeah, and you can go and they're workbooks for the grip, attributes, the mental community, attributes, and the drive attributes, and it goes through each individual attribute and gives you some tips and clues on how to develop that specific one.

The overarching thing is to say to yourself, okay, I have an attribute that I'm low on and I want to yourself, okay, I have an attribute that I'm low on and I want to develop. Okay, first of all, let's do some self-examination and ask, okay, what are those environments and situations that I'm most uncomfortable in? Okay, so take something like, let's just use adaptability. I want to develop my adaptability. I need to understand what that looks like in my life. Maybe I'm traveling and when the plane is delayed or something,

I get very anxious. It doesn't sit well with me. You may want to then, this is radical. You may want to then say, okay, I'm going to develop this. So I'm just going to go to the airport and buy a ticket somewhere, okay? And I'm going to go to a new place and I'm not going to do any, I'm just going to drop onto the ground and then figure it out. I'm just going to decide to do that. I'm going to go find a place to stay.

I'm going to go get it, whatever it is. Put yourself into situations that actually test and tease that and develop that. Now, I want to warn people, like, you know, even courage. I want to warn people you don't have to be extreme on this stuff. You can start small. If you are someone who, you know, courage is a, is usually a common one. If you are someone who finds fear, you know, it feels fear in talking to people.

You're an introvert. It might be as simple as like you said that guy did. You just start a conversation with strangers. That is going to feel very scary to you. Here's the cool thing about fear though, and this is something we can all use. When the fear response gets an issue, when the amygdala begins to kick in, we are given two choices. We are given two choices. And we all know the choices.

Fight or flight. We've often heard of a third choice called freeze, but really what they found neurologically is freeze is simply an oscillation between the two. You're basically just sitting there trying to decide. So it's really just fight or flight. When we decide to step into our fear to fight, that means step into our fear. As, okay? That means step into our fear.

As soon as we do that, our bodies give us a dopamine reward, okay? Our bodies are designed to do that because we had to, the nature had to give us a reason to go find new food, go find your own ways of flee. Or else we'd always, or we'd waste away, right? I mean, so, so what we have to understand about fear and anxiety and all this stuff is it's designed to get our systems moving, okay? waste away. So what we have to understand about fear and anxiety and all this stuff is

it's designed to get our systems moving. When we are hungry, our body begins to feel stressed and anxious. That is designed to get us to go out and find food. Same thing when we're lonely. It's designed to get us stressed to go find out and find the companionship. Our bodies begin to give us reward systems when we actually decided to do that. So if you are afraid, if you find yourself afraid of things, all you need to do is just start testing yourself and stepping into those fears and you'll feel a dopamine reward effort.

I'm not saying that the act is gonna be feel good, right? I don't like roller coasters, okay? When I decide to do a roller coaster, I'm not saying that the roller coaster feels good doing it, but I am saying once I'm done with it, I feel great for having done it, okay? I remember in college, it was this girl I had a crush on, I had a crush on her for a long time,

and she seemed so unattainable, and I said to myself one day, I said, I need to do something, right? And I saw her one night out, and so I went up to her and I asked her out, okay? And she said, no, I'm so sorry, thanks so much for asking, but I have a boyfriend. So I didn't get, you know,

that's not a happy ending in terms of me getting the girl. But I still to this day, I'm so happy I did it, right? Because I actually tried, I actually stepped into my fear. But think about how meaningful that situation is that decades later, you're still able to recall it. Yeah, but here's the thing, Chris, I think every human probably listening to this can think of a time where they actually stepped into their fear. They did something that a little scared and they probably still feel good about it. They're probably good. Because that's how powerful, that's a dopamine hit that we're getting. And so now now I want to say, fear is also designed to allow

human beings to appropriately risk mitigate or assess risk. Sometimes the appropriate thing to do is flee or flight, right, because it's never a good idea to fight a bear. So, but the idea is, can you get yourself into a position when you start feeling that fear where you can actually make that decision, okay, is this something I want you to step into or is this something no kidding I need to flee? Right, so, but if you do decide to step in you'll get that reward, you'll get that hit, and you'll feel good and you just practice that, just like this guy you just said, did. He was basically, he was practicing this stuff and I'm sure that he was able to continue to do it as he did it more because he was feeling the effects of that dopamine reward system.

