The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 260: Mark Divine - How To Create An Unbeatable Mind

Episode Date: June 3, 2018

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk Episode #260: Mark Divine - How To Create An Unbeatable Mind At twenty-six Mark Divine graduated as Honor Man (#1-ranked trainee) of SEAL BUD/S class number 170. Mark served for nine years total on active duty and eleven as a Reserve SEAL, retiring as Commander in 2011.  His leadership of teams was so effective the government tasked him with creating a nationwide mentoring program for SEAL trainees.  He earned his MBA at NYU.  In 2007 he launched the SEALFIT program to provide transformational personal and team training experiences. The training utilizes an integrated warrior development model he developed, called Unbeatable Mind, which draws from his 20 years as a SEAL and business leader, 25 years as a martial artist and 15 years as yoga practitioner.  Mark has written has written four books, including The Way of The SEAL, and Unbeatable Mind. The Learning Leader Show "Do today what others aren't willing to do.  You're 20X more capable than what you think." Show Notes: Sustaining excellence: People who have practices that value excellence and practice it regularly Optimized training, sleep, and balance Mental health: Meditation, nature, learning, reducing potential to be stuck in biases Emotional health: Not afraid of going to therapy, spritual Why is therapy helpful? Mark married a therapist They can be an emotional coach "It's preventative maintenance" --> Must be proactive A "check up from the neck up" You should always be investing in improving your "self" Be mindful - yoga, zen.  It's an evolutionary skill to help you connect at a deeper level Why become a Navy SEAL? Got MBA and a CPA -- Got a job on Wall Street and hated it after three months Started Zen meditation... It changed his brain It created a structured program to look within himself and reflect Mark did not like what was happening in the outer world (with his job) He was meant to be a warrior and a leader Did he ever have doubts? No... Because he had prepared for the difficult moments through visualization and fully understanding his WHY "I created total certainty in my mind. 100% that I was going to become a SEAL. I won in my mind." This outlook helped him finish #1 overall in his BUD/S class How can we apply this to our world?  Outside of the military? You must deeply care about what you're doing... And then visualize your success. A "personal practice of excellence" "It must be something in your vision that you are really passionate about" "Visualize it as a completion.  Visualize doing it to completion." "You're the type of person who is worthy of completing that challenging task... Of achieving THAT" How do you respond to skeptics? The science backs it up... Do your research Give it a try... Why wouldn't you? VUCA = Volatility, Uncertainty, Complex, Ambiguous -- How to handle these situations Creating a decentralized organization -- Why this works in the military and in business (trust and certainty) Why you must "learn to embrace risk" -- Cannot be afraid of failure... And the plan must be flexible "Do today what others won't" -- 20X more capable than what you think "Society has weakened us... Everything is easy now.  You need to force yourself to do hard things." "Challenge leads to growth." "Your body will adapt to the new reality."  "Push it past where you think it can currently go" "You must challenge yourself every single day" Exercise - Write your own obituary.  Think "What would people say about me?" Do the deep self awareness work to "know thyself" "If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for everything" "Derive your passion around purpose. Create your set of principles." Originally, there was a scathing obituary written for Alfred Nobel... It was meant for his twin brother, but there was a mistake and someone wrote it about him.  It changed his life.  He was not aware of how badly he was thought of... And he became known for peace moving forward.  So much so... That they named a prize after him. How Brad Stevens and Bill Belichick have mastered the art of coaching Why the "hacking movement" is not good according to Mark There must be deep learning over many years to get to mastery level of anything Simplify = Be narrow on what you want, get rid of everything else. And focus Use the "Get To Know You Document" Social Media: Read: Unbeatable Mind Follow Mark on Twitter: @MarkDivine Connect with me on LinkedIn Join our Facebook Group: The Learning Leader Community To Follow Me on Twitter: @RyanHawk12

You've got to challenge yourself to prove to yourself that you're capable of 20 times more. And you've got to challenge yourself in a big way. So, you know, every day we find something challenging to do. Every week, something a little bit more challenging. Every month, a little bit more challenging. Every quarter, even more challenging than once a year to every 18 months. A real doozy. This episode is brought to you by Gusto.

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Most small businesses don't have an HR expert, but you don't need one to use gusto with great software and great software. great service. You can focus on your business, not payroll and paperwork. And to help support the Learning Leader Show, Gusto is offering our listeners an exclusive limited time deal. Sign up today and you'll get three months free once you run your first payroll. Just go to gusto.com slash leader. That's G-U-S-T-O.com slash leader. Welcome to the Learning Leader Show. I am Ryan Hawke. Thanks so much for being here. It is Mindful Monday. Text learners to 44222 in order to join thousands of other fellow learning leaders from all over the world.

Text learners to 44222. Now, on tonight's featured leader, it's with the great Mark Devine in New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller of multiple books. He ranked the number one trainee of Seal Bud's class number 171. He served nine years on active duty and 11 years as a reserve seal. Retiring as a commander in 2011 has since become a world-class entrepreneur. He found in Navyseals.com, among other things. This was incredible. A few of the topics we got into why everyone, including you, should go to therapy.

