The School of Greatness - The Navy SEAL’s Guide To Never Being Lazy Again [MASTERCLASS] EP 1440

Episode Date: May 19, 2023

https://lewishowes.com/mindset - Order a copy of my new book The Greatness Mindset today!David Goggins emphasizes the importance of facing personal challenges and embracing discomfort to build confidence and find fulfillment. Nick Lavery shares the essential steps required to become a great leader. He emphasizes the transformative power of gratitude in overcoming adversity, highlighting how cultivating a mindset of appreciation can fuel resilience and perseverance.Retired US Navy SEAL Lieutenant Jason Redman shares his inspiring story of overcoming a life-threatening setback and transforming into an exceptional leader.Jocko Willink, a retired Navy SEAL officer and business consultant, discusses the true essence of leadership, emphasizing the importance of understanding human nature and taking responsibility for mistakes.In this episode you will learn,The importance of facing personal challenges and embracing discomfort as a means to build genuine confidence and find fulfillment.The essential steps to becoming a great leader, including the transformative power of gratitude in overcoming adversity.The importance of having a meaningful mission in life to provide direction, motivation, and purpose.How to avoid a victim mindset and emerge stronger in the wake of a traumatic life event.The importance of understanding human nature and taking responsibility for mistakes.For more information go to www.lewishowes.com/1440Mel Robbins: The “Secret” Mindset Habit to Building Confidence and Overcoming Scarcity: https://link.chtbl.com/970-podDr. Joe Dispenza on Healing the Body and Transforming the Mind: https://link.chtbl.com/826-podMaster Your Mind and Defy the Odds with David Goggins: https://link.chtbl.com/715-pod

My friend, I am such a big believer that your mindset is everything. It can really dictate if your life has meaning, has value, and you feel fulfilled, or if you feel exhausted, drained, and like you're never going to be enough. Your mindset is everything. And our brand new book, The Greatest Mindset, just hit the New York Times bestseller back-to-back weeks. And I'm so excited to hear from so many of you who've bought the book, who've read it and finished it already and are getting incredible results from the lessons in the book. If you haven't got a copy yet, you'll learn how to build a plan for greatness through powerful exercises and toolkits designed to propel your life forward. This is the book I wish I had

when I was 20, struggling, trying to figure out life 10 years ago at 30, trying to figure out transitions in my life and the book I'm glad I have today for myself. Make sure to get a copy at lewishouse.com slash 2023 mindset to get your copy today. Again, lewishouse.com slash 2023 mindset to get a copy today. Also, the book is on Audible now, so you can get it on audiobook as well over there also. What gives you confidence not being afraid is overcoming the fear. I found out the whole key to life. You have to. 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 used to take one day off a week. I used to take one day off a week. Uh-huh. I used to take one day off a week. For the body to recover, right? Makes sense.

But that one day off was an active recovery day where I would get on a trainer and ride for like two hours. Wow. But at a zone one heart rate, very low heart rate, and I replaced the carbohydrates in my body while I rode because the best way to recover for me is to do something at a very low heart rate because therefore your blood's flowing through your body. Yeah.

As your blood's flowing through your body, refuel it with the nutrients because then your blood's flowing, the nutrients is going through all your cells in your body. All that glycogen is now flowing at a low heart rate. So it's not burning it, it's refueling it. Yeah. So every Sunday used to be that. it's refueling it yeah so every Sunday used to be that and it kind of snowballed into as human beings we believe like so many people before I give them a workout plan they're talking about recovery everybody everybody that hears me speak they want to go straight to recovery work out first huh work out for before you talk to me about recovery how to recover yeah work out first. Work out first. Before you talk to me about recovery.

How to recover, yeah. Work out first. We are always looking for, like whenever I talk to people, people take my words and they put it in a way to where they want to feel comfortable. This guy, you know, they want to put you in a box. They want to put a title on you. No, you're putting a title on me to make yourself feel better about yourself. If you read this book of mine

and you see where I came from, this person was not built. This person was not made by God. This person was built. I made this person. I made this person by diving into the insecurities

that life gave me. Because now they're yours. They're yours to own. If you're not smart, call yourself dumb. It's okay. Because you are. But take that not as you're putting yourself down. If you're fat, call yourself fat. I used to be 300 pounds.

We want to talk so soft to ourselves. We're looking for that recovery day and that recovery day is everything in your life everything in your life is a recovery day we're looking for it it's not coming it's not coming get over that recovery day and that's the mentality i took with me and what happened through that process was all the frivolous things of life Start to float away. I think tell people lies so they would like me. Mm-hmm Cuz I was so insecure when you start to build yourself up It start to have the one thing that we don't have is confidence. Yeah real

authentic confidence from hard work Everything else goes away. You no longer look to other people for your self esteem. That's right. You now know. I walk in a room now and I know the hours and years and decades I put into David Goggins. That's something, it's not on the wall. It's not a trophy on the wall. It's not a medal on your neck.

