Why Navy SEALs Aren't Scared Like Everyone Else | Rich Diviney

22:10And that's a myriad of things that I hear. And that's I love that because or or you also I also hear I've actually been doing this all along. but now I know exactly what I'm doing. I can talk, I can explain what I'm doing, which also really jazzes me because once you can explain it, you can, again, teach it to others. You can show it to others and you can replicate it and you can practice it. So that's what's been cool.

22:32Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Hydration isn't just about drinking Coke Zero or other sugar-free sweetened beverages like Red Bull. Now I'm saying this for a friend or it's not even about drinking more water. It's about keeping the right balance of electrolytes and fluids. During life's most demanding season, like, I don't know, parenting, maybe pregnancy or postpartum. Your body is going through massive changes, blood volume increases, hormones shift, breastfeeding demands, you know, all those things. All of these life transitions, you probably need more and better hydration. And you need electrolytes like sodium, magnesium, and potassium.

23:06Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Element is formulated to replenish what you actually lose without sugar, fillers, and junk that you don't need. It's a clean, effective way to stay hydrated. And for men, again, it's not just about hydration. It's also about performance, recovery, mental clarity, and yes, even energy. Whether you're hitting the gym, chasing kids, or grinding through your workday, maybe even your teeth, dehydration can quietly sabotage your focus and endurance. Element helps you stay sharp, strong, and ready. We use Element because it works. Tastes amazing and it's no nonsense, just science-backed hydration that actually makes a difference.

23:44Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:And right now, Element is offering a free sample pack with any purchase. That's eight flavors to try on the house. Go to drinklmnt.com slash Dr. Lion to claim yours. That's drinklmnt.com slash Dr. Lion. Stay hydrated, stay strong, and as Goggins would say, stay hard. I took your attributes test. I would recommend anyone listening to take the attributes test. In fact, everyone has taken the attributes test on my team except for matt the producer this videographer over here has not taken the test i was shocked to see my number one attribute i can't remember which one was humility yeah that doesn't surprise me at all yeah i was surprised by my top attributes and then thinking about the the team and then comparing it to my husband's and what i learned was there's different compatibility at work versus at home but the person isn't the same yes so so what's interesting about the attributes and if someone takes like just like your your one through 41 attributes ranked from your first your top all the way down to your bottom a couple things that's interesting is first of all that uh it has nothing to do with the scores you know so the scores just help with the ranking it and and and what it also highlights is that you are we are in absence of none of these attributes we have all of them so you have your four i can't remember what your 41st was, but your 41st you have.

25:14It's just you prioritize all the other attributes before that, you know, ahead of that. That list is how you act without thinking. That's you at your most raw. What we're constantly doing in everyday life with our attributes when there's not a lot of uncertainty, challenge, or stress, or even minimal is we're dialing up or dialing down those attributes very deliberately. So we are going into an environment, and if you're low on patience, you're deliberately dialing up your patients. Or if you're high on, so one of my friends, team guy, his number one was humor, not surprising. I said, do you have to sometimes dial down your humor because of the situation?

25:49He's like, oh yes, all the time. Because the joke I want to tell is completely inappropriate, right? So he's deliberately dialing down his attribute. We do this when we're able to consciously do it. It doesn't happen as easily or if at all at our most raw. So the cool thing about the attributes is it just shows you who you are at your most raw. And it gives you an idea of how and when you're dialing these up or dialing down. That's what aids in anybody's ability to perform better.

26:11Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:You know, we recently, we were in Coronado for vacation. First week off. I just missed you, by the way. You did? You were in Coronado, too? I was there last week. So yeah. Okay. It was, we were at the Hotel Del. Yeah. Have you stayed there? I have, yes. Yeah. And they have a new training facility. And we were there. Bud's was not happening at the time. So BUDS is that selection process. Can you tell us a little bit about BUDS? And the follow-up question is athleticism. Yeah. Athleticism isn't the biggest predictor if someone can become a Navy SEAL or not. Right. I want to know why. Yes. So first, BUDS, basic underwater demolition slash SEAL training is where regular Navy guys, females are allowed, but none have made it through yet, go to become Navy SEALs.

26:59um about an 85 percent attrition rate roughly on average how many people typically go through so typically like my class for example and this is a typical number start with 170 we graduated 35 so that's typical numbers okay um six months long um and has the has it's all it all sucks but the infamous hell week is is week five where that's where you get the most quitters that's where you start on a sunday you go all the way till that following friday during which you um you only sleep for about two hours the entire week so you're constantly on the on the go i was with

27:29Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:for Robert. Yeah. And he was saying that he actually, they tell you guys they let you sleep. Yeah. But I don't know if you, if you register, if it registers or he said that he wakes him up after five minutes. Yeah, that's right. And then people think that they're sleeping. Yes. Oh, yeah. That's but that's part of the hell of hell week. No, that just sounds like having a newborn. Yeah. So no, it's true. Yeah. There's a whole separate, whole separate hell few months that goes on when one has a newborn. So why is athleticism not a predictor of success? It's because athleticism on its own is a very certain endeavor, whether it be sports, whether it be just working out.

28:13And I would say athleticism also has to do with your ability to the aptitude you have in sports. I never considered myself an athlete. I played lacrosse in high school. I never considered myself an athlete. I was okay at lacrosse. I think athleticism has to do with your ability to kind of conduct yourself in the sports environment. It also has to do with being in shape. But I think even being in shape is not a single predictor because that act of getting into super shape and being super fit is, again, a very certain act. I mean, you have to be. It has to be. You have to be disciplined. You have to go to the gym every day.