Then the power of visualization and Mark's response to people who are skeptical of this. Then what happened when Mark wrote? wrote an obituary for himself and why you should do this too ladies and gentlemen there's so much it's wide-ranging it's deep it's really good it's mark divine all right mark divine thanks so much for being here i'm honored to have you on the learning leader show welcome ryan thank you very much for having me it's an honor i i'm very curious i've been looking forward to this one for a while and uh given your life and everything that you've accomplished as well as the people that you spent a great deal of time around. I'm really curious to learn from you. What have you found to be the commonalities among leaders who have sustained excellence over an

extended period of time? That's such an excellent question. The answer jumps right out of me. Leaders who have sustained excellence in leadership tend to be people who have practices around excellence or achieving and maintaining excellence in their personal life. And I would, you know, say that these practices include physical training, you know, maintaining optimal health. So those would be practices and rituals around optimizing sleep, optimizing physical training, and homeostatic balance, you know, through stress management. And then mental development, so, you know, patterns of excellence around mental development or mental health would include things like, you know, meditation, time and nature,

you know, learning new things and kind of stretching the boundaries of your mind. and also reducing the potential for, you know, getting stuck in your biases and whatnot. So constant, you know, approach to learning, reading, growing mentally. And then the third and crucial is emotional health. You know, when I think of the top leaders that I know, they're ones that aren't afraid of going to therapy. They're the ones that are really always working on their relationships and realizing that ultimately relating with other human beings is largely an emotional thing. And so they have practices of excellence around that.

And of course, spiritual, like the spiritual aspect keeps humility at the forefront. You know, they're doing something, they're doing what they do for a higher sense of power, purpose and power, and it's not really about ego or achievement for, you know, those kind of lower level things, which helps them stay energized and really focused. And I'll say the last thing is that those who have sustained excellence are always willing to challenge themselves and to risk a little bit. bit, right? So they're constantly growing. They've learned that human beings grow through challenge and so they don't shy from it. Wow. That was just off the cuff, man. That was awesome. So I appreciate that. I'm really thinking about that one where you mentioned therapy and

and just just popped to my mind. So I, I've hired a coach to help me write specifically a book, Mark, and because I realized that I need help and it's funny. So we're talking through every the introduction and all the chapters. And these feel to me, and I've told her this, these feel to me like these deep therapy sessions, but they're so helpful. And I haven't gone to like a real therapy, but this is almost my version of it. So how do you practice this in your life? Well, it started when I married a therapist, you know, so it kind of happened by default,

unbeknownst to me. Anyways. And then, you know, I've had a number of therapists. working on kind of different things. And, you know, just like finding a good business coach, it does take time to find the right fit. I look at therapy almost the same as a writing coach or a leadership coach or a success coach, you know, or life coach, whatever you want to call it. There's coaches in every domain popping up all over the place. And so the therapist really is your emotional coach. Now, most people have a different view. They think, oh, you know, when you're

broke or your relationship breaks down or your marriage is failing, that's the time to go to with the therapist is like a Hail Mary to try to save things. And a lot of men especially, they think it's like taboo. I have a completely different viewpoint. I think therapy is preventative maintenance. It helps you do the deep self-awareness and introspection because, you know, largely we're inside the bottle. We can't read the label of our own lives.

And we need a little bit of external support and help from an expert who can, you know, see our own, you know, see our bullshit, you know, and listen to our bullshit that we're telling about ourselves. You know, we live a bunch of stories, right? And sometimes those stories are solid empowering like yours and a lot of your listeners. And sometimes those stories are just complete BS, and we need to be called out in them. And that's what a good therapist will do. I like that.

So that's how I do it, you know, frequently. And then if I ever, you know, get really stuck or some, you know, some past issue just kind of bubbles up and it's a recurring pattern. And, you know, I'll get that kind of like little nod for my wife, like, okay, it's time. And I'm like, okay. All right, so place the call, and there's a few more sessions. It can be routine. It can be episodic, like checkup from the neck up every once a month. This is kind of what I do now.

Or you can marry a therapist. That always works, too. How did you meet your wife? Well, I finished Navy SEAL training in 1991. It feels like yesterday because it was such an intense experience. And I moved next door to my future wife in Coronado, California, which is where the Navy SEAL training base is. and we struck up a friendship first, and then, of course, that turned romantic later on,

four years later after a couple world tours, I should say. Were you a patient of hers? Not at all. No. No, we just literally shared a back deck, and I took note of this very attractive woman who was living next door to me. Nice.

I love that story. Okay, Mark, so there's so much to get to. What I thought of right there, though, was you said it's a preventative measure, And I think what it makes me think of when I read your work as well as that specific phrase you just said is that the people who sustain excellence are proactive in the way that they operate. They're proactive with everything, including something that others may view as something that's a more reactive thing. Uh-oh, things are going bad. I better talk to someone.

And they're saying, no, things are going well. I want them to continue going well and go even better. So I'm going to invest in someone to help me. Correct. You know, a good, a lot of people are. And I know you are. I saw the term mindfulness on your website. Yep.

