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Welcome to this special masterclass.
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We ve brought some of the top experts in the world to help you unlock the power of your life through this specific theme today.
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It s going to be powerful, so let s go ahead and dive in.
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It wasn t until I got real sick, and I talked about in the last chapter of that book, I got real sick and I was about 38 years old.
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I m 43 now, and my life got real quiet.
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I went from running 205 miles in 39 hours to I couldn t get out of bed.
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The doctors couldn t figure out what was wrong with me, but once again, it was the best thing that ever happened to me.
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Why is that?
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In that moment when my whole life changed.
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I went from a guy who worked out every day, trained every day, to a guy who couldn t get out of bed.
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My life was taken from me.
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The one thing that kept me going was my training.
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Now you didn t have that.
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I didn t have anything.
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Now you just had to sit alone.
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Alone.
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And not train.
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And that s what changed me.
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And that s when I realized I hadn t thought, hadn t taken time to think about what I d done in my life.
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You haven t reflected yet.
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I haven t reflected.
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I ve done all these things, but there was no finish line.
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I still believe that, but you must have time to reflect.
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I was just going.
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I wouldn t even, I finished a race of life and I wouldn t even receive my medal.
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I go on.
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You re like on to the next.
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I get in the car and I go.
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You wouldn t even take the medal.
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Gone.
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Don t care about it.
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Like I m not gonna waste an hour sitting around for this ceremony.
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Most people sit around and that s what they like.
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They need the ceremony if I accomplished something.
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I haven t done anything.
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Let s go.
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Let s go.
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Let s go.
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I m just getting started.
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When I started figuring out life,
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that I was leaving so much in the tank, I call it my 40% rule.
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I was leaving so much in the tank, once I realized, my God, man, I was this dumb, fat kid being bullied and now I m a 180 pound person who lost 106 pounds in less than three months.
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Learn to read, learn to do this, learn to do that.
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I was like, I need more.
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I was fueling my mind with everything and I never took time to say, my God, you came from this and you re here.
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So those insecurities,
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And this is how I explain it the best way.
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SEAL training became pretty hard and a lot of guys weren t getting through it.
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So they designed a SEAL prep program.
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Like a boot camp for the boot camp.
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That s right.
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And it was two months.
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In my last two years before I retired from the military, they sent me there to train these kids.
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To get ready for BUDS.
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18, 19, 20-year-olds, yeah.
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Young kids.
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So when they get to Navy SEAL training, man, they were physical studs.
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They were running, swimming.
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I mean, they were hybrids.
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But they d get to Bud s and the same amount of people would quit.
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Why is that?
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This is why.
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We were training bigger, stronger, faster quitters.
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It s not about... Not the mind.
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That s right.
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We weren t diving into the sewer.
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Everybody s got a story.
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We don t share it on social media.
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We share our nice life on social media.
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We all have a dungeon.
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I m just willing to talk about mine.
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Most of us aren t willing to talk about it.
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I m willing to talk about my dungeon.
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I wasn t getting into the dungeon of these guys  minds.
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I wasn t building that so-called mental toughness.
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Mental toughness isn t something that you sample.
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It s something that you live in every day.
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So when something hard would happen to these kids, like in Hell Week,
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it would draw on something that made them very insecure and they look for comfort.
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Whenever hardness comes, and you don t know what it is, it may be different for you than it is for me, but you go back to your insecurities and then when you go back to your insecurities, you then look for comfort within those insecurities.
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And we all look for that cookie that your mom used to give you when you were sad, when you were sick.
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We look for our wife or our husband, we look for comfort.
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It s in those moments you must retrain your mind to think differently.
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I wasn t training them to do that.
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Why weren t you training them?
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I wasn t training myself yet because at that time I was doing what I was told.
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These guys need to meet a standard.
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Physical standard.
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A physical standard.
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The physical standard is not what they need to meet.
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It s a mental standard you must meet in life.
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So going back to when I was sick, I was hitting the physical standards.
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I wasn t meeting the mental standard.
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The mental standard is you must know how far you ve come.
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I had come 8,000 miles from where I started.
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But if you never know that, you re still in the $7 a month place.
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When I was sick, I was able to slow it down.
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and reflect back on my entire life.
