WHOOP Podcast - Navy SEAL Commander Mark Divine on how mindfulness made him an elite warrior.

Episode Date: February 5, 2020

Mark Divine was one of America's top warriors, but his path and approach to becoming a Navy SEAL Commander was anything but ordinary. Mark joins Will Ahmed to discuss how he went from being a CPA to a SEAL (4:55), how mindfulness, meditation and zen led him to become a warrior (7:51), the importance of listening to your heart and gut (12:31), similarities between meditation and exercise (19:26), why leaders should meditate (25:12), how he uses WHOOP and how it changed his outlook on wearables (30:41), what SEAL training is like and how his mindfulness toolkit helped him become the No. 1 graduate in his class (36:29), how 185 guys got weeded down to 18 (42:07), his views on training soldiers of the future (46:06), what a "true warrior" is made of (47:10), and his approach to business and how leaders should carry themselves (51:04).Support the showFollow WHOOP: www.whoop.com Trial WHOOP for Free Instagram TikTok YouTube X Facebook LinkedIn Follow Will Ahmed: Instagram X LinkedIn Follow Kristen Holmes: Instagram LinkedIn Follow Emily Capodilupo: LinkedIn

We discovered that there were secrets that your body was trying to tell you that could really help you optimize performance, but no one could monitor those things. And that's when we set out to build the technology that we thought could really change the world. Welcome to the Whoop podcast. I'm your host, Will Ahmed, founder and CEO of Whoop, where we are on a mission to unlock human performance. At WOOP, our clients range from the best professional athletes in the world to Navy SEALs to fitness enthusiasts to Fortune 500 CEOs and executives. The common thread among WOOP members is a passion to improve. What does it take to optimize performance for athletes, for humans, really anyone?

On this podcast, we dig deeper, we interview experts, we interview industry leaders across sports, data, technology, physiology, athletic achievement, you name it. How can you use data to improve your body? what should you change about your life? My hope is that you'll leave these conversations with some new ideas and a greater passion for performance. With that in mind, I welcome you to the Whoop Podcast. I just kept having a sense that I was kind of heading down the wrong path

and fast by being a CPA. And that there was some other thing that I was meant to do that was like really, really urgent and important. And that if I didn't figure it out quickly, then the opportunity, whatever it was, would pass me. by and I'd live this life of regret. So I just stayed with that for a long time in my meditation and then what came up to me was that I was meant to be a warrior. That's when the Navy SEALs kind of revealed themselves. Hello, folks. My guest today is former Navy SEAL commander

and entrepreneur Mark Devine. Mark spent 20 years in the Navy in both active duty and reserve roles before retiring with the rank of commander in 2011. Mark's path to becoming a Navy SEAL was pretty unique. He actually started out as a CPA in New York City before finding his calling as the number one graduate in his SEAL training class. We spent a lot of time talking about that transition. What led him to it? How did he think about this being the right new career for him and new path in his life? And also a lot around how meditation and mindfulness played a major catalyst in both his success as a SEAL and becoming a SEAL. He's passionate today about helping veterans with PTSD and he's founded an organization for those struggling with the invisible wounds

of war. We definitely thank Mark for his service. Mark and I also discuss on this podcast how he found meditation and Zen in his early 20s and how those tools set him apart from others as he was training to become a seal. I think in general this is a really important podcast if you're interested at all in meditation, visualization, mindfulness. We go deep on that. We talk about what Navy SEAL training is actually like, it's extremely hard, and how Whoop has helped him overcome his skepticism of wearables. We're proud that Mark is a Whoop member. Overall, this is an amazing podcast. Mark is remarkable. You can catch the interview he did with me on his podcast, but without further ado, here is Mark. Mark, thanks for coming on the podcast. Real, thanks for having me.

It's great to be here. So we did one together at the Spartan event, which was a lot of of fun and you're a great host yourself so hopefully i can uh hold up to your standard well man i had a great time talking to you up at spartan and um i'm really stoked to be here and i've got to tell you i've been wearing my whoop and learning all about the nuances of you know how my uh training and sleep and recovery is impacting my life so super stoked to talk about well that's good to hear because i remember actually when we were we sat down you were a bit of a skeptic well i'm i'm definitely not i'll probably your target because I'm an elite athlete only for in the sense that I used to be an elite athlete. And I'm probably an elite athlete for a 56 year old in my age group. I could probably

kick most people's asses in, you know, in that age. But, you know, I don't really need it to like drive peak performance for, you know, some sporting event like most of your clients probably are, you know, CrossFit Games athlete or, you know, or even an active duty Navy SEAL. Having said that, I think it's hugely valuable. And you're right, I was kind of against wearables, mainly because of my personality is not to rely on tech. You know, even in the seals, we said first, you know, you got to know your map and compass and then you use, you know, the satellite tech and GPS and all that because if the tech goes down, you're toast in the field. Having said that, I've kind of come around because I think tech can really be a good, enabler, as long you don't rely too heavily on it.

Well, let's start with what made you join the SEALs. That is such a great question. In fact, your tech guy, Matt, was just asking me, like, how could you go from a CPA to Navy SEAL? Probably the only SEAL who's ever been a CPA or had even any inkling of that kind of career. Yeah, I mean, you start your career graduating from Colby with a BS in economics, and then you're earning your MBA from NYU, and then you're working at what's now become Pricewaterhouse Coopers as a CPA before joining the SEALs. So you really were well on your way down a business path, and that's quite a pivot. Yeah, for sure. You know, it's something that I talk about in my book

The Way of the Seal. I was kind of groomed to be a business guy. We have a long-term historical family business that was started like in mid to late 1700s. You know, it's like there's only a few of those left this country, probably less than a thousand or so. And, you know, it was just kind of expected that my brothers and I would come back and be part of the family business. So I was being groomed to be the future CEO. And so when I went to Colgate and then, you know, major in economics and after that got a job down in New York City with Cooper's Library, which you, as too, we pointed out, became Pricewater. I was Coopers. And they sent me to NYU to get my MBA. And I became a certified public accountant. Like, it was all systems go. Everyone was.

