You Will NEVER Be Lazy Again If You DO THIS! | Navy Seal Rich Diviney & Lewis Howes

anybody could be in charge i was as an officer you know in the in the military i was pretty much in charge of something all the time it didn't didn't make me a leader you you don't get to call yourself a leader it's like calling yourself funny or calling yourself handsome okay someone else someone else makes that decision you can't you can't designate yourself that way i think you gotta have a dream the school of greatness please welcome us i want to talk about first off the difference between peak performance and optimal performance because your whole thing is about optimal performance and that peak performance is not sustainable right but in kind of leadership world or personal growth world a lot of people say let's get to peak performance yeah so why more optimal performance we should be leaning on what is it and why do you feel like it's better than peak performance yeah you know peak performance is is well in a word awesome i mean it's very seductive you know it's flow states it's it's you're at your best you're doing you know things that you never thought you could do and uh and ultimately it's a it's a very honorable and great goal um the reason why it doesn't interest me as much stems from the i from the fact that people generally think of and would come up to me and say well you navy seals are the top peak performers i mean the ultimate peak performers and uh and i said actually no we're not peak is an apex and it's a and it's an apex is from which you can only come down right and and peek has to be um prepared for scheduled conditioned right planned for the professional football player for example you know spends his entire week preparing to peak for three hours on sunday right um and that's exactly what that football player should do except navy seals uh don't have that option right you know and and spec op spec ops people don't have that i don't know military people don't have that option i don't think anybody in life has that option unless you're planning a specific event for a moment you can peak you can plan for a peak in a moment but everyday life is really about optimal optimal is how can i do the very best in the moment with what i've got all right sometimes that looks like peak sometimes it looks like flow states sometimes it's just like hey i'm just taking step by step i have my head down and i'm trudging through and it sucks and it's muddy and it's dirty and it's hard right um this is you know what kind of keyed me into it was you know in seal training you do something called surf torture so they take you out in the cold waters of southern california and they march you into the surf zone you lay down the waves just crash over you for what seems like three hours it's freezing you get a lot of guys quitting during that evolution and they do it at night you know and um and i remember you know that i remember being in the surf zone and there was nothing peak about my performance in the surf zone right i was just i was doing the very best i could which was not to quit which was what the other guys around me were doing too um and some did and some didn't you know but this happens i mean the the person fighting cancer there's nothing peak about going through chemotherapy the person striving for that goal and nugging it out there's nothing peak about it's not peak all the time even you know you you're talking about training for a marathon or these long distance surroundings you know you're not going to be peaked the whole you know you're not sprinting yeah yeah every moment right there'd be points at which you're you're ebbing and flowing and so optimal is about the ebb and flow and that's life and that's really understanding oneself and one's performance so that you achieve optimal versus peak how do we train ourselves to find motivation and not be lazy because i feel like there's a lot of laziness out there or there's moments of motivation but then it falls back into a laziness uh structured schedule how do we train our minds and our body to be motivated towards a goal and not stay lazy yeah uh well at first it's know thyself because we all we're all different so one of the attributes i talk about in the book is discipline and what i had to do with discipline was um actively separate discipline from self-discipline what's the difference okay well the difference is that self-discipline is internally focused okay self-discipline is about is about managing one's self and it does it has very little to do with external requirements right so so you or i can decide to get in shape for example and we can change our diet we can work out every day the external environment uh doesn't have a lot of say in that you know in us in us achieving that accomplishment so self-discipline is about is about managing the internal discipline the way i talk about in the book is about achieving that long-term goal this is these are those long-term goals are going to take a while to achieve and the the external world has a say so getting that promotion writing that book becoming the famous singer becoming a navy seal right the external world has started a podcast right the external world has a say in whether or not you do that and that's and the discipline that is required to move through those wiki those wikis takes adaptability it takes flexibility it takes the ability to not get seduced by the highs the successes and not get crushed by the failures and continue to move towards that goal and what i found was because i'm a i'm a very unself-disciplined person i don't have a lot right um and so what i so i had to separate this because i've been able to achieve a lot of goals in my life i said what's the difference well the difference is if you are overly so those with very high self-discipline sometimes this is not exclusive but sometimes have trouble achieving long-term goals because because the achievement of long-term goals often takes a an ability and an uh and by necessity to march into the unknown into uncertainty which is going to throw you off routine and throw you out of certainty the self-disciplined person the very self-esteem likes routine like certainty right that's how it's structure i mean that's what it is um and so and so moving towards a goal like that takes oftentimes uh being able to adapt out of structure you know and say well i i can't do that like i'm normal i'd have to just go in i have to go and unknowing right now the the best the most successful people those who have both self-discipline and discipline right um in terms of staying motivated to goal the way i would do it by knowing myself as i would i would uh understanding i'm not a very self-disciplined person i would simply try to chunk a goal into smaller pieces right so if i want to if i want to lose weight you know then i can say well that's why cheat days are actually good for me right because i can i could say i'm take this piece of it and move so i i chunk my reward system in a different way but i think um i think the way the way one stays motivated towards a goal is highly subjective but it would in my uh kind of through my thought process and my experience involve a an active or one to actively um map out a reward system that helps someone move through that sort of creating a reward system first for the for the goal in order to help you stay motivated yeah depending on your depending on your how you show up not to say like okay i'm gonna my goal is to achieve this thing it's gonna take me three years to accomplish it right and that's the only reward i'm gonna get in those three years but how can i reward myself every day for an action i take every month for a milestone every year if we're getting closer so focusing on the reward system yes and this is this is this is neurobiological because dopamine the neurotransmitter is you get you get hits of dopamine when you as a reward when you achieve things you know there's many ways you get dopamine but one of the ways is when you achieve things so if you're able to effectively create a reward system that means something to you it can't be it can't be kind of inert right so so if i want to run if i want to run a marathon and i haven't and i can barely run to the to my mailbox right um you know then maybe you know buying some running shoes and putting them on one morning is enough of a reward system to get a dopamine hit as someone who runs you know somewhat frequently and i you'd probably uh identify with this uh just putting on our shoes one morning is probably not going to give us that dopamine we got to we got to extend that we're going to extend that task a little bit so that we've already accomplished a lot of something you have to push beyond you have to push beyond it to get that that reward system so it becomes subjective what would you say 20 years as a navy seal at different levels uh and you were deployed how many different times are you allowed to talk about that well you know i mean 13 and some change yeah so deployments between what six months and over a year yeah i never did year long but anywhere between you know three months to six months usually um this is iraq and afghanistan for the most part and other places maybe not a lot to talk about what would you say of that 20-year experience was the most challenging experience for you was it something within a mission was it learning how to develop as a leader was it having a relationship with your wife during that time what was the most challenging point for you yeah the most challenging thing ironically wasn't the job because you because we were all so prepared for the job and you were arriving we were around just the best people in the world um so so the trust and the camaraderie was to this day you know i look back on it very fondly right wow um so not the day-to-day job i mean even just like the the missions you went out on yeah that wasn't that wasn't challenging uh i think i think if i were to if i were to say you know the first foremost was probably having to leave the family when you have to say goodbye to your family um for a stint you know whether it's three months or six months or some some folks are deploying for a year right um that is a rough deal that not many people can can capture not many people with families can capture that when you have to say goodbye to your kids and your wife for that you know okay we'll see you in however and then and then to add on to that understanding their stress or at least my kids were a little bit smaller but understanding my wife's stress knowing that i was going someplace and she was staying in contact yeah well i mean luckily with today's technology contact was fairly easy but we found was you know again ironically we found that that um daily contact was never a good idea because what happens is you establish a routine you get comfortable you get comfortable so so something happens if i'm working i'm overseas in something i'm i have a mission that goes along or whatever and i don't get to call her that day well suddenly she's worried you know and it also makes time actually seem slower interesting yeah so we we decided we were only going to talk usually once a week my son who had a real trouble when he was young i mean he was you know he was born in um 05 so he was he was by the time he was two he was he was having trouble with me deploying um and and every time i went it was rough on him and we actually for him we actually almost had to what we literally had to just decide not to i wasn't i was not going to talk to him on the phone it was too hard for him he had to basically kind of forget me oh my gosh so he had to come compartmentalize as a child yeah in order we had to help him compartmentalize survive yeah and not go depressed or be stressed because that's one of the attributes you talk about is compartmentalization yeah how do you do that if you're an emotional human being that's you have these deep connections to your family and friends how do you just detach in a sense yeah and become more machine-like for a period of time and then allow yourself to feel deeply in other moments well it never goes away and i think the attributes the the way i talk about comparabilitation and the attribute is more uh in is more kind of surrounded by the way our brain functions and processes information versus i'm going to block something out so i don't have to think about it however i think most team guys seals spec ops guys have a very high ability to compartmentalize away from things you know block out things that are that are painful i know that about me um and i know that about my my uh my buddies um because you have to because war sucks you know and at the end of the day the mission has to be accomplished you know so if something gnarly happens on a mission um you can't sit there these these movies that show these extended scenes of people you know mourning when when their body goes down or whatever like oh my god you don't have that but no you have to win the gunfight right because if you don't and all of you won't make it home right so so you have to and i think i think the training allows you to do that the training is so intense and so um kind of uh so effective that it requires you to compartmentalize you know training teaches you to compartmentalize you become become very very good at it um now that could be a detriment in a relationship so uh i think those of us who were able to recognize that actively try not to do that with our families and so it becomes much more of a precision tool versus a frenetic thing that just happens without us without us having control over it what was the the moment that was the scariest for you when you're deployed where you thought like um i may not make it um or our team may not make it or this is a really bad i guess you're training for bad situations all the time but was there ever a moment i don't know if we're gonna get out of this no i was i was fortunate not to have that moment i say that i say that with immense gratitude because i know there's a lot of friends of mine who didn't have that that uh he can't say that they had those moments where they you know they said that but but no i i was fortunate enough to be um always in a position um and my team was always in a position that we had prepared planned and executed in a way that was highly effective