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

27:37When I'm next to that individual, this is a paper cut to me. So like that power of perspective, because I was able to weaponize the gratitude in that scenario, that's the key. Because a lot of times I think when it comes to comparison or perspective, it can drive people even deeper into a hole because they're saying, hey man, like this person did this thing under are these extreme circumstances and I'm having difficulty getting up in the morning, like what's wrong with me? And it ends up being a driving factor that makes it worse where, no, no, no, stop for a second. Be grateful for what you have.

28:15See it that way. Open up your heart and your soul a little bit. Say, wow, I'm really fortunate. I got a lot of great things going right now and use that as a tool. Those that are stuck, you know, if there is not a mission that's been identified, in my opinion, it becomes extraordinarily difficult to get past the adversity, but even oftentimes just to get moving. Like, what is it that you want to do? It sounds like a very simple question, but there's layers of difficulty built within this. Like, have you begun an internal dialogue with yourself yet at all? Have you looked in the mirror at any point in your life and said, what do you want to do?

29:05Who do you want to become? And I think oftentimes, and that's how it started for me, just very simple. And letting the universe or God or your soul or call it whatever you want, communicate back to you on what do you want to do? Who do you want to become? In order to make that exercise of any kind of value, one is expectation, knowing that it's likely not going to, the answer is not going to come blasting through the glass and punch you in the face more often than not. It takes repetition. You have to actually work at it. Two is if there's not a degree of self-honesty, then it's really not going to matter.

29:43And in today's world, you can make the argument that that has never been more difficult ever in the world of immediate satisfaction and social media and where people are projecting an image because that's become the norm, it's easy for us to begin to believe our own facade. And so that internal dialogue, that level of self-awareness is important. But if you're lying to yourself, then it's not gonna matter. Right. So there's a lot there to begin playing around with. but I do think that once that mission has been identified and oftentimes I'm asked like well I'm having that conversation I'm right I really am I'm journaling I'm being honest I'm doing all these things but I still don't know what my purpose is I'm still my soul is not being lit towards something a technique that is often used is to is to hone in on your talents and kind of leverage the likelihood of success.

30:43Because if you hone in on our talents, which are the things we do best with the least amount of effort, and then you lay a skill on top of that, odds are you're going to be in a really great place to do some really great things. I just prefer to use the course of action prior to that as COA 1 because it doesn't place any limitations on ourselves. Right. I think it's beautiful. This is everything that I've been, I don't know, preaching, but communicating to my audience about from my lessons in sports. You know, if I didn't have a goal, I wasn't willing to, I would quit. I would have quit football if I didn't have like some type of mission or goal that I was excited about that was meaningful to me that had like a reason why I wanted to do it because, you know, three days were so painful and it was hot and there's, you know, I could go chase girls instead or do something easier so i needed something bigger than myself a mission bigger than me that i was excited about to go through all the pain right of all the different sports injuries and just like sacrificing you know whatever early mornings all these different things cutting out bad food whatever it was that was the easy way out yeah and same thing when i transitioned to business and just life and relationships it was like things would i would suffer and struggle more when I didn't have a meaningful mission.

32:05You can take on different things in life, but if it doesn't bring some type of fulfillment or meaning, it's going to feel harder and you're going to suffer more. It's going to be hard no matter what. You have to do things every single day to be successful. You have to show up. You have to experience some type of pain and overcome it in order to build your emotional, mental, or physical strength. Consistently. So you might as well enjoy it or find fun in that process with a meaningful mission that you're tied to or seeing in the distance and trying to draw in closer. So I love that you talk about mission because I think a lot of people don't have that.

32:42And I love that you talk about talent and skills. One of the things I did when I got out of sports and was trying to figure out who I was and my identity in life now that sports was over was I started to address a lot of my insecurities and fears. And I said, how can I maximize my talents, but also my fears and insecurities make me feel really, I lack confidence. Because I know these are in the background. It was hard for me to do public speaking. I knew this was just a challenge for me. So I went all in on public speaking every single week for a year. I knew I had this desire to learn salsa dancing, but I was terrified to get on the dance floor.

33:22Because I didn't want to be made fun of. So I went all in and practiced every week for a couple of years as well. I just said, what are the things that I can build as talents and skills that I'm not good at as well that will make me more bulletproof emotionally and mentally? Yes. You know, like I can whip out these tools at any moment and feel more confident and see where it leads me towards my mission. So these are some of the things that I'm so glad you're talking about this because I've been preaching this stuff. And what would you say that the main talents or skills then that you've developed since that time, since losing your leg.

33:58And you speak another language too? Or did you have to learn another language? Yeah, I speak a few foreign languages now. Pretty fluent? No, we'll say we have a working knowledge. Right, right, right. Yeah, if I know I'm going someplace where I may have to use it, I got to pull out the materials and dust off the cobwebs. It's an awesome question, kind of looking at the positive sides of any scenario because they're there. I don't care how horrible it was I believe that it's only a matter of time and with enough reflection that there's positivity to extract from that. This being, you know, one of those, certainly not towards the top, but one of them, one I would say is my level and commitment to efficiency.

34:44and the example I'll use or really the way in which this has been reinforced is, you know, when you have an amputee or when you use a prosthetic with a traditional socket system. So imagine this is my actual leg. My leg fits inside this bucket and that's how it stays attached to my body. That's how most of those of us that have prosthetics, that's how it stays attached to us. Sweat becomes the ultimate enemy because it gets slippery. It slips around. It's not working. It starts to chafe. The leg isn't functioning normal. So I eventually began to visualize the second I put my prosthetic on my body, a clock began to tick.