28:50You have to work out every every day. Buds is, and the other thing I'll say is a lot of athletes, when they're, especially in collegiate athletes, athletics, the goal is always to be hitting the field at 100%. And an athlete will do everything in his or her power to get themselves to 100 % so that they can hit the field at their best, okay? Everything about Buds is, we're going to take you to zero, and what do you got at zero. And so it is, it becomes, Hey, we're going to make you use so many pushups that you can't do anymore. You can barely move. What do you have? And so they, they almost mitigate the athleticism to see where your mind goes.

29:30So buds is a mental endeavor. Um, and this is why you have sometimes division one athletes going to buds and quitting within the first week. Meanwhile, the kid from the farm who's done nothing, um, in terms of sports and flies through because it's a mental thing. So BUDS is designed to test your mental capacity. Now, you have to be in shape to be able to do what they're asking you to do. So you have to still be in shape enough to do the thing. But rest assured, it's not about the physical. It's about the mental.

30:01Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Do you have to be taken to zero in everyday life to see what you're made of? No, not at all. Should you be? No, I wouldn't say you should. I think if there's, well, first of all, we are all as human beings taken to zero in different ways. Some extraordinarily traumatic, which I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy. Others, people just throw themselves into a Spartan race or something like that or go to buds. So there's different ways you can get to zero. I would say a couple things. First of all, you don't have to get all the way to zero. You have to really be willing to stretch yourself and move outside your comfort zone to a degree that you feel like, oh actually i just accomplished something you'll know it you'll know when you go outside your comfort zone and you make it through um so i don't know if that's true well i think it is because you get a dopamine reward for it every time um when you when you do something really hard and again hard is subjective to the individual i mean you know hard for a person who's been sedentary their whole life might be i'm going to walk up the 10 flights of stairs instead of take the elevator for you and i that's like oh i mean i could run up 10 flights of stairs but that's hard for them and so when they accomplish that they're going to feel the reward you and i might not feel the reward, but they will.

31:11And so I think we have to be always cognizant of the subjectivity of what hard is and encourage people to do hard things. Getting in the ice bath for me is hard every single time. That's why I do it.

31:23Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Did you do a winter hell week or summer? Yeah, it was November. So it was winter. Yeah, it was not January, but it was still cold. It was considered in that zone. Getting in the ice bath is hard. Every single time I do it, I don't want to do it. I dread it. I just don't like it. That's still something hard. Same thing when I do my, you know, Virginia Beach, but I do my sprints with my weight vest up Mount Trashmore, that big hill. I dread that too, but I do it because it's hard. So I think we need to encourage ourselves to push, because we know the anterior mid-cingulate cortex, that's the part of the brain that they've discovered that neuroscientists realize that when it's activated, when you do hard things, you do things you don't want to do, it's activated.

32:03And it in fact grows the more you do that. And that's been linked to, A, the ability to do hard things more frequently. And B, what's really cool, it's been linked to longevity. So you actually, the more you tickle that part of your brain, the longer you live. So it's not only good for us as human beings to do hard things. It's in terms of just a day-to-day life. It's good just for your longevity to do hard things. And so.

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33:44Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Lion and use the code Dr. Lion to get 20 % off. I recommend trying their starter pack with all three different formats. And of course, their gummies, which are incredible. Physically hard things, there is a beginning and an end. Yes. Sprinting, ice, baths, you name it. Mentally hard things, that seems like that's much more difficult to push. I'll give you an example. I thought that doing a book launch would be hard or writing a book and doing all the things that come with it. And in retrospect, I think, well, was it hard? Or speaking in front of thousands of people, is that hard? And I find myself, and maybe you can relate, if I find myself questioning, is that really hard?

34:32Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Or where is the edge? And how am I stretching myself? I find that if it is mental, it's much more challenging to pull that lever. Yeah, I totally agree. I totally agree. Because that's where everything starts. And I will, I will concede that we can work out in a way that adds the mental piece to it. But this is also why we need to take advantage of the lives we live. We are, as human beings, subjecting ourselves, and life is subjecting us to uncertainty, challenge, and stress all the time. Hard stuff all the time. It's our job to recognize that. And don't mope, and don't complain, and don't brush it off like it's something you want to forget.

35:13Understand it, live it, feel it, and learn from it. Can you give me an example? Just take marriage as an example. I mean, Kristen and I, I mean, healthy married couples get into arguments. Those are hard. Those things suck. It sucks when you're in it. An ability to recognize that in the moment, or at least sometimes it's tough in the moment, but certainly as soon after the moment as possible, as, hey, this is a challenge. Let's lean into that, and let's make sure we make it work. That's recognizing hard stuff. The delayed or canceled flights during travel. Those are hard things that you have to work through.

35:48These are what I call little tragedies that are allowing us to practice our horizon shifting, practice our resilience muscles in these little moments so that we get good when the shit happens that we haven't anticipated or the really big bad stuff happens. But all of us, every single one of us as human beings can tell at least one or two or three stories throughout their lives where, man, that was a shitty time. And it's incumbent on us, if we didn't do it back then, to look back at those and ask ourselves, okay, what did I do? How did I perform? How did I behave? What can I learn? So that the next shitty thing that happens, you can actually start stepping through with more confidence.

36:31Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Would you say it's about mastering those little tragedies? It's about mastering the tools that get you through those little tragedies, which now we get into. So one of the biggest things that inhibits our performance is fear. Because fear is this, you know, again, it's this motion that tickles the amygdala, it gets our autonomic arousal engaged, our brain begins to do weird things. As our autonomic arousal goes up, our frontal lobe, the decision-making part of our brain, begins to actually start taking a backseat to our limbic brain, which is the emotional part of our brain. And in the extreme cases, amygdala hijack or autonomic overload, we are, it's a case where that frontal lobe has taken our complete back seat and we are in limbic decision-making.