You know, a lot of people are getting into kind of meditation, mindfulness. And they think, okay, this is going to make me a better leader because I'll be more self-aware and more mindful. Of course, that term, you know, is pretty broad. But, and I've got some different ideas on that we could talk about later. But, you know, generally speaking, mindfulness comes from the spiritual traditions, you know, yoga and Buddhism generally or Zen. And it was ported over here to the United States.

And, you know, you can look at that as to as a. success tool or an evolutionary skill that everybody can and ultimately, you know, should or will do some form of, you know, to really help connect at a much deeper level spiritually with other human beings and then, you know, ultimately with all of reality. Now, that's a, what I'm going with this, Ryan, is that you could, you could meditate, like for 20 years, become an advanced monk, you know, be a highly successful CEO. And if you're an asshole when you start, you're just going to be a bigger asshole when you're done.

Because if you don't do the emotional development, and you see this all the time with people who are really, really advanced in their careers or at the highest levels, and they're doing all these things, but they're not paying attention to their baggage, their emotional baggage. And it just starts to grow and grow, and the patterns get more deeply rutted

until all of a sudden they just torch, you know, torch their career or their relationships. So I look at them as like hand and glove. You've got to do the spiritual work and the meditative work will help evolve you. It'll evolve your consciousness. You know, imagine on a scale you're going upwards and getting more advanced or more evolved. And the emotional development is dragging you back or the lack of emotional development is dragging you back down. And so you kind of like root out and clear up your past, which allows you to free up and

grow toward your highest and best self in the future. Does that make any sense? Yeah, there's a lot there. And I think part of this is I want to get to your personal story and how it relates to everything you're talking about because I think that will bring it home. First, why did you decide to become a Navy SEAL? Well, that is, it actually kind of relates to what we were just talking about. I was 21, had just graduated from Colgate University with an econ degree. A bunch of my friends and I had gotten these jobs down in New York City where we were going to go to NYU and get our MBAs there and work for these big aid accounting firms. Now they recruited from like Colgate and Williams and Amherst and Yale and Harvard. And it was a big cohort.

The idea was that they were going to create a much more well-rounded partner at the accounting and consulting firms, you know, those who weren't just, you know, bean counters. And I had no accounting, you know, background at Colgate. So I went to this program, got my master's in business administration, my MBA, became a certified public accountant. I was working for Cooper's and Libran, which is now PricewaterhouseCoopers. At any rate, early in my time down in New York, like literally within three months of landing in New York, city in Manhattan, I started training in Zen meditation. And it was through a martial arts program. But, you know, I like to say that my grandmaster was a Zen master masquerading as a karate instructor.

And so he taught us Zen. We sat in meditation, you know, every day during before and after class and then these long sessions on Thursday nights, weekend retreats at the Zen Mountain Monastery. So here's this 21, 22-year-old kid who's on the path, you know, to white collar success and wealth, doing all the right things. And I'm sitting on this bench meditating with these monks and my brain is changing. You know, we know now through neuroplasticity, which is certainly not a word that anyone knew about back then. This is 1986. My brain is changing really fast. It's still developing, to be fair,

but now it's developing in new ways. And it's the first time in my life that I had a structured program of self-inquiry and looking within, whereas, you know, most of our lives, especially in the West here, everything's focused outward, you know. And so what happened, I'll try to shorten this up a little bit. What happened was my, as my mind was changing and I was learning to look in, I didn't like what was happening in the outer world. I just found out that the story I was living was a complete misfit for me. I was really miserable as a CPA. I didn't see myself. I couldn't visualize my future in business or white collar or back of the family business, which was kind of the path that was laid out for me. So that whole story, which had been planted in me,

was wrong. And I noticed that because of meditation. I never would have never would have taken the time to really figure that out until some midlife crisis hit me at 45 if I hadn't started meditating when I was 21. And so that, you know, that required, you know, some serious emotional check-in, right? Like, it was a little scary to think that I had totally screwed up and gone down this wrong path. And then if not that, then what? What am I going to do, right? And so I just doubled down in my training and kept, you know, meditating and contemplating and visualizing what it could be. and all of a sudden, it took like a year and a half of this work, Ryan. It's not simple, quick work.

I all of a sudden had these huge insights and breakthroughs. It's almost like I had cracked open a door or a window, you know, to my inner self or my soul. And all of a sudden I was able to see clearly that I was meant to be a warrior and that, you know, that I was a warrior and a leader. And that I wasn't going to fulfill that, you know, that deep energetic drive. You know, you might call it a carmic energy or or my soul driving me that direction. I wouldn't have been able to fulfill it in the current path I was on. And so I started to explore that. And that's when I came, you know, came upon the Navy SEALs and that's what really, really sparked my interest.

You know, within a couple of years after that, I was graduating from SEAL training. And you go through it and I think I've had a number of SEALs and most people understand or they don't understand, but at least we know of the intense training that it takes. takes to just to become a seal, let alone the things that you do after, after you become one. Did your mind or did your thoughts, did you, did you waiver ever in the middle of that and say, maybe I'm not meant to be a warrior and maybe I'm not as much of a leader as I thought because what we're doing here is really hard and I don't like it. I mean, I'm curious of your mindset while going through it.