35:25And it was only a matter of time before I had to take it off, wipe it down, depending on what I was doing, maybe let it breathe for 10 minutes or 20 or an hour. Because you sweat a lot. Because I sweat a lot. Me too. And a guy, you're sweating all the time. Walk out in the snow and you sweat probably, right? All the time. Me too, yeah. Right? Especially, fun fact, when you lose this many sweat pores, your other ones work in overdrive. Oh my gosh. To cool you off, yeah. Learned that in the hospital. I was going through like multiple t-shirts a day. So, you know, I am more capable when I'm on two feet.

35:56Certainly I can be mobile. I can be in a wheelchair. I can be on crutches. But I'm not as capable as I am when I'm on two legs. Yeah, you're more efficient when you're on two legs. Absolutely. I'm more productive when I'm on two legs. So that clock begins to tick. So I knew I needed to maximize every single moment that I was on two legs. Wow. And it got a little OCD, which my wife eventually kind of got cool with because it got to the point where if I, for example, were leaving my house for the day and I grabbed my stuff and I took, you know, eight steps. and I realized I had forgotten something.

36:34Well, that's 16 steps that I'm not getting back. Eight to go back to my thing, eight to get back to where I was. And it started to drive me more and more crazy. So I began... Every step needs to matter. Every step, every minute, every second needs to matter. And this is, I get, I understand this is the extreme and some of your viewers may be like, this is insanity. But, you know, again, I set my sights on something so ambitious that I need to maximize every single moment. And therefore, I began just modifying, creating or modifying these different systems to minimize the likelihood of me missing those 16 steps again.

37:13So it's like, okay, I forgot my wallet. So now it's wallet, phone, like at the end of every day, like this is where everything goes so that… Everything you need to leave the next day is in one place. Everything is streamlined. Yes. So just day to day, I began just kind of instinctually creating these different systems throughout my day to maximize my level of efficiency just so I could do more things better on two feet and for longer. So that's just kind of a process in which I likely would not have learned if I had not gone through this. And it's one that I've maintained really to this day. For the last nine years now, right?

37:54Or however long it's been. Yeah. Right. So it's almost instinctual where I'm just, I'm constantly looking at ways to improve, to make up a second or two or not. But with extreme circumstances, you need to take extreme, you know, changes to maximize your life or to master your life, right? Otherwise, you could fall two hours behind every day because, oh, I forgot this. And not upgrading your systems with a level and the degree of your new reality, right? It's like you need to upgrade your level of thinking, your skill sets, the systems inside of you, your processes to be even more efficient than before, even with the changing of the prosthetic or whatever you might have to do, right?

38:37And this is more tactical, on the ground stuff, like physically moving things around through my day. This is tactical, tangible tools. I'll use a second point. it's more conceptual, but I really want to emphasize this when you talk about what were the upsides, what were the positive aspects that you've learned or been able to leverage from losing your leg. And it's knowing, realizing and knowing that although I was a hard worker and I was productive on two legs and I've got plenty of accomplishments and stuff that I'm certainly proud of, that took a lot of really hard work. There was an entire another level of work ethic and productivity that was sitting inside me the entire time that I did not know existed until this happened.

39:31And I set my sights on something extraordinarily unlikely, but I committed myself to because I knew I needed to be able to work at an extraordinarily higher level, like the highest possible level. And it's not as if when I was in the hospital, you know some scientist walked into my room and rammed a metal spike in the back of my head and uploaded work ethic right like neo and the matrix like it was literally there the whole time i think that and oftentimes it takes a traumatic event or hitting rock bottom for people to realize that there's so much more inside them that is literally sitting there waiting to be leveraged Yes.

40:13And that's becomes the kind of the catalyst for them to start to see that. And then it becomes contagious. It's like, oh, my gosh, look what I just did. What else can I do? What else can I do? And that snowball effect happens. But having retrospectively kind of analyzed that, yes, sure, this was the catalyst. And I've seen what I was able to do. How did I really do that? and it was through the modification primarily anyway of two relationships my relationship with fear and my relationship with pain and those are relationships like any other relationships we have right it's a two-way street you talk to that entity and it talks back you can only influence so much but by modifying my relationship with those two things really is what facilitated my ability to do more, push harder, create more, and accomplish more.

41:08How do you modify your relationship with fear and pain? I think, at least for me, man, it began with a recognition of what they're there to do. And the human brain does a lot of amazing things for us, but its primary responsibility is our survival, is to keep us alive. and the brain has a security system within it. And within that are two different alerts, one of which we know is fear and one we know is pain. Fear is the alert of pending danger or a potential threat. Like something bad could happen. You're now scared. I need you to be scared of that to stay away from it. Pain being the alert of damage or impairment, right?

41:51Because the brain wants us to survive. knowing that our brain is there because it wants the comfort zone like homeostasis like the medical term it wants things nice and predictable and sustainable and forecastable and let's just keep things all nice and calm here when it comes to even a heartbeat our red blood cell count like it doesn't want change recognizing that and then knowing that if we've set our sights on something um righteous something of ambition something that is unlikely unprecedented there are going to be times when we have to ignore our brain and listen to our heart and our soul and one of the greater challenges of life really is knowing when to take that risk and asking yourself in that moment in real time like right now are you willing to take the risk of doing this particular thing, knowing the potential hazards, but then also knowing the potential effects.