Does that mean that fear increases our vigilance? Is that reflected in the brain at all? So it's an interesting question that's a little bit complex because, and again, I'm a fan of neuroscience, but I'm not a neuroscientist. When we are afraid, when our body goes into fear response, what typically happens is we narrow our focus. So in fact, our vigilance goes away because we're focused on a threat. This is why the alert but calm state is so important. When we're alert and calm, we are actually in a state where we actually have more vigilance because we're able to neurologically notice different things. We are brains in fact react faster

when we are actually in that state. An example would be, if you're at a stoplight, okay, and it's red, and you're staring at it, waiting to, you're staring at the light, waiting for it to go green. If you're staring at it and it goes green, you're going to respond and go. You'll actually respond faster. You'll actually hit that accelerator faster if you're actually not staring at it. You're actually just, it's in your periphery, okay? And you, you see it go green in your periphery, you're actually response is faster. Now, I'm not, I'm not advising anybody to go drag race, by the way, okay? But this

is also why when we're riding our bike or running or something and a bug hits our eye, and it's like, oh my God, that bug is finally going to be a bug. And we're like, oh my God, I can't believe I blinked. Right when that bug hit my eye, well, our body actually did that. We were in an open state and our body saw before our brain saw

our body said, oh, bug coming close the eye, so it didn't hit us in the eye. So we are we are actually the alert calm state is the best for vigilance when we were when we were in a fear state and we're we we tend to narrow focus because our bodies are designed to focus on that threat and and address it and then and then get out of it. So, so it's a little bit of a complex answer. I understand. One of my favorite attributes that you go into is humor, actually, which I think would have been a surprise maybe to some people. It makes sense, but you wouldn't, when you're talking about optimal performance, humor

perhaps doesn't come up as one of those. Can you dig into that for me? Well, yeah, again, we're talking about neuroscience again and neurobiology because what laughing does, first of all, laughing is involuntary. It's like sneezing, okay? If you laugh, it's not, it's because you just does, first of all, laughing is involuntary. It's like sneezing. Okay, if you laugh, it's not, it's because you just, you're, you did, all right, and you know, that's why comedians are such a gift, right? When we laugh, we get three powerful chemicals injected into our system, two neurotransmitters in one hormone, okay? First neurotransmitters,

doping, just talked about that, that's a hugely powerful one, says, hey, this is good, keep doing this. Transmitters doping, just talked about that. That's a hugely powerful one. So I say, this is good, keep doing this. The next one is endorphins. Endorphins are the human body's equivalent of opiates. So they mask our pain, runners high, and things like that, that's endorphins. Designed by nature to make us the endurance creatures that we are.

That's why endorphins exist. So we get dopamine, we get endorphins, and then we get oxytocin, which is a hormone. Oxytocin is known as the love hormone. It's a bonding, binding chemical between human beings. We get bursts of it when we embrace human touch when we have a great conversation, when we shake hands, when we act as a physical kindness, exo-kindness between human beings, induce oxytocin. It's a bonding chemical. So when we laugh, we get all three of those involuntarily, laughing makes us feel better. Because it's involuntary, because we get burst with these chemicals, this is why sense of humor is one of the most desirable qualities when you're looking for mates, either male or female, because? Because it's a signal between humans that, hey, when things get tough, I will bring you

up, I will lift you up. Neurobiologically, I'll make you laugh, okay? I've never seen a high-performing team, a successful one that hasn't had at least a couple class clowns. You know, the people who make jokes right when things are bad, right, and bring everybody up. And again, humor as an attribute doesn't mean you have to be that class clowns, the people who make jokes right when things are bad, and bring everybody up. And again, humor as an attribute doesn't mean you have to be that class clown. You don't have to be the person making the jokes.

You just have to be someone who's able to laugh, because if you're able to laugh, it will get you through. And oh, by the way, we just talked about courage. This is why laughing, this is why humor is also a hack into courage, because when you laugh, you're getting dopamine. Well, dopamine is the same reward you get when you execute a step into what scares you. So this is why anybody, and anybody could have this, might have an example in their lives, if they had, if they were, if they could think of a time they were

scared of something, and then someone made them laugh, like really made them not like, I'm like, I think that, but really like a laugh, they, they felt braver automatically. You know, they felt, they felt better that fear started to dissipate because they got that reward system. So laughter can also be a hack into courage as well. Did you guys use morbid humor a lot? I tell you Chris, people ask me what I miss the most about the teams and it's the humor. I mean, I remember, I mean, we allowed it, but you that starts in buds. I mean, in buds, it's, there were some of the most miserable times

and we were laughing until we were crying. I mean, it was that funny. So yeah, we all the time. I mean, this is where I think these teams that do really, people always think, you know, these firefighters, cops, spec ops, military folks, they have this dark humor. It exists for a reason because when you do dark stuff, you need things that help you get through it properly.

It's a performance enhancer and a coping mechanism in one and a team building exercise. That's right. I know, unfortunately, I've been, I've been to far too many funerals in my day, but even at funerals, when you're, when you're honoring someone and remembering someone, those people who can remember them in a funny way and make people laugh, you feel so good. You feel great about it. It helps you cope because this is, again, this is neurobiological, which is cool. What about decisiveness? I think this is something that a lot of people want.