It is actually a feeling in your heart and people, why don't you ever smile? I don't have to. Yeah. Yeah, I do have a stoic look on my face. I'm a very focused person. But the feeling I have in my soul and in my heart, that's why I don't need to smile. I don't need to smile.

I don't need you to look at me and say, oh, my God, you look happy. Because half of us aren't happy. We're giving you something that we think you want to see. I don't do that anymore. I don't care how you perceive David Goggins. Because through my journey, I figured out the one piece I was missing. I thought it was cars. I thought it was women. I thought it was money. I thought it was everything. The one piece I was missing was me having the courage to face myself. And once you do that on a daily basis, it's not about the running. People are going to be, you have to start working out.

Where I got my work ethic from was the hours I had to spend learning this. When you sit down and you're not smart, and you have a disability, and you still want to be at the top of your class, I didn't want to just get by. When I realized that I can learn through hard work, and I can beat the valedictorian in school, but I got put in 10 hours more a day than he does. You know what kind of strength comes from that? When you're sitting down, that valedictorian study for an hour and you know I caught you I caught you and I am dumb but I have the work ethic to catch you that's where David Goggins got really invented yeah was at a kitchen table with 20 spiral notebooks that were empty

and then three months later yeah they were full and when you can go through that I still have them in my storage you go through these spiral notebooks of your life and you like this is how I learned this is unbelievable there's no miles it's not about the miles it's that having a discipline every day to say for me to learn this one math problem, it's going to take me 10 hours. And that's where it, and you realize through hard work, you can outwork anybody. No matter how badass they are. But that's the part people don't want to dive into.

Yeah. When someone's lacking confidence in themselves, what's the answer you would give them if they're like, how do I gain more confidence? It starts with yourself, man. You got to start diving into those things that you are afraid of. You don't gain confidence by going to the spot that makes you feel good.

It could be a false reality. And the second life gives you that challenge, all you want to do is go back to what made you confidence or what gave you confidence. Is that happy spot? No to what made you confidence or what gave you confidence is that happy spot no what gives you confidence what gave me confidence was spending years at a kitchen table

trying to learn how to read and write on my own realizing I can't learn the way you learn I can't but I can learn what gives you confidence not being afraid it's overcoming the fear I just stutter severely bad so right now I don't know how many people are gonna watch this no it gives me confidence there's no I'm no longer care if I say or start stuttering to you yeah that's what gives me confidence is facing these things overcoming them and maybe not overcoming them every day but but facing them. And facing them and facing them.

Pretty soon like this, you know what, man, this is where it's at. It's not in that comfort zone. It's in the discomfort zone is where my confidence is getting built. That's where it's getting built. But people want an easier answer. There has to be an easier way. There's not. I'm sorry. There has to be an easier way. There's not. I'm sorry.

I searched for it my entire life. You cheated. You lied. I lied. I did everything. And I still felt empty. I coach a lot of people nowadays, billionaires, who call me on the phone and say, man, I'm still missing something.

It's because they did what they were good at. And they had this beautiful family, two, three houses, cars, everything. It has everything to work. On the outside looking in, like, my God, man, how can you be unhappy? I walk around with a backpack with all my stuff in it and no car. And I walk around, happiest person in the world. Have nothing. Happiest hell.

It's because I found out the whole key to life. It's not in all that. You have to face yourself. So many people live to be 100 years old and they die miserable having everything because they never examined. I call it my live autopsy. You never examine this Happiness peace Enlightenment it's all up here man. It's all up here if I start talking like this people a man, you know

I don't know. It's the truth man. Yeah, it is true. It's all up here. He's gonna be willing to go and face it And that's the hard part. What's your biggest insecurity today? Not to be arrogant, I don't have one. What was the last one you had and when was that? The last one I had was probably still me. Me. Still living, because I always talk about, I pay rent. still me, me, still living.

Cause I always talk about, I pay rent. So we used to live in a $7 a month place when I was growing up. Is this in Buffalo or is this in? This is in Indiana. So like we had a lot of money in Buffalo. And when my mom left my dad, we went to nothing for a period of time before she got on her feet.

And that $7 a month place used to be It was my it was who I was. I was no one I wasn't a sewer my mom went there. I had nothing and You always feel like you have nothing I achieved so much. I Was a Navy SEAL. I've gone through Ranger school. I've gone through Delta Force selection training I I've done so much. I run 200 miles, pull up records, everything. Learn 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 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 finished a race of life, and I wouldn't even receive my medal. I'd go on. You're like, on to the next.