42:57Are you willing to do it? I'm curious about, in your mind, I don't want to assume anything, but has anything become harder since you lost your leg? And has anything become easier or better since then as well? I don't want to make assumptions either way that things have gotten harder or easier and better. But if there is, is there something on both sides that's been harder and easier and better? Yeah, certainly. I mean, there are countless specific tasks were really hard to relearn and are still harder today, even after having learned them and doing them now for almost a decade. I mean, walking is harder now than it was prior.

43:47Um, I think generally speaking, the, the hard comes from a willingness to accept that you don't know how to do something right now. And that's okay. And not letting my pride and ego get in the way of that, But, man, slicing off a massive serving of humility, be willing to take that risk of embarrassment. You know, and when it comes to fear, sure, we're fear of physical damage. But I would argue fear mostly comes through the lens of emotional damage, fear of failure, fear of embarrassment, you know, self-judgment. Being judged by other people. Judgment. I think most of that. So, again, a modification, that relationship.

44:30Hey, am I willing to do this? um but most i think it's probably accurate to say most tasks certainly anything that involves me being on two legs are more difficult today than before what's what's easier or better if that's man i'll start off in the clouds man um because if i could go back in time right like Doc Brown shows up in the DeLorean and he's like, let's go back and we'll save your leg. You know, the butterfly effect is a, you know, a concept. You weren't there and you were in another room or something. But I look at the life I have now, man. And, you know, particularly my family and my boys and my wife.

45:14And it's just amazing. I would not undo a single thing. Really? Because there's just a chance that I don't end up where I am here right now. Like talking to you with my family at home, I live such a fulfilling and loved life that I wouldn't change a thing about this. That's like up in the clouds. But it's important, you know, no, I think. I'll go into the tactical realm. So I'm big into jiu-jitsu. And I started as a two-legged guy and competed. and jiu-jitsu was a huge part of my recovery, which began in the hospital. Certainly physically, range of motion, flexibility, humility. Also your spirit too.

45:58Absolutely. Camaraderie, competition, all that stuff. Yeah. Huge aspect of my recovery and just really overall life. But you know, jiu-jitsu is a weight class sport. And although, you know, I walk around now today at around 220 pounds big strong guy man i'm missing about 45 pounds of leg right right so you would be a 265 weight class but you're right against guys you know my size absolutely you're freaking just bear hugging them yeah so you know i learned that there was like a huge advantage in that realm which is you know i wouldn't say it's silly because you can conceptualize that to say like Like, no, there's always upsides to it.

46:40So I was able to leverage, you know, my upper body strength and whatnot when I would compete as an amputee. And if you looked at me versus some of my competitors from the waist up, you'd be like, there's no way these guys are in the same weight class. Right. It's impossible. Well, you look like a beast next to them. Yeah. Right. So certainly just an example, man, of things that I would say are easier, but certainly things that I can leverage to my advantage. Yeah, yeah. That's cool, man. anything else that's easier or better now with this is do you have a different you know mental capacity emotional capacity do you appreciate things more yeah oh my gosh is your heart open now because you have different type of humility i mean i'm just i have no idea but i'm throwing it out there yeah um my my degree of confidence is actually probably higher now than it was really as a two-legged guy.

47:34Wow. Why? How? Yeah. Great question. I think you could summarize confidence into two words, training and preparedness. And when you've put in the reps and you've got the resources in place to deal with the what-ifs, I think drastically basically increase the level of confidence. And my training was, you know, I attacked that on a whole another scale. And as I was working my way back to the team and then continuing to deploy into combat and doing all these different things, my level of training was quite insane at times. And I needed to... Physical training or like... Oh, yeah. Workout training to get back?

48:20Yeah. I mean, it was belligerent. You know, My lifestyle and structure was nuts. And then my level of preparedness also had to increase as well. I would break these things. I would need tools. I would need stuff to have available. I learned all these through really difficult lessons. So training and readiness or training and preparedness were essential for me to do what I needed to do. So, but most significantly is as I began to fail repeatedly in front of those in which I wanted to impress, like my teammates and my commanders, I eventually got to a place where I was okay with failing in front of people.

49:03Like when I first got back to my unit, I was only in the hospital for a year. I got back to my unit. I was still really raw. I would not be seen without my prosthetic on my body. No one would see me without a leg. Why? Because in my mind, that would be seen as weakness. I would be seen as a liability. I would be seen as, man, there's no way this guy can stay in this community. So I struggled with that for a while. And there was a time eventually one of my teammates came over and I was hobbling around. I clearly needed to take my leg off and like let it chill for a minute. And he came over. He's like, dude, why don't you just take your leg off and like sit down for a second?

49:42And he knew why without me having to say it. He's like, listen, dude, everyone here knows you only have one leg. Yeah. Like, if you take your prosthetic off, it's not going to change anything. And I'm like, okay. And that was, like, step one. And I just did that, and I looked around, and no one cared. No one cared. Yeah. Getting comfortable with the uncomfortable. Absolutely. Yeah. The fear of embarrassment or the worry, what are people going to think. Yeah. No one cared. No one cared. They just want you healthy, happy. They want you to feel ready to go. That's it. And then from there, it just kind of began to snowball where I would, you know, I'd push myself harder and I would trip and fall or my leg would come detached or I would fail on this deadlift or I'd be out trying to learn how to run and I'd fall down.