so that when things went wrong because things always go sideways we had complete you know or near complete control or we we understood the pathways we needed to get to to go throughout it but but i say that also you know this is this comes back to comparabilization you know one of the things that you have to be able to do when when [ __ ] goes sideways is to not focus on that thought you just brought up right the focus is not oh my god i don't think i'm going to get out of this because it's how do i get out of this but the so the mental cutie attributes which are situation awareness um uh compartmentalization task switching and then learnability right um so that's how information is coming in how we're processing it and prioritizing how we're switching between the necessary tasks and then how we're learning from our from our from from our decisions right so i talk about the parachute malfunction in in the context of that um but ultimately comes to even be able to do that in the first place it requires a uh a forebrain dominance in the sense that you're not letting your autonomic system take over into a fight flight response and you're able to think through stress challenge and and uncertainty in in the sense that say okay what what can i control right now and this is where trust in your teammates comes in because now i have a team i mean i i can say this with with um with great pride and gratitude i can remember literally walking in areas you know when we're overseas and thinking man this is a it's a bad area this is sketchy and having complete and utter faith right because i just i was around because i was with my teammates right i was around people who just i trusted i knew that if something went went wrong we'd we'd be able to handle it you know and so i think that's that's a necessity when you do this type of type of stuff when you're going out on a mission what's the process like of preparing for that mission are you planning more for all the things that could go wrong on how to get out of that situation or is it planning for here's exactly how we would like it to go right yeah but let's also have a exit plan or a plan for when things go wrong what do you think it's the latter it's it's it's you plan the mission as you'd like it to go um and then you uh inside of that planning you put together you build contingencies within each uh within each factor so when this doesn't go as planned right so what are the three ways to get it yeah so you know just like i mean just like any um athlete would understand or so so a quarterback coming out of a snap would say well i have two or three or four plays i can fall back on depending on how this line shapes up right um you have the same thing you know i you know this is where experience matters ever you do you do it over and over again it's okay well during as we're coming in on insertion you know we there's there's a few things that could go wrong so if this then that if this then that and you kind of do that throughout a phase throughout the phase planning but then there's what we call the 80 20 rule and that is you you get to 80 of certainty and then you recognize that 20 is just out of your control and that's where confidence comes you say if something happens outside that 20 percent we will we will figure it out because we're not going to figure out everything and and it's you know murphy's law will dictate that something happens that we haven't thought of uh so you uh so you prepare yourself to deal with uncertainty how do you train your mind to deal with chaos in the moment so that you don't freak out and freeze up but you actually turn on a level of focus and attention towards achieving that goal yeah the uh i was i think we're predisposed uh each one of us to what uh what i've called a human huberman i both have called this is the autonomic set point you know at what point do we start flipping into an auto into an autonomic response into fight flight where our or our system starts you know taking over and our forebrain starts coming offline if we were if you and i use boiling point as the average most of us might be average there are those who uh who start really freaking out at like 190 you know so 212 is the average at 190 degrees they're starting to freak out right there are people who take it takes until like 2 30 to boil right i think that the guys who make it through that training are predisposed to have a higher set point first of all uh in other words we tend to when bad things start to happen we tend to slow down and start thinking through it versus get all hyped up it's funny it's funny you know uh i live in a neighborhood and in my neighborhood there's four other navy seals there's you know one across the street one down the road one must be nice well it is nice you know hey because they're great dudes and it's great they're great neighbors but i remember my wife once saying and she said hey i'm so glad these guys are here and i in the neighborhood i was like why so she said because if something went wrong i know i could go to them and they'd act like you act and i said well tell me i said because because if something happens they would immediately calm down and they'd start working the problem right and so so i think there's there i think we show up predisposed um training to it is is difficult you know um and i i think so so here we are actually working on some stuff some stuff to help train have to help teach people to do that uh but it comes down to understanding your own neurology and it comes down to understanding that you know um here's how you have to think through situations under stress and then it's going to be about putting yourself into deliberate stress to practice that you can't practice this type of thinking if you're not in stress you need to put yourself you need to put yourself in that what are some things civilians could do to practice stressful moments on a daily basis where it doesn't hurt them but it's actually preparing them i talk about every day i think you should be experiencing some type of pain something that's uncomfortable right seeking discomfort yes uh whether it be through a 10-minute workout whether it be through a longer run it doesn't matter what it is an uncomfortable conversation we should be doing this every day in a in a structured environment yeah that allows us to grow yes what do you think are some ways we could do this that's not putting us in harm's way or physically hurting ourselves i i can't answer that because it's so subjective i can give some ideas and you just gave some i mean some people are are very social people so starting a conversation with a stranger is a piece of cake right for me that would be hard right starting a conversation with a stranger would be hard so that might be something i do uh giving a presentation public speaking for people is tough so uh so volunteering to give that presentation is a great way for a lot of people because you know you know they that that makes them anxious you know so working out for some is like for some people they've developed a system where that that pain point of working out is something they highly enjoy right so they're not they're not practicing it you know so um so it so someone should should look at their own makeup and ask themselves what what fright well in fear again it doesn't have to go all the way to fear fear is interesting because it's a it's actually a combination of two things it's a combination of uncertainty and anxiety and you can have each one of those and not have fear right so if you are anxious but not uncertain that would be i have to give this presentation on monday i hope it's nervous about it right that's you know but but there's nothing uncertain about it it's monday it's at two o'clock i know what i'm gonna do i'm just i'm nervous about it okay um uncertainty without anxiety well that's every kid on christmas eve okay i mean so uh but it's when you combine the two that you start to generate fear well um the the idea is if you have fear if you have uncertainty plus anxiety and it's starting to manifest into fear the key is to understanding which of those two factors can you buy down okay anxiety buy down buy down which means decrease um anxiety can be decreased internally it's an internal response right so things like some of the tools your room talks about visual tools breathing tools so you can begin to you can begin to shift your physiology out of your sympathetic into your parasympathetic come off of the autonomic response system right so that's so that's how you could start you know kind of buying down on uh anxiety uncertainty is largely external okay that means something around you outside of you you don't understand there's unknown um the way the best way to do that and the way we do it in the in spec ops is we we control what we can control so some some people have referred to it kind of control your three-foot world right but it doesn't have to extend it's not a it's not a three-foot thing it's it's what in this moment can i control and then take control of that right because then you are grabbing onto certainty you're taking what is uncertain you're grabbing onto something certain as soon as you've controlled that as soon as you move through that then you have to make another decision what's what's the next thing this is basically kind of stepping through right stepping through this challenge right so uh so you can start to you can start to practice um coming off of fear or moving through fear by kind of understanding both of those those uh those pieces what do you think is the greatest lesson you learned throughout the 20 years for yourself that has helped you not only during that but also after being with the seals i think it's i think it's it's not fearing the unknown it's the it's the idea that i i you know when you go through something like you understand that hey i could pretty much do whatever i'd like to do um and i know that even though even though i don't know how i'm going to do it i know i can figure it out if there's enough interest that there's a passion right you know i'm not gonna i'm not interested in becoming a pro football player you know right so so that's you know that's off my list right but i was interested in writing a book and that was a whole new process for me you know when i started when i left the navy i started public speaking i did not like public speaking at all right i did not like it but i knew it was it was it was an edge that i wanted to conquer you know and say okay well let me work through the things to conquer this that's kind of like your philosophy i think it's a really it's it's not only a deep one but it's profound because because if we are consistently moving deciding what our edges are moving towards our edge and then getting there then we are we are growing you know because guess what we're doing at that point we're looking for the next edge you know and that's the growth process it's continuing to move to our edges and and then finding the next edge i mean you say you don't like public speaking but don't you have to speak to your teams and guys yeah but that's not public that's like that's that's the guys so it's not it's not the same it's different yeah it's different there's a lot more you know when you're you know because you're in and and when you're in the in the military there's no there's no expectation of of you know kind of great articulation or or humor or you know it's just or whatever yeah it's just what's the fact that here's the word and that's what you appreciate too there's like no one wants you to sit there and it's like hey guys this is this is what's going on um so there's there's a there's a directness that's appreciated and um and required you know so but that's not you know what do you think was the hardest lesson you had to learn through your 20 years something that you were struggling with or challenged with or you kept repeating until you finally learned the lesson yeah i think the hardest lessons the hardest lesson maybe not one the hardest lessons were just around leadership what it takes what leadership take what it takes to be a leader because again um being a leader and being in charge are often conflated they're not the same thing okay what's the difference well anybody could be in charge as an officer you know in the military i was pretty much in charge of something all the time it didn't didn't make me a leader you don't get to call yourself a leader it's like calling yourself funny or calling yourself handsome okay someone else someone else makes that decision you can't you can't designate yourself that way um someone else decides whether or not you are a leader okay and that's done through the way you behave in that position so if you are in charge and you're behaving in a way that causes someone to make a decision okay this is the person i would lead i mean if if if we think about the leaders in our lives the people who we consider leaders in our lives it's not because they were just in charge of us in fact we could probably think of people who we would follow uh into hell and back and they're they have they have no place in the hierarchy of of our lives right they are just someone who just they've behaved that way in in a way that's made us kind of in in endeared to them so so the attributes i talk about in the book in terms of leadership attributes are all attributes that actually um cause behaviors that typically cause people to look at others as leaders what are the behaviors that most human beings admire the most that we want to follow that person or be inspired to be led by something that they're sharing or involved in a community of movement whatever it may be what are the three or four main behaviors that they have and we should be developing if we want to be better leaders yeah well i talk about five in the book in terms of that the first is empathy okay and again i would say this there's not an exclusivity in terms of what someone will decide uh because there are people who will subjective right it's a subjective thing you know again it's someone's choice as to whether or not they think so empathy is one um selflessness uh is another and this is not just um you know so let's just back up your empathy um not just i know how you feel i feel how you feel right i can i can put myself into your shoes and and i