was super stoked. Family was thinking, right on, the Golden Boy is doing exactly what he needs to do, is getting all that experience, and is going to bring it back to the family business. Well, I was also an athlete, right? Like a lot of your guests and you yourself, I was an elite athlete. I was an elite athlete at Colgate, a competitive swimmer. I was a rower as a triathlete. And when I went to Manhattan, I was, you know, I was unique because we're talking about their early, 80s, early to mid 80s. I think a lot more people today are kind of like this, but back then there weren't many like me where I said, you know what? I refuse to let that part of my life go and just become, you know, some sort of fat corporate, you know, guy. Because everyone

around me was that back then. And I was like, there's no way that I'm going to, you know, just wear a suit every day and go out, you know, eat donuts and go have the martini lunch and, you know, see my body just wither away and be some bald fat guy when I'm 30. I'm not going to do that. And so I kept up my regimen. You know, I got up at 5 o'clock every morning and ran through the park and did sprints. And then I would go to the gym at lunchtime and do my version of a high intensity workout. And then in the evening, I was trying to figure out, what am I going to do in the evening. I could continue training for my triathlon, so I did that for a while. And then I thought, I really like to get into a martial art. So, long story short, I found a martial art that was

right around the corner from where I lived on 23rd Street. And it was a moment that changed my life. I walked into that studio, and I just felt like, whoa, this is amazing. Like, the energy there was incredible. The grandmaster was a 10th degree black who created the style of karate. And unbeknownst to me, the real benefit for me was that he was a Zen master also. In fact, I really believe, and I might have mentioned this, he was kind of, he used karate, you know, his schoolhouse and training karate basically to teach Zen to people. And I took to the Zen training, you know, like a moth through a flame or like a, that's probably not a good analogy, but I really loved it. And I tell you, Will, especially to do this as a 20 to 20. 21-year-old, 22-year-old, 23-year-old guy, it had a profound effect on my psyche, my mind,

the way I thought, you know, nowadays we understand that. I had no clue. There was no one talking about neuroplasticity or meditation back then, yet here I was doing Zen every day for 20 minutes, sitting on my little wooden zaza bench. And so what happened to me was, you know, everything that you can imagine that happens when you start to meditate and you stick with the practice. I begin to think more clearly. I begin to have all sorts of really interesting insights. And I can tell you now how I think that works, but back then I didn't really know. I just was sitting on the bench. I drop into kind of the void and suddenly I would just know something or I would have an image of something. And where that started to lead me, and I recognize these

patterns recurring. And one of the main patterns was I just kept having a sense that I was kind of heading down the wrong path and fast by being a CPA. And that there was some other thing that I was meant to do that was like really, really urgent and important. And that if I didn't figure it out quickly, then the opportunity or whatever it was would pass me by. And I'd live this life of regret. So I just stayed with that for a long time in my meditation. And then what came up to me was that I was meant to be a warrior. And as soon as I identified this idea that I was meant to be a warrior, that's when the Navy SEALs kind of revealed themselves to me. I had really never even heard of the SEALs. As soon as I figured out, that's it. I really want to be a warrior.

It's not like I said, I want to be a Navy SEAL. It's like, I want to be a warrior. I am a warrior. And if, you know, if the right thing for me was to be a warrior in the corporate world by, you know, starting an organization, that I probably would have been led that direction. But within days of having that insight, I walked by a Navy recruiting office, and on the window was this poster, and the poster title was be someone special. And it had all these images of Navy SEALs doing wickedly cool Navy SEAL stuff. And I literally was transfixed, staring that poster going, holy shit. Like, what is this? Who are these people? That's me. Like, that's what I want to do. And, you know, after that, it just was a matter of going through the motions of trying to

figure out how to get in and then doubling down on my training, both physical and mental, to make that transition from CPA to seal. Well, I love that story so much because I think from the outside, it sounds fairly serendipitous, but what you did a nice job there highlighting is how you were sort of tuning your mind and your body and your soul in some ways to be looking for these opportunities or to be trying to identify something to take you down a path. And it's, you know, this concept of priming or affirmations that then in turn makes an outcome so much more likely. Do you agree with that sort of summary?

Yeah, I think you're right. There's a lot of ways to look at it. One is, you know, yeah, the biases, right? Confirmation bias, certainly. Like if I start looking for things that are warrior-like, then I'm going to see them. There's definitely that happening. Also, this idea of intuition. Like some people would say that intuition is more astute pattern recognition, right? The ability to, you know, like Kahneman's system one mind and system two mind, the ability to really know how or have your system two, which is your rational thinking mind, be able to pick up patterns and recognize those patterns and to be able to interpret them from your system one mind, which is your subconscious. There's definitely that going on. But my experience is also much more

kind of on the gut and the heart intuition level as well, is that we have these other aspects of our brain system, right, our nervous system, our enteric nervous system, you know, our gut biome system, and the heart itself is part of our brain, you know, part of our thinking capacity, you know, I'm not sure how else to say it. And so when you start to meditate and you get control a rational, cognitive kind of left brain aspect, and you can drop into these moments of silence where you're not doing anything, right? The yogis would call that you're perceiving mind. You're not thinking. You're not visualizing. You're not remembering. You're not dreaming. You're just sitting there meditating, I guess, right? Which is doing nothing. Well, you're doing

something, but you're not actively doing anything. You're just listening and you're searching or being quiet. And all of a sudden, that's when you can hear or see. sense what the gut is telling you, your gut brain and all the brain activity of the biome and your heart, right? And these two have a different way of communicating with you or through you. And I think that's what I was, you know, this idea that I was a warrior, it wasn't pattern recognition. It was my heart, my spirit telling me that's the direction to go. And then the pattern recognition went to work to help me narrow that down to say, is it a seal? Is it a Marine? Is it, you know, to be an adventurer, right? There's lots of ways to be a warrior.