50:23And I began to just care less about the opinions of others. Yeah, if you fell down, it didn't matter anymore. It didn't matter. Like my teammates, my family, my loved ones, they love me regardless. So I just began to build up a greater sense of confidence because I was callusing my mind to a degree where, like, no, I can do this. I can be vulnerable. I can mess things up. And not only is it okay, but it actually inspires people around me and makes them want to dig a little bit deeper. What would you say would be the biggest lesson you learned from being a SEAL then? that just about life in general from your entire time there?

51:09So I summarize that in one phrase, get off the X. Get off the X. Yeah, so, and the X is any point of attack, any point of crisis, any, and that now, that's one of the big things I talk about to companies and individuals. It is the sticking point. In SEAL training and special operations lingo, the X was the point of the attack. It was the ambush point. so for one side of my career I had trained to try and put the enemy on the X and and that X is a specific point that usually we pick ahead of time that will channelize them into an area that it makes it very difficult for them to get out of and then we rain as much fire explosives to try and a destroy their will to fight and be destroy them or equipment or whatever else and what I had learned also was if you're ever on the X you have to get off the X as quickly as possible because the longer you sit on it the harder it is to get out of an ambush so 2007 my gunfight we survived because my teammates fought back and we were able to get off that X I mean it took a little while we had to use the air assets my teammates fought back but that's what enabled me to be successful out of that gunfight.

52:28When we got to the hospital, or when I got to the hospital, I kind of realized that I had stepped out of one ambush into another ambush. An emotional, psychological ambush. Absolutely. And this journey that I was facing. And I remember when the doctors were telling me, you know, we're thinking about amputating your arm and it's going to take years to put you together. I felt like, man, it's no longer the bombs and bullets of battle. It's the bombs and bullets of life wow and everybody gets hit by those bombs and bullets so it took a couple of years for that all to come into clarity but uh it made me realize everybody gets ambushed in life everyone and everybody gets stuck on that x and that x is insidious it's like quicksand and the more you want to feel sorry for yourself and that's what happens when people get on the x Yeah.

53:18Um, three things happen. Number one, we will look back at what we've lost and we waste a lot of time at, well, you know, I mean, a little bit like I did. Well, what if I had moved this way or what if I had moved that way? Or I want back my life before I got wounded because it was so much better. And we waste a lot of time doing that. We also look forward. Well, I was supposed to be this, or I was supposed to be that, or this was supposed to be my most successful year. or, you know, I was going to play in the NFL. This was my launch point. And then we get bitter about that. And then the last one is we look for someone or something to blame.

53:54You know, it was their fault. They did this or they didn't do this. And that is the victim mindset. That pins us to the X. And what happens is, I mean, in a gunfight, you literally can physically die. But in life, I watch people who mentally and emotionally die. Yes. And I write this in the book, Overcome, that there are people who that life ambush that hits them becomes the excuse for everything in their life. For decades. And they become lesser individuals than they ever were before. Like alcohol, drugs, whatever it is, every bad behavior is justified because of what happened to them. And they just lay on the X and they're just a dead person walking.

54:42So when you made that conscious decision to make that sign and kind of create a mission statement for yourself to recover in a more positive state, what shifted for you and what shifted for the people around you that you weren't claiming to be a victim? Yeah, I mean, it was just nothing but positivity. And don't get me wrong, I had hard times. I mean, there were definitely days that were hard. I mean, it was not, you know, it's not blue skies and rainbows every day, but it is a choice. It doesn't mean that it's a choice to keep driving forward. And my wife, who I call the long-haired admiral, is amazing.

55:21But I, yeah, she's trying to raise three young kids. And really, I felt like this fourth kid because you know who was cleaning my wounds? You know who was grinding up my medicine, who was feeding me through, you know, grinding up food so that I could eat through a stomach tube? It was my wife. I was in a wheelchair when they brought me home. I had all this metal and hardware, you know, helping me clean this trach that I wore for seven months and two days. So the last thing I was going to do was add additional stress to her by complaining or by, you know, and not only that, I want to set the example to my kids.

55:56Like, hey, bad things happen to good people, but by complaining and being negative, you are not helping the situation in any way whatsoever. And this is something I talk to people about in this idea of leading always. when it sucks the worst, nobody needs to hear about it because all you're doing is pulling others down. And it is a virus. It is a cancer when it occurs because usually when a team is at a point in time where people are starting to turn inward and feel sorry and eat themselves, you're at a tipping point. And this is when a great leader can step up and step out of his own misery to try and lead others forward to push you in the right direction or you will fall in the other direction.

56:37And I wanted to show my kids and others that I wasn't going to be that guy. I was going to continue to drive forward no matter what. That's powerful. Lead yourself, lead others, lead always. For those who are looking to accomplish their goals, but they feel stuck in life, what would you say were the strategies of the SEALs in accomplishing your goals at the highest level? What are some of the things that you guys did strategy-wise to make that happen? Structure and discipline. So muscle memory would be the biggest one, which is now many of the things that I teach in both Overcome and in my Point Man for Life program.

57:20And it was something that I was missing. I felt like I was missing when I left the military. And I think a lot of military members feel the same way. The SEAL teams are incredibly effective at what we do for a lot of reasons. One of the reasons is selection. And that selection is there's a lot of things you have to do to qualify just to get to SEAL training. A lot of people don't realize how smart SEALs have to be. So there's a level of intelligence. There's a level of physical ability. There's a level of, obviously, resiliency that has to come into this. And then we put everybody through this meat grinder called SEAL training that eliminates anybody that doesn't have that ability.