37:14In other words, we're acting without thinking. This stuff comes in very handy when we're jumping out of the way of the moving train or running from the bear. But in most scenarios in life, we want to actually engage our frontal lobe so we can decide, we can actually move through and decide. So you know, Andrew Huberman and I are good friends. We met each other after, as soon as I got out of the Navy, we did a lot of work together on this. He was still running his fear lab. And so what we did together, we started studying fear. He was studying fear kind of from a neuroscientific level. and we began to kind of explore what guys like Navy SEALs do to actually step through this.

37:43One of the things we hypothesized is that fear is, in fact, a combination of two factors. It's a combination of uncertainty plus anxiety. When you have either one of those without the other, you don't necessarily have fear. So you can be anxious without being uncertain. That might mean I'm going to give a presentation next week. I know the presentation. I know the people I'm giving it to at work. So I'm a little anxious, but there's no uncertainty there. There's no fear. You can be uncertain without being anxious.

38:09Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:You can be uncertain without being anxious. That's every kid on Christmas Eve, okay? So there's no fear there. When you combine the two, that's when you start to get fear. So the strategy, and that's the type of uncertainty we're talking about, by the way. We're talking about the uncertainty that adds anxiety, that equals fear. None of us have any concern about the uncertainty about Christmas Eve, okay? The way we begin to move through that is we buy down either the uncertainty or the anxiety or both, all right? And so buying down uncertainty is a very specific set of tools that I talk about in the book.

38:41And this means what it looks to do is it looks to generate certainty. In an unknown and certain environment, you anchor on something and generate immediate certainty. What do I mean by that? In any environment, our brain is always trying to figure out what's going on. Our brain seeks certainty, so it's trying to figure out what's going on. Most of the time in an environment, it's through three factors, three distinct factors. Duration, how long this is going to last. pathway, what's my route in, out, or through, and then outcome, what's the end state here? If we are in absence of one or more of those, we start to feel that uncertainty rise, often anxiety comes with it.

39:17Let's take, we'll just take illness as an example. Strep throat is an illness we all know. There's actually an antibiotic you can take for strep throat. If we get strep throat, we are only in absence of one of the three. We have the pathway, that's the antibiotic. We have the outcome, I'm going to get better. What we don't necessarily have is duration because antibiotics might work a little bit faster on you than they do for me. So we're in absence of one, our uncertainty level is mild. Now let's talk about the flu. Also a known illness. Nowadays in today's society, most people recover from the flu.

39:47They don't die from the flu. However, when we have the flu, we are in absence of two factors. We know the outcome, we're going to get better, but there's no known thing you can take for the flu. So there's no known pathway. There's a lot of people who have ideas, but there's no codified way. So we're in An absence of pathway or an absence of duration. Anxieties or uncertainty level is moderate. Now let's imagine a disease shows up. No one's ever seen before. Starts spreading across the planet. Some people are dying. Some people aren't dying. No known vaccine. We don't know how long it's going to be doing this.

40:18Enter 2020. This is how we, when COVID hit, all of us were feeling the way we felt because we were in absence of all three of these. All this process, I call it moving horizons, does, is it basically allows you to pick something and ask yourself, what do I know? What kind of control? Pick something to anchor on and in essence, create your own DPO, Duration Pathway Outcome.

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41:25Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Now, this isn't about cosmetic quick fixes. It's about changing the biology of your skin, strengthening the barrier, improving firmness, hydration, elasticity with clinically tested ingredients. So if you are focused on aging well from the inside out, it's time also to think about your skin. It should get the same level of care. Go to oneskin.co for 15 % off. Use the code Dr. Lion. It is amazing and it will not break the bank. An example during SEAL training would be this, and people can relate to this even if they're working out, but SEAL training was during Hell Week. You run around with those big heavy boats on your head all the time.

42:04It was three in the morning. We're running with these things. We're all miserable. We're on the beach next to a sand berm. And I remember saying to myself, you know what? I'm just going to focus on getting to the end of this sand berm. Now what I did in that moment inadvertently is I picked a horizon and in essence created a DPO, Duration Pathway Outcome. duration from now until end of sand berm pathway from here to end of sand berm outcome end of sand berm and what i also did in that moment is i immediately engaged my dopamine system to to start endeavoring or start going moving forward in that goal and then i also created a reward at the end that gave me a dopamine hit when i got it which then allowed me to once i hit that horizon ask the question again okay now what do i know and what kind of control and pick a new horizon now this horizon shifting is basically generating certainty out of uncertainty but the horizon shifting, the horizon picking is subjective to the individual and the intensity of the environment.

42:55And it's constantly moving. It's not always the same thing. Freezing in the surf zone, which we talked about winter hell week, you know, surf torture. I've never heard the end of it. Yeah, it's awful. I remember freezing in the surf zone and I'd say my horizon at the time was, I'm going to count five waves. Sometimes my horizon was, I'm going to make it to the next meal. Sometimes my horizon was, I was going to, you know, run to the end of the sand berm. It's all based on the subjectivity because what you're doing in essence is you're manipulating your own dopamine reward system and dopamine as we know not just a reward chemical it's a motivation chemical we can't we don't even get out of bed without dopamine or a system and so if we pick a horizon what we're doing is we're engaging our dopamine system however the reason why it's subjective in terms of how far or how short that horizon is because if we pick a horizon that's too far we won't have enough dopamine to get to the end of it would that be for example somebody wants to lose weight and they pick a time frame that is eight weeks away.

43:48Yeah. Or, or they say, I'm going to, I'm going to lose 30 pounds in eight weeks. Okay. That is too far of a horizon. Well, again, it's subjective. The person might not be, but in, in most cases that'd be too far horizon, but I'll give you a more visceral example that everybody can, can imagine. Cause I just talked about hell week. A classic example is thinking about Friday of hell week on Monday. We always have a saying in buds. If you think about Friday on Monday, you're not going to make it. And in fact, they started doing exit interviews for guys who quit. It was probably 10, 12 years ago now.