Well, I also love just the degree to which it's clear that finding moments of silence or finding meditation, the Zen practice, obviously, I want to come back to that, had this unbelievable impact on your life. Like, do you think you become a seal if you never learn to meditate? Absolutely not. Like there's zero chance that I would have been a seal had I not gotten meditation. So that's unbelievable in some ways, right? It's like fascinating. And by the way, I completely believe you and have experienced this firsthand in, you know, my own path of learning meditation. I practiced transcendental meditation, which we talked about about on your podcast. And a lot of what you're describing, like makes perfect sense to me. And it's

it's often hard, I think, to even explain to people who have never gotten into a practice of meditation just how powerful it can be. Yeah. In a lot of different ways too, right? It's one of the things I think, you know, you and I wanted to have a further conversation on is that, you know, people sometimes, you know, will put meditation into a one-size-fits-all kind of box. I think just do it. And there's something to that, right? It's better to just do it than to not just do it, right? So that's for sure. Just do it in that sense. But, and headspace and 10% happier and all that are useful tools in the just doer category because it will lead to health benefits, it will lead to stress reduction, longevity,

you know, and a little bit of peace of mind. But that's all like very, very surface level, in my opinion. I think meditation has many, many different aspects to it, many different tools that will lead to like pretty extraordinary outcomes if you work it, right? If you follow, you know, the trail markers deeper and deeper. One of those outcomes is what we've just talked about an alignment with your calling, you know, what the yoghries would call your Dharma, right? And also a recognition of the patterns that are causing or creating more karma in your life, especially negative karma. So that's a reduction of negativity and negative patterns and reactionary conditioning to creating more positive outcomes in your life and to burn off that kind of karma. So

that you, you know, you move forward with the positive conditions in the future. That's kind of extraordinary outcome of meditation. And then, like third, just for being able to focus like a freaking laser beam on the right things at the right time for the right reason, allows us to be much more successful. And as you and I would know, in today's world, successful in a sense that you're doing something that's impactful and positive, not just successful in the sense of you're backing up your bank account or your likes on Facebook. Sure.

There's three very powerful outcomes of a daily meditation practice. No, it's so powerful. So let's talk about that initial experience of learning, you know, learning this practice. What immediately made you comfortable doing it? I mean, obviously there was somewhat of the calling in that you felt like you needed to learn more about yourself. There was the added karate element to end the fact that it was nearby.

but what got you sitting there and meditating in the first place? I think all of those were really important. And it's hard for people, in my experience, because I teach this stuff also, it's hard for people to just add something like meditation to their schedule and stick with it because it's so new, it's different, and they don't have a good way to measure success. They're used to external measurements like exercise, you know, that they can track their baselines or their strength training or something like that. With meditation, you don't have those external measures.

It's much more subtle. But what helped me was to have a teacher and a schedule. And the schedule was external. Like every Thursday night for an hour, I had class. And so I went to class. So I just committed to do it. The reason I committed to do it partly was because I really trusted the teacher. And nowadays, there's a lot more evidence about the power and the value of meditation.

So I suppose you could say, well, you know, most people don't have to wonder if it works anymore. They know it. We know it works. So just do it. But it certainly helps to have a trusted teacher. And that teacher who can kind of point out what you're doing right and what you're doing wrong and can give you insights and tips and to hold you accountable. Huge, right, huge. Yeah.

So that was it. I really respected Nakamura, which was the Zen master's name. I trusted him, and I had a schedule, and I was motivated to do it. Once I experienced the benefits, which was hard, right? I imagine, like, when you started TM, you know, for the first month, your mind's running all over the place. That monkey mind is just screaming saying, nah, this is not for me. And then all of a sudden, you feel like you have one session, we're like, oh, shit, I think I did it. You know what I mean?

Yeah, right. actually made some progress there and that becomes very motivating so you have these kind of roller coaster ups and downs in the first months or even years but meditation is one of those things like exercise if you just keep doing it and stick with it day in and day out you'll look back over time and see your progress you may not note the progress every day but when you look back you're like holy shit i have come so far and with meditation what you're looking for is change of perspectives, you know, a reduction of stress in your life, more clear decision-making, a feeling of peace of mind and contentment, these types of things, the ability to be more

present with others and to be a better listener in relationships. And these are the outcomes you're looking for, you know, subtle stuff that have a profound effect on your life. What kind of a technique were you doing? Was it just be still and breathe? Or was there some, you know, breathing techniques that you were learning in the process? says. Yeah, I like, that's a great question. It was, it's kind of like Zen is like boot camp for meditation, right? The technique is the path of concentration. TM is a path of mantra. Sure. And then

mindfulness meditation is the path of mindfulness or awareness. They're all train your brain a little bit differently. TM and Zen have a lot of similarities because they're really a concentration practice. The point is to still your left brain thinking mind and focus it on one single point of reference. With TM, that reference will be the mantra. With Zen, the reference is the breath. But breathing in a way that slows down. So it's a lot like the box breathing that I teach the seal trainees, slowing down the breath and inhaling and exhaling with the same duration. And each inhale and exhale is going to be maybe like five count or six count, right? And I think that was really...

That's pretty long. It wasn't... Yeah, nice, slow breaths. So you're doing probably, you know, four to six breaths per minute. And the more you get into it, you even slow that down. So you might be doing two breaths per minute and eventually one breath per minute, like 30 second inhale, 30 second exhale. Then, you know, what Nakamura asked us to do was to just breathe like that to, to, While you're doing that to not think of anything else, like that is your focus.

Your mind is like pinned to that breath, right? It's following it like ever so closely like a Navy SEAL sniper following a target. And when your mind wanders, it's not a mindfulness practice where you just notice it wandering and you're like, oh, that's interesting, you know, come back to the breath. it's more like a sniper shooting the wandering mind and coming back to the breath right away. It is like you go back to the breath. You snap back to the breath as soon as you notice that you wander. And, Will, you kind of start over, right?

Yeah. So the way that works for us is he said, okay, just all you need to do is 10 of these breath cycles. Your goal is to get to 10. Inhale, exhale one, inhale, exhale two. You start thinking about something. bam you notice it snap back to the breath go back to zero right that's why he said it's kind of like meditation boot camp right you do not get credit you know for the first two you go back to zero by the way this is uh this is something you introduced me to uh during your podcast and we talked

about this idea of can you count to 10 without thinking about anything else through this breathing exercise and i you know i like to think i've been meditating at least for a little while probably four or five years now, and it is enormously hard. It is. So if you're listening to this and you're thinking counting to 10 is a joke, and you never meditate before, try to count to two. It's that hard. Inhale, exhale, one, you're probably, you've probably already lost.