Yes, that's a great question. I often tell the story about my first day. training. The very first evolution, the evolution is what the seals call each event. I think it's because we're meant to evolve through that. I'm not really sure what the origin of that word is. But anyways, the first evolution was a couple hour, you know, total beach beat down with every instructor in the center. And it was just brutal. But it was a beautiful day. And it was on the beach in Coronado, California. And, you know, we were doing thousands of flutter kicks and pushups and running in and out of the surf zone and climbing the ropes. And it was just brutal.

physically. And one of these in and out of the ocean, they call it hit the surf sessions, and then you roll around on the beach and make yourself a little, they call it a sugar cookie, which is, you know, sand goes in places that you didn't even know you had places. It's extremely uncomfortable. And then you're running with sand and it's chafing you and you're bleeding and everything. You know, it's kind of torture. Anyways, I was having fun, right? Because my perspective was I could be back in New York sitting at a desk right now and I'm on the beach, you know, getting paid to work out, the sun's out. I'm like, this is pretty cool.

And the instructor says, hit the surf. I jump up to hit the surf. I look around for my training buddy, who I went through Officer Canada school with. This guy was a total stud, wanted to be a Navy SEAL for longer than I did. And he was running in the other direction. And he ran to the bell and rang the bell, which signifies acquit. And I asked him later, what happened? And he said, I couldn't figure out in that moment why I was there.

you know but for three years he was telling himself he wanted to be a seal but it was soon as the shit got really hard he couldn't remember he couldn't figure out why he wanted to be there he didn't know his why and for me i the reason i knew my why and i didn't waver i didn't waver at all throughout seal training was because i had visualized it for literally two years after i kind of came to that you know back to the zen bench thing after i came to that conclusion that i was misfit as a CPA and that really was meant to be a warrior and then I'd settled on the seals. It's not like I just snapped my fingers and got into the seals. It literally took me a year and a half to work my way into an offer to go to the seal training. And every day during the time frame,

Ryan, I visualize myself going through seal training and graduating and being completely healthy and, you know, like dominating it. And you understand the power of visualization, I'm sure. But for me, this was hammered home big time when I was 24 doing this because I had something happened, which was extraordinary. Every day for 20 minutes, I was sitting on my bench, I would do my breathing, I would do my Zen, and then I would visualize at the end. I visualize myself, like I said, completing seal training, even getting my seal emblem, we call the Trident pinned on me.

And about nine months into this practice, I had a shift, like a subtle shift. And I can only describe it as a sense of total certainty. that I was going to be a Navy SEAL. The wish had gone away, the hope, any type of anxiety about whether I make it or not had gone away, completely washed away. I had 100% certainty that I would be a Navy SEAL. And then when I showed up at SEAL training,

that certainty was right there with me, and it is as if I'd kind of been there before. And so I call that winning in my mind. I won it in my mind through that arduous practice. And there's a Sunsuit quote that states that victorious warriors win in their mind first and then go to battle while the losers, you know, go to battle hoping to win. Wow.

Okay. So there's a lot there. And one of the things I like to do, Mark, throughout is when we hear incredible stories and good practices is to figure out how we implement and execute into our daily lives. Most people listening, as well as myself, we are not Navy SEALs and we are not going to become Navy SEALs. We hold them in, you know, highest regard, honor them, your American heroes. for those of us listening in the States.

But how does this relate or how would you relate with that story or that practice to somebody who is currently 34 years old working at a big company as a mid-level manager has aspirations to maybe be the CEO or start their own business? What advice do you give to them based upon that story and those practices that you use to become a Navy SEAL? You bet. I would take it back to your first. question. Make it a practice of excellence so that you can sustain that excellence to achieve your

goal. Now, in order for this to work, you have to be visualizing something that's deeply meaningful, inspiring, and aligned with your purpose or your calling in life, right? I don't know if this would work. It probably would, but I've never really tried it. I wouldn't waste my time, I should say, trying it on just something really mundane or like just a promotion or something like that. Deeply, deeply care about is what you're saying. Right. So if you're like to your point, if you're 34 and you're in a career and you deeply desire to be an entrepreneur running your own successful high tech startup, but you really don't know how to get there. Well, of course you're going to, you're going to do the research and you're going to meet people.

You're going to do all that. But the personal practice of excellence is a daily visualization where you see yourself succeeding. Just like I saw myself succeeding as a seal. That was a big audacious. risky proposition for me to turn my back on my MBA and my CPA and all that experience and all that money, you know, to take literally a $500 a month paycheck, you know, going through the training and, you know, like you said, very, very few people make it through seal training. I was the honor man or number one graduate of my class out of 185. We had 19 of us finish.