44:18And I'm glad they did. But as they interviewed these guys and just said, hey, what happened? Nine times out of 10, the story was the same. It's like we were doing, we had been doing X. We were still doing X. I couldn't imagine doing X for the next five days, right? They could not shorten their horizon. Now, what's interesting is every single one of us human beings have done this at some level most of us who work out do it all the time we don't go into a workout and say and think about the entirety of the workout we say what am i what am i focusing i'm going to do this muscle i'm going to do this exercise i'm going to do this set we we break it down into horizons by manipulating our dopamine system in the in that way if we pick up a horizon that's too far we run out by the way if you quit anything it's because you've run out

45:01Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:of dopamine if you pick i like that if you quit anything yeah you've run out of dopamine you picked a horizon that's too far. If you pick a horizon that's too close, then you won't register the reward. It won't feel like anything. And you'll know it. You'll know it both ways, which is - What do you mean too close? So in other words, if I, if for, okay, here's a great example. And I'll just, I'll just reference a guy I talk about in the book. There was a guy who I met at a conference. He walked up to me. He introduced himself. He said he was an ultra runner. And his name was George. And I said, that's cool.

45:30I mean, how did you get into ultra running? Because I think it's insane. I would never run 100 miles. And he said, you might not believe this, but I used to be 300 pounds or something like that. I said, oh, you got to tell me that story. He's like, well, I was frustrated. I was so frustrated one day with my weight and my health that I decided that I was going to run a marathon. I said, okay, what'd you do? He said, well, the first thing I did is I went home and I got online and I ordered running shoes and those came. And when those came, I said, okay, tomorrow morning, I'm going to put on my running shoes, which is what he did.

46:00Next morning, he said, I'm going to put him on my running shoes. I'm going to walk to the front door, which is what he did. Next morning, he walked to the mailbox. Next morning, he walked to the end of the street and slowly went up and up. Now, if you and I, because we work out, we're athletic, if you and I decide, and I try to run twice a week, if we took a break from running for three months and we said, we're going to start running again, tomorrow I'm going to put on my shoes and walk to the mailbox, that's not going to be enough of a horizon for us. It's very subjective. We won't register the reward.

46:24It has to be something bigger. So too small, it's just not going to be big enough. and you'll know it because you're just like, oh, that didn't feel like anything. Too big, you'll know it because you're just, you're going to feel like you want to quit. The good thing is we can modulate. If you feel like you picked a horizon that's too far and you're in the middle of it, bring it down a little bit. When I'm running my hills at Trashmore, it's about a, I would say about a 80 to a hundred yard run uphill. And I started, I started just practicing or just doing this just to see what it felt like. I said, you know what, I'm going to, I'm going to pick a horizon that's 10 steps up the hill.

46:55I realized that was too small for me. I realized my best horizon is actually the top of the hill. Now, for other people, it might be halfway up the hill and then go. If we're doing sets at a gym, sometimes we'll be doing sets and we'll want to do 12 and we'll do six. And it's like, OK, just six more. What we've done there is we've adjusted our horizon in that moment. We've picked another horizon, a different focus point. So we can adjust these constantly just to get us through. And it's all subjective to the individual.

47:24Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:it seems that if we go through life consciously yeah a lot of us i mean i can just speak for myself i don't think about well i do now think about the horizons but i i believe that many people are walking around with my mom used to call it free-floating anxiety yeah yeah have you heard of that i haven't but it sounds uh well i will say it is fascinating sitting with you and just watching my husband he's not anxious yeah i i think to myself hey man i think you should be anxious about this you have no idea what you're doing or what about this what about that and it's really interesting to watch an individual go through life without anxiety yeah yeah it is completely different than an individual trying the amount of energy to navigate life with this idea of just anxiety yeah what would you tell someone who is walking around just feeling anxious yeah and has not doesn't have a reason as to why which which i think that's a lot of people that's a lot of people there's two two things and then now we're talking about we've we talked about buying down uncertainty now we have to talk about buying down anxiety the first thing i'll mention is that there are anxiety causes stress in the system which causes again our autonomic arousal to go up one of the ways we there are physiological ways we can actually manage our stress okay and there's breathing techniques breathing tools visual tools which we can talk about so that's one way to do this.

48:53However, what I'll say is this. One of the biggest reasons why guys like us don't suffer from anxiety is because we completely reframe anxiety. Anxiety is quite literally fiction. Anxiety is always about what might happen. It's always in the future. Now, the past is history and the future is fiction. Now, the effects of anxiety, the stress that's the result of anxiety is completely present. That's the present physiological thing. Is it though? Well, yeah, because it's creating stress in our system. So that's very present. But what SEALs never do is worry about shit they can't control. Now, it does not preclude proper planning, of course.

49:28I mean, we're going to plan and say, you know, on a mission, we'll say, well, but we don't overplan. We'll say, hey, these three things are the biggest things that might happen. Let's plan for those. We'll put that on the shelf. That way we've mitigated the uncertainty window because we've planned for those. Other than that, we're like, hey, whatever happens, we'll figure it out along the way. We do not worry about things that are in the future. We anchor ourselves to the present moment and we let that anchoring take away any anxiety. So the key, again, the stress that is the result of anxiety can be overwhelming.

49:59And in those cases, we have to employ, I would encourage everybody to employ those physiological tools and those visual tools.