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And in that bed, when I thought I was dying, because that story is long, that sick portion of my life is long, I didn t care if I died or lived because I was for the first time in my life happy and at peace because I reflected back on where I started.
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You said, well, I have come a long way.
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That s right.
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And no one saved me.
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It wasn t like someone came down here and guided me through life.
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When you figure this out on your own, the amount of pride and dignity and self-respect you have.
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That s why I walk around the streets with a backpack and just like, I don t need anything else.
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You figure it out by going inside yourself, by callousing over the victim s mentality.
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You re always a victim.
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even if you have everything in life until you realize what you ve achieved.
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You have to first realize what you ve achieved and my mom has accomplished so much in her life since my father, but she hasn t done that one step.
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Really?
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She doesn t acknowledge it and reflect back?
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She continues to go back to the dungeon of her past life.
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And live in that space?
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And live in that space versus living the space that she s in now and reflecting back on, my God, this is what I ve done with my life.
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So... Have you talked to her about this?
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We talk about it all the time and you have to be willing to go there.
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You have to be willing to really go there.
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Not surface.
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I don t live on the surface of anything.
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Surface is what got me where I was at.
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It got me from 175 pounds to 300 pounds.
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Telling everybody I m good.
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I don t give a ****.
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I m good.
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No, they re hollow words.
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A lot of us speak in hollow words.
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I used to speak in hollow words.
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I don t do anymore.
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Everything that comes out of my mouth has substance, it s real.
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And we all have these feelings in our bodies, in our minds, in our souls.
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I act on mine.
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A lot of us who are afraid of something, we allow our minds to choose the path of least resistance so we go a different route.
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I m afraid of something, it s telling me you must do that.
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You must do that.
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You have to go that way.
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And most of us don t understand that mentality.
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We go left and we wonder why we haven t fulfilled something in our lives.
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It s because we continue to take the journey that is mapped out.
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And how I look at it is I talk in life like a lot of us in life want to take the four-lane highway that has road maps and all this other stuff on it, man.
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Tells you where to go, gas stations.
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the next 10 miles up, you re going to see a McDonald s or Crackle Barrel.
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It s the easy route.
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Very few of us want to go to the right side.
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That Crackle Barrel is that Midwest life.
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That s right, that s right.
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It s all about it, man.
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Indiana, Crackle Barrel everywhere.
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Dude, that s amazing, bringing back memories.
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This is powerful because I ve been telling people this.
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I ve been living that way unknowingly my whole life of like whatever the thing is I m afraid of.
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When I was in high school, I started doing those things.
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It was just like I m sick and tired of feeling afraid.
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So I need to do the things that scare me the most.
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You know, I ve talked about this a lot on the podcast Tiffany s heard me these share these stories But I was afraid to talk to girls when I was a teenager.
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I was afraid of Dancing I was afraid of like singing and playing music in front of people I was afraid of all these different things and so I said I want to do this I m gonna give myself a challenge every single day until the fear goes away.
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Sure.
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I
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and I feel like that s what more of us should be doing.
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I m hearing that that s how you live your life.
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That s all it is, man.
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And it helps me feel so much more confident.
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When you overcome that fear of saying this doesn t have control over me anymore, it s like you can be at so much more peace in your life.
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Most of, like for instance, I never thought in my wildest dreams I could be a Navy SEAL.
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It s until you open your mind, open-mindedness creates that.
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We all shut down our mind, like for instance, when I broke the pull-up record,
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Everybody around me who heard the pull-up record was 4,020 pull-ups.
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That s the first thing they did.
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Oh my God.
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4,024 hours?
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Yeah, it s 4,020 pull-ups in a 24-hour period.
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The first thing I did versus closing my mind like, oh my God, that s crazy.
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I went and got a pin in.
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How many is that every minute?
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Exactly.
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Every hour, every second.
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Instead of taking life and making out to be
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this grandiose thing, start breaking it down.
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Start breaking it down.
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And most of us, we live in a box.
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And we don t want to go outside that box at all, ever.
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Outside that box is all these possibilities of life.
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What we do is we shackle our mind.
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We are a prisoner in our own mind that this is all I can do.
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This is all I m good at.
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and we take away the possibility that you could be this, you could be that, you could be all these things.
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And I never thought at 300 pounds I could be Nathan Simmons.
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So if my mind was shackled, me and you would never meet.