We have a paradox of choice at the moment. Far too much stimulation, far too much information to work out what it is. I don't know what I want to do. How can someone develop their decisiveness? Decisiveness is really all about understanding how effectively you're bringing in information and then to what extent you're comfortable deciding to do something with a certain level. Decisiveness is the ability to make an effective decision with efficiency and speed.

Okay, and those two last words are actually the most important part of decisiveness, because someone can be good at making decisions, but it's like a long process. All right, decisiveness really kind of almost bridges into this thing we call the military the 80-20 rule where you are never going to get a hundred percent of the information that you need to make an appropriate decision. It's almost impossible, especially in a military environment, but most life situations, you're not going to get a hundred percent of the information. So the idea is to get as much information as you can in the moment. Okay, what of that percentage looks like and then make a decision and move.

And again, when you make a decision, what people have to understand is it's final but not, but might not necessarily be permanent. Okay. So in other words, we're going to make a decision and we're going to move into that decision. We're going to execute, but I'm also going to buttress that with some accountability and ask myself, after I make that decision, is this working? Is this not? We may have to change, right? make that decision, is this working, is this not? We may have to change, right?

So, final is not the same as permanent. So, you can be decisive, you can make decisions that are final, and then you buttress that with accountability so that it might not be permanent. No leader, no true leader that any of us think of as leaders aren't such, are people who are long, protracted decision makers. Decisiveness is a leadership characteristic that most human beings really honor and look for. I think a corollary of that is the ability to do task switching quickly. Yes.

You know, again, too much stimulation, too much information, we were not designed to consume the entire world's news instantly 24 hours a day What about task switching how can people reduce the lag time? It's Stephen Kotler talks about this that if you knock yourself out of flow you're looking at 20 minutes at least Before you can get yourself back in how can people Maximize their their focus and their ability to move between different tasks? Well, definitely put away the distractions that that that don't matter in the moment. I mean, again, we were talking about a neurological thing or our minds are neurologically jumping between contexts. And so when we're with you and I are having

a conversation and suddenly I have my phone and it beeps, right? My brain has just switched. Even if I haven't taken my eyes off of you, my brain has just jumped, right? And sometimes that's the equivalent of going from a library to a to a to a to a football field, right? Your brain's like, okay, what's going on? Now, whether we like it or not or whether we're good at it or not, that is very energy. It's neurologically taxing and it's energy expending. It's a, it's a, our brains only run it on about 40 watts of power. And task switching takes up a lot of energy, which is why if it happens a lot, we can feel exhausted. It's funny because people will ask me,

why will we start the pandemic? All of us are quarantined. Okay, we're all in our house, right? Doing almost nothing. It feels like we're doing nothing all day, yet we're exhausted. Okay, why is that? Well, one of the reasons is because we just,

we went from a lifestyle where we had environments of that was siloed environments of activity, right? I'm at home, then I'm in my car, then I go to work, and then I, then I'm doing, then I'm at, at the gym, and then I'm at home again, right? It's, and so our brains had, had environments instead of which we could say, okay, now I'm locked into this, okay? Well, as soon as we're quarantined, all of those contexts got wrapped into one environment,

right? So, so I remember, I was like, all of those contexts got wrapped into one environment, right? So, I remember I was like, I was writing the book and then suddenly I was helping my son with calculus and then suddenly I was making lunch and then I said I was walking the dog and we're like, okay, why am I so exhausted? Well, the reason why is because our brains were switching constantly, you know, going from context to context inside one environment. So it can be mentally which turns into physically exhausting.

And so... Is that going back to the triggers that we spoke about before that the Environmental cues often prime our state for the act that we're going to do. I always talk about this man I have never no matter how good a home gym is I've never had as good of a workout or lifted as much as I do When you go through the ritual of getting the bag out of the car saying hello to the receptionist, you know, you put choosing the playlist that you're going to listen to or bitching about the playlist that's on in the gym or whatever. Yeah, you get locked in. You're physiological and physical state gets locked into environments, right? This is why I used to say it's good thing that

when we deployed, you know, to go to, to go to go to war, we weren't coming home every night. It would have been enormously difficult to do that job and have to switch between the two. So chunking again. Yeah, chunking again. So we can use these and so and because of these environments, I've also created some unconscious competence inside of them, right?