And so the idea of getting to 10 is actually unbelievable concentration. It took me over a year to do that. And even then, that was like a once in a while thing. And it's still hard to do, right? But over time, this path of concentration is super powerful because it helps you sharpen your mind like iron sharpened steel. And I think mantra, like I've actually moved on to where mantra is probably one of my primary forms because mantra becomes an all the time meditation. That's what the beauty of mantra and mindfulness is that eventually you take it off on that and it's a thing you can do. Well, the mantra, I mean, to your point, TM and Zen, you know, have this.

focus on stilling your left brain, the mantra is the reset, the same way you described, returning to the breath being the reset. So for those, you know, for those listening who are a little unfamiliar with what we're describing, when you're repeating a mantra over and over again, what stills your left brain is that's all you're focused on. And then when a thought comes in, you have this opportunity of thinking about the thought or letting it pass by by again returning to the mantra. It sounds like in the Zen practice, if the sole goal is not to think about anything else and you think about something else, then you have to return back to zero in this counting exercise. And you're right. So the outcome of those is a very, you know, focused mind

and also a mind that's able to discern, you know, when the focus has been broken, you know, distracted and also to do that more frequently, right, and to snap back to your object of concentration, whether that's a podcast or writing or, you know, focusing on a board meeting, you know, very, very quickly. And so it has enormous benefits for leaders, right, to be able to be laser focused on the right thing at the right time, for the right reasons even. And then and also because you're training your left brain to like kind of toe the line, so to speak and stop being the dominant player but to be a partner with the rest of your brain systems, now you can start to access some of those intuitive aspects of your intelligence and the spiritual aspects of your intelligence that we talked about earlier. But you've got to distill the left hemisphere and that really active rational brain of ours because it's been overtrained in our lives. I think everything you're describing is literally a superpower.

And ever since I've gotten introduced to this world of meditation, I've been blown away by the number of high-performing successful individuals I've met who have all confessed to me, whether publicly or privately, that they completely believe in meditation. It is a secret maybe that's not actually a secret amongst very high-performing individuals, and it's no surprise, Mark, that it's had such a profound effect on your life and given what you've been able to accomplish. Yeah, I think it's our next frontier for all leaders, right? These skills will probably be fairly commonplace in 10 or 20 years. We'll laugh about how we thought we were pioneers and, you know, getting the word out. Now, the whoop hook here for whoop members listening, you mentioned, can you measure the success of meditation?

We've actually seen enormous benefits to resting heart rate, heart rate variability, and things like slow wave sleep and REM sleep, all of which WOOP measures from people who introduce a mindfulness practice, a meditation practice. we've done a number of small studies in this regard where we take someone who doesn't meditate or doesn't do any form of mindfulness and then they introduce a were-whoop and then they introduce some kind of a practice and it could be as simple as, you know, five times a day just being mindful for a few minutes. It could be, you know, doing a 20 or 30-minute session once or twice a day. The bottom line being that we saw across the board meaningful physiological improvements, again, to resting heart rate being lower, heart rate variability being higher.

I mean, heart rate variability is literally a measurement of your autonomic nervous system, which, as you know, is this relationship between sympathetic and parasympathetic activity, and the more imbalance sympathetic and parasympathetic, the higher your heart rate variability. Now, quite literally, when you inhale, that sympathetic heart rate up, when you exhale, So that's parasympathetic heart rate down. And so just by getting into a really intense breathing exercise, you are triggering a higher heart rate variability in that moment. Right.

Yeah, really well said. I agree with that. And especially with populations that either need that kind of evidence, that feedback evidence, or like for studies, you know, that's huge. I'm thinking like we've got a foundation called the Courage Foundation where we work with vets who are suffering from post-traumatic stress. One of my missions is to reduce or eliminate the suicides that are happening from the veteran population.

It's crazy. It's so important. It's horrible. And so we want to use the whoop with our veteran programs because, you know, these people are, they're not necessarily, I mean, they'll believe me. But boy, if you can, if they believe Commander Devine that, hey, this breath practice along with improving your quality of sleep. along with getting back into, you know, rigorous exercise, along with connecting, you know, with your team or with the team again and having a mission, all of these things are going to help pull you out of your depths.

But if you can also have a way to track that and measure it and to show some proof, sometimes that's what it takes to tip the scale. You know what I mean to get people to do it every day. And that's what I love about the wearables is that, you know, if you miss a day, you're like, oh, shit, it shows up, you know, because the data is missing. Yeah, you got to wear it all the time. Well, it's been fascinating for me to see how introducing data and real, you know, tangible numbers to a competitive population, like the Navy SEALs, for example, we've been fortunate to work with a number of SEAL teams. And as you know all too well, this is a population that because their mindset is so incredibly powerful and they can overcome all kinds of, you know, degrees of pain and lack of sleep and sort of fill in the blank, they have a real go, go, go. mindset. And in some ways, that's what helped them become seals in the first places. You know all too well. But when you can assign a value that says, hey, you've got this high green recovery, whereas your teammates have low ones or vice versa, all of a sudden, it gives some numbers to a competitive

population that are, you know, quite, quite beneficial to be competitive around, right? Where all of a sudden you've got these high performing individuals that aren't just competing around how many pull-ups they did, but also how much slow-wave sleep or REM sleep they got the night before. And so we have seen some positive behavior change, I think, come from being able to measure these things and therefore manage them. Now, Mark, if you think about your initial skepticism or some of the challenge that you had implementing wearable technology in the past, what are some things that maybe you've overcome using whoop so far? Well, again, for me, it's like prove it, right? I just needed the proof that it was going to be useful, and it wasn't going to add complexity

in my life. And I loved, I really remembered when I called it a watch in our interview, and you quickly correct me. You said, no, the whoop is not a watch, right? Because we didn't want people, we didn't want to complexify it. You know, this is a wearable device to track your heart rate and resting heart rate. Passive monitoring, right? So, and also it's, it's another thing that really trips me up is, again, just having one more thing to charge up. I mean, it's so simple. Like, I'm a caveman in that regard. Like, I charge, you know, my, my, my, I have an Apple I watch too. So I charge that. Charge my phone. I charge my AirPods. You know, so I'm an Apple guy. Those things are already a pain in the ass. And now I've got to charge your woo. But you've come up with