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There d be no book.
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There d be no book.
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There d be nothing.
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So...
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What people don t understand is that they live for themselves, not knowing that you have the power within yourself to change millions of lives by facing life, by facing yourself.
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And through that,
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I would die never knowing that I had the power to change millions of lives.
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And what haunts me the most, people ask me, what haunts you the most?
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What haunts me the most is that if I were to die at 300 pounds, let s say I was 75 years old, I got to heaven, and God has a chart like that on everybody s life.
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God knows all, let s say that.
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I don t care what you believe in, doesn t matter.
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I m not judging anybody.
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But let s say my thing is God.
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You get to heaven, I m 300 pounds, I sit down, I was a cockroach, terminated my whole life, and we re sitting down just like this, you re God and I m David.
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And he gives me that chart, and he says, look at this.
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Now look at this chart, and on the chart it has all these different things, but my name s on it.
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But these things aren t me.
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I was going to change the world.
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I was going to set records.
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I was going to be a Navy SEAL.
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I was going to be... All these things in the military that I accomplished.
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You re going to get the VFW award.
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You re going to be honored here, honored there.
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I m like, God, I was... This isn t me.
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Like it says David Goggins.
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I was an Ecolab guy.
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I sprayed for cockroaches and I m 300 pounds.
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It says here I m 185.
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It says here I got a bachelor s and a master s.
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It says all these things.
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And God goes, no.
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That s who you were supposed to be.
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Wow.
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My biggest fear in life is if there is a final resting place in this world and there s a final judgment and you talk to something much bigger than you.
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I don t want to sit down and have a conversation with someone with something that says you re in heaven.
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This is what you should have been on earth.
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And are you really in heaven now?
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Are you in?
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Hmm.
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thinking about how much I left on the table for fear, for not willing to go over the wall and over the next wall and over the next wall.
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So in my mind, I believe that and God knows all, at least I believe that.
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I want God to be up there right now as we re speaking, writing stuff down and saying, my God, he exceeded even my expectations.
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That s how I live my life.
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I now know that there is no cap.
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on the human mind.
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There s no cap.
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We cap it ourselves.
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Wow.
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Is there a cap on the human body?
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That s right.
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Is there one?
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I don t believe so.
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Because one thing I found out was I didn t, for several years I gave myself a way out.
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When you were 300 pounds?
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When I was 300 pounds, when I was, all the way up until I was 24 years old.
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I would climb a mountain, I d fall back down.
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I d start climbing, I d fall back down, for the first 24 years of my life.
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I went to my first Hell Week, my second Hell Week, and then my third Hell Week came in SEAL training, and the CO, Captain Bowen, looked at me, I m on crutches, I m all jacked up, he says, hey, this is your last time you re gonna go through buds.
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This is it.
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I had several stress fractures.
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I had double pneumonia, I was jacked up and he gave me a few months to heal.
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He said, this is your last time going through, I shouldn t even let you go back through.
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Wow.
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I started Navy SEAL training with stress fractures.
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Stress fractures, not shin splints.
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That s hard to finish.
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Stress fractures.
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Starting the hardest training, arguably the hardest training in the world with stress fractures.
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And this is when I started to not put a cap on the body, if the mind is there.
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Every morning I wake up at 3.30 in the morning, 4 o clock in the morning, go to my dive cage,
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go in there before anybody saw me, I d get duct tape and I would tape from my forefoot all the way up to the mid of my calf and I would put two black socks on.
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And so I ran not using the pivot.
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Oh my gosh.
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And I ran my hip flexors.
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So for the first 45 minutes to an hour, I was in absolute excruciating pain.
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But what motivated me through that whole process was the fact that this kid,
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Came from that.
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I m in the hardest training in the world, in the worst shape of my entire life.
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What if I can graduate amongst these studs?
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Wow!
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All these guys around me are studs.
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They re stallions, they re gladiators in my class.
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They re all healthy, most of them.
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They re not broken like this.
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They may have some, you know, everybody s sick going to that training.
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But if I can graduate,
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it would change everything for me.
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If I can start the hardest chain in the world, broken, and graduate.
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So my mind fed off of that.
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You are now, from the weakest man, you are now the hardest man to ever live.
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If you can do this.
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If you can do this.
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Life is one big mind game.
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And you re playing it with yourself.