and that reflects in the way i communicate with you and i care about it shows that you care about another human being what is the best way to to show that i mean give me an example as opposed to saying i know how you feel how do you feel empathize showing you feel how they feel well first deep listening and so so uh so we all so listening to another person but uh but true like deep full-on like listening like i i am hanging on every word listening oftentimes we listen to people and we're two things one one of two things is happening either we're thinking about what we're saying next right or we're thinking about how what that person is saying relates to our lives and it's not from a malicious standpoint it's really because we're trying to relate so we're trying to say okay you're you're talking about football i'm thinking okay wait a second you know did i play i played football in eighth grade maybe i could talk about that yeah but what i'm doing is i'm not listening to you anymore you know i'm making what you're saying about me you know so um so what's what deep empathetic listening is i'm i've i have like a white board in my mind okay and as i'm listening to you speak if something pops onto the whiteboard i erase it and i move on i just keep on listening you know that is if you do if you if you empathetically listen like look into someone's eyes attentive behavior facing each other you are going they are going to feel cared for because you're exchanging now there's an exchange going on there's serotonin being released uh there's uh there's oxytocin being exchanged or at least released and all these kind of these bonding chemicals right so so that type of listening shows someone you care about them empathy is a little bit tougher for some some people are just wired we know some people are wired to be my wife is extraordinarily empathetic i mean she really feels other people i mean i am not she's i've had i've had to really try to develop empathy it's something that she's taught me in terms she hasn't taught me she hasn't taught me how to do it because she can't teach someone attributes but she's inspired me to kind of develop it myself um and that is hey i'm asking myself questions like okay given your background you know can i really put myself can i kind of take out all of my predispo predispositions and biases and really put myself in your in your shoes um sometimes the answer admittedly is no you can't do it fully right and that's we can admit we can probably admit that right but to even make an attempt i think is is a showing of caring what's the what's the attempt then is it you're you're explaining something to your wife about uh i'm out in the field this happened this guy got injured i was terrified i thought whatever yeah and a wife or your partner or friend who's not in that experience they could say well i can't feel how you feel but how would they try to feel how you feel if you're sharing something like that that's unrelatable because they're not gonna say well you know with me and my girlfriends right i went through something that was hard but you're gonna be like well you're trying to be relatable but it's missing the mark right so i i i don't know i mean i think i i have some ideas i you know per a person who be the person i think the best person asked would be like a uh oscar-winning actress or actor um because those people the best actors are not faking it they are actually empathizing they go into that they go into that place and they feel it and so i would be very curious in fact you know next time you have an actor i'll listen to the black guys well ask that question because because how do they do that how do they get into the person's shoes um you know i for me it's about asking some some some questions and saying okay what are my what biases am i what biases might i be coming in to with that that are not allowing me to feel this um and can i can i maybe imagine myself with conditions and circumstances such that this person might have might have been or or is experiencing um is it better to share back what you're hearing someone saying to show that you're listening is it better to say nothing to show empathy is it better to say well here's my thoughts and solutions what's the best way to respond to show empathy yeah certainly not to offer solutions because that means that means you've been you've been thinking about solutions while you've been listening which means you haven't been listening um there's a there's kind of a way you can you can respond that tells them that you've you've heard them but you still but and you still want to hear more so so i unders you know it sounds to me like what you're saying is this you know um and then and just let it out there but the key is when you're empathetically listening is to talk way less you know um and and really a lot of our acknowledgments can come nonverbally i mean we do most of our communicating non-verbally if i'm if i'm if i'm listening to i'm nodding and my eyebrows are moving and i'm really emoting as you're speaking you know i'm listening to you you know i'm hearing you without me saying it but if you're looking out around you're not connecting to me or worse yet you know we're looking at my iphone when it comes right oh man you know that's the that's the worst yeah so okay so that's number one yeah the of the five behaviors great leaders have is empathy would you say that's the most important are these all equally important i would i would hesitate to put a level of importance but i would say that one of the most important is and it's i'm not saying this in order but would be authenticity authenticity builds trust often you know when you are authentic when you are yourself um and you are that way all the time you know with that with whomever you're with that shows others that this person is real and is being real and this person is the same person uh at work as he or she is at home as he or she is with the enlisted people in the military or the officers or the ceo or the you know or the line worker right um i always say it doesn't have to it doesn't mean you have to be nice you know i had a i remember you know when you uh when you take over command there's a change in command ceremony in the military and i remember uh i was attending one of these command changing command ceremonies for a ceo that was coming into the command i was at so he was going to be my new he's really the command's new commanding officer but my ceo and we were at the ceremony i went to introduce myself to him and um and within about 30 seconds i mean you have a really kind of firm kind of rough handshake with a very serious and within about 15 or 30 seconds he's asking me like really tough questions about some gear that had been sitting on the shelf right and i was giving him some rote answers that some guys had told me that i didn't really know and he was grilling me i mean it was like well why you know having why haven't you done this what do you have you tried it have you done it yourself why would you believe it was like rough and i was like man this is not fun and i remember walking away from that conversation and saying yeah this is going to be a rough two years and this guy's grumpy you know and he seems mean but what i realized over the next couple weeks is that he was like that with everybody you know it didn't matter if he was an officer enlisted didn't matter if he was at the chow hall it didn't matter if he was out in the you know pt you know physical training wherever he was he was always asking the tough questions he was always kind of grumpy he was always doing that stuff he was actually a phenomenal leader he was like that with all i could trust his i could trust his grumpiness i could trust his tough questions i knew exactly what to expect every time i went to this guy and he was actually a phenomenal leader he really was because i could i could trust him i knew he was being authentic and he was just the same way and that's important so i think authenticity is is uh another one of the five yeah selflessness you said selflessness uh so selflessness is is different than just generosity or altruism selflessness involves a risk or cost to that to the person who's being selfless right so so are you are you doing something that is at risk or costing you in some way um that's selflessness that shows someone that you are extending yourself for that person what does that look like well that could be as easy as giving someone some rope you know so to go take a take a risk and knowing that they and and them knowing you have their back you know um it could be you know spending time time you know a good friend of mine likes to say time is the currency of leadership we all have the same amount you know when you give your time you're giving something that we all have the same amount there's no one who has more right or less so when you give your time to another human being you're being selfless with your time so that's another way you can do it it it it's um it's showing that you are i mean even showing that matter even as a teammate you know if if uh if you're if your project uh teammate needs to win points with the boss you give them credit you know a project you work together you give them more credit you know that's that's selfless right i mean you can there's different ways you can do it no but uh but just doing something that is for another human being and that is risky or costing what's the fourth one decisiveness uh which is different than making good decisions uh making decisions is obviously a very good thing to be able to do but it's a skill you can learn how to make good decisions just by analysing you know understanding how to analyze data and predictions and and probabilities and outcomes and things like that is it better to make a bad decision than no decision at all depends is it better to be a decisive person sometimes sometimes people conflate making no decision with doing nothing but sometimes the decision is to do nothing you know sometimes the best decision i give an example in the book of what's called uh recon by fire sort of an old tactic where um you know you the enemy used to use this in vietnam they they'd fire you know they'd think that a patrol was out there and they'd fire into that area in order to elicit a response because that patrol would think they're being fired on immediately fire back well as soon as they do that the enemy knows exactly where they are right right recon by fire we yeah spec ops guys you you learn this because you learn hey sometimes you're a small unit right you don't want to get into a firefight so just because you hear shots doesn't necessarily mean you pull the trigger sometimes the decision is just is to do nothing to be still to be still and wait as as they keep firing every yeah i mean if the bullets start hitting the tree next to you you may want to do something right but you know but if it's a half a mile away right it's to assess right so so i think i think it really depends on on the decision decisiveness is really about both the speed and the effectiveness of decision how how quickly are you able to make a decision and with what effectiveness and that that involves uh the ability to gather a reasonable amount of information about the situation such that you're hitting a percentage it could be the 80 20. okay i'm getting enough that i'm gonna that we're going to do something i want to do um and then and then and then moving forward because we all know that those leaders who um take long protracted amounts of time to make decisions they're like okay that doesn't it doesn't abuse a lot of a lot of trust and faith but the leader who's who's responsibly decisive are those we say okay yeah that's that's great now the other thing that the decisive leader understands is that um uh decisions while they are final they are not permanent okay so uh so you make a decision say we're going to move out this is final we're moving out we're doing this thing but as we as we kind of start to uh recognize the effects or the or the um outcomes of that of that movement we are free to adapt and change if we found that that decision was being flexible flexible and adaptable um so that's decisiveness and then the last one is uh it has to be decisiveness has to be buttressed by accountability accountability is also huge because um because if you are not able to be accountable for your decisions then that is not going to be trusted no one's going to no one's going to trust you if you say ah it wasn't my fault i mean yeah i mean leaders just don't do that i mean how many leaders do we know in our lives who we really if we can honestly ask ourselves and say to ourselves okay what's it if i could think of the greatest if i can think of the one you know one of the people in my life who's the greatest leader and ask myself are they accountable for their actions the answer is unequivocally yes it's not about blame it's not about well it's not about excuses it's about owning it um ownership is key yeah ownership is key and i think that's those are those are the quality so i think those five attributes are attributes that lead to um people uh deciding that you're a leader you don't have to have all of them perfection is not the not the outcome here um and admittedly sometimes even though i consider myself an accountable person there are cases where i can you know again you could say i was guilty of not being as accountable as i should have right so we all slip a little bit right but um but i think those are the those are the key ones do you think people are there are some people that are are more born into being natural leaders or is it something that all of us can be trained and learned how to do this yeah i think i think it's a little bit both i mean i think the attributes you know i talk about the attributes in terms of uh they are inherent to our nature all right so we are we're all born with these attributes um and and it's really the levels to which we have each and we can develop them over time if we are if we choose to do so um some people are are very empathetic but not very decisive some people are highly accountable but maybe not um uh you know selfless who knows um so i think i think there's there's a there are people who are probably born and are predisposed with maybe more of these attributes than others