ACHIEVE ANYTHING You Want In Life (Never Be Lazy Again) | Rich Diviney EP 421

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes, and welcome to The Daily Motivation Show.

0:1120 years as a Navy SEAL, one of the attributes you talk about is compartmentalization. Yeah. How do you do that? If you're an emotional human being, you have these deep connections to your family and friends. How do you just detach in a sense and become more machine-like for a period of time and then allow yourself to feel deeply in other moments? The way I talk about compartmentalization and the attribute is more surrounded by the way our brain functions and processes information versus I'm going to block something else so I don't have to think about it. However, I think most team guys, SEALs, spec ops guys have a very high ability to compartmentalize away from things, block out things that are painful.

0:52I know that about me and I know that about my buddies because you have to, because war sucks. At the end of the day, the mission has to be accomplished. You know, training teaches you to compartmentalize. You become very, very good at it. That could be a detriment in a relationship. I think those of us who were able to recognize that actively try not to do that with our families. And so it becomes much more of a precision tool versus a frenetic thing. It just happens without us having control over it. One of the things that you have to be able to do when it goes sideways is to not focus on that thought you just brought up, right?

1:25The focus is not, oh, my God, I don't think I'm going to get out of this. The focus is, how do I get out of this? So the mental acuity attributes, which are situation awareness, compartmentalization, task switching, and then learnability, right? So that's how information is coming in, how we're processing it and prioritizing, how we're switching between the necessary tasks and then how we're learning from our decisions, right? To even be able to do that in the first place, it requires a forebrained dominance in the sense that you're not letting your autonomic system take over into a fight-flight response.

1:49And you're able to think through stress, challenge, and uncertainty in the sense of saying, okay, what can I control right now? And this is where trust in your teammates comes in. Because now I have a team. I can say this with great pride and gratitude. I can remember literally walking in areas, you know, when we were overseas and thinking, man, this is a bad area. Sketchy. This is sketchy. And having complete and utter faith. Because I was with my teammates, right? I was around people who I trusted. I knew that if something went wrong, we'd be able to handle it, you know? And so I think that's a necessity when you do this type of stuff.

2:20How do you train your mind to deal with chaos in the moment so that you don't freak out and freeze up, but you actually turn on a level of focus and attention towards achieving that goal? So I think we're predisposed to what I call the autonomic set point. You know, at what point do we start flipping into an autonomic response, into fight-flight, where our system starts taking over and our forebrain starts coming offline? If you and I use boiling point as the average, most of us might be average. There are those who start really freaking out at like 190. So 212 is the average. At 190 degrees, they're starting to freak out.

2:54There are other people who it takes until like 230 to boil, right? I think that the guys who make it through that training are predisposed to have a higher set point, first of all. In other words, when bad things start to happen, we tend to slow down and start thinking through it versus get all hyped up. But it comes down to understanding your own neurology, and it comes down to understanding that here's how you have to think through situations under stress. and then it's going to be about putting yourself into deliberate stress to practice that. You can't practice this type of thinking if you're not in stress.

3:23You need to put yourself in that. What are some things civilians could do to practice stressful moments on a daily basis where it doesn't hurt them, but it's actually preparing them? I talk about every day I think you should be experiencing some type of pain, something that's uncomfortable, seeking discomfort, whether it be through a 10-minute workout, whether it be through a longer run. It doesn't matter what it is, an uncomfortable conversation. We should be doing this every day in a structured environment that allows us to grow. What do you think are some ways we could do this that's not putting us in harm's way or physically hurting ourselves?

3:54I can't answer that because it's so subjective. I can give some ideas and you just gave some. I mean, some people are very social people. So starting a conversation with a stranger is a piece of cake, right? For me, that would be hard, right? Starting a conversation with a stranger would be hard. So that might be something I do. Giving a presentation. Public speaking for people is tough. So volunteering to give that presentation is a great way for a lot of people because that makes them anxious. How do we train our minds and our body to be motivated towards a goal and not stay lazy? Well, at first, it's know thyself because we're all different.

4:26So one of the attributes I talk about in the book is discipline. And what I had to do with discipline was actively separate discipline from self-discipline. What's the difference? Okay, well, the difference is that self-discipline is internally focused. Okay, self-discipline is about managing oneself. self, it has very little to do with external requirements, right? So you or I can decide to get in shape, for example, and we can change our diet. We can work out every day. The external environment doesn't have a lot of say in that, in us achieving that accomplishment. So self-discipline is about managing the internal.

4:53Discipline is about achieving that long-term goal. These are those long-term goals that are going to take a while to achieve. And the external world has a say, getting that promotion, writing that book, becoming the famous singer, becoming Navy SEAL, The external world has, starting a podcast, the external world has a say in whether or not you do that. And the discipline that is required to move through those buckets takes adaptability. It takes flexibility. It takes the ability to not get seduced by the highs, the successes, and not get crushed by the failures and continue to move towards that goal.

5:21And what I found was, because I'm a very unself-disciplined person. I don't have a lot. I had to separate this because I've been able to achieve a lot of goals in my life. I said, well, what's the difference? So those with very high self-discipline, sometimes, this is not exclusive, but sometimes have trouble achieving long-term goals because the achievement of long-term goals often takes a march into the unknown, into uncertainty, which is going to throw you off routine and throw you out of certainty. The self-disciplined person, the very self-disciplined, likes routine, likes certainty, right?

5:49That's how it's structured. I mean, that's what it is. And so moving towards a goal like that takes oftentimes being able to adapt out of structure, you know, and say, I can't do that. I have to go in unknowing, right? Now, the most successful people are those who have both self-discipline and discipline. In terms of staying motivated for a goal, the way I would do it by knowing myself is I would simply try to chunk a goal into smaller pieces. So if I want to lose weight, then I can say, well, that's why cheat days are actually good for me. Because I can say, okay, I'm going to take this piece of it and move.

6:18So I chunk my reward system in a different way. But I think the way one stays motivated towards a goal is highly subjective. but it would, through my thought process and my experience, involve wanting to actively map out a reward system that helps someone move through that. Sort of creating a reward system first for the goal in order to help you stay motivated. Depending on how you show up. Not just say like, okay, my goal is to achieve this thing. It's going to take me three years to accomplish it. Right. And that's the only reward I'm going to get in those three years. But how can I reward myself every day for an action I take, every month for a milestone every year if we're getting closer?

6:53So focusing on the reward system. Yes. This is neurobiological because dopamine, the neurotransmitter, is you get hits of dopamine when you achieve things. You know, there's many ways you get dopamine, but one of the ways is when you achieve things. So if you're able to effectively create a reward system that means something to you, it can't be kind of inert. If I don't run a marathon and I can barely run to my mailbox, right, then maybe, you know, buying some running shoes and putting them on one morning is enough of a reward system to get a dopamine hit. But as someone who runs somewhat frequently, just putting on our shoes one morning is probably not going to give us that dopamine hit.

7:25We've got to extend that task a little bit so that— If you've already accomplished a lot of something, you have to push beyond it a little bit. You have to push beyond it to get that reward system so it becomes subjective.

7:40Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of The Daily Motivation, and I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click the link in the description. That will take you to the full episode of our main podcast on The School of Greatness. And if you are loving the daily motivation, please follow us over on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review over on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want more exclusive content and ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want to get even more inspiration from our world-class guests and learn how to improve your life and take it to the next level, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.

8:36Again, have an amazing day and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.