The School of Greatness - 3 Navy SEAL-APPROVED Mindset Shifts That Will Help You Take Your Life Back

Episode Date: February 16, 2024

In today's episode, we're joined by three incredible Navy SEALs who are here to guide us through the journey of overcoming our limiting beliefs and smashing through obstacles to reach our dreams. David Goggins dives into the power of reframing our mindset to conquer our goals. Jocko Willink shares wisdom on becoming better leaders and silencing self-doubt so we can support others effectively. And Jason Redman, a former Navy SEAL, speaker, and author, walks us through his personal process for tackling life's toughest challenges, no matter what life throws at us.In this episode you will learnThe important questions you need to ask yourself so you can achieve your fullest potential and live without regrets. How your mindset will determine the outcome of your life. The difference between feeling lost in life and not being satisfied with where you currently are. The biggest mistakes people make when trying to be a strong leader. How Navy Seals break down their goals and how you can apply it to real life.For more information go to www.lewishowes.com/1576For more Greatness text PODCAST to [phone]More episodes we think you’ll LOVE:Eckhart Tolle – https://link.chtbl.com/1463-podRhonda Byrne – https://link.chtbl.com/1525-podJohn Maxwell – https://link.chtbl.com/1501-pod

What people don't understand is that they live for themselves, not knowing that you have the power within yourself to change millions of lives by facing life, by facing yourself. And through that... Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Welcome to this special masterclass. We brought some of the top experts in the world to help you unlock the power of your

life through this specific theme today. It's going to be powerful, so let's go ahead and dive in. I achieved so much. I was a Navy SEAL. I've gone through ranger school. I've gone through Delta Force selection training. I've done so much. I run 200 miles, pull-up records, everything. Learned to read and write, became pretty intelligent. I still was like, man, what is wrong with me? It wasn't until I got real sick, and I talked about in the last chapter of that book, I got real sick, and I was about 38 years old. I'm 43 now. And my life got real quiet.

I went from running 205 miles in 39 hours to I couldn't get out of bed. The doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. But once again, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. Why is that? In that moment when my whole life changed, I went from a guy who worked out every day trained every day to a guy who couldn't get out of bed my life was taken from me the one thing that kept me going was my training now you didn't have i didn't have anything i each had to

sit alone alone and not train and that's what changed me and that's when i realized i hadn't thought i hadn't taken time to think about what I've done in my life got it reflected yet I am reflected I've done all these things but there was no finish line I still believe that but you must have time to reflect yeah I was just going I wouldn't even I finished a race of life now when you receive my medal I go on you're like on to the next I get in the car and I go you won't even even take the medal. Gone. Don't care about it. I'm not gonna waste an hour sitting around for this ceremony. Most people sit around and that's what they like.

They need the ceremony if I accomplished something. Validation. I haven't done anything. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. I'm just getting started. I'm just getting started. That's right. When I started figuring out life that I was leaving so much in the tank, I called it my 40% rule. I was leaving so much in the tank. Once I realized, my God, man, I was this dumb, fat kid being bullied. And now I'm a 180-pound person who lost 106 pounds in less than three months. Learn to read, learn to do this, learn to do that. I was like, I need more.

I was fueling my mind with everything. And I never took time to say, my God, you came from this and you're here. So those insecurities, and this is how I explain it the best way. SEAL training became pretty hard and a lot of guys weren't getting through it. So they designed a SEAL prep program. Like a boot camp for the boot camp. That's right. And it was two months.

In my last two years before I retired from the military, they sent me there to train these kids. To get ready for BUDS. 18, 19, 20 year olds. Yeah. Young kids. So when they'd get to Navy SEAL training, they were physical studs. They were running, swimming. I mean, they were

hybrids. Wow. But they'd get to BUDS and the same amount of people would quit. Why is that? This is why. swimming I mean they were they were hybrids Wow but they get the buds and the same amount of people would quit why is that this is why we were training bigger stronger faster quitters hmm it's not about not the mind it's right we weren't diving into the sewer everybody's got a story we don't share it on social media we share our nice life on social media we have we all have a dungeon I'm just willing to talk about mine yeah most of us are willing to talk about it I'm gonna talk about my dungeon I wasn't getting into the dungeon of these guys

minds I wasn't building that so-called mental toughness. Mental toughness isn't something that you sample. It's something that you live in every day. So when something hard would happen to these kids, like in Hell Week, it would draw on something that made them very insecure, and they look for comfort. Whenever hardness comes, and you don't know what it is, it may be different for you than it is for me, but you go back to your insecurities. And then when you go back to your insecurities, you then look for comfort within those insecurities. And we all look for that cookie that your mom used to give you when you were sad, when you were sick. We look for our wife or our husband. We look for comfort. It's in those moments

you must retrain your mind to think differently. I wasn't training them to do that. Why weren't you training them? I wasn't training myself to do that because at that time I was doing what I was told. These guys need to be a standard physical standard a physical standard the physical standard is not what they need to meet it's a mental standard you must meet in life so going back to when I was sick I was hitting the physical standards I wasn't meeting the mental standard. The mental standard is you must know how far you've come. Wow. I wasn't. I had come 8,000 miles from where I started.

But if you never know that, you're still in the $7 a month place. When I was sick, I was able to slow it down and reflect back on my entire life. And in that bed, and I thought I was dying because that story is long. slow it down and reflect back on my entire life. And in that bed, and I thought I was dying, because that story is long, that sick portion of my life is long. I didn't care if I died or lived. Because I was for the first time in my life happy and at peace.

Because I reflected back on where I started. You said, wow, I have come a long way. That's right. And no one saved me. It wasn't like someone came down here and guided me through life. When you figure this out on your own, the amount of pride and dignity and self-respect you have. That's why I walk around the streets with a backpack and just like, I don't need anything else. Yeah.

backpack and just like i don't need anything else yeah you figure it out by going inside yourself by callusing over the victim's mentality you're always a victim even if you have everything in life until you realize what you've achieved you have to first realize what you've achieved and my mom has accomplished so much in her life since my father. But she hasn't done that one step. Really? She doesn't acknowledge it and reflect back? She continues to go back to the dungeon of her past life. And live in that space. And live in that space versus living in the space that she's in now

and reflecting back on, my God, this is what I've done with my life. Have you talked to her about this? We talk about it all the time. And you have to be willing to go there. You have to be willing to really go there. Not surface. I don't live on the surface of anything. Surface is what got me where I was at.