and others who are born and they just develop them along the way there are leadership skills that one can learn you know listening is a leadership skill uh decision making is a leadership skill delegating is a leadership skill so these are skills that you can learn so i think leadership is a mixture of attributes and skills uh so i think the answer is both you can be you know you can you can be born with some advantages on the leadership front um but again leadership is about someone deciding that you know it's not about anyone else's society yeah it's not about you saying i'm a born leader right you know it's it's not bad it's like or do you behave in a way you know that people i mean do you do you turn around and are people following you you know if the answer is yes and you're probably a leader right if the answer's no then you're not there's nothing wrong with that and there's some you know full professions that aren't they're kind of self-directed right you know the the the comedian doesn't necessarily need to be a great leader right that's a self-directed you know profession so so it's not necessary but i think we just have to understand that leadership is something that other people decide not us you know so so if we want to be leaders we need to behave like that and then see what happens yeah and you can't rush being a leader probably you can't force it you can't rush it no that's dictatorship being in charge aggressively right you can't say oh i'm doing all these attributes i'm developing these skills like people should want to follow me now right no it's not you know i mean that's like saying you're handsome so girls should be attracted to me girls should be falling over when they look at me right come on what's going on i'm combing my hair i'm brushing my teeth you know you know i'm working out doesn't work that way what's the uh skill that you have yet to develop that you wish you could develop it's it's windsurfing but with that no kite serving that's what's happening that's a skill i would like that's a skill what about an attribute that uh attribute i'm still i'm i i'm always actively working on my empathy you know that's something i'm actively working on um i'm actively learning on my working on my learnability if i were to if i were to rate all the mental acuity attributes i'm pretty high on situational awareness task switching and compartmentalization learnability is still tough for me it takes me a while to learn things you know so i i i'm always trying to develop that one uh humility i think humility is one you have to constantly keep in check and then narcissism is one that we all have to manage i talk about narcissism as a drive attribute and it's not it's not something you want to work on as much as manage right so is narcissism something that it can be good oh yeah yeah so i talk about narcissism as a drive attribute because uh because narcissism is so every every human being wants to wants to feel special in some way wants to stand out wants to be paid attention to once it wants to be what's the attention want some attention right this is this is biological we're infants being looked at and adored by our parents we are getting hits of serotonin and dopamine and oxytocin as that's happening so it feels good um and so we it's it's it's natural for us to want to feel that way um when i talk about what people you know talk about hey why'd you why'd you become a navy seal and i always joke so go you know i'm a patriot but it wasn't because i was a patriot you know most seals will tell you i just want to be a bad i wanted to be a bad i wanted to see if i could do it i wanted to see if i could do something very few people could do i wanted to be a badass there's nothing wrong with that if it's a driver to be the best of the best why does someone want to be a a a a singer you know a a famous singer athlete any one of those things so so i think narcissism um when managed appropriately as an is a tremendously powerful driver um and we have to recognize that and the only the because again we have to understand our own engines and and in the act of recognizing that we also understand we need to manage it the way you manage it is through your close trusted personal relationships friends and friends and people who really love and trust you and will give you the hard truth bringing you back to earth right ground you like our grounding wires right who are our grounding lawyers you know my wife is my grounding wire she always has been and and thank god for her and she she uses me as her grounding wire right um because she will always tell me the truth she'll always tell me you know if i'm leaning too far out over my skis you know um and then and then you collect other people my uh my teammates my brothers you know you know just just this group of people if you are if you've surrounded yourself with a circle of sycophants um you're probably guilty the here's the problem with narcissism it's like a vampire looking in the mirror you can't see it in yourself it's very very it's almost it's impossible right um it really easy to see in another in another person you see right away like man that's the right way and you see it you see it in their groups the groups they form as well because the groups they form are are largely sycophantic they are temporary right so the loyalties are temporary because because it's just tough to always be you know bending the knee to someone else right so so you see people transitioning they'll come and go and those people who usually go are usually demonized when they do because the because the the narcissist does not like that um and so the group is an indication tough to see in ourselves we have to lean on our lean in our relationships ask for feedback hey am i being too narcissistic and ask yourself i mean if you're in a group um who is typically the one being paid attention to the most and if you if you're able to answer that honestly you know you you might get a clue okay it's funny my my wife and son they listened to a podcast i did a wife several months ago and they had never heard me on a on a podcast and and my son's 15 and i come home because i recorded in my office because it's quiet and um i come home they're like they're like who who is this guy i mean you it's like a narcissistic who is this guy because we don't hear you talk like this at home because at home i don't talk a lot you know if i do like joke if you're at home you're talking about you know what you're going to eat next or you know you know something or whatever yeah whatever you know um but um but i recognize when i'm with my family my family we all live in the same area so we all get together a weekend and i don't talk much i just listen and it's nice for me you know and and but i recognize that's healthy because i'm not i don't need to nor do i want to be the center of attention you know um and uh and i have to keep that in check right so it's interesting sometimes i've always discovered this because i was always scared to talk publicly growing up in after college i was afraid of public speaking so i took public speaking class every week for a year and i always felt like i was just insecure around my words when i was even in small groups yeah so i'd always i was always just kind of sit there and listen as i got older i started to really listen by asking intentional questions and just always ask questions yeah and by the end of the night i'd be like everyone be swarmed around me because i'd just be asking everyone questions they'd be like man you're the most interesting person here yeah so you have to kind of like make sure you're in check also that way because the quiet one is usually sometime can be sometimes someone that always wants to learn from too hey they're not saying enough you're asking yeah so what do they know a little bit of stealth going on yeah exactly but and i think you have a natural curiosity which is a very healthy uh way to express what you're doing is i think a healthy way to express because what you're doing the reason why people are surrounding themselves or surrounding uh surrounding you is because they love people love hearing about themselves right when you ask someone questions you know they they love to answer i mean we all love to talk tell me about your success yes oh man tell me why you're so amazing i'd be happy to right i mean so so when someone uh this is one of my wife's you know nor just qualities she just she loves asking deliberate questions she's very curious about human beings well guess what people just flock because yeah because they because she's just there's a magnet there's a magnetism just like you know there's a magnetism with you when you do that you know so so curiosity and and it's a and it's a it's a genuine curiosity it's not yes it's not a uh it's not one with malicious strategic it's a strategy that's right um so it's it's so there is some power in being narcissistic for periods of time for moments but you want to be checking yourself most of the time yeah it's a driver i would say to help you achieve something sure yeah because because again how are you going to set and achieve audacious goals unless you unless there's a little bit of of narcissism in there to think that you know i can you know and what would you say is the difference between you mentioned this task switching versus multitasking yes well multitasking neurologically is a myth um because what happens is our our forebrain our conscious mind can't really focus on anything any anything more than one thing they you know again guys like hubert would say that hey the brain does there's a little there's a little facet of being able to to be to pay attention to something else maybe one other thing but focus is really one one thing now people were like what are we talking about i could do something and i can listen to music or i can do something and i can walk when the activity is being conducted unconsciously so that when we're driving a car a lot of that that a lot of that um activity that that skill is being conducted unconsciously like crazy right yeah but just think about it if you're listening to a podcast if i'm listening to you in my car because i listen to podcasts while i'm driving usually if i'm listening to you in my car and i'm driving down the highway i'm really engaged in what you and the guests are talking about until someone cuts me off and i have to slam on the brakes right and i just i recover and i realize i just missed the last 30 seconds of what you both just said on the podcast because my brain switched you know so so task switching is the is the hopping between contexts of your brain so we have and we do this we do this all the time we do it automatically so you can switch you can switch context in you can switch tasks inside of the context right so so driving for example the context of driving inside of that we're switching all the time one moment we're focused on the steering wheel then the accelerator then the brake and now here the blinker is hopefully not our phone right but we're doing that constantly as soon as we park that car and we walk out into the parking lot we've switched contexts right now we're in parking lot context okay and we're now we're paying attention to other things you know cars that might hit us then we walk into the supermarket and we switched context again um so task switching is the is the hopping between and we just have to recognize that that's a um that's an energy expenditure every time our brain does it okay it's very natural every time it switches every time it switches costs energy yes now those who are um who find task switching more difficult are those this could be advantageous right because there are those people who um they they get into something with deep focus and they find it very difficult to pull out right so this is the person who who start who's working on a project and everything else in their in their world could be burning down and they're not even they don't even notice they're deeply focused the other side of that is what could probably be like adhd where you're you're constantly switching you're never able to focus enough you're like bam bam bam bam right the the balance there is are you able to um focus in on something maintain an awareness of other things that are going on such that when priorities shift you can switch okay and that can be practiced and i practice this you know when i'm in the city you know at least pre pre-pandemic um you know riding the subways in new york i love that because it's a it's an enormous mental acuity drill for me um so can you do that the the thing that we are guilty of most of us is that we task switch unnecessarily throughout the day and that's true on this phone it's largely because of our phone right because our phone is you know what that is it's a collection of contexts right it's that game it's that it's the instagram it's the email it's the text it's like a different world in every app and every app is in context right and what does that do to our brains when we're constantly switching context it uses a tremendous amount of energy you know and and what it does is it shifts focus right so um so if i'm focused on a conversation with you and my in my text goes off and i choose to address it right i've i've completely shifted contact neurologically it's like going from a library to a soccer stadium right i mean you're just you're shifting context i'm attending to that and then now i'm trying to shift back okay so hard and they've done studies on that a lot of times it takes 15 to 20 minutes to fully re-engage um and the the the other thing about this is even um we could decide like you know let's keep our phones upside down okay even if it bings or or vibrates right the idea of just hearing it is is is shifting a switch in our brain right because it's because we're because we don't act on it even though we don't actually it's still a stimulus that we have to think about because we recognize it i wonder if i need to get that and i wonder yeah and as a decision right it's like okay okay i said vibrating but i'm not going to get i just i just hopped contexts right so so we do this quite often and it's it takes a lot of energy you know and um and i think you know we can we can practice some of these mental huge attributes by putting away those phones noticing our what's