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Is it true?
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I don t care.
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it got me through the hardest training starting out broken.
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When most people quit, I had just started.
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And when you take that mindset and you learn to flip that around, that s what made me powerful and my body followed.
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And three months later, my stress fractures were healed by running on them.
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Calcifying it, just like... I never had them since.
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I m 43 years old.
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Wow.
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I ran 7,000 miles in 2007.
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Haven t had a stress fracture since.
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And I m not saying to do that.
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I m just saying that when the mind and the body connect and you don t give yourself a way out.
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The only way out for me at that time was death.
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Wow.
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I m going to be a Navy SEAL.
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Or I m going to die.
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Or I m going to die trying.
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Yeah.
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Period.
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and my body said, Roger that, we re going to get you through this.
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So, when the mind gives it no way out, your body says, okay, I believe you now.
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I have to heal.
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I m going to figure this out with you, we re going to do this, it s going to be the worst part of your life, but you re going to survive.
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We re going to survive.
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Wow!
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And as you hear in that 100 mile race I did, I started figuring out more and more and more and more about at the other end of suffering,
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is a life that no one, and I m not talking about go out there and kill yourself.
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Don t take these words and flip them and say, oh, my God.
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No.
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Just be uncomfortable.
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I call it suffering.
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Don t physically injure yourself.
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Yes.
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Not saying that.
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And then be out for six months.
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That s right.
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That s no good.
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That s no good.
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I m not saying do what I did.
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I was in a spot that life forced me
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I had a choice.
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I had a choice to be this guy or the guy that s in front of you.
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I had choices.
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I chose this path.
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And you re still choosing it.
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And I m still choosing it.
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You can go back to that guy at any moment.
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Because I found out.
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I found out something with those stress fractures.
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I found out something through facing all these things.
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I found out a whole nother world, which is why I walk around with all my stuff in a black backpack.
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Wow.
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I found out a whole nother way.
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A whole nother way of
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No matter how far you get in life, you have to be able to go back to scratch in your mind at a moment s notice.
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You can never get so far beyond scratch.
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What that means is when you accomplish something in life, if you want to go back to scratch,
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and go back to that $7 a month place where I once lived and visit that place for a long period of time.
1
SPEAKER_00
If you were here, when you went back to scratch, you would now be here.
1
SPEAKER_00
Scratch is what makes you better.
1
SPEAKER_00
Scratch, friction, obstacles create growth.
1
SPEAKER_00
There s no friction when you re this far up in the game anymore.
1
SPEAKER_00
You think there is.
1
SPEAKER_00
That s right.
1
SPEAKER_00
When you achieve so much, the friction is minor.
1
SPEAKER_00
Because why?
1
SPEAKER_00
I m sore, I m gonna get a massage today.
1
SPEAKER_00
I m hungry, I m going to eat today.
1
SPEAKER_00
The refrigerator is always full.
1
SPEAKER_00
So your discomfort is now very minuscule to your discomfort back here in the $7 a month place.
2
SPEAKER_01
You have to go back to the total discomfort to then raise your level of where you re at now.
2
SPEAKER_01
I m not saying stay there and stay there.
2
SPEAKER_01
Visit it.
2
SPEAKER_01
probably the first dichotomy in leadership that I had to say to myself, you know what, there s another side to this, is I used to tell the young SEAL officers that you have to be aggressive, you gotta be default aggressive, that s how you gotta be.
2
SPEAKER_01
Because when something s going on, you gotta be aggressive to get that problem solved.
2
SPEAKER_01
And if you re not being aggressive, then you re hesitating, well then you can get killed.
2
SPEAKER_01
Okay, so there you go.
2
SPEAKER_01
And that s what I used to tell guys.
2
SPEAKER_00
And as I was telling- That s extreme, that s an extreme style.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yes, that s the problem with it.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so the question is, can you be too aggressive?
2
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
2
SPEAKER_01
Absolutely.
2
SPEAKER_01
You can, hey, there s a machine gun nest over there.
2
SPEAKER_01
Let s attack it.
2
SPEAKER_01
So you charge up the hill and everyone dies.
2
SPEAKER_01
You ve been too aggressive.
2
SPEAKER_01
So what you have to do is you have to be balanced.
2
SPEAKER_01
And that s probably, so even as I had these kind of mantras, like default aggressive, can you do too much of that?