such an elegant system that it's almost a no-brainer to keep it charged up. And so I'm inclined to actually wear it all the time. Whereas I won't. wear my watch at night because I know that as a you know for sleep hygiene I don't want the electronics on me or near me but with the it's such a low energy signature of the wolf and you know it's important to get that sleep data I'll wear it all night long so those are some of the things just the simplicity it didn't it didn't add much burden to me in terms of keeping it charged up and once the data you know once I was patient enough to let the data kind of catch up and just like you told me and it took me a while to really get this but the data improves

the whoop improves over time as it starts to really learn from your patterns and so that's been really interesting to me so I think the other part is just like it'd be useful to know because I'm a solo person right now I'm not using it like with my seal team where I've got someone who's saying hey you know mark you're an outlier here or you know compared to the rest of your team you know your rate is high or low or whatever. So I'm kind of flying alone. It'd be helpful to have like some coaching or, you know, a team. And there probably is that. I just haven't explored it yet. So one thing you can do, which we recently added, is you can now create teams in the WUP app, which a lot of our members have enjoyed a lot. So if you had a few friends or if you had a seal team

that you were training out of combat or, you know, you had a group of people that you wanted to work with, you could create a team for them and be a member of that. team and then in turn you can help assess their data and again it creates a nice layer of accountability too if you've got the right people involved because if you're an individual who's getting three hours of sleep every night and you see the rest of your team's getting eight hours or six hours or whatever you know that can really sort of drive some behavior change I got to tell you the one you know it's kind of an obvious thing but because I've been training for so long you know with these internal practices and I have a

a pretty rigorous and disciplined exercise routine. Because I teach these things, I really focus on getting, you know, seven to eight hours of sleep every night. So when the data caught up, it was validating, you know. But at the same time, I saw that there was room for improvement. You know what I mean? So even though I'm operating at the top, you know, probably 1%. I was like, there's definitely room for improvement.

You know, my sleep was at 87%. I'm like, well, why isn't that 100%. I mean, I know why, because I've got little habits there. that, you know, dropped me down from 100 to 87, but 87 is pretty good. You know, I'm averaging like seven to eight hours of sleep at night, but every once in a while, you know, I've got that night. What was it that caused it? You're like the model citizen of seal behavior, because most seals that we start out with

are like, you know, 40 to 50 percent of their sleep. No kid. You know, one of my friends is a seal named Dr. Parsley, and I've done a couple podcasts with him. He's called the Sleep Doctor. But he said when he was in the Seals, then he became a doctor. When Back became a doctor for the Seals, he would start, you know, all the guys would come into him with this complaint and that complaint. And he ended up boiling it all down to like, they basically were radically sleep deprived.

And it just, it just crushed all their hormones. He said they had the hormones of like a 13-year-old girl. Yeah, isn't that amazing? Yeah. And so once he dialed in their sleep, then a lot of things started to improve. And meditation is one way to. really dial in your sleep. It really helps. It's virtually good for everything as we've touched upon during this podcast, but we especially see it with sleep and we especially see it with heart rate

variability. So let's go back to your experience now as a seal. So you've successfully done this Zen practice, found your calling. You've seen the advertisement to join the Navy. Describe the process from there in becoming a seal. Well, you know, I was going to go through Officer Canada's because I had a master's degree and a, you know, underwent and Colgate. Even though, you know, today, gosh, most, you know, college graduates going into the SEALs go in as enlisted. And it's actually preferred, you know, you get to spend some time as an enlisted shooter and really learn the ropes. And then you can get commissioned as an officer. And it, you know, really doesn't slow your career down and enhance your career.

And that's what I usually recommend people. But, you know, if you're coming from the Naval Academy or Officer Canada school, or, yeah, Officer Canada School, then, you know, you become an officer first and then you become a seal, which is the route that I took. So OCS was no big deal. Then I showed up at maybe seal training, and everyone was a total stud, right? And I'm looking at this class, I had 185 studs on day one. And I'm like, wow, there's some badass guys, a lot of former military like Marine Recon and even special forces, guys trying to become seals. And then a bunch of civilians like me.

And so it turns out, Will, I mean, the physical. physical stuff, I was right there. You know, I'd done the work. I was a competitive athlete. Sure. I dominated the screening test scores. So I wasn't worried about that, but pretty much everyone had that, you know? I mean, some more than the others. So I immediately kind of went back to my toolkit from Zen and said, okay, you know, what's going to differentiate me? And it wasn't so much I sat down and planned this out. It's more like the skills kind of were there for me. And so I doubled down on them. I continued my Zen practice. I continue my, you know, structured breathing or controlled breathing practice and visualization. Now, visualization is something I added on during my Zen training because it really helped me concentrate. It turns out imagery is a great way.

It's a great tool for concentration, but it has a lot of other benefits too, which have been well researched in, you know, especially with sports visualization for practice. and also for manifesting kind of some sort of destiny that is desirable to you that you really are strongly aligned with. So I use visualization in my daily practice for about a year before I got accepted into the Officer Candidate program, and I continue to use it throughout my time in seal training. So how it all came down, I now call these the big four skills. So every day I would wake up and do my breathing and Zen practice, and I would dirt dive the day.

What I meant by that is I would visualize myself kind of going through what I knew was going to happen that day, whether we had an obstacle course or ocean swim or, you know, a six-mile time run, whatever, whether we're in dive phase, you know. Would you always know what you were going to do? Generally, we would, you know, except for Hell Week. Hell Week was one week where you didn't have a freaking clue. But every other week, hell week, by the way, for those who don't know, is it's seven days of around the clock nonstop training, no sleep whatsoever, except for about. We had about 45 minutes, and I think they now give you about two to three hours on a Thursday. And it's just intense.