in our world that's situational awareness starting to work with okay what do i want to focus on you know what i want how do i prioritize all this information what i want to focus on and then as i'm focused on it can i switch effectively in in that and then and then learning from my from my lessons as i go how do you develop uh confidence within yourself personally and what have you seen that's worked within navy seals on when they might doubt themselves in moments of uncertainty or fear or stress and there's a moment of doubt how do we build up self-belief self-confidence self-worth so that when challenges arise we don't doubt ourselves yeah uh so the uh the the processes and tools that so hebrew and i are working on are meant to help articulate this better but i'm going to give you kind of a an overview and that is um confidence for me is the ability to handle uncertainty and so i so i consider myself very confident because i've i've come from a lifestyle where we are quite literally masters of uncertainties we've trained ourselves to deal with uncertainty very effectively and i think if i if we can walk around the world and say hey regardless of what happens i know i'm at least equipped to be able to handle it to a degree okay i won't i will fall apart i can manage it you know it might be ugly it might be painful but i can manage it right that's confidence you know um the way we the way we can practice that is to practice taking control of what we can control it's actually it's it's well it's taking control of the two things the internal the anxiety can we manage our our physiology through our breathing through our vision you know some of those tools and then can we manage the external uncertainty through controlling what we can control this this idea of controlling what we can control is huge because what it does is it it allows you to take action and take control of some sort and control and action build builds confidence right right and it could be very small it could be like um uh well let me let me give you an example internal control and external control internal control and external code i mean so an example from seal training would be you know you you're running on the beach for hours and hours with these boats in your head and you're doing and especially hell week you're just miserable okay and i remember i remember being in running with you know one it was i can't remember what night of hell week it was but it was middle of the night sometime you know and i had the boat on our head we we had the boat on our head and we were running i was like i can't it's just it seemed like it had been going on forever you know and i said to myself how long is this going to last and so immediately i said you know what i'm just going to focus on the end of that berm because you're running on the beach and there's you know burns i'm going to focus on the underperform right and so what did i do immediately without thinking about it i immediately took control of what i could control right i said end a berm and that's where i moved to you know then as soon as that that happens i actually that was a reward that's a dopamine reward that i just that i just gave myself and i did it again you know so um so so let's let's let's take it all to a situation we can all relate to covid and 2020. okay when's this going to end right i mean think about think about when we first all got locked down you know i mean none of us in the in those first few moments had skills that we could lean upon right this is where attributes start to come for the force do we have the skills no because because we've never been the situation right the the the and i would say you know there's some caveats there because i might have developed skills in terms of how to deal with uncertainty right but it's really i developed the ability to lean on my attributes and say okay what do we know let's solve the problem yeah here's what we don't know i can't worry about what i don't know what i what i can't control what do i know and what can i move towards okay i know i have enough toilet paper i know the the family is healthy i know we're okay um we have internet so the kids can go to school right now um that's pretty much it yeah right now let's see what tomorrow brings we got a backyard right so yeah so it's um so we all actually practiced this in 2020 we all practiced to some degree um what about this do i understand and what can i control and at first there was very little uh and for those who got too steeped in the news they found it much more difficult because the news was um really all they were doing was reporting uncertainty yeah you turned on the news and it was all about what you don't know that's right and so and so my wife and i actually took a news diet you know we said we're not watching this you know we're smart i never watch the news yeah it helps because that's i mean imagine what happens imagine i think i was talking with huberman last time imagine watching a train crash actually hit into a car of people every 10 minutes in real life yeah be traumatic yeah it's almost like we're doing that by watching tv of showing the worst moments of something over and over on repeat right and i believe our brains are really being affected by that and and watching more of it is not going to help us it's not and so and we can't it's in in some cases we could certainly blame the news organizations right but they are simply um putting forth a model that works okay they're getting more attention they're making more money we are we are neurologically and evolutionarily designed to pay attention to threats that's what we do okay because we are designed to say okay what's what might harm me okay um and so that's why if we walk by by the newsstand and we see two newspapers next to each other and one says um genius eight-year-old wins world spelling bee which is kind of a cool story and next to it says uh dangerous weather storm approaching you know we're going to focus on the weather storm okay because we're designed to do that this is biological when we were in the caveman days we had to pay attention to threats um this so this is why you know news bad news sells right so so the the the thresh the fear is like okay what you know how can i protect myself you know the problem is when there are actually no answers you know and all it is is just threats you know which is really when the 24-hour news cycle they don't there aren't solutions coming that fast you know and so so we it's now incumbent on us to to take a diet you know and hopefully if we if enough of us diet from the news like that maybe the news will change exactly so so it's the practicing taking control of our internal which would be our breathing or our thoughts or um what's inside of us and then also controlling the external turning off the news going for a walk what other external things can we be doing to build uh i guess certainty in uncertainty just just asking yourself the question because it's going to be subjective what can i control in this moment you know um you know and and and move towards that it might be at that moment taking a walk it might be um you know turning off the news it might be reading a book it might be having some family time um whatever that might be in the in a worst case and in a crisis scenario this is exactly what kind of triaging is you know what's in a triage situation where you're dealing with a bunch of you know injuries right you're saying hey what do i need to focus on first what do you mean a triage so in a triage situation when you have when you have a mass casualty situation so a lot of injuries right what happens is during a mission well or first responders right yeah in an accident right they will they will look at the they will look at the casualty let's say it's four or five people and they will immediately start to prioritize who the who the most threatening injuries are and they will deal with them first right so it's like okay i cut my leg but this person's got this person doesn't cut it but it's gonna be fine right this person's arm is off and if we don't do something they will bleed out um this person's neck is you know is starting yeah uh and it's it's bad but as long as we don't move them right now we're going to be okay so let's do this first right and then we'll move to the neck and then we'll move so so this is called triaging and so we just need to um you know mentally triage our situation a little bit better prioritize triage is a little bit more of a graphic word so i'd rather say prioritize but say um you know what can i control you know what is what in this moment can i control and it might be um it might not be a lot right it might you know again you know you talk about the you know i mentioned the the person working through cancer right that per anybody who talked to you has gone to cancer treatment and chemotherapy will say you know what during those days of chemotherapy i was going minute by minute man that was all i was doing i was just i was like go through the minute by minute and then just get through the day and then get through tomorrow right that person was controlling what they could do they were just chunking their environment in order to step through and sometimes that's all it takes you know uh but that person to control you know those people who survived what would you say the next steps to building belief and confidence in yourself after you've taken control of the internal the external what would you say is next i would say set goals and accomplish them there's nothing that builds more confidence i think than setting a goal and making it happen um and that can be anything you know and it can be as it can well it can be as small or as large as you want it has to be meaningful to you um so if if it is you know running around the block that's great or if it is running the marathon that's great or it could be doing the 100 you know the triathlon whatever if we're in the physical sense it could be right in the book it could be getting the promotion it could be uh it could be changing jobs um whatever it is pick some goals uh set your intent and move towards it yeah i've always uh i think that's super smart as an athlete i've always had goals and for every season of life and every season of sports and as i stopped playing sports when i was 24 and was trying to figure out the rest of my life after the dreams were over of sports days i realized i didn't have the same confidence i had like confidence from like what i'd done and i was like okay i have achieved goals and i was a confident athlete but now i'm trying something completely new yeah and this is unknown it's kind of scary and i remember just thinking to myself i'm living in a lot of fear and i need to go all in on these fears until they disappear yeah otherwise i'll constantly be kind of masking confidence or living off of constant confidence of the past and trying to apply it to something unknown yeah it's gonna be very authentic and so that's when i was like okay i created a list of my biggest fears and i started doing them one at a time until i was at least comfortable with the fear until i mastered the fear until i was like okay i can do this at any time without being prepared because i've already gone through it yeah yeah and for me that was something that was really powerful and every year i'm always thinking how can i gain more confidence and humility by you gain humility by doing hard things because you suck at them right it's like i'm doing spanish right now spanish lessons and it is challenging yeah i hate not being great at something within the first day right it's like i want to be the best i wanted to be like be able to master it and pick it up but it's humbling me like in one area while other areas are growing and thriving yeah so it's allowing me to keep that balance of i don't know so that's something you bring up a really great point where everything has to be uh hyper-emphasized and that is the the the ability and the deliberacy of jumping out of the the context that you're comfortable in right so you built up confidence inside the sporting context yeah okay as soon as the sporting contest was or context was out of there you realize oh wait a second i'm not as confident as i thought so to practice confidence you have to deliberately continuously throw yourself into unknown uncertain environments right it can't you can't in other words you can practice a little bit in the physical realm but stand by because you're you're only going to gain confidence in the physical realm right so you need to say okay what's my next thing what do i fear maybe it's yeah so it's like if i'm a crossfit expert and i try to spartan race it's very similar it's very similar you know you start to build up and this is what i call stress inoculation you can you can actually stress inoculate because you are building up the the tools and the means with which you know how to move through that specific challenge right so i did this with my stress inoculation so so stress inoculation is the ability to uh to inoculate yourself against the fear and stress of a of of a context what's inoculation mean it basically you're basically um you're basically uh building up an immunity to it you're yeah you're you're being immune to the stress right it's not it's not happening anymore right you're it's going away right so i'll give an example because i don't like heights i never did you know so so skydiving was always a challenge for me um when i uh would you have to do a lot of skydiving yeah a lot of it so yeah so but like those trips sometimes you do trips and you do like in a week you do like 50 or 60 jumps right no way and by and by like day by like tuesday or wednesday we've had like 10 or 12 or 15 jumps on her belt and i feel like okay i'm i'm good i'm not i'm not really scared anymore you know but i would do this you know there's an obstacle course at every seal base you know and you have series of obstacles one of the most popular ones because it's almost on every obstacle course is a cargo net so it's about a 65-foot net really simple you climb up one side you throw your leg over at the top and you climb down okay um but it's really high i mean and if you don't like heights that that leg hop over is actually are you wearing a rope no no it's all it's 65 feet up yeah so if you fell over