It got me from 175 pounds to 300 pounds. Telling everybody I'm good. I don't give a ****. I'm good. No. They're hollow words. A lot of us speak in hollow words. I used to speak in hollow words. I don't do anymore.

Everything that comes out of my mouth has substance. It's real. And we all have these feelings in our bodies, in our minds, in our souls. I act on mine. A lot of us who are afraid of something, we allow our minds to choose the path that leads to resistance,

so we go a different route. When I'm afraid of something, it's telling me you must conquer that. You must do that. You have to go that way. And most of us don't understand that mentality. We go left, and we wonder why we haven't fulfilled something in our lives

is because we continue to take the journey that is mapped out and how i look at is i i talk in life like a lot of us in life want to take the four lane highway that has road maps and all this other stuff on it man tells you where to go gas stations the next The next 10 miles up, you're going to see a McDonald's, a Cracker Barrel. Yeah. It's the easy route. Very few of us want to go to the right side. That Cracker Barrel is that Midwest life.

That's right. That's right. That's right. I'm from Ohio. It's all about it, man. Indiana. Cracker Barrel everywhere. Dude, that's amazing.

Bringing back memories. This is powerful because I've been telling people this. I've been living that way unknowingly my whole life of like whatever the thing is I'm afraid of. When I was in high school, I started doing those things. Right. And it was just like I'm sick and tired of feeling afraid. Right. So I need to do the things that scare me the most.

That's right. You know, I've talked about this a lot on the podcast. Tiffany's heard me share these stories. But I was afraid to talk to girls when I was a teenager. I was afraid of dancing. I was afraid of, like, singing and playing music in front of people. I was afraid of all these different things. And so I said, I want to do this.

I'm going to give myself a challenge every single day until the fear goes away. That's right. And I feel like that's what more of us should be doing. I'm hearing that that's how you live your life. That's all it is, man. And it helps me feel so much more confident when you overcome that fear yeah I'm saying this doesn't have control over me anymore right it's

like you can be at such more peace it's a hundred percent life most of like friends I never thought my wildest dreams I could be a Navy SEAL it's until you opened your mind open-mindedness creates that we all shut down our mind like for instance when I broke the pull-up record, everybody around me who heard the pull-up record was 4,020 pull-ups. That's the first thing they did. Oh my God.

4,024 hours or was this- Yeah, it's 4,020 pull-ups in 24 hour period. Yeah, yeah. The first thing I did versus closing my mind, you're like, oh my God, that's crazy. I went and got a pen and- How many is that every minute? Exactly.

Every hour, every second. Instead of taking life and making it out to be this grandiose thing, start breaking it down. Start breaking it down. And most of us, we live in a box and we don't want to go outside that box at all, ever. and we don't want to go outside that box at all ever outside that box is all these possibilities of life but we do we shackle our mind we are a prisoner in our own mind that this is all I can do is all I'm good at and we we take away

the possibilities you could be this you could be that you could be all these things and I never thought at 300 pounds I could be Navy SEAL. So if my mind was shackled, me and you would never meet. There'd be no book. There'd be no book. There'd be nothing. So what people understand is that they live for themselves, not knowing that you have the power within yourself

to change millions of lives yeah by facing life by facing yourself and through that I would die never knowing that I had the power to change millions of lives it will haunt me the most people ask me what haunts you the most what haunts me the most is that if I would have died at 300 pounds let's say I was 75 years old, I got to heaven, and God has a chart like that on everybody's life. God knows all. Let's say that. I don't care what you believe in.

It doesn't matter. I'm not judging anybody. But let's say my thing is God. You get to heaven. I'm 300 pounds. I sit down. I was a cockroach, terminated my whole life. And we're sitting down just like this. You and I'm David and he gives me that chart

And he says look at this now. I'm looking at this chart and on the chart It has all these different things But my name's on it, but these things aren't me I Was gonna change the world I was gonna I was gonna set records I said be a Navy SEAL I was gonna be to be all these things in the military that I accomplished. You're going to get the VFW award. You're going to be honored here, honored there. I'm like, God, this isn't me.

Like it says David Goggins, I was an eco lab guy. I sprayed for cockroaches, and I'm 300 pounds. It said here I'm 185. It says here I got a bachelor's and a master's. It says all these things. And God goes, no, that's who you were supposed to be. Wow. My biggest fear in life is if there is a final resting place in this world

and there's a final judgment and you talk to something much bigger than you. I don't want to sit down and have a conversation with someone with something that says, you're in heaven. This is what you should have been on earth. And are you really in heaven now? I'm thinking about how much I left on the table for fear, for not willing to go over the wall and over the next wall and over the next wall. So in my mind, I believe that. And God knows all. At least I believe that.

I want God to be up there right now as we're speaking, writing stuff down, saying, my God, he exceeded even my expectations. That's how I live my life. I now know that there is no cap on the human mind there's no cap we cap it ourselves wow is there a cap on the human body that's right is there one there I I don't believe so because one thing I found out was I didn't, for several years I gave myself a way out. When you were 300 pounds? When I was 300 pounds, when I was, all the way up until I was 24 years old. I would climb a mountain, I'd fall back down.

I'd start climbing, I'd fall back down for the first 24 years of my life. I went to my first hell week my second hell week and then my third hell week came and still training and the CEO captain Bowen looked at me I'm on crutches I'm all jacked up he says hey this is your last time you're gonna go through buds this is it I had several stress fractures I had double pneumonia I was jacked up and he gave me a few months to heal. He said, this is your last time going through. I shouldn't

even let you go back through. I started Navy SEAL training with stress fractures. Stress fractures. Not shin splints. Stress fractures. Starting the hardest training in the world with stress fractures. This is when I

started to not put a cap on the body, if the mind is there. Every morning, I would wake up at 3, 3 in the morning, 4 o'clock in the morning, go to my dive cage, go in there before anybody saw me. I'd get duct tape, and I would tape from my forefoot all the way up to the mid of my calf, and I would put two black socks on. And so I ran not using the pivot. Oh, my gosh. And I ran my hip flexors. So for the first 45 minutes to an hour, I was in absolute excruciating pain. But what motivated me through that whole process was the fact that this kid came from that.

I'm in the hardest training in the world, in the worst shape of my entire life. What if I can graduate amongst these studs? Wow. All these guys around me are studs. They're stallions. They're gladiators in my class. They're all healthy, most of them.