58:01And then once you get to the SEAL team, it's how we train and build teams. And it's forged through tremendous adversity because our training, even once you get to a team, is designed to be very hard. I mean, some people would say almost sadistic in the way we would train. We would look for what is the absolute worst case scenario we can think of, and then how do we amplify that just a little more? To make it even worse. To make it even worse. and then train from that. And then train from that. And it was grueling and painful. And sometimes we got guys killed in training. I mean, you try to reduce the level of risk, but we also recognize that in order to be ready for combat, we have to train at the highest level.

58:44So, and in order to do that, it was a lot of repetition. And crawl, walk, run was the mentality. And it was not these big goals of, hey, I'm going to take down this entire town, like, you know, right off the bat, because that's really complicated. That starts to get into all kinds of very complicated things. It was, how do I take down a single room? And we walk as we flow through it. And then that became, well, how do I take two rooms? How do I take three rooms? How do I take a house? How do I take a compound of three houses? How do I take a village? So it was a crawl, walk, run mentality all the time.

59:25And then structure and discipline and the way we trained, everything was built up that way from shooting. You know, oftentimes I was a marksmanship instructor and I've trained some other people to shoot and they're always, they're a little funny because the very first thing to do when I train anybody to shoot is you shoot at the three yard line. Little black dot and we're shooting at the three yard line and they're like, hey man, this is stupid i'm like no you're not you're learning and the repetition that you need to effectively pull your weapon out and and get a positive sight picture trigger squeeze release that round second sight picture and follow through so that we can do that over and over and over again until you know at that whatever point you know you're shooting from 50 100 yards or more yeah So all of that comes together to create small victories and repetition, structure and discipline that all come together to be successful.

1:00:22How does someone create that for themselves when they're not in the military? So that's when I left. So what I began to realize, so overcome, when I wrote the Trident, which was my first book, it was just the story. It's a story, it's my story of a young punk kid who did well enough to become an officer or a leader and then totally failed because of ego and arrogance, got a second chance and then redeemed himself and then got wounded and kind of realized there was another level of leadership. And when people would read that, people would say, how'd you do that? And I couldn't definitively answer that question.

1:01:04So, Overcome became, I mean, it took, Overcome came out in, I think, five years after I wrote the Trident because it took that long to kind of think about what enabled that. And a lot of that had to do with when I got out of the military, I missed that structure and discipline. I missed, you know, a lot of people don't understand that the military is sometimes a really simple existence, especially when you're deployed. like when you're in the combat zone it's a very simple existence you you eat sleep sleep you work out and then you train and conduct missions and you're worried about the guys around you and the real world's really complicated there's all these distractions there's no one that gives you the guidance no one hands you a mission and says hey man this is what you're doing today you gotta figure out your own mission exactly and as I got out I realized that that I had to figure out my own mission and all these things were not there so I started with okay so how was I successful coming out of these injuries because that's what everybody wanted to see how were you so positive how'd you write that sign on the door how'd you you know less than a year and a half after your injuries launch a non-profit how did you you know later create your their own speaking company and all these things.

1:02:24And I realized that I was super balanced as a leader when I was wounded. When you were wounded? When I was wounded. I wasn't prior to being wounded. Really? Not when I had the leadership failure. And at other points in crisis in my life, I realized I wasn't as balanced. I think I saw one of your videos recently talking about the key to successful leadership is balance. It is. I believe it. But balance is a misnomer too, because it's not like, well, I put 20 % in this bucket, in this bucket, in this bucket. I teach five, I teach something called the Pentagon of Peak Performance. So five key areas that a leader should be balanced in.

1:03:03The foundational level is physical leadership. And it's something that I've come to find that all of us, as we get older, have a tendency to let slide. We do the opposite of probably what we should be doing. It's going harder. Yeah, because as we get older, we're breaking down. we need to take care of ourselves better than we do when we're younger where your body's so much more resilient and that's why I tell people as a leader you need a lot of energy you need to be able to think clearly you need you know sound mind and everything that you're doing so that foundational level of physical leadership is critical to what you're doing and that consists of sleep nutrition and fitness.

1:03:47So those three components.

1:03:52And my physical leadership saved my life when I was wounded. Now, for most people, hopefully, you're never at that level. But in some ways, right now, you look at today, COVID is kind of a strange thing. But for the most part, it is individuals who are not healthy that are having the greatest problems. right uh and and those with a stronger immune system seem to be doing better and it's like that with other diseases right so once again physical leadership to have the energy and the ability we manage stress better so that's the foundational level number two was mental leadership and um when i became a junior officer um and and i was super arrogant i really thought I knew everything and I didn't challenge my beliefs.

1:04:42I didn't question my own capabilities. You know, do as I say, not as I do. I didn't do things to get out of my comfort zone.

1:04:52And that's, those are the things that make up mental leadership, constantly educating ourselves, constantly challenging our beliefs. We're in a day and age where it's dangerous in my opinion, because social media feeds you the information that you like to see. And so many people don't don't go seek out, they don't challenge that belief system of what they're being fed. So it only furthers their belief in things that may or may not be true, but because you keep clicking on that line of thought, you're being fed all that information. The news is no different. The media, people watch what they like to see and it's very biased in this day and age.

1:05:30So mental leadership is constantly challenging your beliefs. It's doing your due diligence to find out what's really true and how does it play into who I am and what I'm trying to do. It's getting outside of your comfort zone. It's finding the individuals who are where you want to be and identifying them as mentors so you can be better, so that you're not surrounding yourself with individuals who are pulling you away from where you want to go. Right. Number three, and this is the biggest one of my weakest point, and that's something I found about the Pentagon. Most people have one area that they're super strong naturally, and then they have an area where they're super weak.