you're in the sand oh yeah you're done yeah or you're definitely injured right so really yeah so uh so what i do though is is every time i go for a run i'd plan my run to go past that opposite past that cargo net and i'd climb up it and i'd when i got to the top i'd sit on the top of it and i just breathe in the fear wow and just feel it okay and then i go and then i go down the other side and and every time i did that i felt great because what's happening is that you're getting a dopamine hit by stepping into that fear right and this is neurologically backed right so you're getting a reward but what it would you know i do that every day and after you know a week or two of doing that i'd get to the top of that net and i no longer felt afraid you know i was used to it right so i no longer felt afraid and i no longer was getting that dopamine hit so it didn't feel as good anymore okay but i was not to go twice as high the next time yeah they didn't have a net twice aside but this is it's an example of inoculating yourself in a context right so something that makes you have fear you do it over and over again until the fear goes away or until it minimizes a lot maybe you have like a little bit of queasiness for a second but you feel comfortable but then you're not afraid anymore to do it yeah so you're not getting rewarded anymore is that what you're hearing well so yeah so a good friend of mine once said uh because he he knew i was into the stress inoculation stuff he's like hey you know i have this i have this fear of flying at night i just it was one i was on air probably one time there was an emergency nothing happened but i now i just it's just hard for me to fly at night i mean how can i get over my fear of flying at night every time start flying more at night he's like oh i knew you said that he was like it's true though the only way to overcome your fear is to go all in on it can you just yes yeah you can't think your way out of something that's scary or cool you have to be experiencing you can you can you can think your way out of it when you're experiencing it you know but you can't you can't i mean i guess you can't like be afraid of heights and say i'm not afraid of heights anymore no although that's an interesting it would be an interesting experiment to give to the neuroscientists visualization is a powerful tool right so if you if you in virtual reality so if you if you're able to um simulate enough of that threat right um then perhaps you could do it without actually um getting up high but i don't know those are there's not questions for you that's that's challenging though so so what i'm hearing you say is that when you're afraid of something you need to create an environment of stress inoculation in order to overcome that fear or to be able to embrace that fear without it crippling you yeah yeah this is what i do with public speaking you know as soon as i got out and i started public speaking i was nervous every time and i didn't like it and i just keep doing it and i was doing it everywhere i was doing it for free i was doing it everywhere everything as much as i could you know just to practice doing it and stepping into that fear so you were afraid of heights you conquered the 65-foot net and then it started to not be scary anymore so what do you do next well it depends on which what direction you want to go you know and again that the the 65-foot net is only in that context right the 120-foot roller coaster still scary yeah yeah and even skydiving if you do you know i haven't i haven't jumped out of an airplane in several years now so i know if i do it again which i plan to because my sons want to try it my wife wants to do it um i'll be nervous again really so i'll have to step through it again yeah because because again it's not you know if you know it's just some of us are just you know we just naturally don't like certain things right you know put me under water in pitch black with with with sea life tv around me and i could fall asleep really oh my god i'm what i'm i'm as comfortable i mean i i always that way oh yeah i mean the water is i mean i love it wow so in the dark in the dark in the night that would terrify me without even seeing if i can't even see my hand from my face i'm still okay so you would go in the ocean right now in santa monica at midnight yeah and swim around and feel comfortable willingly without them without a mask or without any oxygen without a yeah really yeah and just swim around yeah you'd be like i just trust there's no shark or eels or just for me it's you know for me it's comfortable you know heights or not that's crazy but again so it's subjective right i mean so so you know some people like a bunch of my friends they love i mean every aspect of skydiving they love you know and you know and some guys don't even like diving something yeah i just died because i have to do it right um so it's really i mean i think the um one of one of the things i always loved about the community that i was in was that it was a bunch of guys who um regularly tested themselves and they never let their their fear detract from what they from the job they needed to do and what they needed to do to support their teammates right if someone was afraid of jumping or didn't like jumping i'm still going to jump because everybody else is jumping that's part of the job i'm not going to cry about it i'm going to go through it if i don't like diving i'm going to do it right that's just the way it is and that that practice allows and allowed us to go into some of the worst areas in the world in combat and not and not feel trepidation it's probably also nice to like doing a fear on your own is probably way scarier than if you have a team of people that are doing it with you wouldn't you say or so so yeah so you get into so in the book i talk about some attributes that i call the others uh and i really i call them the others because on most of the attributes um to have to have more of each one is is probably better it's probably more effective in optimal forms other than say narcissism right the others are ones that i as i thought about that the logic wasn't lining up the same way so one uh so two of them were patients and inpatients and what i realized was optimal performance and high performers like super performers some are very patient and some are impatient it doesn't matter right so just because you're impatient doesn't mean you're not going to be a great performer i happen to be patient my wife happens to be impatient right it doesn't it it doesn't dictate whether or not you succeed as much as say not being adaptable right so so i labeled that in the category the other one was um competitiveness and non-competitiveness right there are some some hyper-successful people who are very very competitive in fact in fact a lot of the uh a lot of the genre of like performance and things like that um really uh tout competitiveness as an attribute um but i've never been competitive i can't stand it you know i i played lacrosse in high school i liked i liked the guys i liked the game i liked the stick workout i never really if we went or lost i was like okay and everybody's having fun yeah just having fun right um and what i realized was that first of all happily the navy seals uh they they they they neither um touted or rejected that competitiveness right it wasn't like they do this to win yeah it was always they actually honored both sides so both polarities and you can tell because there's two awards you get there's two awards that are given at the end of the seal training class so one is the honor man okay the honor man is given to the person who has the highest scores in all of the like the swims the runs the obstacle course time so all those competitive person competitive person right the other ward's called the honor man okay but one's called honor man and the other one's called the fire and the gut okay fire and the gut is the award that's given to the person who's shown the most grit and and uh and kind of uh gumshoe they want to use it fire and the gut fire in the gut award and usually that person has the lowest scores right and it you know that can't be one it has to be earned and it's voted upon like the class of votes on wow so who has more respect well it doesn't matter because the honor man has a lot of respect too because that that guy really put out right so both so both awards hold the same level of respect which shows that both the competitive gene and the non-competitive gene are both highly interesting but this is but if you think about it the dichotomy is actually quite beautiful because if you are in a team some gain some some most environments need both types of mindsets the competitive mind looks at a looks at a situation and immediately begins to apply rules and boundaries and says okay how can i win this how can i win inside of what i see right that is very very powerful right the non-competitive mind like myself i said um what's going on over here how can we go maybe do something different okay what's a way we can go around okay so some missions required going straight up the line you needed the competitive mindset to do that some missions didn't require that we want to start the line it would be disastrous some some missions require no no we need to think about it differently right we need to think about what what's the pac doing and what can we do that's not in the pack you know so so so those are the two pillars long long answer to the question you ask is the last one i talk about is the uh fear of rejection versus kind of insouciance yes so what people think the fear of rejection is a powerful attribute as long as it's not too much right because because it can be leading to peer pressure and all that stuff but but oftentimes those of us with a little bit more of a fear of rejection will do things that we'd otherwise wouldn't do because the group is doing it you know i jumped out of airplanes because my buddies were jumping out of airplanes there was no way that i was not going to jump out of the airplane right there was no way because i was i needed to be with them right um so the fear of rejection can be effectively um used and be very powerful if balanced you know you don't want to be you know you don't want to to be pressured to do things that are unsafe but can be it can be very effective because it'll cause that person who's who's generally not a traveler to go with their friends and travel try new things explore explore different avenues right because they don't want to be left out okay there's nothing wrong with that meanwhile you have the the the person who it doesn't care what anybody thinks has no i mean no bearing whatsoever i don't give a flying you know what what people think right that person is important too because that's where most of the economic classes come from you know they're like i don't care i'm just going to do this do what i want to do and in fact those people are pretty magnetic you can see those because they're just off doing their own thing otherwise like hey what's that person doing right yeah you know um and so so both polarities can actually be it's interesting when i've been talking to a lot of people uh a lot of people are afraid of failing a lot of people don't do something because they're afraid of failing and i see a lot of people say that they're actually afraid of success and what the pressure that comes with success losing friends and family because you're higher than or whatever and them trying to pull you back down into their circle of comfort so the fear of failure the fear of success but then also the third thing is kind of the fear of being judged by other people um by taking action what's the difference between judgment and fear of rejection um fear of rejection is uh is internally processed it's my it's what i think you are thinking about me uh judgment is what i'm thinking about you right and so so all of so everything even judgments um so we don't know if someone's i mean as less says someone that says explicitly i am judging you yeah right or someone judging you or critiquing you then it's a judgment in a way well and it might be a healthy critique by the way but um but it's all about how you process that um and so uh so fear of rejection is really about more the internal the internal processing and what i am what i am feeling that how i how i am feeling about what they're feeling right yeah um whereas uh whereas judgment is what i th either what they're saying or what i think they're saying um and i think i don't know how do you think a lot of people are afraid of being judged by others for well because they don't want to be rejected because that's why so they're so they're um they're connected in that way because if someone feels like they're being judged negatively they feel like they're being uh actively excluded from the group they're not accepted they're not accepted and that's scary if we're not and have close ties we're surprised we're tribal species right so how do we use the fear of rejection or the fear of being judged in our favor when we say i'm going to go after this career i'm going to launch this book i'm going to go be a pro athlete well i i would say and people say well you're not going to do it or yeah i think i think it's real simple if the the fear of rejection is used effectively if it's proactively moving towards our goals you know it's being used ineffectively if it's detracting from our goals right now i'm not going to do this because i'm doing this because i'm scared of what people will think then that's being then that's my fear of rejection being used negatively i'm allowing that to be used negatively um if i'm saying you know what i am going to go on that roller coaster um with my friends even though it scares the crap out of me because i want to try something new and they're going to go that's that's proactive you know so so it's really about our own movement you know if if that feeling in ourselves is causing us to recede in in for for silly reasons right you know not safety reasons yeah how do we overcome how do we overcome that fear then you think of rejection and judgment how do we self-impose movement forward as opposed to pulling back on our dreams the way i do it is i try to remember that everything that i think they're thinking is what i think only i have no clue i