50:06Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Meaning what you talk about in the book, open gaze, physiological size. So open gaze is just soft gaze, right? if you're looking at if you if you pick a point on the wall and you're looking at a point and then you suddenly stop looking at the point you just soften your gaze i don't know i'm still stressed out when i tried that one okay well so so you feel feel how it works for you i know when i started public speaking which is not comfortable for me at all i'd get up on stage and i immediately just open my gaze instead of staring at one thing i kind of look to the back of room and open my gaze that helps it's not as powerful as the as the respiratory tools one of the most powerful respiratory tools the physiological sigh that's the deep breath in all the way to the top top it off and then a slow and controlled exhale out okay that actually has been proven to real in fact we do this when we're going to sleep we've we've heard our pets do this by the way our dogs do this all the time it actually begins to calm you it and what what by calming you it's bringing down bringing down that autonomic arousal and re-engaging your frontal lobe that's really important because you cannot start picking horizons until you re-engage your frontal lobe what's very cool is you can combine the two quite immediately.

51:10Anybody who's really feeling stressed and anxious in a moment can say, you know what? My first horizon, take 10 breaths. That's their first horizon. I like that. Yeah. And they can actually combine the two. But what you're doing is you're anchoring into the present. Once you begin to do that, once you can control that and you can begin to move horizons, fear goes away. And I say that, you know, you might put it on a shelf, but I remember, you know, people have asked me before, have you, were you ever in a situation where you were really afraid, like in combat or something? And I answer them quite honestly, no.

51:37But the answer is not coming from a place of arrogance or bravado. The answer is literally because in those moments when they happened, all of us were so focused on what we needed to do in the moment that we didn't worry about anything else. It was just step by step by step. So much so that it was quite often that after everything was done, maybe we were home from the op, all the reports, I was back in my hooch by myself. I think back and then the fear would hit. Like, holy shit, that was close. And I get all the physiological responses, but it's much better to get it there than, you know, later.

52:09And that's also can be the seeds of PTSD as well, by the way, which is a whole nother issue. But the idea is if we are actively picking horizons through a moment, we are actually mitigating uncertainty because we are mitigating anxiety because we're not focused on what could happen because it's fiction.

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53:48Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:And with some of the jumping profiles, people don't know what Red Squadron is. Yeah, that's one of the squadrons at Dev Group that we were a part of. So but one of the things we do some insane skydiving profiles. So we do a Hayhoe operations, high altitude, high opening operations, where you jump out of the plane, you go up to about 20 ,000 feet, 22 ,000 feet. You jump out of the plane at 22 ,000 feet and you count to four and you open your parachute. So you're at about 20 ,000 feet and you're flying to an unknown DZ, which is literally a DZ that no one's reconned before. We just looked at the map and said, that looks like a clear spot, but you don't know.

54:17You land there, and then you start your mission. You could patrol your target, all that stuff. And then, of course, you're at 20 ,000 feet, so you're night vision, oxygen, all that stuff. Very intense and multiple pieces for an operation like this. Well, we were having lunch. We were talking about one of these ops. It was a huge op, very serious target, hey-ho. And my buddy says, he says, you know what's funny? when that ramp opened up, there's only one thing I'm thinking. And we're like, what? He's like, nail the exit. And he's absolutely right. Because if you don't nail the exit, if you don't get a stable body position, your parachute's not going to open properly.

54:53And they have a whole host of problems. So First Horizon, with all that in front of us, every single one of us are like, nail the exit. Once you nail the exit, pull my parachute. Once I get my parachute out, get on heading, right? It's just step by step by step. And so anybody who suffers from anxiety should start to, A, reframe it. It's all fiction. It hasn't happened yet. So you're literally worrying about something that hasn't happened and begin to anchor themselves in the present by using this moving horizons process. And they will find themselves able to start stepping through more effectively.

55:22This is what guys like Shana and I do without thinking. That's exactly right.

55:26Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:I don't see him think through this process. It is just an immediate reaction. And that, you think people can get there? Oh, yes. Yeah. We just practice on the small stuff. Practice on the small stuff. Start looking at some of the things that cause you, so doing hard things or anything that causes stress or hardship, practice with that. Working out's a great place. So even though working out is not an uncertain environment, you can practice it during working out. You can practice it during physical endeavors. You can practice it even making it at work. If you have to do, you have a thousand things, just say, you know what?

55:59I'm going to focus on this. I'm going to do email for 10 minutes. That's my horizon right now. I'm going to block out everything else. That's my horizon. You can practice this so that you start working through it and you'll find yourself a more productive but b

56:10Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:the anxiety will start to mitigate what about this idea of identity where does identity fall in this scope so in the book i break down the idea the the process or the kind of the mastering uncertainty method comes in two parts part one is this idea of managing our own physiology and neurology what i just talked about the good news is every single human being has the ability to do this. It's ubiquitous in terms of our ability to move horizons and manage our physiology. The second part deals with what we individually bring into uncertainty, okay? Because we all are different types of automobiles.

56:46Some of us are Jeeps, some of us are SUVs, some of us are Ferraris.

56:49Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Maybe a Prius. Maybe a Prius. And no judgment, because the Prius can do things that a Ferrari can't do, and the Ferrari can do things the Prius can't do. I don't agree. Yeah, that's like, be comfortable. Well, well, but the idea is, the idea is understand what vehicle you are, because you are bringing something unique into whatever environment. This is what we do with teams when we put teams through this attribute stuff is we allow them to understand all the different types of vehicles on the team and how they mesh together because sometimes a Prius is what's needed to be up front. Sometimes it's a Ferrari that needs to be up front.

57:20Sometimes it's a Jeep. So all this to say, we all have very unique individual profiles that we bring into uncertainty. Attributes is one of those. So understanding attributes is important. Identity is another huge one because identity is this idea that we all as human beings are a collection of I am's. Now, anything we put after the words I am is, I always say I am are the two most powerful words in the human language because anything we put after those two words, we begin to behave towards. It forms an identity. But we are all a collection of different I am's. We collect them over a lifetime of experience.