I'd get in the car, and I'd go. You wouldn't even take the medal? Gone. Don't care about like, onto the next. I get in the car and I go. You won't even take the medal? Gone, don't care about it. Like 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 accomplish 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 call it my 40%, that I was leaving so much in the tank. I call 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 hell 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 get to Navy SEAL training, they were physical studs. They were running, swimming.

I mean, they were hybrids. Wow. But they 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. That'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 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, 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 in hell. 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. 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. 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. Wow.

Because I was, for the first time in my life, happy. Wow. 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. 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 she continues to go back to the dungeon of her past life and live in that state live in that space versus living the space that she's in now and reflecting back on my god this is what I've done with my life. So. 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 damn. 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 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 wanna 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 gonna see a McDonald's or Cracker Barrel. It's the easy route. Very few of us wanna go to the right side.

The Cracker Barrel's that Midwest life. That's right, that's right. That's right. 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 gonna 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 what you 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 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 penny. How many is many is that every minute exactly every hour every second

It's gonna take your life and make it not to be this grandiose thing. Start breaking it down Start breaking it down in 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. 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 named soon Wow so if my mind was shackled me and you would never meet there'd be no book right there'd be no book right 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 were to die 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 terminator my whole life life and we're sitting down just like this your 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 gonna change the

world I was gonna I was gonna set records I was gonna be a Navy SEAL I was gonna be all these things the military that i accomplished you're gonna get the vfw award you can be honored here honored there i'm like god i was this isn't me like it says david goggins i was an eco lab guy i sprayed for cockroaches and i'm 300 pounds said here i'm 185 it says here i got a bachelor's and a master's it says here I got a a bachelors and a masters 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 hell? Thinking about how much I left on a table for fear. For not willing to go over the wall and over the next wall and over the next wall so 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? 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 in SEAL 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 going to 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, not shin splints.

That's hard to finish. Stress fractures, starting the hardest training, arguably the hardest training in the world with 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 to 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're another hardest man to ever live if you can do this life is one big mind game why do you think so many people suffer in their stuckness of job career life purpose and how can they

start taking full ownership as opposed to making excuses or blaming everything around them as opposed to being responsible for their life? How can someone learn this? When I hear this story of you, I'm just like, what's anyone's excuse? Sure.

On how to overcome adversity? Yeah. I'll start off because you mentioned this perspective is a, is a powerful tool. You mentioned comparison and whatnot, powerful tool when it's wielded or when it's weaponized appropriately. And, you know, I was in the hospital at Walter Reed for a year, lost my leg, could have easily felt really sorry for myself when I was alongside people that had, you know, they were missing all their limbs or even worse service members that had such severe traumatic brain injury that they did not recognize their wife and kids. When I'm next to that individual,

this is a paper cut to me. So like that power of perspective, because I was able to weaponize the gratitude in that scenario. That's the key. Cause a lot of times I think when it comes to comparison or perspective, it can drive people even deeper into a hole because they're saying, Hey man, like this person did this thing under these extreme circumstances. And I'm having difficulty getting up in the morning. Like what's wrong with me? And it ends up being a driving factor that makes it worse where, no, no, no, stop for a second. Be grateful for what you have. See it that way. Open up your heart and your soul a little bit. Say, wow, I'm really fortunate. I got a lot of great things going right now, and use that as a tool. Those that are stuck, you know,

if there is not a mission that's been identified, in my opinion, it becomes extraordinarily difficult to get past the adversity, but even, and oftentimes, just to get to get moving like what is it that you want to do it sounds like a very simple question but there's layers of difficulty built within this like have you begun an internal dialogue with yourself yet at all have you looked in the mirror at any point in your life and said what do you want to do who do you want to become and i think oftentimes and that's how it started for me just very simple and letting the universe or god or your soul or call it whatever you want communicate back to you on what do you want to do

who do you want to become in order to make that exercise of any kind of value, one is expectation, knowing that it's likely not going to, the answer is not going to come blasting through the glass and punch you in the face more often than not. It takes repetition. You have to actually work at it. Two is if there's not a degree of self-honesty, then it's really not going to matter. And in today's world, you can make the argument that that has never been more difficult ever in the world of immediate satisfaction and social media and where people are projecting an image because that's become the norm. It's easy for us to begin to believe our own and our own our own facade and so that internal dialogue that level