And I was the honor man is because I largely believe it's because of this practice of visualization. So, you know, anyone listening here, you got to have something in your vision, right, that's, you know, three to five years out that is, that is really, really passionate to you, really important to you. It might be a total career change, a launch of a new business, you know, starting a new division, creating a family, finding a spouse, something like that, you know, finishing your PhD or getting it. But, and then visualize that as a completion. Like, you're done with it. You can even have a calendar. date in your visualization, you see yourself, you know, maybe doing the final stages and completing it. And you have to, you know, see yourself as the type of person who's worthy of achieving that. And you may not feel that today, right? You may feel there's a pretty big gap between who you are now and the type of person you need to be that person. So you visualize yourself as that person. And then

what happens is every day as you visualize and then you take action, that gap closes. And And then all of a sudden, in your mind and your emotional state, you'll notice that you've become that person well before it actually happens. And that gives you just an amazing confidence and momentum. And then you experience these synchronicities as well. You know, doors start to open. Challenges just kind of fall down in front of you. What do you say, Mark, what do you say to people who are skeptical of this of visualization of seeing it? I picture Jason Day before he's about to hit a goal.

golf shot and there are certainly many others. I've used these practices when I played football of the way I use visualization and this may be wrong, but I'm curious to see what you think as an expert on this is it, to me, I visualize to say, look, all I have to do is execute my responsibility, my job. I don't need to necessarily think about the defense and the other 10 guys. Like, what is my responsibility? And then it almost for, it, it's, it brought this sense of calm and ease over me to say, it's really not that bad. You know what I mean? I don't know if that's the right way to do it. But that's how it was helpful to me that I felt like this visualization of like, execute my responsibility, do my job to the best of my ability.

And then literally envisioned certain plays happening to play action fake, looking to safety off and then hitting my receiver for a long touchdown. Like things like that were things that I visualized to help me be successful playing football. But I'm curious to get you. your thoughts in this. Well, there's a lot to unpack here. First, for the skeptics, you know, you can't, I can't tell you you're going to believe something until you experience it. So give it a try and it's okay to be skeptical. But, you know, prove it to yourself. Having said that, research is out, right? When I was doing this, it was on a hope and a prayer and I proved it to

myself in several different domains. Also in the sports domain, I had a very powerful experience of visualization really improving my performance like you, and then this seal experience, and I've used it, you know, I use it constantly now. But the research is out. You know, there's some really, you know, classic studies. One they did on basketball players. They had three, you know, groups, kind of the controlled group who did nothing,

the group that did actual free throws, and then the group that just visualized free throws, and the one that had the best improvement after the study was done were those who visualized the free throws. And the reason for that is you can have. have perfect practice only in one place and that's in your mind. You can never have perfect practice on the field or, you know, in any other demand, just in your mind. And you're greasing the groove, bio, you know, neurobiologically, I guess, it's probably not the right word, but you get

the picture through visualization because there's a subtle effect, you know, it's having a subtle effect on your body, mind system. So the research is out. Then the other thing I would say is if Navy Seals are using it, you know, if top athletes are using it, if astronauts are using it, and if top CEOs of Fortune 100 companies are using it, then why not you, right? Why not you? What type of people do you work with personally one-on-one or in group settings to help them do this? Well, it's probably similar to your audience who's listening. You know, we have entrepreneurs and executives and business owners, and then we have top athletes,

you know, like working with, you know, sports teams like the flyers and the ranks. and also, you know, high schools and football, you know, football programs mostly, but also hockey and whatnot. And then warriors, you know, folks who want to be spec ops generally. That's where we really, really cut our teeth on this starting back in 2006, 2007, was training seals, training special forces and not just U.S., but all allied countries. You know, that was through my business, Seal Fit, right? So we're trying to bring these skills to teach.

ancient techniques to, you know, the modern warrior to try to make them better. So they kind of gotten lost in the Western culture. So speaking of some of your previous work, the way of the seal, you have a fifth anniversary edition coming out soon where there's new material as part of it. So what are some of the new things that you added to this great book? Yeah, thanks for mentioning that. The way of the seal I wrote in 2012. and what's interesting about it is it's getting more and more relevant, right?

So the publisher, where's Reader's Digest came and said, we'd like to do a fifth anniversary edition because the book is actually more relevant now than it was back in 2012 when we launched it for 2013. So I added two new chapters and I revised it and updated it. And it was really neat to be able to go back and revisit a book because usually once they're done, they're done. So I added a chapter called Leading and Accelsiorated, Accelerating Times, and then a second chapter called Secrets to Building an Elite Team, both things that, you know, SEALs know a lot about.

So we, you know, the accelerating times chapter is really about this idea of VUCA, it's an acronym for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. And what my assertion is is that, you know, SEALs and spec ops are masters at dealing with VUCA environments because, you know, the modern battlefield in particular is a very volatile and uncertain and complex and ambiguous environment. but the business world is starting to look that way and leaders need to start thinking like a seal team in combat because things are starting to happen really fast. Change is almost, you know, the pace of change is crushing. And it's creating a lot of uncertainty and confusion in the marketplace. You could have your business completely, you know, trumped or, you know, obsolete within three to five years. And there's estimates that, you know, over 50% of the Fortune 5. 500 will be obsolete in the next five years.