They're not broken like this. They may have some, you know, everybody's sick going through that training. But if I can graduate, it would change everything for me. If I can start the hardest training in the world broken and graduate. So my mind fed off of that. You are now from the weakest man. You are now the hardest man to ever live if you can do this life is one big mind game yeah and you're playing with

yourself is it true I don't care it got me through the hardest training starting out broken mmm where most people quit, I had just started. Wow. And when you take that mindset and you learn to flip that around, that's what made me powerful. And my body followed. And three months later, my stress fractures were healed by running on them. Calcifying it, just like.

I never had them since. I'm 43 years old. Wow. I ran 7,000 miles in 2007. Haven't had a stress fracture since. And I'm not saying to do that. I'm just saying that when the mind and the body connect, and you don't give yourself a way out.

The only way out for me at that time was death. Wow. I'm going to be a Navy SEAL. Or I'm going to die. Or I'm going to die trying. Yeah. Period. And my body said, Roger that.

We're going to get you through this. So when the mind gives it no way out. No way out. Your body says, Okay. Okay. I believe you now. I have to heal. I'm going to figure this out with you.

Yes. I'm going to do this. It's going to be the worst part of your life, but you're going to survive. We're going to survive. Wow. And as you hear in that 100-mile race I did, I started figuring out more and more and more and more about at the other end of suffering is a life that no one, and I'm not talking about go out there and kill yourself. Don't take these words and flip them

and say, oh my God. No. Just be uncomfortable. I call it suffering. Don't physically injure yourself. Yes. Not saying that. And then be out for six months.

That's right. That's no good. That's no good. I'm not saying do what I did. Yeah. I was in a spot that life forced me. I had a choice. I had a choice to be this guy or the guy that's in front of you.

I had choices. I chose this path. And you're still choosing it. I'm still choosing it. You can go back to that guy at any moment. Because I found out. I found out something with those stress fractures. I found out something through facing all these things.

those stress fractures i found out something through facing all these things i found out a whole nother world which is why i walk around with all my stuff in a black backpack wow i found out a whole nother way a whole nother way of no matter how far you get in life you have to be able to go back to scratch in your mind at a moment's notice you can never get so far beyond scratch what that means is when you accomplish something in life if you want to go back to scratch and go back to that seven dollar a month place where i once lived and visit that place for a long period of time if you were here when you went back to scratch you would now be here mmm scratch is what makes you better scratch friction obstacles create growth there's no friction when you're this far up in the game anymore you think there is the room that's right you cheese so much the friction is is minor because

why I'm sore I'm gonna get a massage today I'm hungry I'm gonna eat today the refrigerator is always full so your comforts are now so your discomfort is now very minuscule to your discomfort back here in the seven dollar a month place so you have to go back to the total discomfort to then raise your level of where you're at now. I'm not saying stay there and stay there. Visit. Visit it. And then you raise your level. You can't be extreme in one direction or the other, right? You can't be, if you're in a leadership position, you can't talk all the time, right? Obviously as a boss, you can't talk all the time, right?

Obviously as a boss, you need to communicate, you need to talk to your people. But if you talk too much, guess what happens? People stop listening to you, you're putting out too much information, they don't know what's important and what's not. So that's bad, you can't go too far in that direction. The other direction is you can't not talk enough

and now no one knows what's going on, no one knows what's happening. So you have to be balanced and that's the whole idea of the dichotomy of leadership. But probably the first dichotomy in leadership that I had to say to myself, you know what, there's another side to this, is I used to tell the young SEAL officers

that you have to be aggressive. You gotta be default aggressive, that's how you gotta be. Because when something's going on, you gotta be aggressive to get that problem solved. And if you're not being aggressive, then you're hesitating, well, then you can get killed. Okay, so there you go.

And that's what I used to tell guys. And as I was telling- That's extreme, that's an extreme style. Yes, that's the problem with it. And so the question is, can you be too aggressive? Yes. Absolutely. You can, hey, there's a machine with a nest over there.

Let's attack it. So you charge up the hill and everyone dies. You've been too aggressive. So what you have to do is you have to be balanced. And that's probably, so even as I had these kind of mantras, like default aggressive, can you do too much of that? Yes, you can. So you end up with this, what do you end up?

Can you be too passive? Oh yeah, absolutely. Well, now we're not making any progress. Now we're getting crushed by the enemy because we didn't maneuver. Okay, so that's bad. So where do you want to be? You want to be balanced.

Even the idea of extreme ownership. Can you take too much ownership? Yes. Yes you can. Really? Yes you can. I thought you said you need to take ownership of everything.

Two different things. Listen to this. If you're working for me, and I say okay, here's the mission that I want you to accomplish tonight here's the people I want you to take here's the weapons I want you to bring here's the vehicles I want you to bring here's the here's the route I want you to use to get to the target here's the method I want you to use to secure the

target here's the route I want you to do to get back yeah so that's the plan now you take ownership and and go execute now can you really take ownership of that plan? If someone else gave you the whole thing? I mean, I gave you the whole thing, right? Is that your plan? No. No, it's not your plan.

It's my plan. So when you go in the field and now you come up against an obstacle and you're executing my plan, what's your attitude? Well, it's not my plan. It's his plan. And you're at an obstacle now and you're like, hey, Jocko didn't think of this.

Right, right. So his plan's hard. So now you just back away and you come back and you say, hey, we failed the mission because you didn't think of this. You didn't think of this option. Right, so that's me taking too much ownership. So what I need to do is I say, hey, here's the plan or here's the mission, how do you want to do it?

And now if you're a good leader, you'll go get with your people and you'll say, oh, hey guys, here's the plan or here's the mission that we have to accomplish. How do you guys want to do it? Now you all come up with a good plan and you come back to'll say oh hey guys here's the plan or here's the mission that we have to accomplish how do you guys want to do it now you all come up with a good plan and you come back to me and you say here's the plan and i say that looks pretty good go execute and now when you hit an obstacle in the field what's your attitude i need to adapt and adjust what's your plan you'll make it come up with this yeah yes so can you take too much ownership the answer is yes you can so with just about every So with just about every, you can name a trait, right? You can name a trait from a leadership perspective that you think is a

positive trait. And you'll immediately see that if you go too far with it, it'll become bad. It'll become bad. So you have to be balanced. So even as I came up with the dichotomy of leadership, I had to be humble enough to say to myself, you know what, being aggressive is really, really good most of the time, but if you're too aggressive, that's not good. So like you said earlier, you're constantly questioning everything. And to me, what that is, that's humility.