1:06:11And my weakest area was emotional leadership. And emotional leadership is our ability to maintain. As a leader, it's critical to be even keeled. We're not too hot. We're not too cold. We're not too excited. we're not too angry because people can count on you with that consistency they know as a leader I can come to you and tell you bad news and and and you're gonna take it well and I can come to tell you amazing news and you know you're not gonna burn it down drinking and be an idiot you know I mean you gotta ride that balance and and I really struggle with that because I I was an emotional rollercoaster when I was younger and I came to realize that that really damaged my credibility as a leader.

1:06:55And it's also choosing that positivity in the face of negativity. Nobody wants that leader that is just an emotional train wreck, you know, or a negative Nelly. They want that leader who they can count on, that's positive, that's going to push you forward. They also don't want that leader that's something I call a leadership wrecking ball. A leader who they're all about the result, but they leave a path of destruction behind them they'll they'll crush you and their path to get things done and that in my opinion is weak emotional leadership also yes a leader we got to think about the others yeah the health of others yes and then uh the reform the last point well the last part of emotional leadership is uh is managing our mouths because our mouth our mouth yes yeah because so many people so true So many people, and I was guilty of this and I'm not impervious to this.

1:07:55Like I said, this is my weakest area, but I'm really aware of myself now because when we let that zinger fly, 90 % of the time, it doesn't do anything to further what we're trying to accomplish as a leader. All it does is massages our ego. You know? Well, I was angry in the moment, so I wanted to say this. I see this in relationships all the time husband and wife that let these zingers fly. It does nothing to further That situation in a positive way No other than maybe making you feel good to attack people who disagreed with and that's That's part of being a leader also, right that people are gonna disagree with you.

1:08:34So what? You can't be extreme in one direction or the other right you can't be if you're in a leadership position, you can't talk all the time, right? Obviously, as a boss, you need to communicate. You need to talk to your people. But if you talk too much, guess what happens? People stop listening to you. You're putting out too much information. They don't know what's important and what's not. So that's bad. You can't go too far in that direction. The other direction is you can't not talk enough, and now no one knows what's going on. No one knows what's happening. So you have to be balanced, and that's the whole idea of the dichotomy of leadership.

1:09:09but probably the first dichotomy in leadership that I had to say to myself, you know what? There's another side to this is I used to tell the young SEAL officers that you have to be aggressive. You got to be default aggressive. That's how you got to be. Because when something's going on, you got to be aggressive to make that, get that problem solved. And if you're not being aggressive, then you're hesitating. Well, then you can get killed. Okay. So there you go. And that's what I used to tell guys. And as that's extreme, that's an extreme. Yes. That's the And so the question is, can you be too aggressive?

1:09:39Yes. Absolutely. You can, hey, there's a machine gun nest over there. Let's attack it. So you charge up the hill and everyone dies. You've been too aggressive. So what you have to do is you have to be balanced. And that's probably, so even as I had these kind of mantras, like default aggressive, can you do too much of that? Yes, you can. So you end up with this, what do you end up with? Can you be too passive? Absolutely. Oh yeah, absolutely. Well now we're not making any progress. Now we're getting crushed by the enemy because we didn't maneuver. Okay, so that's bad. So where do you want to be?

1:10:09You want to be balanced. Even the idea of extreme ownership. Can you take too much ownership? Yes. Yes, you can. Really? Yes, you can. I thought you said you need to take ownership of everything. Two different things. Listen to this. If you're working for me and I say, okay, here's the mission that I want you to accomplish tonight. Here's the people I want you to take. Here's the weapons I want you to bring. Here's the vehicles I want you to bring. here's the route I want you to use to get to the target, here's the method I want you to use to secure the target, here's the route I want you to do to get back.

1:10:42So that's the plan. Now you take ownership and go execute. Now, can you really take ownership of that plan? If someone else gave you the whole thing? I mean, I gave you the whole thing, right? Is that your plan? No. No, it's your plan. It's my plan. So when you go in the field, and now you come up against an obstacle and you're executing my plan, what's your attitude? Well, it's not my plan, it's his plan. And you're at an obstacle now and you're like, hey, Jocko didn't think of this. So now you just back away and you come back and you say, hey, we failed the mission because you didn't think of this.

1:11:11You didn't think of this option. Right. So that's me taking too much ownership. So what I need to do is I say, hey, here's the plan or here's the mission. How do you want to do it? And now if you're a good leader, you'll go get with your people and you'll say, oh, hey guys, here's the plan or here's the mission that we have to accomplish. How do you guys want to do it? Now you all come up with a good plan and you come back to me and you say, here's the plan. And I say, that looks pretty good. Go execute. And now when you hit an obstacle in the field, what's your attitude? I need to adapt and adjust.

1:11:41What's your plan? You'll make it win. We came up with this. Yes. So can you take too much ownership? The answer is yes, you can. So with just about every, you can name a trait, right? You can name a trait from a leadership perspective that you think is a positive trait. And you'll immediately see that if you go too far with it, it'll become bad. It'll become bad. So you have to be balanced. So even as I came up with the dichotomy of leadership, I had to be humble enough to say to myself, you know what? Being aggressive is really, really good most of the time. But if you're too aggressive, that's not good.

