The School of Greatness - Crush Your LIMITING BELIEFS: 3 Secrets Navy SEALs Use to UNLOCK Their FULL POTENTIAL

Episode Date: May 17, 2024

Are you ready to break through your limiting beliefs and achieve the goals you've always dreamed of? In this episode, former Navy SEALs reveal their powerful strategies to help you conquer obstacles and unleash your full potential. David Goggins, a best-selling author and former SEAL, teaches you how to reframe your mindset to attain your biggest goals. Jocko Willink provides invaluable insights into becoming a better leader who can support others and defeat self-doubt. Meanwhile, Jason Redman guides you through a process to overcome any challenge, no matter what you've been through.Have you heard? David Goggins will be speaking at Summit 2024! Buy your tickets TODAY!In this episode you will learnHow to shift your mindset to unlock your full potential.The principles of leadership that empower yourself and others.Strategies to conquer obstacles and thrive in any situation.Techniques to eliminate limiting beliefs and negative self-talk.The importance of resilience in overcoming challenges.For more information go to www.lewishowes.com/1616For more Greatness text PODCAST to [phone]Full episodes featured in today’s mashup:David Goggins - https://link.chtbl.com/715-podJocko Willink - https://link.chtbl.com/871-podJason Redman - https://link.chtbl.com/1175-pod

Welcome to this special masterclass. We've 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. 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 that. I didn't have anything. Now you just had to sit alone. Alone. And not train. And that's what changed me. And that's when I realized I hadn't thought, hadn't taken time to think about what I'd done in my life. You hadn't reflected yet. I hadn't reflected.

I'd done all these things, but there was no finish line. I still believe that, but you must have time to reflect. I was just going. I wouldn't even, I finished a race of life, and I wouldn't even receive my medal. I'd go on. You're like, onto the next. I get in the car and I go.

You wouldn't even take the medal. Gone, don't care about it. Like, I'm going to waste an hour sitting around for this ceremony most people sit around and that's what they like they they need the ceremony if i accomplish some 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 my 40 rule yeah i was leaving so much in the tank once 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. 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. Wow. To get ready for BUDS. 18, 19, 20-year-olds. Yeah, young kids. So when they'd get to Navy SEAL training, man, 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 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 our nice life on social media.

We all have a dungeon. I'm just willing to talk about mine. Most of us aren't willing to talk about it. I'm going to 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. 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 meet 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, 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.

You figure it out by going inside yourself, by callousing 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 it 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 of least resistance. So we go a different route. I'm afraid of something is telling me you must do this thing. You must do that.

Yeah. 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. It's because we continue to take the journey that is mapped out. And how I look at it is 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 10 miles up you're going to see a McDonald's, a Cracker Barrel. 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. And it was just like I'm sick and tired of feeling afraid. So I need to do the things that scare me the most. 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 singing and playing music in front of teenager. I was afraid of dancing. I was afraid of 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 of saying, this doesn't have control over me anymore. It's like, you can be at such more peace in your life. Most of like, for instance, I never thought in 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? Yeah, it's 4,020 pull-ups in a 24-hour period. The first thing I did versus closing my mind,

you're like, oh, my God, that's crazy. I went and got a pennant. 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. Outside that box is all these possibilities of life but what we do is we shackle our mind we are a prisoner in our own mind that this is all I can do this is all I'm good at and we take away

the possibilities of 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 by facing life, by facing yourself. And through that, I would die never knowing that I had the power to change millions of lives. And what haunts 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 terminating my whole life. And we're sitting down just like this. You're God and I'm

David. And he gives me that chart. And he says, look at this. Now, look 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 going to change the world. I was going to set records.

I was going to be a Navy SEAL. I was going 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 says 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?

Are you in heaven? 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 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 our cap on the human body that's right is there one dear I I don't believe so mm-hmm because one thing I found out was I think for several years I gave myself a way out. When you were 300 pounds? When I was 300 pounds, 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 in SEAL training, and the CO, Captain Bowen, looked at me. 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 Wow I started Navy SEAL training with stress fractures. Stress fractures. That's hard to finish. Stress fractures. Starting the hardest training, arguably the hardest training

in the world was stress fractures. And 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. If you can do this. Life is one big mind game. and you're playing it with yourself is it true I don't care it got me through the hardest training starting out broken where most people quit I had just started. 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 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. We're 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 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 it just be uncomfortable I caught sorry 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 I'm not saying do what I did yeah I was in a spot that life forced me I had a choice 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.