In fact, our seal fit, one of my companies is called SealFit, it's largely, we have an event that's largely modeled after Hell Week. It's 50 hours of nonstop physical mental team training. And we have a lot of elite athletes come through that, and a lot of seal candidates is pretty extraordinary. But during, you know, back to your question, like week to week, we would actually get a schedule and say, you know, you're going to do these evolutions. and, you know, you have physical evolutions, you have classroom time, you have skill development, you know, and it's broken into three phases. So first phase is all performance. And that's where they basically want to weed the class down to the number that's largely going to get through. So we had 185, as I mentioned. Hellweek for us was seventh week of training. The whole training is nine months long now. So the seventh week of training for us was Hell Week. So up to that seventh week, you know, we had all. like performance measures. Every week, you've got to improve your times, time runs, your time swims, and your timed obstacle courses. And if you fail anything more than once, you have a good chance of being performance rolled back. So by the time we got the Hellweek Will, we were at like,

maybe 85. So you start with 185, and now seven weeks later you're down to 85. And you're about to have the real nightmarish week. Yeah, that is, you know, Sunday, you know, the bombs start going off and smoke grenades and it's just, you know, nonstop chaos. You know, you're wet and cold and sleep deprived, you know, for 24 hours a day, for six days, and you're constantly moving and you're constantly performing, but you're doing it all as a boat crew, which is our team. And by the end of that training, we were down to about 40, and that, we were down to about 40, and

that was kind of the number that we worked with. So a few more weeks left in that phase where we did like beach landings and hydrographic reconnaissance and whatnot, old UDT or underwater demolition team stuff. And then second phase for us was dive phase. We've switched it now. That's third phase. But for us, it was learning how to open circuit and close circuit dive using the 100% auction rigs called the Drager and doing ship attacks. So you're learning how to navigate underwater at night, you know, to place limpid mines on ships and stuff like that. So, badass it was pretty cool and and of course while you're doing this you imagine you know each of these dives is like four hours three to four hours really grueling but we're still you know

doing our timed runs and our time swims and our timed obstacle courses and you got to improve your scores so it's just intense and PT in between right so that phase is just brutal and then we go into land warfare and land warfare you know it's where you learn how to shoot move and communicate and do small unit tactics and basically seal stuff And so, of course, during this phase, you've got to improve your times on the time runs. The timed optional courses in the swims, but they get longer. Every, you know, the runs in the swims get longer and longer. And the optional course, you just got to, you know, my time went from, I think,

13 minutes when I started in the first phase to my best time. I had the best time in the class was like six minutes and something, six 50s and like that by the time I graduated. Any rate, we graduated with 18 guys. And I was the honor man of my class. class, number one graduate in my class. Congratulations. And I can tell you, thanks, it was no big deal for me because I was leveraging the skills of

meditation and visualization, but I throw that in the bucket. You know, the bucket of skills that I was using for the meditative practices that I brought to the table were controlling of the breath, like breath control brought me that counter-arousal response, you know, triggering the parasympathetic nervous system from the moment I woke up to literally before every evolution and even during every evolution to really, really focus on breathing through my nostrils and slowing down the pace of my breathing and getting my breath into a pattern that's just nice and slow and controlled. Just that alone might have been enough, right? Because it had such a profound effect on my stress and my ability to just maintain more awareness, right,

throughout the training. So that was like the secret weapon number one. Secret weapon number two was this ability to concentrate and to have that concentration practice, which became an anti-distractor, right? So anytime something tried to distract me, like a Navy SEAL instructor, for instance, are masterful of trying to distract a candidate and to get them to start to think negatively or to think they can't do something. I mean, that's part of their, that is their job. Right. It's to look for weakness, and that weakness is in the mind and the emotions, right? It's not the physical. They know that. So they look for weaknesses in the mind and to distract the student and then to start planting seeds of doubt. And anytime I noticed that happening,

I immediately shifted fire back to my mantra. And my mantra back then was a very practical feel-good jingle that I used, which was, I'm feeling good, I'm looking good, I ought to be in Hollywood. Feeling good, I'm looking good, I ought to be in Hollywood. That was the second secret weapon I had was my mantra. And that helped me stay positive. And it also kind of clicked me back into a positive internal dialogue anytime an instructor or classmate or someone started to go negative with, I can't do this or, you know, it's too cold or whatever. I would use the mantra and then I would get back into a positive self-talk where I would talk to myself, you know, in terms that were, that gave me strength. You know, like I got this easy day, piece of cake. You know,

yeah, this ocean is cold, but it ain't going to kill me, you know. Or I'd just talk about, like, sitting in the ocean and I'm freezing my ass off. I'd start, you know, imagining I was in a sauna, which would be the third skill, is that visualization, and talking to myself like I was warm, sitting on the beach in Hawaii, you know, that kind of stuff. It was really like managing that, managing the mind for success, right? Right. So those three skills right there were money, like visualization, visualizing, dirt diving the day, making sure that I knew what was coming, that I was mentally prepared for it,

and also visualize what would happen, what could potentially go wrong and visualize a response to that. Well, this whole story has been like an advertisement for meditation, breathing, visualization. I mean, if anyone listening to this who was previously thinking of these things as sort of woo-woo, I don't think you need a better endorsement than the number one ranked trini of his seal training class. So this has really been fascinating. for me especially. Ironically, they never taught us any of this, but now, largely, you know, I don't want to

take all the credit because it's coming from multiple sources, but we've had, we've trained hundreds of seals now in this before they became seals as part of their kind of prep. And the instructors and the cadre down in Buds have taken notice. And so they've been, they're on a pursuit, I should say, to really integrate best practices. So now they're looking at and they're working on integrating meditation and mindfulness and breath control training into buds. And I know the pararescue has been using our unbeatable mind training as well. And they're the elite Air Force guys. So you would think that, you know, the elite warriors would have been using this stuff forever. And they were back in the old days.

Like you imagine, you know, the samurai or the, you know, the Shaolin monks. They used it. They innovated a lot this stuff, but it just kind of didn't really get ported over to the West. We focused on the hard skills and we're masters at the tech and the hard skills of running and gunning, but it's these soft skills which are really now necessary for the type of warfare that exists today. And one of my missions on the, you know, the training side, besides healing the vets, is to, you know, make the seals and special operations pre-resilient, mentally more focused, morally more aware. So they're making better decisions in the field, right? Both for the team, for the mission, for the country, but also for the planet, you know what I mean, for humanity at large? Yeah. Because I

think that warfare is just abhorrent. And, you know, true warriors are the last to pick up the, you know, the weapon. And so I want to kind of bring that kind of integrated, holistic approach to warrior training back. And maybe, you know, kind of have the front line warriors make decisions, decisions that will, you know, cause other leaders to maybe pause, maybe slow things down or press the pause button a little bit on our investment in violence and conflict. You know what I mean? Well, I love what you just said. True Warriors are the last to want to pick up their arms.