of self-awareness is important but if you're lying to yourself then it's not going to matter right so there's a lot there to begin playing around with um but i do think that once that mission has been identified and oftentimes i'm asked like well i'm I'm having that conversation. I'm right. I really am. I'm journaling. I'm being honest. I'm doing all these things, but I still don't know what my purpose is. I'm still, my soul is not being lit towards something. A technique that is often used is to, is to hone in on your talents and kind of leverage the likelihood of success. Because if you Because if you hone in on our talents, which are the things we do best with the least amount of effort, and then you lay a skill on top of that,

odds are you're going to be in a really great place to do some really great things. I just prefer to use the course of action prior to that as, as COO one, because it doesn't place any limitations on ourselves. Right. I think it's beautiful. This is everything that I've been preaching, but communicating to my audience about from my lessons in sports. Um, you know, if I didn't have a goal, I wasn't willing to, I would quit. I would have quit football if I didn't have like some type of mission or goal that I was excited about.

That was meaningful to me that had like a reason why I wanted to do it because, you know, three days were so painful and it was hot and there's, you know, I can go chase girls instead or do something easier. So I needed something bigger than myself, a mission bigger than me that I was excited about to go through all the pain, right. Of all the different sports injuries and just like sacrificing and whatever, early mornings, all these different

things, cutting out bad food, whatever it was, that was the easy way out. And same thing when I transitioned to business and just life and relationships, it was like things which I would suffer and struggle more when I didn't have a meaningful mission. You can take on different things in life, but if it doesn't bring some type of fulfillment or meaning, it's going to feel harder and you're going to suffer more. It's going to be hard no matter what. You have to do things every single day to be successful. You have to show up. You have to experience some type of pain and overcome it in order to build your emotional, mental, or physical strength. Yeah, absolutely.

Consistently. So you might as well enjoy it or find fun in that process with a meaningful mission that you're tied to or seeing in the distance and trying to draw in closer. So I love that you talk about mission because I think a lot of people don't have that. And I love that you talk about talent and skills. One of the things I did when I got out of sports and was trying to figure out who I was and my identity in life now that sports was over was I started to address a lot of my insecurities and fears. And I said, how can I maximize my talents, but also my fears and insecurities make me feel really, I lack confidence because I know these are in the background.

It was hard for me to do public speaking. I knew this was just a challenge for me. So I went all in on public speaking every single week for a year. I knew I had this desire to learn salsa dancing, but I was terrified to get on the dance floor because I didn't want to be made fun of. So I went all in and practiced every week for a couple of years as well. I just said, what are the things that I can build as talents and skills that I'm not good at as well that will make me more bulletproof emotionally and mentally? I can whip out these tools at any moment and feel

more confident and see where it leads me towards my mission. So these are some of the things that I'm so glad you're talking about this because I've been preaching this stuff. And what would you say are the main talents or skills then that you've developed since that time, since losing your leg? And you speak another language too? Or did you have to learn another language? Yeah, I speak a few foreign languages now. Pretty fluent?

No, we'll say we have a working knowledge. Right, right, right. Yeah, if I know I'm going someplace where I may have to use it, I gotta pull out the materials and dust off the cobwebs. It's an awesome question, kind of looking at the positive sides of any scenario because they're there.

I don't care how horrible it was. I believe that it's only a matter of time and with enough reflection that there's positivity to extract from that. This being one of those, certainly not towards the top, but one of them, one I would say is my level and commitment to efficiency.

And the example I'll use or really the way in which this has been reinforced is, you know, when you have an amputee or when you use a prosthetic with a traditional socket system. So imagine this is my actual leg. My leg fits inside this bucket and that's how it stays attached to my body. That's how most of those of us that have prosthetics, that's how it stays attached to us. Sweat becomes the ultimate enemy because it gets slippery. It slips around. It's not working. It starts to chafe.

The leg isn't functioning normal. So I eventually began to visualize the second I put my prosthetic on my body, a clock began to tick. began to visualize the second I put my prosthetic on my body, a clock began to tick. And it was only a matter of time before I had to take it off, wipe it down, depending on what I was doing, maybe let it breathe for 10 minutes or 20 or an hour. Because you sweat a lot. Because I sweat a lot. Me too. I'm a guy. You're sweating all the time. Walk out in the snow and you sweat probably, right? All the time. Me too, yeah. Right? Especially, fun fact, when you lose this many sweat pores, your other ones work in overdrive. Oh my gosh.

To cool you off, yeah. Learned that in the hospital. I was going through like multiple t-shirts a day. So, you know, I am more capable when I'm on two feet. Certainly I can be mobile, I can be in a wheelchair, I can be on crutches, but I'm not as capable as I am when I'm on two legs. Yeah, you're more efficient when you're on two legs. Absolutely. I'm more productive when I'm on two legs. So that clock begins to tick.