And 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.

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 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. 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. That's right. When you achieve so much, the friction is minor. Because why? I'm sore. I'm going to get a massage today. I'm hungry. I'm going to eat today 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 $7.00 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 probably the first dichotomy in leadership that I had to say to myself you know what I'm there's another side to this is I used to tell the young SEAL officers that you have to be aggressive you got to be default aggressive that's how you got to be because when something's going on you got to be aggressive to make that 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 that's extreme that's an extreme 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 gun

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 with? Can you be too passive? Absolutely.

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 you guess you can't 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 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. So that's the plan. Now you take ownership 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 your plan yeah 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 yeah 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.

Yeah, yeah. 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 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 me and you say, here's the plan, and I say, that looks pretty good, go execute. And now when you've hit an obstacle in the field, what's your attitude? I need to adapt and adjust, what's your plan? You'll make it win.

We came up with this. Yes, so can you take too much ownership? The answer is yes, you can. 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 know I really don't understand this that well yeah and and there's some things in my life that I don't get whereas a poet as opposed to you walking around say 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, that's good to know. Is there anything that is missing in your life? You feel like something's missing? No, 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, healthy, you know, or get to work out, train. I'm feeling good. Living the dream, man. Yeah. Living the dream. So you never feel like there's something missing for you right now. 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. Cause 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. Like it's like, yeah. Yeah. 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 they're funny you know my my wife and kids yeah my my wife and kids are cool and funny and and we have a good time and lots of inside jokes and all that yeah you know and i and i train jujitsu and that that's very fun and surf that's fun yeah my guitar that's fun how old are your kids again

age 20 18 16 and 10 and what's the biggest lesson you learned about being it 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 gonna be who they are and you can give them some course corrections a little bit, but they're going to be 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, so you tried to train them in 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 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 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 10, right? Because most people, you know, your parents are wanting you to do this thing and you do something else. I mean, I joined the Navy when I was 18 years old. Like that's, that probably wasn't even on the checklist of top 20 things that my parents wanted me to do.

Not even in the same ballpark, right? They didn't want you to go 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 gonna 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 gonna get from 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's 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 it a shot here's a couple I might give you a couple

adjustments and and give you some coaching on it and then you go and you do your thing and you come back you like oh no we didn't land it and I say well what do you think let's debrief and now we talked about it 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 going to add value to our company,

I'm going to either... Step in, yeah. Yeah, I'm going to step in and be like, okay, let's think about that. What's their reaction going to be? And by the way, that's what I'm... I'm not going to say, no, don't do it that way. I'm going to say, tell me that again.

And 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 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, 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 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 when I was a task unit commander, so I'm in charge and I'm the head SE for this 40 seals i'm the main guy yeah 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 my 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, we have a, uh, 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.

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, I say, how would you want to do it? Tell me what you don't like about it. And then tell me how you want to 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 going to be open-minded and listen to you. And that's how you build it. Every time you shut someone down from list from, from speaking their mind, you actually are creating a negative environment where you're not going to get the feedback. And if there's no feedback, as we just said, you're not going to 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 to our skillsets? Number one is listen, 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 wanna 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 gonna 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, spilled 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 detach, which is 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 meeting. It's just a meeting that we just talked about. A 38 minute meeting. All this chaos is happening. Sure, I'm a 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 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 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 without saying you need to calm down or you're too emotional. No, no, no, no, no. Because if you come to me and you're mad about something, you come to me, 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 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 going to diminish them a little bit so that we're not escalating the situation. How would you do this with your wife? 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've got to be kidding me.