That's you being humble enough to say, you know what, I really don't understand this that well. And there's some things in my life that I don't get. Whereas as opposed to you walking around saying, I already got this figured out. I already know what I'm doing. I already know where I'm going. I already know what God is specifically.

I already know what's gonna happen to me when I die. All those things. But instead you're questioning everything, which in my mind is a positive thing. Yeah, that's good to know. Is there anything that is missing in your life? You feel like something's missing i i know i feel like i'm living a pretty good life right now i mean i'm totally blessed i

mean i got a great family i got great kids i got a great company i got working with great people yeah no healthy good healthy you know i get to work out train I'm feeling good in the dream man yeah living the dreams you never feel like there's something missing for you right and if there is you're working towards it you're working on the next book you're building the business yeah well there's a difference between something missing and am i satisfied yeah right because I'm not satisfied I mean I always want to go like I never I never get done with the end of the day and go, cool, mission accomplished.

It's like you've got to be close. So you're not satisfied, but you feel like nothing's missing. Yeah. Yeah, I'd say that's a fair statement. What brings you the most joy in your life and makes you smile the most? Oh, I mean, my kids. My kids are cool. My wife and kids. My wife are cool. They're funny. My wife and kids.

Yeah, my wife and kids are cool and funny and we have a good time and lots of inside jokes and all that. Yeah. You know, and I train Jiu-Jitsu and that's very fun. And surf, that's fun. Yeah.

Play guitar, that's fun. How old are your kids again? Age 20, 18, 16, and and 10 and what's the biggest lesson you learned about being about yourself being a father to them your kids are not going to be who you want them to be you can't train them today they're going to be who they are and you can give them some course corrections a little bit but they're going to be who they who they are and the more you try and force them into what you want them to be the harder they're gonna push back and rebel Wow yep did you learn that the hard way

or did you get yeah she tried to train them into a certain way or yeah somewhat and it's pretty obvious, like from my perspective, I was having a similar conversation with a bunch of executives and they were, we were talking, we went down the road because we're having dinner now, so we're done talking about work, but now everyone wants to ask me about,

you know, parenting and everything else. And I said at the table, I'm like, "'Hey, who here ended up doing exactly "'what their parents wanted them to do?' And there's like one guy out of ten Right because most people you know your parents are bound to do this thing then you do something else I mean I joined the Navy when I was 18 years old like that's that what probably wasn't even on the checklist of Top 20 things that my parents wanted me to do not even the same ballpark, right? They want you to war

Yeah, they didn't want that. So here you go. Yeah. See ya that's so the more you try and kind of pigeonhole your kids into being something that you want them to be the worse off it's going to be it's it's the same thing with leadership it's the same thing with leadership if i'm if i'm trying to force my plan down my team's throat the more resistance i'm going to get it. Whereas if I plant the seed and I allow that plan to grow with them, the better it's gonna be received. Like when people ask me, how do you get people to buy in? Well, you allow them to come up with a plan yourself.

What if in your mind you're like, you really know that plan is not that good? It depends on how bad it is. How bad is it? What's at stake? If you're working for me and you're going to meet with a client and you have a bad pitch that you're gonna give them and the client is some tiny client that I think is a low probability of us working with and the contract doesn't really matter I'd be like hey hey give it a shot here's a

couple I might give you a couple adjustments adjustments and give you some coaching on it. And then you go and you do your thing and you come back and you're like, oh, no, we didn't land it. And I say, well, what do you think? Let's debrief. And now we talk about it. I said, you know, you said this and you said that. Here's some other ways to go about it. I might even actually have you do it to me.

So then I could sit there and take some notes and say, hey, here's some other things that might have worked. Now, if you were going to meet with a big client that really was gonna have value to our company I'm gonna I'm gonna eat up in yeah I'm gonna step in and be like okay let's think about that what's their reaction gonna be and by the way that's what I'm not gonna say no don't do it that way I'm gonna say give me that tell me that again and let me hear you let me give you some objections that you might hear from them and all of a sudden I'll let you come up with the solutions even though I said they're going to yeah what he needs all of a sudden, I'll let you come up with the solutions. Even though all of a sudden they're going, yeah, what he needs to say is this.

No, I'll let you come up with a solution. So then you're kind of going in there like you got this dialed. And then you're gonna feel like you won, which you did. That's great. Which is great. It gives you more ownership, more respect in yourself, confidence, belief.

How important is feedback for leaders? Getting feedback from peers, coaches, or employees, team members. Feedback is how you get better. No feedback, no improvement. And if you're not humble, you're not looking for feedback and you're not listening to it. So if you think you know everything, you're not listening,

you're not asking for it, and even when it gets told to you, you don't listen to it. So feedback is built upon being being humble what would you say is in your way to getting to the next level what feedback do you think you need to hear or receive from your team or people in order to reach the next goals that you have i mean the weird thing about me is even though you might think look at me and think oh who's going to tell this guy anything right the reality is if anyone of my friends, my team, anyone that works for me up and down the chain of command,

if they think I'm wrong, everyone will say, hey, I don't know if that's a good plan. So even, you know, when I was a task unit commander, in, so I'm in charge, and I'm the head seal for these 40 seals, I'm the main guy. Anyone in that chain of command, those guys would all come to me and say, hey, I don't know if this is a good way to do it. And you know what I'd say?

Why not? What do you think? What are you thinking? How do you think we should do it? My mind is open. If my plan is bad, please tell me. They would know that. So my friends, my family,

they'll tell me when I'm doing something wrong all day long. They're not intimidated or scared of you? No. That's good. No. So how does a leader cultivate that with his family, friends, team, in order to welcome the feedback or the information? Yeah, what you do is when somebody gives you feedback, you listen to it.

This is like, you know, just the other day we have a leadership event that we do two or three times a year. But the thing that I was telling this group of people was, as a leader, you should be listening 98% of the time and talking 2% of the time. So every time you come to me and you say, hey, Jocko, I don't like this plan. I don't say shut up and do it my way. I say, how would you want to do it? Tell me what you don't like about it and then don't say shut up and do it my way. I say, how would you wanna do it? Tell me what you don't like about it and then tell me how you wanna do it.