mean we don't have any clue what people are thinking we really don't so why try and the one you said who doesn't care what anyone thinks automatic people are like drawn to them and they're yeah now now there are there are certain social norms right that we have to if we want to if we want to interact effectively with our environment we want to make sure we care what people think you know we want to shower and we want to you know you know be kind be kind and not be you know an ass you know yeah but uh but other than that you know we don't know what people are thinking nor really should we care unless it's going to socially impede us in a way that detracts why do you think so many people obsess over the few critical comments they get versus the abundance of positive comments when they put something online or a post or a book or a piece of art why do you think it's in our nature to obsess over the criticism as opposed to obsess over the praise well probably because we we focus on our weaknesses because we think it's going to exclude us you know we think our weaknesses might exclude us but i think there's a again the inoculation against this one is is kind of a neurological one it's what i talk about um in in some some of the facets of what i speak i actually mentioned in the book too and this idea of asking better questions we are as human beings wired to make sense of our environment by asking questions you know that's we don't we do it unconsciously all the time our brain is asking questions about what's going on oftentimes bouncing that off of previous things we have stored in our hippocampus okay i recognize that that that's a cup that's a camera that's a wall that's hot that's cold that's right um but we can do this consciously so whenever we when we consciously lodge a question into our forebrain our brain immediately begins to come up with answers so i do this experiment with with people in in classes i teach and i say okay just take a moment i'll give you 30 seconds to answer this question how could i double my income in the next 30 days all right i'm gonna give you 30 seconds anything that pops into your head write down on a piece of paper right so i start writing down okay give them 30 seconds okay they they generate a little list and i say okay i don't care what the answers are and i don't care how ridiculous the answers are how many answers did you come up with and usually i get answers like five four three sometimes eight seven or eight the reason why that happens because they lodged a question to their forebrain okay whatever question we lodge into our fort brain our brains will begin to answer now oftentimes we do this the wrong way we say why am i so bad at this why does this stuff always happen to me you know why are these people out to get me our brains begin to answer that question and some of those answers are as ridiculous as the answers that someone writes down and doubling their income okay um but our brains will answer them but if we shift that question uh that that context and we ask ourselves better questions and we flip it and we say what are some of the things i'm great at you know what are some of the things i can learn what are the mistakes i can learn from and how can get better later um how can i more effectively be part of this group of people or help this or how can i help this person our brains will answer that one too you know so so this is a i think there's a really powerful concept i learned this when i was in high school and i began to use it and it's drastically changed the quality of my life and i would submit to you just through experience this i would say that the the quality of our lives are directly proportional to the quality of questions we ask ourselves on a consistent basis you know if we ask ourselves consistently negative questions our quality of life is probably going to suffer you know in fact i would guarantee it is you know versus if we ask ourselves better questions and so and we do this all the time what are the better questions we should be asking well i mean again this becomes so subjective i mean so the first question is what's the better question you know and then funny because my wife and i you know during this pandemic we um we you know we have a german shepherd so we just take walks around the neighborhood with the dog because it was a way for us to release and just be together and the dog got exercise or we were at this point and as most people were at many points and the kids were having trouble in school we were just in a b we were just upset we were all upset and we we're kind of lamenting this and we did we do two laps around our neighborhood that's usually standard and we had done one lap and we had the first lap had been largely uh lamenting on this the negativity and at one point we're both like you know what let's stop here what's the better question right now and we literally began to start thinking about what the better question is and it took us a while but we came up with a better question and that question led us down a pathway of getting out of you know the funk we were in and actually moving forward so so i think without being able to tell you what that exact question is the first question you should ask is what's the better question here when you find yourself in that situation yeah that's important we were talking about this beforehand a little bit about the law of attraction and you mentioned you have an interesting story about the law of attraction and that you believe in the law of attraction for yourself and that it's worked for your life what is your relationship with the law of attraction so when i was in high school my mom gave me a book called the key to yourself it's right but it was by venice bloodworth um and i still have a couple copies of this book it was written in the 50s and um and this book was all about the law of attraction you know she basically was talking about she was it was uh it had a there was a religious tone to it so there was it was there was a religious slant to it as well but um but ultimately it was you know about this idea that if you if you intend and if you set your your mind frame and if you think positively all the stuff you will start heading down you know you reap what you sow basically and i began to i began to get fascinated with this stuff and i really began to go i wouldn't say obsessed because that's a strong word but i started reading books on psychology positive thinking psychology things like that all everything i could get my hands on and began to really try to implement this and i tried to do visualization and start to really think and it started working you know and like one of the first things that that kind of i was able to quote manifest was you know my brother and i always wanted a jeep as a car when we're in high school and so we just began to visualize a jeep and you know senior year we got a jeep an 84 1984 jeep cj7 and i still have that car today it's parked at the airport right now i still have that car because it's a very first thing and it just every time i had a goal i would basically set my intent and move towards it now um i i'm not here to uh either prove or promote the efficacy of metaphysics right but i do think so i'm so you are as interested in the neuroscience behind this as i am and i don't know if we've figured that out yet um i know it works one of the things that one of the one of the um aspects that i think one of the reasons why i think it works is because of this idea of just attention in general right we have and i talk about this in the situation awareness chapter we have about 11 million bits of information coming into our systems at every second right from all of our five senses um and the thing is we do massive amount of deselection there's things happening to us that we don't know like like you know the bottom of your shoes right you just started noticing that because i told you about it right but that's this is kind of happening constantly so we we are we are in inputting 11 million bits our frontal lobe is only processing about 2500 or so from what i understand um so when we actively lodge something into our frontal lobe intentionally saying this is something i'm going to say out of that 11 million bits i want you to notice everything this i want you to notice everything that has to do with this okay so we all of us have had this experience anytime we buy a car or we want a car okay um suddenly we see that car everywhere everywhere and it's not because that car suddenly upped in sales and it's on the streets more it's because we lodged that into our frontal lobe and now we're noticing it it was always there right and so i think part of the neurological reason why a lot of attraction works is because we are when you when you set an intent especially when you write down a goal i think i'm a big believer in writing it down you set an intent you write down a goal you are literally lodging into your frontal lobe an intent to say anything that happens in that 11 million bits per second that has anything to do with this or accomplishing this i want to notice you know and so so it starts so we start to notice things and it seems like things are just happening magically but what's really happening is we're noticing things that we're we're noticing opportunities we're noticing conversations we're noticing people that we see serendipity is actually explained because we're so i think there's that admittedly is maybe a small facet of the neurological reason why i think it works uh but i i'm a believer in it especially by about setting intent writing down goals and and moving forward was there anything that happened while you were a navy seal that you used a law of attraction for that happened i'm even training you know i remember just in training i was i was constantly saying to myself hey i'm supposed to be here i i see myself as a navy seal i see myself as this this is what i'm supposed to be you know i go to the extent of saying i am an abc let's say it myself you know but um internally internally yeah uh but i think that's yeah so yeah i used it constantly you know what's the greatest mantra you used when you're under the most stress or fear or uncertainty or sketchy situations that a civilian could use today when they're facing stress what's the mantra you said to yourself what can i control what is it kind of control right now because you're taking control you're you're taking yourself out of uh out of um an uncontrollable a seemingly uncontrollable situation and you're grasping the steering wheel and you're grasping the you're putting your foot on the brake or the accelerator and you're saying i have control over this at least this small part that's right that's my that is my if there's if there's something i do the most and now probably unconsciously is i'm always saying what kind of control right now if especially if the situation begins to deteriorate you know right that's what i do did they teach you guys about mantras or self-talk or no uh focusing on the next step as opposed to the end result no not nothing implicit uh excuse me nothing explicit it was probably implicit in just that but this is where this is where challenge and strife this is where these environments especially physical ones can teach us so much about ourselves you know and most of us can can think of a situation in our lives where we can say to ourselves you know what i uh that was horrible i'd never want to relive that okay but but i'm glad it happened isn't that interesting because this is what i learned this is why i met this right that's what i became this is what i became you know and and so so just take those so i would offer take those experiences and start start deconstructing them uh do some autopsy on that because there's lessons in there there are things that you did probably unconsciously that walked you through that that you can take and you extrapolate and say hey i can do the same thing next time or now you know because i've done it before i can do it again you know right yeah and going through adversity builds confidence and getting out the other side and being alive and thriving builds confidence and it's growth i mean it's the key that's the key to growth i mean this is what we and i we all know this in the gym right you go in you lift weights you tear muscles yeah you are tearing the muscles you rip your muscles apart okay that's what you're doing and then you rest and the muscles grow and they become smaller so you cannot grow muscle unless you rip them first um this is this is the unless you apply pressure yeah yeah so so that is growth you know and that's why that's why it's important i think just in in anybody's pathway or their evolution to continually test themselves and i'm not i mean some people are like hey i'm fine where i am i i respect that in fact in some cases i'm envious of it it's hard for me to say that because i'm always like okay i i always say to myself i'm i'm someone who's always extraordinarily grateful but never satisfied because i think you can be both you know i'm so grateful for where i am everything i've done but i'm always kind of saying okay what's next you know what's next um there are some people who are like hey i'm good with where i am there's nothing wrong with that but uh but you know but active growth for me has been to actively walk to my edges and then uh and then look at the next one uh i wanted to ask you about this one of the attributes is cunning and you talk about the princess and the dragon i was curious what does that actually mean to be cunning and what is this story about the princess and the dragon yeah i uh i i relate it to the navy seals in terms of one of the one of the one of the most predominant traits in navy seals or is the cunning so cunning is the ability to really think outside the box if i want to put it very simply is to is to understand that in any problem so any problem has two conditions or two elements right element one is that has a there's a solution there's some sort of outcome that needs to happen the other element is that has variables or conditions that that in some ways outline the problem because if you have one without the other you don't have a problem right if you if you're given a uh if you're given a um a group a a set of materials of of clay molding materials and say hey um you