57:56Some are benign. Some are pretty powerful. I went to this high school. I played lacrosse. I'm a husband and father. I'm a Navy SEAL. I'm a Metallica fan, okay? Whatever those I ams are, they all come with them, certain rules and conditions and boundaries inside of which you behave to behave towards that identity. In uncertainty, challenge, and stress, we will behave towards whatever identity we are prioritizing in that moment, okay? So in combat overseas, of course, my priority identity was Navy SEAL. Just as powerful an identity for me has always been husband father okay but in combat navy seal was priority now sometimes the target would change and we'd have to take care of maybe some civilians husband and father identity would come to the fore okay but but understanding which identities we have and what they're doing to our behavior actually is massively important an example of this going the wrong way we've all heard the story of the avid sports fan who beats the shit out of another sports fan okay and gets in trouble and suddenly is standing in front of the judge and the judge is like what the hell were you thinking that person's like, I don't know what I was thinking.

59:01I was just doing. Now, what happened in that moment was that person in that moment was prioritizing that identity to a negative degree.

59:09Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:But it's subconscious. Well, it's subconscious if you let it be subconscious. The reason why I bring it up in the book is because we can actually gain control of this by understanding what identities we're bringing to the table. If this person we just talked about had understood or thought about the fact that he also had an identity of professional businessman, maybe husband, father, said, you know what? As a professional businessman, as husband and father, maybe I won't behave this way. I'm going to prioritize a different identity. So the power and the utility of understanding A, our identities, the list, allows us to bring to the fore the ones we need to in the moment, discard the ones we don't, or not bring to the fore, or I would say even discard.

59:49There might be identities if we go through the list, because there's a lot. We have a lot, okay? But go through the list, and there might be ones that, you know what? This doesn't apply to me anymore. You know, Navy SEAL is a huge one. And Shane would agree with me. You know, Navy SEALs, it's not like the Marine Corps. The Marine Corps is once a Marine, always a Marine. And the Marine Corps does a fantastic job of solidifying that identity. You can talk to 90 year old men who still refer to themselves as gunny sergeant. Okay. Not the same in the SEAL teams. SEAL teams is earn your trident every day.

1:00:16As soon as you take that trident off, you are no longer a Navy SEAL. Shane and I are former Navy SEALs. Now that comes with it, a whole host of different behaviors, different identities. But part of the vacuum that a lot of guys feel when they leave the SEAL teams is because they've been holding on. They've been holding on to that identity and no longer exists for them.

1:00:36Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:And you were a commander. That's different. What is that? Well, that means I was an officer. In other words, I was in charge of teams and I was in charge of a SEAL command too. So I was commanding officer of a team as well. How does that work? They're all really alpha types. I loved it because A, in any type of leadership, there's so much that goes into that. But there's often, and I talk to many civilian leaders, there's often sometimes a problem of just motivating your people. I never had to motivate my people. For me, my biggest job was holding people back in some cases and providing them the environment to really excel.

1:01:14Now, that kind of holding back can be sometimes a difficult challenge, but I think I'm a big collaborator. Collaborative is one of my high attributes. And so to be able to work with such high performing individuals and just watch them and give them the space, because it was my job to really create an environment inside of which they could do everything they needed to do, create the space. So I felt my job was to watch them be able to succeed and do that was not only just a thrill, but also one of the greatest things I've experienced.

1:01:49Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Do you find that because you guys did such hard things together that it created a bond? Yes. So here's another good thing about hard stuff. And this is something Hubar and I talked about. When we learn anything, experience anything, we create a neural connection in our brain. And what happens is we create that neural connection, that neural network, and then that connection begins to myelinate as we repeat that. So if we're learning something and we repeat it over and over again, that connection begins to myelinate, which is like a substance that goes around this kind of coaxial cable. Once that's fully myelinated, what that means is that connection, the energy is going immediately.

1:02:29In other words, you don't have to think about what you're doing anymore. So just take driving a stick shift car. When we first learn how to drive a stick shift car, we're thinking about it. Everything we're thinking about, those connections are new and they're not myelinated very well. As we do it over and over again and we achieve unconscious competence, that means those connections have been myelinated fully. We can do it without thinking. Neuroscience has proven that that whole process, the connective process and the myelination process, can in fact increase 100 to 1 ,000 times sometimes if three things are present in the environment.

1:03:01Those three things are intensity, novelty, and focus. This is exactly why being told a stove is hot is different than touching a hot stove. Because touching a hot stove involves all three of those. You will never touch a hot stove again. Why do I say that? It's because the reason why we find that relationships strengthen oftentimes.

1:03:18Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:You said intensity, novelty, and... And focus. So this environment is very intense. It's novel. It's somewhat new. And then it's... I'm deeply focused. This is why we learn more from our mistakes than we do our accomplishments. Because whenever we fail or make mistakes, those three things are absolutely predominant. Not as much when we succeed. There's a difference there. It's also why when we fail together as groups, it creates these bonds. Because we're actually creating these networks at the same time. If people do, people have to experience the same level of failure. No, I don't think so. I mean, everything's subjective.

1:03:52And it's really whatever feels. I mean, again, for you and I, in doing what we've done, failing at something, we might be like, yeah, that's not a big deal. Or someone else who has never experienced that, that is a huge deal for them. That's why I'm always, I'm always, emotion's a very subjective thing. So I always have to be, we always have to be cognizant of what other people consider hard, because it's, it's a, it's real to them. So.

1:04:16Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Having been through life and death situations, and again, this goes back to what it takes to become a SEAL, and SEALs are not normal. And I, and I truly do believe that there's a certain level that can be trained up but there is there is what i believe in and i i don't know if this is true a particular set of attributes not skills right but a particular set of attributes that when stress uncertainty and chaos arise these individuals have an ability to perform which brings me to you you've been in very austere environments you've done really hard things and now you're living a civilian life yeah in order to maintain a certain level and happiness is not the right yeah word i agree happiness is fleeting and you don't want it all the time yeah right uh satisfaction okay fulfillment there you go you have now set the bar extremely high how do you put yourself in an environment where you have to or will give you that same feeling Well, it's not going to be the same feeling.