I don't think that that's necessarily conventional wisdom amongst society, but listening to you speak about this and just the thoughtfulness with which you describe becoming a seal and focusing on yourself and visualizing. I mean, it just seems like such a positive attitude towards warfare and protection and security and some of the things that this country values. So all I can say is I feel safe at night knowing that people like you are out there.

I think warriors are, you know, I use that term to talk about warriors in the way we're talking about. Because not everyone who joins the military is a true warrior. You have thugs. Sure. People are doing it for a job.

But, you know, when it comes to the elite, you know, that's peckops and a lot of other, you know, there's a lot of warriors throughout the forest, so don't get me wrong. But when it comes to the warriors, I think they're not very understood by our culture. And people just want to throw anyone who was in the military kind of under the bus as being someone who's prone to violence. And we have this saying about the sheep dogs, the sheep, and the wolves. And warriors are sheep dogs, right? Most people, as good intention as they are, everyone's getting by doing their thing, but when it comes to the ability to handle crisis and violence, they're sheep, right? They just freeze up.

You don't know how to deal with it, and they want someone to take care of them. And that's where the first responders come in. The first responders can't be everywhere at all times. And so, you know, one of my goals is to help develop this mindset and more and more people so that we can be there for our communities and our families when the crisis hits. but the warriors are generally those who understand violence. They abhor it, but they understand it, and they can use it with precision against evil. And thank God, right, that we have sheep dogs and warriors, right, because there is evil in the world.

It's a utopian idea to think that, you know, all violence could suddenly be stopped if everyone on the planet started meditating. You just have all sorts of different cats and dogs and reasons for negativity. to exist or to coexist with the light, right? So the dark and the light kind of coexist, the yin and the yon. And so you've got to be prepared, hope for the best, but be prepared for the works. So I think that, but I have a more complete warrior is my point, is to have a, have a warrior that is both sensitive, emotionally aware, morally strong, and can kick ass and take names. I mean, it seems like you've offered an amazing amount back into the community.

as a as a leader, as a manager, as a mentor to the SEAL community, what made it so obvious to you that that was the next extension after coming out of the SEALs? That's such a great question. I don't think anyone has asked me that. When I left active duty, first it's important to say, you know, especially if there's a military person listening, I was a reservist for half of my career. So I did about 10 years of active duty, 10 years of reserves. And most people kind of know by now that what the reserves are is, you know, you're ready to go, but you're a civilian.

I was recalled to active duty twice, did my tour in Iraq, that kind of stuff, all as a reserve officer. And it was an incredible experience. But while a reserve officer, I was also able to get back into the corporate world or the business world, I should say. So when I left active duty, I didn't want to go back to the family business. because I'd already kind of X that off. And I didn't want to go back to the big corporate thing. I kind of eck that off, too. So I wanted to become an entrepreneur.

Entrepreneurs and Seals mindset have a lot in common. So I launched my first entrepreneurial endeavor, which was a microbrewery in Southern California called the Core, not a Brewing Company. This is in 1996. We were the fourth microbrewery in San Diego. Now there's like 300 of them or something like that. So we were early in the game.

And, um, You know, the business is hugely successful to stay. I'm no longer involved. I sold my interest to my partners. We kind of clashed our horns a little bit. But one of the things that I learned from that experience is that in business, it's really important to do something that you're passionate about and that is aligned with your purpose. Because here I went from being a warrior and being very clear about that being my purpose.

And then getting off active duty, staying in the reserves as a warrior thinking I was going to get that purpose fulfilled there and then just going into business to make beer and to make money. And the results did not, were not appealing to me. I mean, I didn't get that kind of reward from just making money and making beer, even though a lot of guys would be like, what's wrong with that? That sounds really good. And it was fun for a little while, but it lost its appeal. And so I went back.

And also during this time, because as you can imagine, Will, as an entrepreneur, it's like really intents to start a business and there's massive demands on your time. And so for some time, I stopped my practice. And that's when the, you know, the train, my train, personal train, started to swing off the rails. And so when I sold my interest in the brewery and, you know, got out of the little, you know, battle that I was having, I went back to my practice. You know, I dedicated to the daily meditation practice. I really got deep into yoga, reengaged in a new martial art training. And so I was all in back in my practice. And that's when I started to have the same kind of experiences. I was like, oh, yeah, why did I forget this? Right? Because the same

things that happened that led me from being a CPA or going back into the family business to becoming an elite Navy SEAL, number one, in my training class, I relearned, you know, having after my first business venture, the Coronado Brewing Company, that I needed to do something that I'm super passionate about that's aligned with my purpose of being a warrior, but I wasn't going to go back on active duty. I wasn't going to go become a military contractor. There was another way that I was going to serve as a warrior. So in a sense, I went from like a warrior leader to become like a warrior states, not statesmen, but like strategists or teacher. And that's kind of how SealFit came about. I had that one foray, you know, starting a business to do the

the government contracting, and that was unsatisfying as well. So I thought, okay, I really need to get clear about this. And when I launched SealFit, it all came together. So through SealFit, I could become a warrior businessman and kind of put it in the practice or put in the plate, everything I've learned, everything I'm doing myself, and teach others. And so I started to teach all the special operators these skills while I was growing a business. And SealFit, you know, grew kind of a worldwide reputation for its training, programs, and we continue to run those today.