So therefore, the next time you have an objection, you're like, you know the door's open, you know that I'm gonna be open-minded and listen to you and that's how you build it. Every time you shut someone down from speaking their mind, you actually are creating a negative environment where you're not gonna get the feedback. And if there's no feedback, as we just said,

you're not gonna improve. What are two things that any leader could do to improve their leadership skills, right off the bat, two things you can think of, and what are two things that wannabe leaders do that hold them back from being great leaders? So what are two things they could add yeah you have number one is listen which which we just talked about so that's fresh on my mind and

you'd be surprised about how many leaders are thinking that because they're in a leadership position they should be talking all the time wrong answer wrong answer i'll sit through a meeting with a client or with one of my companies and I'll listen for 38 minutes. And at the end of those 38 minutes, I'll have already thought through every discussion that's been had. You know, you want to argue with him and he's arguing with her. And guess what? I get to sit there and assess those arguments and see which one is the most important. Meanwhile, you're expending all your ammunition. She's expending all her ammunition. He's given up everything he's got. I'm learning all their thought patterns. I'm learning the pros and cons of each one of their arguments.

And I do that for 38 minutes. And in the 39th minute, I say, hey, here's what I think we should do. And guess what? Because I've done an accurate assessment and listened, I'm actually going to be able to make the best decision. It wasn't because I was smarter. It wasn't because I had better tactical understanding. It's because I actually shut my mouth, listened to everyone spill their guts, learned everything that they knew, and did a good detached assessment of what the right thing to do was.

So listen. And the other one is the word that I just used, which is detached, which is not getting emotional, not getting emotional Not getting into the weeds about stuff that doesn't matter if you can take a step back and look around You're gonna see infinitely more than you can When you're in the weeds Staring the firefight in the face looking down the sights of your weapon shooting. If you're doing that, you can't see anything else.

Just think about that metaphor right there. If I'm looking down the sights of my weapon and I'm shooting, my world is this big. The minute that I stop shooting, point my weapon at high port, take a step back and actually look around, I can see infinitely more. So apply that to a meet, this is the meeting

that we just talked about a 38-minute meeting all this chaos is happening sure I'm the boss I could jump in there and start arguing and giving my opinion but what am I really doing then what I'm really doing then is I'm in the weeds and I'm not able to assess what is actually happening so that so there you apply it there to your personal life if you and I are arguing you're my friend and you did something and now we're starting to escalate an argument and I'm starting to get emotional am I able to listen to you anymore am I able to logically figure out what's going on if I'm talking to my wife and she did something that made me mad and now I'm starting to raise my

voice is that is that whole situation going in the right direction? No. No, it's not. It's not. So what I need to do is take a step back, detach, calm down, listen to what she's saying, and then try and assemble a logical thing to say back without saying, you need to calm down. Or you're too emotional. No, no, no, no, no. need to calm down or you're too emotional no no no no because if you come to me and you're mad about something you come to me whether it's whether it's my wife or whether you're a business partner you come to me and you say the dang the supply department didn't give me the stuff i needed if i say hey calm down right if that's my reaction then you realize that I'm against you right I

don't get it and so now it's me and the supply department against you no one understands no one understands so I do a little technique what is that yeah I call I call it reflect and diminish so I'm gonna reflect your emotions back to you but I'm gonna diminish them a little bit so that we're not escalating the situation. How would you do this with your wife? So if you, well, if you come to me and you go, the supply department's been late,

they're two weeks late on this stuff. I don't say, calm down. I say, oh, you gotta be kidding me. Two weeks? And you go, yeah, can you believe it? Ah, that's horrible. We gotta put a solution, we gotta get that figured out. In the meantime, what do we need to do right now to get the problem solved right so we already now we're

on the same team so we can work together to find us we bonded on the pain yes yes you felt the pain yes we're on the same team yeah okay my wife what's going to make my wife mad um the ice machine's not working right the ice machine's not working it's your fault yeah whether it's my fault but we don't know the ice machine's not working by the way this is a real story this is happening today the ice machine's not working and she didn't get mad about it but the ice machine's not working if i go hey chill out you have a refrigerator and a house and you know you just calm down right how's that gonna go it's not gonna go go? It's not going to go good. Now she's going to get mad.

Now it's me against her. You know, so instead, the ice machine's not working. Ah, man, that thing is junk. Have you called the repair guy? You know what I mean? And then all of a sudden we're on the same team. And she's like, well, no, I haven't, but I'm about to. Okay, cool.

As opposed to the ice machine's not working. Well, okay, do you want me to have ice shipped in from alaska there princess right that's not going to go over well for those who are looking to accomplish their goals but they feel stuck in life what would you say were the strategies of the seals in accomplishing your goals at the highest level what are some of the things that you guys did strategy-wise um structure and discipline so muscle memory would be the biggest one which is now many of the things that i teach in in both overcome and in my point man for life program and it was something that i was missing i felt like i was missing when i left

the military and i think a lot of military members feel the same way. The SEAL teams are incredibly effective at what we do for a lot of reasons. One of the reasons is selection. And that selection is, there's a lot of things you have to do to qualify just to get the SEAL training. A lot of people don't realize how smart SEALs have to be. So there's a level of intelligence. There's a level of physical ability. There's a level of obviously resiliency that has to come into this. And then we put everybody through this meat grinder called SEAL training that eliminates anybody that doesn't have that ability. And then once we get, you know, once you get to the SEAL team, it's how we train and build teams. And it's forged through tremendous adversity

because our training, even once you get to a team, is designed to be very hard. I mean, some people would say almost sadistic in the way we would train. We would look for what is the absolute worst case scenario we can think of, and then how do we amplify that just a little more? To make it even worse. To make it even of. And then how do we amplify that just a little more? To make it even worse.

To make it even worse. And then train from that. And then train from that. And it was grueling and painful. And sometimes we got guys killed in training. I mean, you try to reduce the level of risk, but we also recognize that in order to be ready for combat, we have to train at the highest level.

So, and in order to do that that it was a lot of repetition and crawl, walk, run was the mentality and it was not these big goals of hey I'm going to take down this entire town like right off the bat because that's really complicated that starts to get into all kinds of very complicated things it was how do I take down a single room and we walk as we flow through it and then it became well how do I take two rooms how do I take three rooms how do I take a house how do I take a compound of three houses how do I take a village so it was a crawl walk run mentality all the time and then structure and discipline and the way we trained. Everything was built up that way from shooting.