So I knew I needed to maximize every single moment that I was on two legs. And it got a little OCD, which my wife eventually kind of got cool with because it got to the point where if I, for example, were leaving my house for the day and I grabbed my stuff and I took, you know, eight steps and I realized I had forgotten something. Well, that's 16 steps that I'm not getting back. Eight to go back to my thing, eight to get back to where I was. And it started to drive me more and more crazy. So so i began every step needs to matter every step every minute every second needs to matter and this is i get i understand this is the extreme and some of your viewers may be like this is insanity but you know again i set

my sights on something so ambitious that i need to maximize every single moment and therefore i single moment. And therefore I began just modifying, creating or modifying these different systems to minimize the likelihood of me missing those 16 steps again. So it's like, okay, I forgot my wallet. So now it's wallet, phone, like at the end of every day, like this is where everything goes so that- Everything you need to leave the next day is in one place. Everything is streamlined. Yes. So just day to day, I began just kind of instinctually creating these different systems throughout my day to maximize my level of efficiency, just so I could do more things better on two feet and for longer. So that's just kind of a process in which I likely would not have learned

if I had not gone through this. And it's one that I've maintained really to this day. For the last nine years now, right? Or however long it's been, yeah. Right, so it's almost instinctual where I'm just, I'm constantly looking at ways to improve to make up a second or two or not. But with extreme circumstances, you need to take extreme changes to maximize your life

or to master your life, right? Otherwise, you could fall two hours behind every day because, oh, I forgot this. Not upgrading your systems with a level and the degree of your new reality, right? It's like you need to upgrade your level of thinking, your skill sets, the systems inside of you, your processes to be even more efficient than before, even with the changing of the prosthetic or whatever you might have to do, right?

And this is, I mean, this is more tactical, on the ground stuff, right? Like physically moving things around through my day. This is tactical, tangible tools. This I'll, I'll, I'll use a second, a second point. It's more conceptual, but I really want to emphasize this. You talk about what were the upsides, what were the positive aspects that you've learned or been able to leverage from losing your leg. And it's knowing, realizing and knowing that although I was a hard worker and I was productive on two legs, and I've got plenty of accomplishments and stuff that I'm certainly proud of,

that took a lot of really hard work. There was an entire another level of work ethic and productivity that was sitting inside me the entire time that I did not know existed until this happened. And I set my sights on something extraordinarily unlikely, but I committed myself to because I knew I needed to be able to work at an extraordinarily higher level, like the highest possible level. And it's not as if when I was in the hospital, some scientist walked into my room and rammed a metal spike in the back of my head

and uploaded work ethic, like Neo and the Matrix. Like it was literally there the whole time. I think that, and oftentimes it takes a traumatic event or hitting rock bottom for people to realize that there's so much more inside them that is literally sitting there waiting to be leveraged. And that becomes the kind of the catalyst for them to start to see that. And then it becomes contagious. It's like, oh my gosh, look what I just did. What else can I do? What else can I do?

And that snowball effect happens. But having retrospectively kind of analyzed that, yeah, sure, this was the catalyst and I've seen what I was able to do. How did I really do that? And it was through the modification, primarily anyway, of two relationships. My relationship with fear and my relationship with pain. And those are relationships like any other relationships we have, right?

It's a two-way street. You talk to that entity and it talks back. You can only influence so much. But by modifying my relationship with those two things really is what facilitated my ability to do more, push harder, create more, and accomplish more. How do you modify your relationship with fear and pain? I think, at least for me, man, it began with a recognition of what they're there to do.

And the human brain does a lot of amazing things for us, but its primary responsibility is our survival. Yes. It's to keep us alive. but its primary responsibility is our survival. Yes. It's to keep us alive. And the brain has a security system within it. And within that are two different alerts.

One of which we know is fear. One we know is pain. Fear is the alert of pending danger or a potential threat. Like something bad could happen. You're now scared. I need you to be scared of that to stay away from it. bad could happen you're now scared i need you to be scared of that to stay away from it pain being the the alert of damage or impairment right because the brain wants us to survive

knowing that our brain is there because it wants the comfort zone like homeostasis like the medical. It wants things nice and predictable and sustainable and forecastable. And let's just keep things all nice and calm here when it comes to even a heartbeat, our red blood cell count, like it doesn't want change. Recognizing that and then knowing that if we've set our sights on something righteous, something of ambition, something that is unlikely, unprecedented, there are going to be times when we have to ignore our brain and listen to our heart and our soul. And one of the greater challenges of life really is knowing when to take that risk and asking yourself in that moment, in real time, like right now, are you willing to take the risk of doing this particular thing? Knowing the potential hazards, but then also knowing the potential effects.