1:05:26First off, I get used to that. Okay. And my buddies and I talk about that. It's not the same feeling. However, it's a different feeling and it's just as serious. Listen, I wrote a book and began a business with my wife. I mean, she and I work for no one. We work for ourselves and we're building a business together. That is, and we have one kid in college and one getting ready to go. So these are, you know, speaking in front of crowds.

1:05:50Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:That's easy for you now. It's easy for me now, but it's only because I inoculated myself to do it. But now what do you do? I continue to build a business. You know, we pivot the business. We ask ourselves, what's the next level that we need to do? Parenting, regardless of the age, is a stressful endeavor because you're constantly asking yourself, what do I do? Am I doing it right? How do I accomplish this? Staying married for, you know, 24 years and onward, you know, is... But you get what I'm saying. there's a level of this book so masters of uncertainty look how well worn this is yeah i actually travel with this book by the way i wrote it small just so people would so yeah love it and it's you know i i mark in it and uh so i'm never giving this book away also it has writing and markings i signed that right you did of course you did yes i would be very upset if i lost it but there is a level of stress uncertainty and chaos and then people become people like you become really good at managing life yeah in order to grow and there's business growth but i'm talking about putting yourself and again i look at shane it's very hard for he for him to be in a situation where it's pushing him i mean the guy is running marathons now yeah while he's working 120 hours a week but for someone like you and i also i'm asking this because I think about for myself, there's being busy and working hard.

1:07:20Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:And then there's really pushing yourself to the edge. For example, for me, I am a mom of two kids. I don't have full-time help. I just wrote my second book. I'm podcasting. I'm doing these things. But when I reflect and I say, okay, is this really hard or is this requiring me to be diligent and focused? How do you put yourself in a position where you're functioning at that edge? Well, first of all, don't mitigate the things you're doing as not being hard. You're just processing them in a way that you say to yourself, oh, was that hard? You have learned to process. Shane, what he's doing, he is still, he's moving horizons.

1:08:00And when he's running these long races or doing what he's doing, he might be moving about very minute levels, which means he's exercising this muscle constantly. It's really not about the thing. It's about, are you exercising the muscle? That's what you're doing. And whatever endeavor we're trying to do, whatever next phase, we are constantly, I'm constantly exercising that muscle. Because comfort kills. Comfort kills, right. So I always say, you know, Kristen and I were talking about this the other day. I always say I always endeavor to be massively grateful but never satisfied. That's what I always want to be.

1:08:31I want to be, and I am, I'm very grateful for everything, you know, everything that we've done, everything accomplished, everything up until now, massively grateful. But I want to maintain at least a small level of dissatisfaction so that I'm always looking to the next horizon. What's the next place we can go? What's the next goal we want to accomplish? So, yeah, getting out of the Navy was, okay, can I, first of all, function? Can I get a job? Which I did. Then, okay, can I write a book? And then can we build a business? Now, that's the current endeavor to include a second book. Can I write a second book?

1:09:03That's the current endeavor. I don't know what the next endeavor will be five to ten years from now. I'm going to focus on this horizon. And then once that horizon is to a position where I'm like, okay, actually, this feels good. What's my next pivot? But what I can guarantee is I will always pivot. There will always be something I'm pivoting to so that I'm challenging myself in some way. Again, we ask where we get this stuff. My dad is 80. Both my parents, they're divorced, but they're both very tough people. Where did you grow up? Connecticut. Yeah. And my dad's a lawyer. He's 85, right? 85, 84.

1:09:36It was two years ago, about two years ago. So it was 82, 83. And it was January. He'd been a lawyer at a law firm there in the town we grew up for 40 years. And he wrote us an email. The kids, you know, I have three siblings. And you have a twin. One twin and then an older sister and a younger brother. He wrote us an email and said, hey, kids, just want to let you know everything changes. You know, the law firm has realized, and he was a partner for a while, but then he kind of stepped back doing a little bit less. He said, the law firm has discovered that it can no longer sustain itself to a reasonable financial model.

1:10:13So after a hundred year old law firm, so after a hundred years, it's closing its doors. He said, but no worries. I've already interviewed at three other law firms and I've decided to take a job at this one law firm. I'm going to start in a week. So he's an 82 year old man and he's going and he started a new job at a new law firm. Now he's at this law firm. He loves, he said, I'm surrounded by young people who are teaching me things. I'm able to mentor them to a degree. There's other people. He's, I'm learning a lot. He's active. He said, Rich, I wouldn't know what to do with myself if I didn't want, he loves the law.

1:10:42He loves doing what he does. This is what I'm talking about. If we are not staying active, if we're not picking the next horizons, we're not picking the next goal, then we're gonna just wilt. And so I don't plan to do that. The idea that winners are calm under pressure,

1:10:57Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:and I say winners loosely, but are there top one or two attributes that people that are very successful have? Yes. I'm going to give you the kind of soft answer, but it's probably the best answer, but then I'll give you more specificity. The soft answer, which is the best answer, is the answer is yes, but I don't know which ones they are because it's completely subjective to whatever environment they're in. The super successful accountant, the attributes for that person are different than the super successful Navy SEAL, than the super successful teacher or nurse. whatever that is. Now, all that said, I think that the if I were to if you put a gun to my head and said, hey, what are the really important ones?

1:11:40Which has probably happened. Yes. Well, I would say compartmentalization is one compartmentalization is the attribute that that allows for moving horizons. Totally. And so and so so Navy SEALs for the guys who make it through BUDS, we all show up to the beaches of BUDS on day one with a level of this. We have to because we're not going to make it through the first day and it just gets hyperdeveloped. right? The guys who don't make it through buds, they just didn't show up with as much. So compartmentalization is one. Courage is another. And by courage, I mean, again, we have to understand courage is the ability to step into our fear.