You know, oftentimes I was a marksmanship instructor and I've trained some other people to shoot. And they're always, they're a little funny because the very first thing you do when I train anybody to shoot is you shoot at the, you know, at the three-yard line. A little black dot and we're shooting at the three yard line and they're like hey man this is stupid i'm like no you're not you're learning and the repetition that you need to effectively pull your weapon out and and get a positive sight picture trigger squeeze release that round second sight picture and follow through so that we can do that over and over and over again until you know at that whatever point you know you're shooting from 50 100 yards or more yeah so all of that comes together to create small victories and repetition structure and discipline that all

come together to be successful how does someone create that for themselves when they're not in the military so that's or not on the sports team when i left uh so what i began to realize so overcome when i wrote the trident which was my first book it was just the story it's a story it's my story of a young punk kid who did well enough to become an officer or a leader and then totally failed because of ego and arrogance, got a second chance and then redeemed himself and then got wounded and kind of realized there was another level of leadership. And when people would read that, people would say, how'd you do that? And I couldn't definitively answer that question. So became I mean it took overcome came out in I think five years after I wrote the trident because it took that long to kind of think about

what enabled that and a lot of that had to do with when I got out of the military I missed that structure and discipline I missed you, a lot of people don't understand that the military is sometimes a really simple existence, especially when you're deployed. Like when you're in the combat zone, it's a very simple existence. You eat, sleep, you work out, and then you train and conduct missions. And you worry about the guys around you. And the real world's really complicated. missions and you worry about the guys around you and the real world is really complicated there's all these distractions there's no one that gives you the guidance no one hands you a mission and says hey man this is what you're doing today you got to figure out your own mission exactly and as I got

out I realized that that I had to figure out my own mission and all these things were not there so I started with okay so how was I successful coming out of these injuries? Because that's what everybody wanted to see. How were you so positive? How did you write that sign on the door? How did you lessen a year and a half after your injuries launch a nonprofit? How did you later create your own speaking company and all these things? And I realized that I was super

balanced as a leader when I was wounded. When you were wounded? When I was wounded. I wasn't prior to being wounded. Really? Not when I had the leadership failure. And at other points in crisis in my life, I realized I wasn't as balanced. I think I saw one of your videos recently talking about like the key to successful leadership is balance. It is. I believe it. But balance is a misnomer too, because it's not like, well, I put 20% in this bucket and this bucket and this bucket. I teach five, I teach something

called the Pentagon and peak performance. So five key areas that a leader should be balanced in. The foundational level is physical leadership. And it's something that I've come to find that all of us as we get older have a tendency to let slide. We do the opposite of probably what we should be doing. It's becoming harder and... Yeah, because as we get older, we're breaking down. We need to take care of ourselves better

than we do when we're younger where your body is so much more resilient. And that's why I tell people as a leader, you need a lot of energy. You need to be able to think clearly. You need, you know, sound mind in everything that you're doing. So that foundational level of physical leadership is critical to what you're doing. And that consists of sleep, nutrition and fitness. So those three components and my physical leadership saved my life when I was wounded. Now, for most people, hopefully you're never at that level.

But in some ways right now, you look at today, you know, COVID is kind of a strange thing. you look at today, you know, COVID is kind of a strange thing, but for the most part, you know, it is individuals who are not healthy that are having the greatest problems. And those with a stronger immune system seem to be doing better. And it's like that with other diseases. So once again, physical leadership to have the energy and the ability, we manage stress better. So that's the foundational level. Number two was mental leadership. And when I became a junior officer and I was super arrogant, I really thought I knew everything. And I didn't challenge my beliefs, I didn't question my own capabilities. You know, do as I say, not as I do. I didn't do things to get out of my comfort zone. And those are the things that make up mental leadership,

constantly educating ourselves, constantly challenging our beliefs. We're in a day and age where it's dangerous, in my opinion, because social media feeds you the information that you like to see. And so many people don't go seek out, they don't challenge that belief system of what they're being fed.

So it only furthers their belief in things that may or may not be true, but because you keep clicking on that line of thought, you're being fed all that information. The news is no different, the media. People watch what they like to see, and it's very biased in this day and age. So mental leadership is constantly challenging your beliefs. It's doing your due diligence to find out what's really true and how does it play into who I am and what I'm trying to do.

It's getting outside of your comfort zone. It's getting outside of your comfort zone. It's finding the individuals who are where you want to be and identifying them as mentors so you can be better so that you're not surrounding yourself with individuals who are pulling you away from where you want to go. Right. Number three, and this is the biggest one and my weakest point,

and that's something I've found about the Pentagon. Most people have one area that they're super strong, naturally naturally and then they have an area where they're super weak and my weakest area was emotional leadership and emotional leadership is our ability to maintain as a leader it's critical to be even keeled. We're not too hot, we're not too cold, we're not too excited, we're not too angry because people can count on you with that consistency they know as a leader I can come to you and tell you bad news and and and you're gonna take it well and I can come to tell you amazing news and you know you're not gonna burn it down

drinking and be an idiot you know you gotta ride that balance and and I really struggle with that because I I was an emotional roller coaster when I was younger. And I came to realize that that really damaged my credibility as a leader. And it's also choosing that positivity in the face of negativity. Nobody wants that leader that is just an emotional train wreck or a negative Nelly. They want that leader who they emotional train wreck, you know, or a negative Nelly. They want that leader who they can count on, that's positive, that's going to push you forward. They also don't want that leader that's something I call a leadership wrecking ball,

a leader who they're all about the result, but they leave a path of destruction behind them. They'll crush you in their path to get things done. And that, in my opinion opinion is weak emotional leadership also yes as a leader we got to think about the others yeah the health of others yes and then uh for the last point well the last part of emotional leadership is uh is managing our mouths because our mouth our mouth yes yeah because so many people so true uh so many people and i was guilty of this and and and i'm not i'm not impervious to this like i said this is my weakest area but i'm really aware of myself now because when we let that zinger fly um 90

of the time it doesn't do anything to further what we're trying to accomplish as a leader. All it does is massages our ego. Well I was angry in the moment so I wanted to say this. I see this in relationships all the time. Husband and wife that let these zingers fly does nothing to further that situation in a positive way. That's part of being a leader also.