Are you willing to do it? do it. I'm curious about in your mind, I don't want to assume anything, but has anything become harder since you lost your leg? And has anything become easier or better since then as well? I don't want to make assumptions either way that things have gotten harder or easier and better, but if there is, is there something on both sides that's been harder and easier and better yeah certainly mean there countless specific tasks were really hard to relearn and I still had a today even after having learned them and doing them now for almost a decade. I mean, walking is harder now than it was prior. I think generally speaking, the hard comes from a willingness to accept that you don't know how to do something right now and that's okay. And not letting my pride and ego get in the way of that.

and not letting my pride and ego get in the way of that. Slicing off a massive serving of humility, be willing to take that risk of embarrassment. And when it comes to fear, sure, we're fear of physical damage, but I would argue fear mostly comes through the lens of emotional damage. Fear of failure, fear of embarrassment. Being judged by other people. Judgment. I think most of that. So again, a modification of that relationship.

Am I willing to do this? But most, I think it's probably accurate to say, most tasks, certainly anything that involves me being on two legs, are more difficult today than before. What's, what's easier or better if that's. Man, I'll, I'll start off in the clouds, man. Um, because if I could go back in time, right? Like Doc Brown shows up in the DeLorean and he's like, let's go back and we'll save your leg. You know, the butterfly effect is a, you know, a concept. You weren't there and you were in another room or something during that time.

Yeah. But I look at the life I have now, man. And, you know, particularly my family and my boys and my wife. And it's just amazing. I would not undo a single thing. Really? If, because there's just a chance that I don't end up where I am here right now. Like talking to you with my family at home, I live such a fulfilling and loved life that I wouldn't change a thing about this. That's like up in the clouds. But it's important, you know, no, I think. I'll go into the tactical realm. So I'm big into jiu-jitsu. And I started as a two-legged guy and competed.

And jujitsu was a huge part of my recovery, which began in the hospital. Certainly physically, range of motion, flexibility, humility. Also your spirit too. Absolutely. Camaraderie, competition, all that stuff. Yeah, huge aspect of my recovery and just really overall life but you know jiu-jitsu is a weight class sport and although you know i walk around now today at

around 220 pounds big strong guy man i'm missing about 45 pounds of leg right right so you would be a 265 weight class but you're're against guys, you know, my size. Absolutely. And you're freaking just bare hugging them. Yeah. So, you know, I learned that there's like a huge advantage in that realm, which is, you know, I wouldn't say it's silly because you can conceptualize that to say like, no, there's always upsides to it. So I was able to leverage, you know, my upper body strength and whatnot when I would compete as an amputee. And if you looked at me versus some of my competitors from the waist up, you'd be like, there's no way these guys are in the same weight class. It's impossible.

You look like a beast next to them. Right. So certainly it's an example, man, of things that I would say are easier, but certainly things that I can leverage to my advantage. Yeah, yeah. That's cool, man. Anything else that's easier or better now with this? Do you have a different mental capacity, emotional capacity? Do you appreciate things more?

Yeah. Oh my gosh. Is your heart open now because you have different type of humility? I mean, I have no idea, but I'm throwing it out there. Yeah. My degree of confidence is actually probably higher now than it was as a two-legged guy.

Wow, wow, why, how? Yeah, great question. You know, I think you could summarize confidence into two words, like training and preparedness. And when you feel, when you've put in the reps and you've got the resources in place to deal with the what ifs, I think drastically increase the level of confidence. I attacked that on a whole other scale. And as I was working my way back to the team and then continuing to deploy into combat and doing all these different things, my level of training was quite insane at times.

And I needed to- Physical training or like- Oh, yeah. Workout training to get back? Yeah. I mean, it was belligerent. My lifestyle and structure was was nuts and then my level of preparedness also had to increase as well i would break these things i

would need tools i would need stuff to have available i learned all these through really difficult lessons um so training and and readiness or training and preparedness were essential for me to do what I needed to do. But most significantly is as I began to fail repeatedly in front of those in which I wanted to impress, like my teammates and my commanders, I eventually got to a place where I was okay with failing in front of people. Like when I first got back to my unit,

I was only in the hospital for a year. I got back to my unit. I was still really raw. I would not be seen without my prosthetic on my body. No one would see me without a leg. Why? Because in my mind that would be seen as a, as weakness. I would be seen as a liability. I would be seen as, and there's no way this guy can stay in this community. So I struggled with that as a liability. I would be seen as, man, there's no way this guy can stay in this community. So I struggled with that for a while. And there was a time eventually when my teammates came over and I was hobbling around. I clearly needed to take my leg off and like let it chill for a minute. And he came over. He's like, dude, why don't you just take your leg off and like sit down for a second?