So how do you think and act like this? And that's, you know, that's really what the whole book is about. It's this notion that as leaders, we've got to begin to expand our consciousness, expand our awareness, deepen our concentration and focus, get clarity around the, you know, the really important things so that you can let the little things just kind of work themselves out. You don't have to control all the externals like you did in the old days. The planning processes become very rapid. and using decision models and tools to do super fast, rapid planning, what I call fast twitch iteration,

becoming greatly decentralized, you know, like the blockchain industry is allowing us to think of decentralization with trust and certainty, which is very, very cool because that's going to, you know, help us deal with VUCA. So we had that in the seals. We had a high degree of decentralization. You know, the tactical operator in the field was making decisions that, you know, were at a very high level for conventional military units. You know, they're acting almost like, you know, the lowest enlisted guy was acting like a colonel, you know what I mean, in terms of the

decisions he was empowered to make. And not, you know, not being afraid of risk, but actually learning to embrace risk and learning to move toward failure seeking the lessons that are resident in that process, right? So like seals don't, we're not afraid of failure. We embrace it. We embrace it. We don't mind that stuff happening because we've always got a plan B and a plan C. And we know that no plan survives contact with the enemy. So we've got to fail forward to, you know, to the mission success. So we have a vision for what that success looks like, but the plan is very, very flexible. In fact, the Marines are called Semper Fidelis, which means always faithful. The seals, we use the term Semper Gumby, which means always flexible. So that's the way the modern leader has to

start thinking. One of the things you wrote about in there that I like and my brother and I talk about this quite a bit. Principle four is do today what others won't find your 20x factor. How does that relate to the typical person who may be listening in their working world of doing today what others won't? Yeah, well there's a lot of folks who come to our training at SealFit that, you know, they're really inspired by this principle. Generally speaking, our society has, you know, has weakened us because it's kind of, in every instance, veered us away from hard, from challenge, right? You know, the level of comfort, the level of security and wealth, and everything's, you know, just gotten easy, right?

So, you know, from the simplest things, you know, when I grew up, my mom used to garden with a friend and this shared garden was hard work. It was really hard work. And yet it also fed us, just an amazing amount of nutrients. But, you know, when all of a sudden food became more readily available in the supermarkets, they stopped doing it. You know, part of her wishes she just kept gardening because it's such great exercise and, you know, you get really close to the earth that way. So some of that's coming back today. It's a great example.

When I was growing up, I used to go out and bail hay for hours at a time and, you know, work on my friend's farm. And it was just really hard work. And so I got really comfortable with hard work and I sought to challenge myself both through athletics and through personal challenges. And then it's one of the reasons why the seals were attractive. And seal training was enjoyable to me because I really knew that challenge led to growth and that the warriors choose the severest schools for the most intense growth, which leads to the greatest confidence when you go into combat. So this 20x principle, I learned it at Hell Week.

So the hardest, most intense period of seal training is called Hell Week. It's six days of nonstop around the clock training, no sleep. and I had an instructor, you know, at the beginning of Hell Week, it was on a Sunday, I'd walked over the berm to look at the ocean and do some meditation, which, you know, was uncommon. Even to this day, it's uncommon to see a seal meditating or a trainee meditating, although I imagine is happening more and more often. And the instructor came by and he was watching me, and when I got up to walk back, he goes,

he smiled at me, he goes, hey, don't worry, divine, you're capable of 20 times more than you think you are. And I was like, hmm, maybe. That's interesting. And during Hell Week, I found that as time went on, like day three, Wednesday, I was exhausted, right? No sleep or on the clock training. And all of a sudden, I started to get more alert and I started to get stronger.

And by Thursday, I started to put muscle mass on, which was contrary to any kind of conventional belief. You know, here I am, like my body seems should be completely broken down. I should be looking like a POW. And I'm building muscle mass. And I haven't been, I've been awake for five. days. It's amazing. It was such a huge lesson that your body will adapt to the new reality if you allow it time and if your mind tells it, okay, this is the new reality. Start getting in line.

So it's something I bring into my training with my athletes, warriors, and executives is like, you've got to challenge yourself to prove to yourself that you're capable of 20 times more. And you've got to challenge yourself in a big way. So, you know, every day we find something challenging to do. Every week, something a little bit more challenging, every month a little bit more challenging, every quarter even more challenging than once a year to every 18 months, a real doozy, right? We're spooling up for one of those doozies this weekend. We call it Kokoro Camp. It's our version of Hell Week. It's 50, 50, 50, 5-0 hours of nonstop physical, mental, emotional training. So we've got to get you signed up for that one, right?

Whoa, 50 straight. How many people do that? Yeah, we have a few hundred a year. So people are paying you for you to do to do this type of destruction to them. Yeah, it's crazy, isn't that? That is an awesome business model, Mark. I love it. It's a great business model. No, that's really cool, though.

But the outcomes are incredible. Like the people who graduate Kokoro, they have this kind of experience of life before Kokoro and life after is really different. Yeah. They're more present. They're more aware. They're more confident. you know, they're better listeners.

They claim to be better fathers or mothers. Not everyone makes it through. I mean, our last camp, we had one graduate out of the 30 or so who signed up. You know, it's hard work. That's a little atypical. This is an Irishman, you know, who is just, you know, unbreakable. But it's hard training, but it's extraordinary. Even in trying it, you find your 20x because you expose the gaps in your preparedness and your body and your mind.

usually it's mental and emotional reasons that people quit. You know, it's not physical. Yeah. It sounds like that Irishman had an unbeatable mind, as you might say. Something else from unbeatable mind that I really wanted to ask you about, not to get too deep here, but you write about, and I like the thought of doing this, and I want to hear about you talk about it more.