That people are going to disagree with you. So what? If you have conviction in who you are, it's just going to happen in this world. Another Navy SEAL that I had on, Chad Wright said, your tongue is like a rudder in a boat. It's like whatever you speak,

it's going to start guiding you in that direction or influencing you in certain directions in your life. So make sure you really use your words correctly and based on where you want to go, kind of back to the no negativity. If you're negative, it's going to affect you and take you down a negative path in your life. Feeling that way emotionally, you know, you're going to attract negative people. So, you know, you made that decision in that moment to speak differently, use words differently, which I think was powerful. Yeah. Okay. So that was three. Number four. Social leadership. Social leadership. How do we build the rings of influence around us? So, and I break that down into four rings of influence. The outermost ring is our work relationships. The innermost ring is a lot of times our work acquaintances slash friends.

The third ring is our close friends. And then that bullseye is our immediate family. And in Western culture there's a tendency to put a whole lot of time and effort into the two outermost rings, our work relationships and our work friends and acquaintances. And we have a tendency to take for granted our close friends and our family. Yes. And we think they'll always be there for us. But when a major crisis comes, when you're on the X, that may or may not be true

because that's when everything is being pressure tested. And if you haven't put the time and effort into your immediate family, then oftentimes it will break. And Jimmy Hatch, a friend of mine, described it like this. We all ride on trains in this life. I rode on the SEAL train. You rode on the football train. And we never know.

All of us hope that someday we'll get to wherever we want to get off. For some of us, it's the end of the tracks. For others, there's a specific stop they want to get off on. But sometimes there's a catastrophic event that occurs in our life and we get thrown off the train. And those outermost rings don't get off with you because they're still on the train. And it's not that they don't like you or anything like that. They're just still riding the football train or the SEAL train and you're no longer on it. But who gets off with you is your close friends and family.

trainer the SEAL training you're no longer on it but who gets off with you is your close friends and family and so often I have watched individuals that get into a major crisis and you also know so many successful people that have been super successful but got to the end of their career even the end of their lives and said why didn't I put more time into my family that's true so social leadership is making sure that we are we are investing in those relationships to be ready. The key question I ask everybody is, will you be ready? For what? It doesn't matter.

Will you be ready for that moment when it comes? Because we don't know what that moment is. Right. So that balance enables us to be ready for almost anything. Having a mindset of the next ambush is out on the horizon. If I maintain balance, if I have a leadership mindset of being ready for it, I'll be ready for it no matter what it is. No matter what it is, yeah.

It doesn't mean it's going to hurt less, but at least I'll be ready for it to drive forward, but it takes those things. That's why I was so successful when I got wounded. I was balanced in those areas. The last one is spiritual leadership. And for me me faith played a part of that but for others I tell them it's our ability to get outside of ourselves and have perspective in this life That what you're going through We all live in our own personal hell when we're in a crisis

But spiritual leadership enables us to recognize that there are a whole lot of other people I was going through much worse than you are. And if you can do things to get outside of yourself and recognize there's a great big world out there, that what you're going through is temporary, even though it's painful, super painful, you will get to the other side and be able to get beyond it. And what I talk about is that if you're alive, man, it's a gift. It's a gift.

And it may be hard, it may be tough, but it's still a good day and it's up to you to drive forward to get off that X. So I have a motto, no bad days. Cause I'm still here. That's right, man. No bad days. Yeah. You know, because I'm still here. That's right, man. No bad days. What do you think is the skills that we should learn to master more to help us reach at the

top of our field, our industry, or to set us up to be prepared when that ambush comes? So we stay ready. We don't have to get ready. when that ambush comes? So we stay ready. We don't have to get ready. So in my opinion, it comes back to four key things, which I call the point man principles.

Point man principles. Last year, I wrote a planner called the Point Man Planner. And it came about because I got really sick. And while I was really sick trying to they were trying to figure out what was wrong with me I had a parasite and a blood disorder that attacked my central nervous system and I was super messed up I thought I was dying to be honest and at one point I was like man I wish I had a point man like when I was in the SEAL teams to lead me out of some of these bad situations and it made me think well why, why? What made them so effective?

And when we were talking about what makes the SEALs effective, like it became really clear to me that a really good point, man, a lot of SEALs live their life in this way. And there's four principles. And I think this is how anybody out there can be effective and bring their game to the highest level.

Number one, relentless belief in your mission. And there's a lot of people who don't know what their mission is. They've never written it down. They've never defined it. And if you write down your mission, it's got to be built on the foundation of your values. And there's a lot of people that don't know what their values are. They'll tell you cliche things. They'll say, you know, faith, family, finance, fitness.

But when you hear those things, you're like, dude, you haven't been in church in two years. I haven't been in a gym. I haven't seen you in a gym this year. You know, we just throw these things out there and understanding, because whether you know what your values are not, know what your values are or not, they are driving you and they're driving your decision making. Right. you and they're driving your decision making. So if one of your values maybe is fame or recognition, that's okay. You should be aware of it.

It doesn't mean it's a negative thing unless you're stabbing somebody else in the back to get it. But knowing that is important because now you can build your mission in this life upon it. because now you can build your mission in this life upon it and because my mission now now that I'm out of the SEAL teams it's about setting that example as a leader I want people to regard me as a point man for my own life someone that they want to learn from someone you know that is a leader that sets the example that communicates well so that has become my new mission. Number two is a clearly defined destination and a set course.

So in the military, we always knew exactly where we were going. And in life, people often don't. In life, people say, well, I want to be rich or I want to be in better shape. Well, those are not clearly defined things. It's kind of like saying I want to go west if I needed to go someplace. You know? So a clearly defined destination. In the military, we use something called the universal transverse Mercator system.

It's a grid system that covers the entire Earth. And it breaks it down into a… Wow, that's the exact point. Exactly. A one meter square. Almost the size of this table. Yep. That's crazy. and the whole world.

Well all the way the the north and south poles become an issue. Yeah sure. But yeah all the way almost to the north and south poles. Yes where most of people live. Yes exactly. So when we identify a target it's broken down usually all the way to that ten digit grid meaning a 1 by 1 meter Square that's crazy. So a very clearly defined destination and that enables us to not have any deviation You know, and we're not going west We know exactly where we're going and then the second part of it is a clearly defined course and that course is a bearing on How we get there or how we follow our compass to get there

most people may have one but they don't have the other and you can't get to where you're going without having both they may have the destination but not know the how to get there that's right because the course becomes the how-to it becomes our waypoints like I give the example of when I wanted to be a SEAL as a kid, I knew that was my destination. That was a very clearly defined destination. And the course was all the things that I had to do. So I had to enlist in the Navy. I had to get accepted. I had to get a SEAL contract. I had to physically pass the SEAL screening test. I had to get a seal contract. I had to physically pass the seal screening test. I had to academically pass the ASVAB score with a high enough score to get picked up for seals.