And he knew why without me having to say it he's like listen dude everyone here knows you only have one leg yeah like if you take your prosthetic off it's not going to change anything i'm like okay and that was like step one and i just did that and i looked around and no one cared no one cared yeah like getting comfortable with the uncomfortable absolutely yeah the fear of embarrassment or the worry, what are people going to think? Yeah. No one cared. No one cared.

They just want you healthy, happy. They want you to feel ready to go. That's it. And then from there, it just kind of began to snowball where I would, you know, I'd push myself harder and I would trip and fall or my leg would come detached or I would fail on this deadlift or I'd be out trying to learn how to run and I'd fall down. And I began to just care less about the opinions of others. Yeah. If you fell down, it didn't matter anymore.

Didn't matter. Like my teammates, my family, my loved ones, they love me regardless. Um, so I just began to build up, you know, a greater sense of, of confidence because I was callousing my mind to a degree where I'm like, no, I can do this. I can be vulnerable. I can mess things up. And it's not only is it okay, but it actually inspires people around me and makes them want to dig a little bit deeper. What would you say would be the biggest lessons you learned from being a SEAL then, just about life in general, from your entire time there? So I summarize that in one phrase, get off the X. Get off the X.

Yeah. So, and the X is any point of attack, any point of crisis, and now that's one of the big things I talk about to companies and individuals. It is the sticking point. In SEAL training and special operations lingo, the X was the point of the attack. It was the ambush point. So for one side of my career, I had trained to try and put the enemy on the X. And that X is a specific point that usually we pick ahead of time that will channelize them into an area that it makes it very difficult for them to get out of. And then we rain as much firepower and explosives to try and A destroy their will to fight and

B destroy them or equipment or whatever else. And what I had learned also was if you're ever on the X, you have to get off the X as quickly as possible because the longer you sit on it, the harder it is to get out of and ambush. So 2007, my gunfight, we survived because my teammates fought back and we were able to get off that X. I mean it took a little while, we had to use the air assets, my teammates fought back, but that's what enabled me to be successful out of that gunfight when we got to the hospital or when i got to the hospital

i kind of realized that i had stepped out of one ambush into another ambush an emotional psychological ambush absolutely and this journey that i was facing and and i remember when the doctors were telling me, you know, we're thinking about amputating your arm and it's going to take years to put you together. I felt like, man, it's no longer the bombs and bullets of battle. It's the bombs and bullets of life. Wow.

And everybody gets hit by those bombs and bullets. So it took a couple of years for that all to come into clarity, but it made me realize everybody gets ambushed in life, everyone. And everybody gets stuck on that X. And that X is insidious. It's like quicksand. And the more you want to feel sorry for yourself, and that's what happens. When people get on the X, three things happen. Number one, we will look back at what we've lost we waste a lot of time at well you know I mean a little bit like I did well what if I had moved this way or what if I had moved that way or I want back my life before I got wounded

because it was so much better and we waste a lot of time doing that we also look forward well I was supposed to be this or I was supposed to be that and this was supposed to be my most successful year you know I was supposed to be that or this was supposed to be my most successful year or you know I was gonna play in the NFL this was my launch point and then and we get bitter about that and then the last one is we look for someone or something to blame you know it was their fault they did this or they didn't do this and that that is the victim mindset that pins us to the x and and what happens is mean, in a gunfight, you literally can physically die, but in life I watch people who mentally and emotionally die.

And I write this in the book, Overcome, that there are people who that life ambush that hits them becomes the excuse for everything in their life. For decades. And they become lesser individuals than they ever were before. Like alcohol, drugs, whatever it is, every bad behavior is justified because of what happened to them. And they just lay on the X and they're just a dead person walking.

So when you made that conscious decision to make that sign and kind of create a mission statement for yourself to recover in a more positive state, what shifted for you and what shifted for the people around you that you weren't claiming to be a victim? Yeah, I mean, it was just nothing but positivity that and don't get me wrong, I had hard times. I mean, there were definitely days that were hard. I mean, it was not, you know, it's not blue skies and rainbows every day, but it is a choice. It doesn't mean that it's a choice to keep driving forward. And my wife, who I call the long haired admiral, is amazing.

But I, yeah, she's trying to raise three young kids. And really I felt like this fourth kid because you know, who was cleaning my wounds, you know, who was grinding up my medicine, who was feeding me through, um, you know, grinding up food so that I could eat through a stomach tube. It was my wife. I was in a wheelchair when they brought me home. I had all this metal and hardware, you know, helping me clean this trach that I wore for seven months and two days. So the last thing I was going to do was add additional stress to her by complaining or by, you know. And not only that, I want to set the example to my kids. Like, hey, bad things happen to good people.