There's a writing exercise where people write their own personal obituary and basically what would be written. And can you talk to me more about this exercise and why it's beneficial for us to do it? Sure. And I'll tie it into our conversation earlier about visualization. I believe that we're all put on this planet

for a reason, right? You know, I'm a big studier of yoga and the martial arts. So Zen led me to yoga, and I've been doing it since I was 21. And, you know, in yoga, they say you have this thing called Dharma, which is your duty. And it's something that you have to find in your life or you're never going to have peace of mind.

For me to be a warrior and a leader of warriors was my duty and now as a teacher of these principles. So I'm completely aligned. I'm very humbled and grateful that I found that early in my life. If I, you know, had stayed as a CPA or gone back to the family business, I would have been completely off target and I would have been unhappy and I wouldn't have been able to be the person I am today. That's at least my story or my belief system.

And, you know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of value in that as well because it, it requires you or inspires you to do the deep self-awareness work. And, you know, all this spiritual traditions, including even the ancient Stoics and the word traditions, say that's one of the most important things, you know, know thyself, right, is what the Greek said. So this idea of being able to visualize something powerful means that you have to, that thing should be aligned with or directly related to that thing or that aspect of your being that you're trying to move toward, you're trying to become, your Dharma or your duty. So in order to visualize and to move forward powerfully in life, we've got to do the self-awareness exercises to really uncover that. So gets back, gets me back to your question. What I say is you need to like derive a clarity around your purpose and a passionate way that you can fulfill that purpose because, you know, my purpose as a warrior and a leader could have been fulfilled in multiple different ways. So I had to really line it up with things that I was passionate about and that's what led me to the seals. And then also be in alignment with the principles that guide your behavior, right?

Everyone's got a different set of principles. And that's helped helps them know. know where they stand in life. If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything, right? So the exercises, one of the many exercises that I have, my clients do is to write their obituary from the perspective of like a best friend, you know, and so this requires them to visualize their life and to think, you know, very deeply about what is it that's really important, you know,

what do I want people to say about me, you know, on my deathbed? There's a really, you've probably heard this, a really famous story about Alfred Nobel. I think it was Alfred his first name, but it was Nobel, the Nobel Peace Prize guy. Well, he had a twin brother, and his twin brother passed away. And a journalist wrote an obituary, and it was just utterly, and he mixed the two up. So he wrote in the obituary for Alfred Nobel, but it was supposed to be for his brother. He didn't know they were twins. And he just wrote this scathing obituary about how Nobel had been the inventor.

or the modern, you know, creator of dynamite and that, you know, the introduction of dynamite into the military led to like this massive destruction in World War I and millions of deaths. And so Alfred Nobel had the, you know, misfortune of being able to read his own obituary. And he was just mortified. And so he completely changed his life, right? He had a vision of what his life was becoming in this early kind of snapshot obituary. And so he completely and radically changed right then and there. And he created the Nobel Peace Prize and dedicated the rest of his life to peace.

So I think that's a powerful, it's a powerful story and it's a powerful practice to visualize the end, not in a morbid way, but like, okay, you've done well. You've done it right. You've fulfilled your God-given purpose for being on this planet. You've served, you know, whoever you're meant to serve in a very powerful way. good job what was that like what did that look like you know yeah and so this requires you to use deep reflection and visualization and you know a little bit of humility because we're not saying you know hey you know i'm i've got you know a billion dollars in the bank and right i've got all these girlfriends and everyone loves me it's not about that it's about how did you impact the world

right positively you mentioned a word in there um about teaching and being a teacher. And one of the other aspects of what you've written about is kind of a progression. And the master approach is to train for 10 years and then teach for 10 years. And then only then you can begin to teach teachers. And I'm curious how this works if I would relate this to sports. And I think about somebody like Brad Stevens of the Boston Celtics or even Bill Belichick, these guys were not professional players themselves.

So their training, I may be perceived as being different because they didn't do what the people that they're coaching did. Yet they're world class at it, just to name a couple. There are many. I'm curious of your thoughts of that 10 years and 10 years to become a master, how that applies to maybe them as well as others in the business world. Well, in that scenario, I think it's easy to confuse coaching with athleticism, right? They're very different skills. Okay. And some of the best coaches were not the best athletes.

And so the best coaches did follow this path. You know, they observed and studied coaching. Then they did it. You know, they did it at various different levels all the way up until they were so masterful at it they were winning. And then they were teaching and mentoring, you know, their staff to do it at that level, which then helped the whole team and organization develop that expertise and master. And so the teams that win, you know, it's a multifaceted level of mastery. It's individual mastery, it's team mastery, and it's organizational mastery.

So I think that, you know, first of all, let's be clear, when you read something, like if you purchase the way of the seal fifth anniversary edition and you read it, you know, reading it or hearing something, you know, you're going to retain maybe 10 to 20% of it. That's not deep learning. But then if you take the principles that you read about, and let's see, you choose three that inspire you, like my box breathing and visualization and maybe this, you know, developing your personal ethos like we just talked about. And you start doing it and you work it individually. And all of a sudden you start to experience the benefit of that and

you continue to practice that and you do it for a long period of time. All of a sudden you develop kind of a mastery about it. But you're not going to achieve the highest level mastery until you then turn around and start, you know, teaching it or showing the way to other people, right? And so that's where you're going to end up really, really owning it, right? Where the information, you know, flows out of you with the effortless perfection. You know, there's a Japanese term called Shibumi. It means effortless perfection. That's when we find flow.