Two weeks? And you go, yeah, can you believe it? Ah, that's horrible. We've got to put a solution. We've got to 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 okay my wife what's gonna make my wife mad um the ice machines not working right the ice machine is not working it's your fault yeah whether it's my fault but we don't know the ice machine is not working right the ice machine is not working it's your

fault yeah whether it's my fault but we don't know the ice machine is not working by the way this is a real story this is happening today the ice machine is not working and she didn't get mad about it but the ice machine is not working if I go hey chill out you have a refrigerator and the house and we just calm down, right? Is that how's that gonna go? It's not gonna go good now. She's gonna 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 the repair guy? You know what I mean? I think 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

Well as opposed to the ice machine's not working. Well, okay. Do you want me to have ice shipped in from Alaska there, princess? 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 to make that happen? Structure and discipline. So muscle memory would be the biggest one, which is now many of the things that I teach 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 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 and 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, 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. 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 I do when I train anybody to shoot is you shoot 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 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. 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?

Or not on a sports team. When I left, so what I began to realize. the sports team when I left. 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 did you do that?

And I couldn't definitively answer that question. So Overcome 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 know, 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 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 uh 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 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 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,

in this bucket, in this bucket. I teach five, I teach something called the Pentagon of 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, have a tendency to let slide. We do the opposite of probably what we should be doing.

Just be going harder. 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 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 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 is 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 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. Number three, and this is the biggest one of my weakest point, and that's something I found about the Pentagon. Most

people have one area that they're super strong 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 you're going to take it well. And I can come in and tell you amazing bad news and you're going to take it well. And I can come in and tell you amazing news and you're not going to burn it down drinking and be an idiot. You got to ride that balance. And I really struggle with that because I was an emotional roller coaster

when I was younger. And I came to realize that that really damaged my credibility as a leader. Yes. 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 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. 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, is weak emotional leadership also. I mean, as a leader, we got to think about the others. The health of others, yes. And then the last point, well, the last part of emotional leadership is managing our mouths because- Our mouth? Our mouth. Yes. Yeah, because so many people-

So true. So many people, and I was guilty of this, and 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, 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. Hus husband and wife that let these zingers fly it does nothing to further that situation in a positive way no that's part of being a leader also right that people are going to disagree with you so what you know if you have conviction in who you are it's just going to happen i mean in this world yeah another navy seal that i had on uh chad wright said your tongue is like a rudder in a boat it's like whatever you speak like it's going to start guiding you in that direction or you know 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's 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. 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. 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 um you rode

on football 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 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 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 that 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. 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. It doesn't mean it's gonna hurt less, but at least I'll be ready for it to drive what it is. No matter what it is. 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, 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 out there going through much worse than you are and if you can do things to get outside of yourself and 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 um you will get to the other side and and and and be able to get beyond it and what i talk about is that if you're alive man it's a gift yes it's a

gift and uh and it may be hard it may tough, but it's still a good day, and it's up to you to drive forward and get off that act. So I have a motto, 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. 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 principles so point man principles last year I wrote a third a planner called the point man planner and 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? 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 to gym. I haven't seen you in gym this year. You know, we just throw these things out there. And understanding, because whether you know what your values are or not, know what your values are or not, they are driving you and they're driving your decision making. Right. 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 know you're stabbing somebody else in the back to get it but yes knowing that is important 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 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, it's the exact point. Exactly, a one meter square, almost the size of this table. Wow, really? Yep. And the whole world? Well, all the way, 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 the people live. Yes. Exactly. So when we identify a target, it's broken down usually all the way to that 10-digit grid, meaning a one by one meter square. Wow. 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 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 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 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 P's. One physical, one personal, one professional. Every day we make sure I do something called the rule of three P's 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, you know, both in the Pentagon and peak performance? Are we making sure that our destination is front site 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 X as quickly as possible. Overcome mindset. 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. You know, 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, 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 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 man, 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 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 it's hard to recognize yeah it's usually the hardest and depending on the level of ambush and 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 yes it's going to take time to get off the X from losing a job. But also recognizing that you're already thinking, I can't lay here forever. Like I have to. At 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 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, B, starting to gather, hey, I have tools or what's in my inventory to deal with this. And then there tends to be this tendency, if you will, to suddenly rush.

Like, oh my God, this sucks. I want to get off the X and I have these tools, so let me use these to get out of here as quickly as possible. Right, okay. 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. 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?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 on the X by yourself. The X has its own gravitational pull, any kind of life ambush. 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 the X 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 going to do. And there's a level,

and there's that lead yourself level of internal accountability. When we say we're to 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 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. 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. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes

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