1:12:12So like you said earlier, you're constantly questioning everything. And to me, what that is, that's humility. That's you being humble enough to say, you know what? I really don't understand this that well. And there's some things in my life that I don't get. Whereas as opposed to you walking around saying, I already got this figured out. I already know what I'm doing. I already know where I'm going. I already know what God is specifically. I already know what's going to happen to me when I die. All those things. But instead you're questioning everything, which in my mind is a positive thing. Yeah.

1:12:43That's good to know. Is there anything that is missing in your life? Do you feel like something's missing? I know. I feel like I'm living a pretty good life right now. I mean, I'm totally blessed. I mean, I got a great family. I got great kids. I got a great company. I got, working with great people. Yeah. No, healthy. Healthy. You know, I get to work out, train. I'm feeling good. Living the dream, man. Yeah, living the dream. So you never feel like there's something missing for you right now. If there is, you're working towards it. You're working on the next book. You're building the business.

1:13:19Yeah, well, there's a difference between something missing and am I satisfied? Yeah. Right? Because I'm not satisfied. I mean, I always want to go. Like, I never get done with the end of the day and go, cool, mission accomplished. Like it's like you're trying to be close. Yeah. So you're not satisfied, but you feel like nothing's missing. Yeah. Yeah. I'd say that's a fair statement. What brings you the most joy in your life and makes you smile the most? Oh, I mean, my kids. My kids are cool. They're funny. You know, my wife and kids. Yeah. My wife and kids are cool and funny and we have a good time and lots of inside jokes and all that.

1:13:55Yeah. You know, and I train jujitsu and that's very fun. and surf, that's fun. Yeah. Play guitar, that's fun. How old are your kids again? Age 20, 18, 16, and 10. And what's the biggest lesson you learned about yourself being a father to them? Your kids are not going to be who you want them to be. You can't train them to be... They're going to be who they are. And you can give them some course corrections a little bit, but they're going to be who they are. And the more you try and force them into what you want them to be, the harder they're gonna push back and rebel. Wow. Yep. Did you learn that the hard way or did you get, so you tried to train them in a certain way or?

1:14:45Yeah, somewhat. And it's pretty obvious like from my perspective, I was having a similar conversation with a bunch of executives and they were, We went down the road, because we're having dinner now, so we're done talking about work, but now everyone wants to ask me about parenting and everything else. And I said at the table, I'm like, hey, who here ended up doing exactly what their parents wanted them to do? And there's like one guy out of 10, right? Because most people, your parents are wanting you to do this thing, and you do something else. I mean, I joined the Navy when I was 18 years old.

1:15:16Like, that probably wasn't even on the checklist of top 20 things that my parents wanted me to do. not even in the same ballpark, right? They didn't want you to war. Yeah, they didn't want that. So here you go. Yeah, see ya. That's, so the more you try and kind of pigeonhole your kids into being something that you want them to be, the worse off it's gonna be. It's the same thing with leadership. It's the same thing with leadership. If I'm trying to force my plan down my team's throat, the more resistance I'm gonna get from it. Whereas if I plant the seed and I allow that plan to grow with them, the better it's going to be received.

1:15:54Like when people ask me, how do you get people to buy in? Well, you allow them to come up with a plan yourself. What if in your mind you're like, you really know that plan's not that good? It depends on how bad it is. How bad is it? Or what's at stake? If you're working for me and you're going to meet with a client and you have a bad pitch that you're going to give them and the client is some tiny client that I think is a low probability of us working with and the contract doesn't really matter, I'd be like, hey, hey, give it a shot. Here's a couple. I might give you a couple adjustments and give you some coaching on it.

1:16:31And then you go and you do your thing and you come back and you're like, oh no, we didn't land it. And I say, well, what do you think? Let's debrief. And now we talk about it. I said, you know, you said this and you said that. Here's some other ways to go about it. I might even actually have you do it to me. So then I could sit there and take some notes and say, hey, here's some other things that might've worked. Now, if you were going to meet with a big client that really was going to have value to our company, I'm gonna either Step in Yeah, I'm gonna step in and be like okay, let's think about that what's their reaction gonna be and by the way that's what I'm not gonna say no, don't do it that way I'm gonna say tell me that again and let me give you some objections that you might hear from them and all of a sudden I'll let you come up with the solutions even though I'm sitting there going yeah what he needs to say is this no, I'll let you come up with a solution so then you're kind of going in there like you got this dialed and then you're gonna feel like you won which you did That's great Which is great It gives you more ownership more respecting yourself, confidence, belief.

1:17:22How important is feedback for leaders? Getting feedback from peers, coaches, or employees, team members. Feedback is how you get better. No feedback, no improvement. So if, and if you're not humble, you're not looking for feedback and you're not listening to it. So if you think you know everything, you're not listening, you're definitely not asking for it. And even when it gets told to you, you don't listen to it. So feedback is built upon being humble. what would you say is in your way to getting to the next level what feedback do you think you need to hear or receive from your team or people in order to reach the next goals that you have i mean the weird thing about me is even though you might think look at me and think oh who's going to tell this guy anything right the reality is if anyone of my friends my team anyone that works for me up and down the chain of command if they think i'm wrong everyone will and say, hey, I don't know if that's a good plan.

1:18:17So even when I was a task unit commander, and so I'm in charge, and I'm the head seal for this 40 seals, I'm the main guy. Anyone in that chain of command, those guys would all come to me and say, hey, I don't know if this is a good way to do it. And you know what I'd say? Why not? What do you think? What are you thinking? How do you think we should do it? My mind is open. If my plan is bad, please tell me. They would know that. So my friends, my family, they'll tell me when I'm doing something wrong all day long. They're not intimidated or scared of you? No. That's good. No. So how does a leader cultivate that with his family, friends, team, in order to welcome the feedback of the information?