I had to get a seal rating. I had to graduate from my A school. I had to get the seal training. I had to make it through seal training. I had to make it through Hell Week. All these things were waypoints on the course. So if people can break their goals down in this manner, and I break them down in the Point Man Planner quarterly, and then every day we make sure I do something called the

rule of three Ps, one physical, one personal, one professional. Every day we're moving the needle just a little bit towards those goals. That's how we stay on course. Right. Number four, or I'm sorry, number three of the point man principles is risk assessment and situational awareness. So many people walk through life totally blind. When we talk about will you be ready?

They're not ready for the ambushes that are coming and oftentimes they never see them coming even though the signs were there. So one, are we regularly doing risk assessments of where we are in our life? Are we still balanced? Are we still taking care of ourselves both in the Pentagon at peak performance? Are we making sure that our destination is front sight focus that

we're on course that we're hitting the waypoints we should so we're consistently doing a risk assessment we're also looking for the indicators that an ambush is on the horizon yes and so many people don't so then they walk into these ambushes and they're like oh my god I never saw that coming okay and number four so those risk assessment and situational awareness, right? Yep. And the fourth one? Is an overcome mindset to get off the axe as quickly as possible.

Overcome mindset. Yeah. So you can't prevent every ambush. I estimate that most people in this life will go through five, at a minimum, five major life ambushes. And I define a major life ambush as anything that will forever leave physical, mental, emotional, or deep financial scars. And you'll never fully recover from it. Or let me rephrase that.

You will always carry the pain of that ambush. You will always look back and you will think, God, that was painful. Like it hurts when we think about it. And I tell people that on the lower end of the scale, it can be the ending of a relationship. It can be the ending of a marriage. Job. Job, personal failure, professional failure, lawsuit, bankruptcy, the failure of a business. It can be life-threatening illness or injury, life-threatening illness or injury life-threatening illness or injury to someone you love it can be sexual trauma

to you or someone you love and then at the higher ends it starts to get into the loss of a loved one or one of the highest I've seen is the loss of a child oh yeah that's tough so having a mindset of readiness and knowing that unfortunately those things could happen. And I teach something called the REACT methodology. So it's a system to use when these ambushes come. What's that system? So REACT is an acronym for when an ambush comes, the very first thing we have to do is recognize that we are in a crisis.

And it goes back to what we were talking about in the beginning. When you're on the X, there's a natural tendency to procrastinate and deny and look at the past or the future or blame. It's hard to recognize, yeah. It's usually the hardest, and depending on the level of ambush. And I want to make sure that people understand if you lose a child, timeline is relative. I don't expect you to, you know, it's going to take time to get off the X from losing a child.

But also recognizing that you're already thinking, I can't lay here forever. Like I have to, um, some point get up. Yeah, exactly. So number one, recognizing you're in a crisis or recognizing the reality is what I say. Number two is evaluate your assets. So when we are hit by a life ambush, by any kind of crisis or catastrophic event, it's natural to feel totally overwhelmed in the moment because your world has just come to a grinding halt for whatever it is.

It's like you suddenly stepped into a raging storm. You're in the darkness. You're trying to figure out what's happening in this chaos with the wind howling and lightning and thunder and people beating on you. And it's overwhelming. And we tend to think, you know, there's no hope. There's nothing I can do.

It's all outside of my control. But we have to, in that moment, figure out how we control what we can. And one of the first things we can do is evaluate what assets do I have to bring to bear to this project. I also talk about it's like tools in our toolbox. So what can I either buy, borrow, use that I already have? If it's a business crisis, it may be an accountant or an attorney,

or it may be advisors or a board that, or maybe whoever that's helping you to get out of this crisis. Maybe outsourcing someone that has specialties that help you deal with whatever problem you're in. If it's a personal crisis, maybe it's a relationship crisis. So it could be a marriage counselor, a priest,

or whatever it is. Having those things, though, makes you suddenly say, okay, this is crisis, but I can deal with it. Number three is assess possible options and outcomes. And what usually tends to happen when we go, the slowest part is a recognizing be starting to gather hey I have tools or I what's in my inventory to deal with this and then there tends to be this this this tendency if you will to to suddenly rush like oh my god this sucks I want to get off the X and I have these tools so let me let me use these to get out of here as quickly as possible. Right.

Okay. And, uh, and I tell people, you got to slow down. You got to take a tactical pause in the military. We called it, let the battlefield develop. And look at all the outcomes. Yeah. All the outcomes. And also maybe there are things that are happening that you haven't seen yet.

You're behind the scenes. Yeah. So getting your team together, whoever is helping you, whoever's part of this inventory, this is where we now assess both the short-term and the long-term impact of the decisions that we're going to make. Okay. And the C? Choose and communicate.

So you choose the direction you're going to go and you communicate it to the people around you. You're never to the people around you. You're never on the X by yourself. The X has its own gravitational pull, any kind of life ambush. So if it's a personal ambush, your family, your kids, your friends get pulled on the X with you. If it's a business ambush, your team, believe it or not, even your clients can get pulled on with you. So it's important that we choose and then communicate because frequently as a leader, especially when we're in a crisis,

sometimes we want to internalize and we don't want to, even though everybody around us can see, you're in a storm, man, you're on the edge. But it's important to communicate for three different reasons. Number one, when we communicate, we verbalize what we're gonna do. And there's a level, and there's that lead yourself level

of internal accountability. When we say we're gonna do something, now it's like, yes, this is what I'm doing. Number two, it tells others and they're like, oh my God, yes, we have a plan. This sucks, let's go. And that third component of that is hope. It gives people hope. It's like a positive direction, yes, we have a plan. This sucks, let's go. And that third component of that is hope. It gives people hope.

It's like a positive direction. Yes, we have a plan. This is where we're going. And then the last one is take action. Execute on that plan. There are so many people who will go through this process and then they're waiting for the perfect moment. And the perfect moment's never going to come.

The time to act is now, you know, imperfect action is better than waiting for this perfect plan. Exactly. And it creates momentum. It gets you off that X. And you may go from one X to the next, and that happens sometimes, but use that momentum to keep going.

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