know uh build something you know right then okay that's good if i say okay um make a bust of beethoven but i didn't give you no material says okay i'm just going to make a bust if i give you a bunch of materials i could do like scissors and noodles and things like that and say now make a bust of beethoven now you have a problem okay because you have you have an outcome that you have to achieve and you have a set of variables right cunning is the ability to look beyond those variables and shake off what's called functional fixedness um and this this is this idea that when you see something you immediately begin to impla to imply biases and imply rules that are surrounding this so so one of the one of the examples i use is the nine dot problem i know you have heard this but nine dots in a grid and this was like the whole thing outside the box in the 80s right draw a line draw four lines that can that that connect without ever leaving the page in that you know with that it has to hit every dot right and most people couldn't do it until they realized that they had to go outside the box to do it right i think outside the box um so cunning is able to do that um the reason why i talk about the princess of dragons i say hey listen the way i describe this in the sealed teams is this if we were to think about a medieval kingdom you know and the princess there's a princess in a tower guarded by a dragon and the king who wants to save the princess has sent you know his best knights to go slay the dragons to save this princess and every night night after night has been slayed has been burned to death by this dragon right drop a special operator in there whether it be a seal or a green beret or whatever and the first question they say is what's the mission say save the princess and they say well who gives a crap about the dragon right i'm gonna find a way to get to the princess without going through the dragon don't slay the dragon i don't need to slay the dragon i just saved the princess right so so the functional fixedness is i need to slay the dragon to save the princess uh but what but what cunning says is what's the mission save the princess i don't need to i don't just get in the tower i'm going to break it down this is a shrek right yeah i mean so so that's why i call it the princess and the princess of the dragon yeah chapter so it's thinking outside of the uh the functional elements that are available for you and thinking outside of that it's interesting what's the uh what's the thing you feel like you need the most work on to improve to get to the next level with all your years of training self-discipline yeah i'm constantly working on my self-discipline and there's a difference between discipline and self-discipline yeah so self-discipline again is is not drinking beer at night it's not picking up the candy bar it's not even the ice cream it's it's internal control you know again i'm um i i ha you know most of us most most human beings can say we don't like to be told what to do okay so most of us are guilty of not being not liking to be told what to do some of us are extreme about not like not being able to tell what to do i'm going to be the opposite yeah and some of us don't even like to be told by ourselves what to do right you know that's kind of weird against ourselves repel against ourselves so i think i think self-discipline is something i'll um i'll continue to work on uh and empathy i think we i think we're i think especially in today's world empathy is something we all could do well um with uh trying to try to gain more develop more of with uh the time this comes out 2020 will be behind us what do you think could be a game plan for someone for moving forward in their life on how to gain control of what they can control and how to set goals that are manageable if they still feel overwhelmed and stressed what would the navy seal do after 2020 to have a more joyful happy fulfilled life yeah well it's it's interesting how uh things happen and they they become congruent with the time frame you know i wrote this book because i was interested in in helping people understand their own engines because i was because because like you i'm also fascinated with with the you know how to better ourselves and all these tools and techniques and people are out there saying hey do this do that but what i realized is much like any car engine if you start slapping stuff onto a car engine and you don't understand the actual engine you're going to break something or blow something up right so the key to self-improvement is to first know thyself and so the so the reason why i wanted to write this book was because it the reader will help to understand themselves what are they showing up to the game with in terms of their own palette of attributes and where they stand um couple things so so reading the book will help someone learn that and then they can start to look at 2020 and recognize that 2020 taught them a lot about their own attributes because we were all thrown into challenge stress and uncertainty so with the context of the stuff you read in the book you'll be able to look back at what i'm saying in 2020 and say oh you know what i can see actually i'm more adaptable than i thought i'm less resilient that i actually want to be i need to develop that you know right i need to be a little bit more disciplined or i need to be a little bit more open-minded or you know maybe because of the political landscape i need to be more empathetic you know who knows um so so someone should be able to read the book and start to understand more about these internal hidden drivers uh look back at 2020 and index that and then on the website you were put we have a free assessment tool so you can actually take an assessment for both for for grit for mental cutie and for drive that's good and you can see where you stand on these attributes now now it's going to be a snapshot as to where you stand because it's really it's really as compared to a survey set of about 1000 people we got it around the globe of data we got from so it's kind of like okay as compared to these thousand people here's where i stand on adaptability so it's really okay it's it's a it's a snapshot and then you have to kind of say to yourself in looking at the snapshot and looking at how i've dealt with 2020 and how i've dealt with other environments where do i think i stand and then i'm also offering on the website there'll be some workbooks that you can get to help uh guide you in developing any attribute you want to develop you can develop any attribute you want it just has to be self-directed has to be self-motivated you can't learn it like you learn a skill um because i can't if you want to if you're naturally impatient i can't sit down and teach you a class on patients it doesn't work that way i can teach you typing or shooting which is a skill i can't teach you patience so you can't teach an attribute that way you can develop an attribute it has to be self-directed so so i've i've put together some guides on how to develop your develop each attribute and you want to so where do we go for the website uh the attributes.com pretty simple the attributes.com and you're i only found you on linkedin is that true do you have social no i have linkedin i have instagram i have facebook and the attribute says facebook as well so if you go to attributes.com all my stuff is up there but i am on linkedin and um instagram what's your instagram uh rich divini okay cool yeah awesome there you go um this is powerful man the attributes.com and the book make sure you guys check this out 25 hidden drivers of optimal performance i like the idea of optimal performance as opposed to peak performance i think it's good to be able to get to peak performance in moments but it's hard to sustain that obviously so getting an optimal performance would be great i'm a big fan of assessments and reflecting back uh you know as an athlete we watch game films so we would always get scored and assess how we did on every play and the whole game what was our performance right what was the skill you need to develop to get a higher score in the next game yeah so for me it's important to look at and assess your life or assess the year of what worked what didn't work so you know where you want to move into so i think it's really powerful go to the attributes.com for the assessment and the book the book is out um january 26th january 26th so uh you can either pre-order this is that before then or get it right now a couple final questions for you this is called the three truths so i'd like you to imagine hypothetically it's your last day on earth and you've accomplished every dream you have set out every mission you've written more books you've lived the exact life that you could imagine but for whatever reason you have to take all of your work with you so your content this interview any interview you've done any book video the assessments they all go with you to the next place wherever that is yeah but you get to leave behind three things you know to be true three lessons you would share with the world that if anyone wanted to understand who you are and the lessons that you would leave them this is what they would have and that's it yeah what would you say are those lessons or those three truths well we'll see let me let me tell you what i tell let me tell you what i probably tell my kids yes um the first is you are entitled to nothing um and i say that in a in a kind way it's really more of a of a mindset versus a judgment it's it's this idea that uh if you approach the world with the sense of doing the work to earn you know versus you show up and you're entitled to something you're going to understand and be willing to do the hard stuff you know you're not going to worry about getting your hands and feet muddy and dirty you know you're going to be okay you're going to be humble enough to go and do the do the hard stuff right so so i think that's number one um number two is uh that's uh knowledge is not power knowledge is potential power um because we can all have we all know exactly what has to be done and what we need to do to do something but unless we act nothing happens you know you know you and i can you and i can have the perfect plan to you know bench 300 pounds at the end of the you know three-month training cycle or whatever it's going to take take us three months to bench whatever um if we don't do it it's not going to happen so so knowledge just knowledge on its own is not power you have to you have to apply you know if you apply it um and the third one is uh is the idea that um first of all set goals um but but divorce yourself from the pathway that you need to take to reach it because uh because you don't know what the best pathway is you have to start you have to start moving it's just to start moving towards that goal and then just figure it out as we go so so rock climbers could teach us a lot in this venue because the rock climber that's that's climbing a face for the very first time certainly the goal is the p is that is the top right um but that no rock climber is going to say i'm i'm going there there there there the whole way up that rock climber's going to start climbing and that rock climber is going to climb and find find the knot hole that he or she likes and move to that one sometimes and this is tricky okay sometimes the best knot hole is going to be down right so sometimes you have to move away from your goal to actually get closer to it wow to find the right knot hole right so so so oftentimes people get i think tied up and discouraged because the the the pathway that they thought would lead them to the goal that they've written down or the one they're trying to achieve it's not working out for them it's like this is not well sometimes it doesn't you know if you if you stay steadfast you'll get there and just understand that the pathway don't dictate the pathway dictate the outcome those are good i like those a lot um again the attributes make sure you guys get this i want to acknowledge you rich for for constantly showing up after your service for the country you're constantly showing up in service to share lessons uh for us to understand them in a way that works for us so we can have practical tools and ideas to really move forward in our lives so i really acknowledge you for using your service for 20-plus years to then say how can i serve in a different way for human beings on self-improvement and optimal performance so i appreciate and acknowledge your your efforts your work and your constant desire to grow and learn to share this with all of us and i think this book is going to be helpful for a lot of people final question for you is what's your definition of greatness yes what my definition of greatness my definition of greatness is the ability to recognize the power of two words that i think actually are the most powerful words in the human language and that those two words are i am because whatever we put after those two words is what we define ourselves as and the pathway we begin to move towards both consciously and unconsciously and i think we have to be very very careful about what we put after those two works because there's a power so so greatness is be able to understand that and use it amen rich thank you sir appreciate having me if you're looking for more greatness in your life make sure to check out this video right here and also check out our free pdf the three secrets to unlock the power of your mind to help you change your life download it right here i saw what i wanted to be there wasn't a guy that won the one the guy that won everything he did it was a guy that kept getting up

Channel: Lewis Howes

Views: 141,282

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Keywords: Lewis Howes, Lewis Howes interview, school of greatness, self help, self improvement, self development, personal development, success habits, success, wealth, motivation, inspiration, inspirational video, motivational video, success principles, millionaire success habits, how to become successful, success motivation, rich diviney, rich diviney interview, navy seal motivation, navy seal speech, rich diviney navy seal, rich diviney attributes, never be lazy again, optimize

Id: 2hXy46Ex3GQ

Length: 101min 39sec (6099 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 20 2021