1:12:13When we get afraid, our amygdala gets tickled, we're offered two choices. Those two choices are fight or flight, right? They've determined that the freeze one is just an oscillation between the two. But those two choices are actually separate switches in the brain. So if we choose to flee, it's one switch. If we choose to fight, it's another switch, i.e. step into our fear. That fear, that step in switch is a courage. It's known as the courage switch. So we have no access to that courage switch unless we have fear present.

1:12:42Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:We have no access to courage unless we have fear present. Right, which tells us something neurologically that we've all heard philosophically, which is courage is impossible in the absence of fear. You do not have courage in the absence of fear. You can't. All this to say, fear is entirely subjective to the human being. You can have a group of Navy SEALs in a gunfight with Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan who are in that moment feeling less fear than the eight-year-old who just has to step in front of the class and introduce themselves, okay? So it's subjective. So you can be a generally anxious person, but every day and all day, you're consistently stepping into your fear.

1:13:17You're consistently stepping into your discomfort. Your courage level is really high. You can be someone who does crazy shit, right? And you're not accessing that courage. I don't know if you've seen that. I'm sure you have seen the documentary Free Solo. Alex Honnold, right? Crazy. Now, insane. I mean, free climbing this up. I get sweaty palms when I watch it. They looked at his brain. They recognized that his amygdala doesn't get tickled like normal people's, right? It takes a while for his amygdala to get tickled, i.e. he's not accessing that courage switch the same way other people. And I'm not saying Alex is not courageous, but he's not accessing the switch the same way someone else is.

1:13:50Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:I see. Yeah. It takes less courage for him. In some cases, it doesn't take any courage for him because he's not feeling the fear. He doesn't get courage. None of us get courage until we feel fear. So courage as an attribute is your ability to consistently and habitually step into your discomfort and fear. I think that's a very important attribute for all successful people. So you have to follow that up with mental reframing. For example, some individuals will go through their life. I don't know if you know this, but I trained in psychiatry for two years. I remember you saying that. And you'll see people go through the same process and not necessarily move the needle with their anxiety.

1:14:29Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:And I think looking at the tools in this book, going back had I known, and I'm sure that you've got moments where if you could take what you learned now to go back, maybe those guys wouldn't have failed out of buds. But you probably, you know, and just thinking about the brain, the brain becomes wired to do a certain thing. The brain may become particularly accustomed to that level of anxiety. That even if you, that they almost don't seem to get better at managing it. It is, they wake up, they feel anxiety, and then they go to bed. And because they've now anchored this neurology. Yeah, you bring up a great point.

1:15:10This is, by the way, has everything to do with dopamine. And the dopamine reward we get from, it's not just the anxiety. It's what the anxiety pushes them to do or feel. I have my cousin, she now lives in Virginia Beach. She does social work. She's a wonderful human being. And she helps people with homeless people find housing. And she's been in this work for years. But she was telling me a very interesting story. She said, there's some cases where they have someone who's been homeless for years. And they finally get this person in a house. And after five days, the person ditches and is back on the street.

1:15:44Yes. And one of the reasons is because these people have developed this addiction almost to the idea of and the process of getting up and figuring it out all day. It's not exciting enough. They don't get that dopamine reward. So I think sometimes we can get trapped in this moment or phase where our anxiety is actually giving us the dopamine that's actually driving us. And so we just have to, again, is that bad or good? I think it's, again, that's subjective. We have to decide, is that actually progressing our lives or not?

1:16:15Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:It's a tough way to live. It might get the job done. I would agree. Certainly physically, because with that stress that comes from that anxiety comes cortisol and all the bad neurobiology if kind of used for extensive periods. So I would say it's much better if you can start to practice these tools and mitigate anxiety by these tools versus lean on anxiety for the actual rush itself. If you gave people one piece of advice, if they're thinking about this and they want to become tougher, what would that piece of advice be? Practice doing hard things. Do hard things. Because you will, because that anterior mid cingulate cortex will actually grow.

1:17:00You'll tickle it, it'll grow, it'll get, you will find yourself able to do harder things more frequently. You will add to the years on your life, and you will start to gain confidence because as you use these tools, all masters of uncertainty do is we use these tools without thinking. We default to this stuff. You'll appreciate this. I might have told you this story at one point, but there in Virginia Beach, we've lived there for 22 years, and we've been in the same house. Across the street, there's a seal. Down the road to the left, there's a seal, or it used to be. Down the road to the right, there's a seal.

1:17:32My wife once said, she said, I'm so glad these guys are in the neighborhood. And I said, why? She said, because if something happened and I needed them, I could go to them and you weren't around. I could go to them and they'd act like you act. I said, what do you mean? Is it because every time the shit hits the fan, all you guys do is you stop, you just stop, you calm down, you start problem solving. All we're doing is we're moving horizons. We start moving horizons without thinking about it. We just like, okay, what's, what do I focus on? This, this, this. We just start stepping through the process.

1:17:56So, so mastering this, this stuff is really about getting to the point where you're doing it without thinking. And like I said, it'll A, allow you to do better when uncertainty hits without warning. But more importantly, it will give you the confidence to start stepping deliberately into your discomfort and starting to really explore your potential.

1:18:11Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Well, Rich Deviney, I love this book, Masters of Uncertainty. I highly recommend everybody get this and also get your Attributes book. This was before I knew you personally. I love that book. And I am just a huge supporter of the attributes book and the test you're really doing some great work incredibly articulate and i just i'm really grateful thank you well thank you for your support thank you for being such a great friend because uh it's a great journey it's nice to be nice to have great friends along the journey so thank you