1:18:58Yeah, what you do is when somebody gives you feedback, you listen to it. This is like, you know, just the other day we have a leadership event that we do two or three times a year. But the thing that I was telling this group of people was, as a leader, you should be listening 98 % of the time and talking 2 % of the time. So every time you come to me and you say, Hey, Jocko, I don't like this plan. I don't say shut up and do it my way. I say, I say, how would you want to do it? Tell me what you don't like about it. And then tell me how you want to do it. So therefore the next time you have an objection, you're like, you know, the door's open.

1:19:36You know that I'm going to be open-minded and listen to you and that's how you build it. Every time you shut someone down from speaking their mind, you actually are creating a negative environment where you're not going to get the feedback. And if there's no feedback, as we just said, you're not going to improve. What are two things that any leader could do to improve their leadership skills right off the bat? Two things you can think of. And what are two things that wannabe leaders do that hold them back from being great leaders? so what are the two things they could add yeah two things you have number one is listen which which we just talked about so that's fresh on my mind and you'd be surprised about how many leaders are thinking that because they're in a leadership position they should be talking all the time wrong answer wrong answer i'll sit through a meeting with a client or with one of my companies and i'll listen for 38 minutes and at the end of those 38 minutes i'll have already thought through every discussion that's been had you know you want to argue with him and He's arguing with her.

1:20:37And guess what? I get to sit there and assess those arguments and see which one is the most important. Meanwhile, you're expending all your ammunition. She's expending all her ammunition. He's given up everything he's got. I'm learning all their thought patterns. I'm learning the pros and cons of each one of their arguments. And I do that for 38 minutes. And in the 39th minute, I say, hey, here's what I think we should do. And guess what? Because I've done an accurate assessment and listened, I'm actually going to be able to make the best decision. It wasn't because I was smarter. It wasn't because I had better tactical understanding.

1:21:11It's because I actually shut my mouth, listened to everyone spill their guts, learned everything that they knew, and did a good detached assessment of what the right thing to do was. So listen. And the other one is the word that I just used, which is detached, which is not getting emotional, not getting into the weeds about stuff that doesn't matter. If you can take a step back and look around, you're going to see infinitely more than you can when you're in the weeds, staring the firefight in the face, looking down the sights of your weapon shooting. If you're doing that, you can't see anything else.

1:21:50Just think about that metaphor right there. If I'm looking down the sights of my weapon and I'm shooting, my world is this big. The minute that I stop shooting, point my weapon at high port, take a step back and actually look around, I can see infinitely more. So apply that to a meeting. This is the meeting that we just talked about. A 38 minute meeting. All this chaos is happening. Sure, I'm the boss. I could jump in there and start arguing and giving my opinion. But what am I really doing then? What I'm really doing then is I'm in the weeds and I'm not able to assess what is actually happening.

1:22:24So there you apply it there. To your personal life. if you and I are arguing, you're my friend and you did something and now we're starting to escalate an argument and I'm starting to get emotional. Am I able to listen to you anymore? Am I able to logically figure out what's going on? If I'm talking to my wife and she did something that made me mad and now I'm starting to raise my voice, is that whole situation going in the right direction? No. No, it's not. It's not. So what I need to do is take a step back, detach, calm down, listen to what she's saying, and then try and assemble a logical thing to say back without saying, you need to calm down or you're too emotional.

1:23:06No, no, no, no, no. Because if you come to me and you're mad about something, you come to me, whether it's my wife or whether you're a business partner, you come to me and you say the dang, the supply department didn't give me the stuff I needed. If I say, Hey, calm down. Right. If that's my reaction, then you realize that I'm against you, right? I don't get it. And so now it's me and the supply department against you. No one understands. No one understands. So I do a little technique. What is that? Yeah. I call, I call it reflect and diminish. So I'm going to reflect your emotions back to you, but I'm going to diminish them a little bit so that we're not escalating the situation.

1:23:50How would you do this with your wife? So if you, well, if you come to me and you go, the supply department's been late for, they're two weeks late on this stuff. I don't say, calm down. I say, oh, you gotta be kidding me. Two weeks? And you go, yeah, can you believe it? Ah, that's horrible. We gotta put a solution, we gotta get that figured out. In the meantime, what do we need to do right now to get the problem solved, right? So we already, now we're on the same team so we can work together to find a solution. We bonded on the pain. Yes, yes. We felt the pain. Yes. We're on the same team. Okay, my wife, what's going to make my wife mad?

1:24:22The ice machine's not working. Right? The ice machine's not working. It's your fault. Whether it's my fault, we don't know. The ice machine's not working. By the way, this is a real story. This is happening today. The ice machine's not working. She didn't get mad about it, but the ice machine's not working. If I go, hey. Chill out. You have a refrigerator and a house and you have plenty of things. Just calm down, right? How's that going to go? It's not going to go good. Now she's going to get mad. Now it's me against her. So instead, the ice machine's not working. Ah, man, that thing is junk. Have you called the repair guy?

1:24:58You know what I mean? And then all of a sudden we're on the same team. And she's like, well, no, I haven't, but I'm about to. Okay, cool. As opposed to the ice machine's not working. Well, okay, do you want me to have ice shipped in from Alaska there, princess? Right? That's not going to go over well. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts.

1:25:35Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.

1:26:05No, no, no.