And when I get into a car, there's a bunch of things I can do in that car without thinking, because I'm in that car. Same thing at work, same thing at the gym, same thing at home. We've minimized and made efficient a lot of these tasks that are inside these silos. As soon as they got wrapped into one environment, we're like, holy shit, I'm overwhelmed, but it makes a difference. Okay, so how can people improve their ability to switch between tasks? Like, let's say that someone has a lot of stuff going on. Is there anything that you found that works for you?

Um, I, you know, there, I think, that's a great question, because I'm a little bit, you know, I would say I'm probably, I'm a little bit better at task switching than I am, that compartmentalization in terms of focusing, whereas my wife is the opposite, she can focus and deeply and kind of drop everything off. But I would say eliminate all that stuff

that you, that doesn't make sense. And then I think a recognition of when you're shifting helps, right? So in other words, if I'm doing email, okay, I'm gonna do email right now, and then I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna deliberately understand that I'm gonna switch from email to

talking on the phone or doing something else. I think I think, I think, I think knowledge, I mean, recognizing this stuff is part of the battle, and that's probably what I do. Again, I'm not an expert, I'm still working on this stuff myself, but I think knowing what's happening helps. That metacognition.

Yes, totally. And so I think that would be my one note, I guess, to. I agree. I can't remember the guy's name. I keep meaning to bring him on the show. He was on Sam Harris talking about what people mean when they say that they are good at multitasking. And he said, there's no such thing. The reason I such thing is multitasking.

What people mean by multitasking is parallel processing You that that doesn't exist that's bullshit what you can do It's switch between different tasks very very quickly, but even that is Ridiculously inefficient. Here's a really cool analogy that he used so he said that In the same way that there's a mathematical model you can use to work out Based on where a squirrel is in a tree How many nuts are in the tree and how many nuts are close to that squirrel and how far the next tree away from this from that tree is When the squirrels going to give up looking for nuts in that tree and go on. Oh, I just as a function this

It's how much work does this put this person? How much work does the man in the squirrel suit, how much work does the man in the squirrel suit have to do to get the next nut? And what's the cost of moving from where he is now to the next place where he might be able to get more nuts more easily? Right.

And he made an analogy with humans and said that we're in the same way that squirrels and nut forages were information forages. Because for us, and cessery, information was such a valuable resource. It was the thing that kept us alive. We never had more of it than we needed.

In fact, we probably had a scarcely not a surplus. Yes. And now we've got the reverse. Now we have an abundance rather than a scarcity. And his point is to try and bring constraints in, to focus on single things as much as you can, to reduce distractions. Another one that I thought was really interesting to talk about, especially giving your background

is discipline. It's something that, after the last year, everyone's looking to develop a little bit more of what you're insights there. Yeah, I think discipline, the important thing is the distinction. There's a distinction between discipline and self-discipline. I talk about discipline holistically. And discipline holistically means the ability to kind of set and understand the wickets involved to achieve kind of a longer-term goal and then move through those effectively to achieve

that goal. And those goals, that goal is something that the external world actually has to say in whether or not you achieve. In other words, you're going to have to power through some external... What's an example of that? Being a seal, writing a book, starting a podcast, becoming a surgeon. It's easier if I give the opposite example. Self-discipline are those goals that the external world has no say in whether or not you

accomplish. That would be, I want to lose weight and eat better, okay? Or work out and eat better, right? I can decide that. I say I'm going to lose weight and work out and eat better, right? I decide that and I could go to the Vegas buffet, right? And the buffet is not going to throw pastries at me, right? It's all on me as to where the night I achieve that goal, right? Those types of, that's self-discipline. That's those goals that you that only you the external it has no say in whether or not you accomplish. Discipline or those goals that that you have that the external does have a say, right? And oftentimes they can now when when balanced is very powerful. Someone, however, who might be higher on self discipline, typically likes routine and likes a kind of an old-leg scheduled order ordered schedule,

right? If they're too high on that, overall discipline is hurt, right? Because whenever you go to achieve a long-term objective that the external world has a say in, throw routine out the window, because the world is going to hit you with punches all the time you're going to have to break routine right this is why the some of the highly highly highly self-discipline people sometimes have trouble achieving long-term things because it's hard for them to break routine right but again the best is a balance in between so you can have you can be a little bit self-disciplined and also be disciplined that's that's the balance. I love it man. Yeah Rich, do you have any ladies and gentlemen, the Attributes 25 hidden drivers of optimal performance will be linked in the show notes below.

And if they want to go and do their free performance assessment and get all of the tips, they should go to... Yeah, the attributes.com. It's all there. Books there, assessment tools there, workbooks there there. Yeah, so, and you can contact me if you want to get consulting or speeches or kines or things like that. All on the same website?

All on the same website, yeah. Try to make it simple. I love it. Dude, thanks so much. Thank you, my friend. Thanks for having me. you