And early on in 2007, 2008, I had a lot of civilians and entrepreneurs come to me and say, man, that training looks awesome, but can I bring my team? Or do you have a version that I could bring people who may not use fit through? And so I launched, I kind of spun out a company called Unbeatable, where I was able to deliver these trainings and these techniques to entrepreneurs. into leaders. And so that actually is probably where I spend most of my time these days is helping entrepreneurs, leaders, and their teams learn these skills, you know, the skills of integrating physical, mental, emotional, emotional, and spiritual training into their daily

lives and into their team environments. And the impact is profound, just like it was with the seals. The impact is profound for leaders. Really tap into a whole new level of power and focus and awareness. What did you learn in the teaching process that you didn't learn as someone who is a student of this? When I was a student, I was learning traditional Zen from a Japanese master using, you know, Japanese terminology and all that cultural stuff. And when I brought, when I started teaching seal candidates, their eyes were glazing over.

You know, if I were using terms that I brought to them from the Japanese culture from the, you know, the yoga culture. And so I learned early on that I have to take the foo out of the kung fu in order to teach a Western modern audience. And that's, you know, probably one of the biggest insights is I had to simplify things. I had to rename things. I had to come up with like a whole new way of teaching it because, A, people didn't have the time. They're very distracted. So I had to create like drills and simple tools. And I also had to explain very clearly what the exact outcome was. In order to do that, I had to practice these skills like rigorously every day and kind of document what was happening in my life and backcheck that against other

meditators and whatnot so that I could be clear. Like if you do this skill, this is going to be what happens to your brain, right? And what your outcome should be, you know, so that I can be, because people want evidence, they want to know that they're practicing the right thing. And, you know, so over time, I've gotten fairly good at teaching these skills with authenticity, also with some insight because I use them every day myself. And also, a lot of people kind of are, it's easier for them to trust a Navy SEAL commander who's taught thousands of Navy SEALs or hundreds of Navy SEALs and other special operators

and thousands of entrepreneurs and gotten great results than maybe some foofy, your teacher wearing Lou Lemon, you know, or, and I don't need to be judgmental. You do have a high level. You do have a high level of credit. Yeah, there's just a different way that people learn, especially in the business world. And so those are some of the things I learned in which. If people are interested in learning more about your teaching method or wanted to pursue it for themselves, how would they find information on that? Well, a couple ways. I appreciate you asking me that. A lot of people have learned or gotten great insights through my books. So I've got one called The Way of the Seal, which is really about, you know, kind of what we've talked about. How do you use these skills to dominate, you know, in the boardroom? The other one is called Unbeatable Mind, which is more the philosophical architecture of how I think in the Unbeal Mind program.

I have a podcast that you are on and you are a great guest, Unbeal Mind podcast, where we kind of always sprinkle in some of this philosophy and some of these ideas. But then the actual training, if you're a leader, the training can be found at Unbeatablemind.com. And if you're really into the elite athletics and you want to challenge yourself in a way that would really, you know, in a scary way, then go to seal fit.com and learn about our crucible events. Now you have a new book coming out in March, Staring Down the Wolf. Tell us about that. Thank you. Yeah, March 2nd, staring down the wolf comes out. This is how you develop yourself as a leader with your team. And so the underlying premise is that there's seven commitments that if you can,

really drill into these as a leader and train these with your team, then together you and your team will unlock 20 times potential. And the corollary to this is that these commitments, which are courage, trust, respect, growth, excellence, resiliency, and alignment, that the leader typically is in his own way or her own way with their shadow or their emotional kind of bombs that they drop amongst their teammates. And everyone's got some shadow or some bias or something that is an emotional reaction to some childhood trauma or some trauma that happens in their life, that holds them back. And so the idea is that in order to bring out the 20 times potential of your team through

these commitments, you've got to stare down your fears and your shadow stuff. And so it's the combination of working on the growth while simultaneously working on your emotional shadow elements that really unlocks that power. I tell the growth stories through these amazing Navy SEAL leaders who have gone out and done great things and really worked on those commitments. And I tell the shadow stories through my own, my own personal life, my own examples of my failures and how I really screwed up on those commitments and how I'm still working on them today. I think that's part of my message there is that all leaders, you know, have issues. Nobody's perfect. But if you pretend to be perfect or if you wear a mask with your

team, then they'll see right through it. And you won't bring out the best in them because courage and trust and respect won't be there. I'm excited about the book. It's my most vulnerable book yet, and it's a little scary. Well, that's an important theme, I think, that is becoming more popular in society for leadership, which is around vulnerability. And I think that I imagine that that's going to do really well. So just for everyone listening, I'm in the middle of two of your books. You've written four now. And so I'm quite excited for staring down the wolf. I think it's very cool. And we have some pretty cool pre-launch offers, right? You know, typically authors will do some sort of benefits if you buy the book before we launch it. And so we have some really cool things if you

want to look at, you know, get a signed copy or buy something in bulk, like I'm doing some Zoom calls if you buy over a certain number of copies or I'll even do a keynote if you want to buy a certain number of copies pre-order. That's a steering down the wolf.com is the pre-order website. We'll put all that in the show notes for people to check out. And again, I highly recommend it. Well, Mark, is there anything else that you want to add or where can people find you if we haven't touched on that already yeah well i mentioned where people could learn about the different you know ways i train but you know people are starting to really love my podcast i have such great guests like i said you were on i have really interesting people from

neuroscience and training and navy seals and you know even yoga and you know touch on spiritual aspects so that's the unbeatable mind podcast by mark divine or just search my name and then you know a way to just keep up with me is um mark devine dot com i have a blog and my podcasts get posted there. You want to learn about that or my speaking engagements. I got information about that. And my social channels are all linked there.

Like the real Mark Devine is my Instagram and all that kind of stuff is there. And I'm always available if anyone wants to reach out to us. My assistant will get back to you. That email is info at unbeal mind if someone's got a direct question. Info at unbelemind.com. Well, we'll include all these notes in the show notes,

all these links in the show notes. notes and and obviously ways for people to find Mark. And look, man, I think you are a real inspiration. I felt that way when I did your podcast and I feel more so that way, having spent another hour plus with you on this one. So thank you for all that you do and thank you for spending time with me. Yeah, it's been an honor, Will. I really appreciate you for doing this and I appreciate you for launching whoop and, you know,

the brilliance that you're bringing to that whole industry, the wearables. I think it's really important. And you've done an incredible job. So I look forward to, you know, continuing the dialogue and offer you my support however I can. A big thank you to Mark for not only coming on the podcast this week, but also for his service to our country and for keeping us safe. Thank you, Mark.

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