But by complaining and being negative, you are not helping the situation in any way whatsoever. And this is something I talk to people about in this idea of leading always. When it sucks the worst, nobody needs to hear about it because all you're doing is pulling others down. And it is a virus. It is a cancer when it occurs because usually when a team is at a point in time where people are starting to turn inward and feel sorry and eat themselves, you're at a tipping point. And this is when a great leader can step up and step out of his

own misery to try and lead others forward to push you in the right direction, or you will fall in the other direction. And that's, I wanted to show my kids and others that I wasn't going to be that guy. I was going to continue to drive forward no matter what. That's powerful. Lead yourself, lead others, lead always. 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 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 to SEAL training. A lot of people don't realize how smart SEALs have to be. So there's a lot of things you have to do to qualify just to get to 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 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 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. 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 gonna take down this entire

town like you know 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 qual rock 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 to do when I train anybody to shoot is you shoot at the three yard line. 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 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, 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 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 as I got out, I realized 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 the key to successful leadership is balance. 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 percent 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 older, have a tendency to let slide. We do the opposite of probably what we should be doing. It's 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's 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 and 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, 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 and those with a stronger immune system seem to be doing better and it's like that with other diseases right 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. 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 right so it only furthers their belief and 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 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 it's getting outside of your comfort zone.

It's finding the individuals who are where you wanna 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 wanna 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 there 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 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 news and you're not going to burn it down

drinking and be an idiot. You've 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, 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. 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've got to think about the others. The health of others, yes. And then the last part of emotional leadership is managing our mouths. 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, it does nothing to further that situation in a positive way. No. Other than maybe making you feel good to attack people who disagreed with. And that's part of being a leader also. Right. That people are gonna disagree with you, so what?

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 need to communicate you need to talk to your people but if you talk too much guess what happens people start stop listening to you you're putting out too much information they don't know what's important 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 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 to 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. 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 gun nest over there. Let's attack it. So you charge up the everyone dies yeah you've you've been too aggressive so what you have to do is you have to be balanced and that's probably so so even as i had these kind of mantras yeah 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 absolutely 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't 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. execute now can you really take ownership of that plan if someone else gave me 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 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 how do you want to do it hmm 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 hit an obstacle in the field what's your attitude I need to adapt and adjust what's your plan you'll make it came up. 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 yeah so like you said earlier you're constantly questioning everything and to me what that is that's that's humility that's you being humble enough to say you 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 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 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 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. Right? Because I'm not satisfied. I mean, I always want to go. Like, I never get done with the end of the day and go, cool, mission accomplished. Like, it's like, got to be close. 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. My wife and kids.

My wife and kids are cool and funny and we have a good time and lots of inside jokes and all that. And I train Jiu Jitsu and that's very fun. And surf, that's fun. Play guitar, that's fun. How old are your kids again? Fun and surf, that's fun. Yeah. Play 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 yourself being a father to them? Your kids are not going to be who you want them to be. You can't train them to be. 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 going to push back and rebel. Wow.

Yep. Did you learn that the hard way or did you get. Yep. 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 they were, we were talking, we, you know, 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 10, right? Cause 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 the same thing with leadership. It's the same thing with leadership. If I'm trying to force my plan down my team's throat, the more resistance I'm going to get from it. Whereas if I plant the seed and I allow that plan to grow with them,

the better it's going to 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? hmm, if you're 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 hey, give it a shot. Here's a couple, I might give you a couple 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've worked have worked now if you were going to meet with a big client that really was going to have value to our company i'm going to i'm going to eat that thing 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 not going to say no don't do it that way i'm going to 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 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 yeah no feedback no improvement so if 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 even when it gets told to you you don't you don't listen to it yeah so feedback is 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 gonna tell this guy anything right? 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 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 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 friends 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, 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 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 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 yeah two things 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 there you apply it there. To your personal life, if you 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, 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 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 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 I'm going to 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? So if you, well, if you come to me and you go, the supply department's been late for, they're two weeks late on this stuff. I don't say calm down. I say, I said, oh, you gotta be kidding me. Two weeks. And you go, yeah. Can you believe it? Ah, that's horrible. We got to put a solution. We got to get that me two weeks and you go yeah can you believe it ah that's horrible we got to put a solution we 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 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 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 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 machines not working. Ah, man, that thing is junk

Have you called the the repair guy? You know what I mean? I don't know if 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 machines not working. Well, okay. You want me to 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. 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 with me personally, as well as ad free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our greatness plus channel exclusively on Apple podcasts. Share this with a friend on social

media and leave us a review on Apple podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.