That's when, you know, it looks absolutely easy, you know, to other people. people even though nobody else can do it. You know, I just read a story yesterday. I'm really always reading, you know, about yoga or Taoism or, you know, some of these, I just love some of these ancient books and those concepts. There was an old practice done by these ancient kind of Taoist kung fu masters to kind of demonstrate and test their mastery. And they would fight on a four foot by four foot table that had overturned. turn teacups on it. And the two masters would jump up effortlessly on the table and immediately begin to fight

standing and moving on these teacups. And they couldn't fall off or they couldn't break a teacup. That would demonstrate, you know, complete failure and kind of shame. And so they'd be juking and jiving, you know, on dancing around these teacups. And often these, these duels ended up in a draw, right? Because the masters were just that good. That's incredible, isn't it? that's that's lifetime of effort yeah i um i love your ask but you're the way you respond to

um going deep on specific topics that movie because i i truly believe that that's that's the way to go about this from from a learning perspective cal newport talks about deep work right this focusing on a specific principle and going deep on that and then one of the exercises i i've actually done is is ask people if they had to get give just like a 15 to 20 minute talk on a topic that they feel like they've mastered. Could they get up and do it immediately? And I think the quickest way to reinforce what you've learned is then to teach it to others. And it can help reinforce that learning and create more learning when you're forced to be in a

position to teach. Think about any time someone's asked you to say, okay, you have a week and you're going to give a presentation on this specific topic. And you may be passionate about the topic, but your deep learning comes throughout that preparation of getting ready for a big moment in your life. Right. Right. Yeah, I love that.

I mean, we live in a very distracted world. We have so many options. There's so many options when it comes to, you know, personal excellence and, you know, hacking. And, you know, I'm not a big fan of the whole hacking movement. I think, you know, it kind of, it goes back to what we were talking about, this impression that everything's easy. You know, just take a new atropic and put a muse on your head and all of a sudden, you know,

you're going to perform better. No. You know what? Meditation takes a little sustained practice and discipline, daily discipline. So does optimizing your physical and emotional health. You know, so one of the things I think that we could benefit from is, you know, in alignment with Kel, Newport's work, deep work, is to simplify our lives and to start making very deliberate choices to get rid of things and to focus, I call it, covering down,

cover down on a much narrower range of things that we want to be really, really good at. You know, it reminds me of Miyamati Mashashi's, you know, work. He said that, you know, you can, you can learn 100,000 sword strikes and do each of them once, or you can take one sword strike and do it 100,000 times. And which ones do you think is going to lead to mastery, right? Yep. The second approach. And so when it comes to, you know, doing work like I describe in the way of the seal, which is really a personal excellence program toward mastery so that you can serve more powerfully as a leader, there are many paths, but there's only one mountaintop that's right, you know, one

destination. And so you can't take all the paths. You can't try all the things, right? You know, you can't practice yoga and Tai Chi and Qigong and Jiu-Jitsu and CrossFit, you know, and be a runner and a swimmer and a, you know, kayaker. and you know what I mean you just can't do it all you have to really choose one or two things that you love to do and so figuring out what those things are that you love to do that's the tricky part and as you've said success is defined by choice and small choices make a difference between good and excellent it's every day

the consistency of it the compound effect as Darren Hardy might say that that is in parallel to i think what you're talking about is that brick by brick by brick consistently doing it every single day is the path towards excellence. Absolutely. If you want to be uncommon, do the common things uncommonly well. I love it, Mark. This is great, man. I could talk to you forever, and I really appreciate your investment here. I love your work, and I thank you for your service to this great country. I'm very appreciative of it, man. Where would you send my listeners to learn more about you online? Well, if anyone was inspired by the physical training program, we have is called seal fit our website has an enormous

repository of really cool free information and videos it's called seal fit like navy seal but just scea l-fit.com also there's you know all my books are kind of linked there and then the executive leadership development program or the entrepreneurial development program is called unbeatable mind I also have a book called unbealed mind it's available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and unbealmind.com will take you to the training that we offer there.

So those are probably the two best digital resource. Of course, we can be found on Facebook and Twitter and all those social handles as well. Awesome. Well, I love it, Mark, and I definitely want to continue our dialogue as we both progress. It's been a lot of fun reading your work and then getting to talk directly with you about it, man. Indeed. I really appreciate it, Ryan. It's been a lot of fun.

I look forward to, you know, forward to more. All right. Thanks, Mark. You bet. Take care. We are. A true honor for me to speak with Mark Devine. That one was enlightening. I really enjoyed it, got a lot out of it. I hope you did as well. So big thank you to Mark for joining me.

And thank you for listening and for your support. I love it. If you would write a review, subscribe and rate the show an iTunes Apple podcast. That's write a review. Subscribe and rate it. Hopefully five stars on iTunes Apple Podcasts. Really helps spread the message all over the world.

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