2
SPEAKER_01
Yes, you can.
2
SPEAKER_01
So you end up with this, what do you end up, can you be too passive?
2
SPEAKER_01
Oh yeah, absolutely.
2
SPEAKER_01
Well, now we re not making any progress.
2
SPEAKER_01
Now we re getting crushed by the enemy because we didn t maneuver.
2
SPEAKER_01
Okay, so that s bad.
2
SPEAKER_01
So where do you want to be?
2
SPEAKER_01
You want to be balanced.
2
SPEAKER_01
Even the idea of extreme ownership.
2
SPEAKER_01
Can you take too much ownership?
2
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yes, you can.
2
SPEAKER_01
Really?
2
SPEAKER_01
Yes, you can.
2
SPEAKER_01
I thought you said you need to take ownership of everything.
2
SPEAKER_01
Two different things.
2
SPEAKER_00
Listen to this.
2
SPEAKER_01
If you re working for me and I say, okay, here s the mission that I want you to accomplish tonight.
2
SPEAKER_01
here s the people I want you to take, here s the weapons I want you to bring, here s the vehicles I want you to bring, here s the route I want you to use to get to the target, here s the method I want you to use to secure the target, here s the route I want you to do to get back.
2
SPEAKER_01
So that s the plan.
2
SPEAKER_01
Now you take ownership and go execute.
2
SPEAKER_01
Now, can you really take ownership of that plan?
2
SPEAKER_01
If someone else gave you the whole thing?
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I gave you the whole thing, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
Is that your plan?
2
SPEAKER_01
No.
2
SPEAKER_01
No, it s your plan.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s my plan.
2
SPEAKER_01
So, when you go in the field and now you come up against an obstacle and you re executing my plan, what s your attitude?
2
SPEAKER_01
Well, it s not my plan, it s his plan.
2
SPEAKER_01
And you re at an obstacle now and you re like, hey, Jocko didn t think of this.
2
SPEAKER_01
So now you just back away and you come back and you say, hey, we failed the mission because you didn t think of this.
2
SPEAKER_01
You didn t think of this option.
2
SPEAKER_01
Right.
2
SPEAKER_01
So that s me taking too much ownership.
2
SPEAKER_01
So what I need to do is I say, hey,
2
SPEAKER_01
here s the plan, or here s the mission, how do you want to do it?
2
SPEAKER_01
And now if you re a good leader, you ll go get with your people and you ll say, oh, hey guys, here s the plan, or here s the mission that we have to accomplish, how do you guys want to do it?
2
SPEAKER_01
Now you all come up with a good plan, and you come back to me and you say, here s the plan, and I say, that looks pretty good, go execute.
2
SPEAKER_01
And now when you ve hit an obstacle in the field, what s your attitude?
2
SPEAKER_01
I need to adapt and adjust.
2
SPEAKER_00
What s your plan?
2
SPEAKER_00
You ll make it.
2
SPEAKER_00
Came up with this.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
2
SPEAKER_01
So can you take too much ownership?
2
SPEAKER_01
The answer is yes, you can.
2
SPEAKER_01
So with just about every, you can name a trait, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
You can name a trait.
2
SPEAKER_01
from a leadership perspective that you think is a positive trait, and you ll immediately see that if you go too far with it, it ll become bad.
2
SPEAKER_01
It ll become bad, so you have to be balanced.
2
SPEAKER_01
So even as I came up with the dichotomy of leadership, I had to be humble enough to say to myself, you know what, being aggressive is really, really good most of the time, but if you re too aggressive, that s not good.
2
SPEAKER_01
So like you said earlier, you re constantly questioning
2
SPEAKER_01
And to me, what that is, that s humility.
2
SPEAKER_01
That s you being humble enough to say, you know what, I really don t understand this that well.
2
SPEAKER_01
And there s some things in my life that I don t get.
2
SPEAKER_01
Whereas as opposed to you walking around saying, I already got this figured out.
2
SPEAKER_01
I already know what I m doing.
2
SPEAKER_01
I already know where I m going.
2
SPEAKER_01
I already know what God is specifically.
2
SPEAKER_01
I already know what s gonna happen to me when I die.
2
SPEAKER_01
All those things.
2
SPEAKER_00
But instead you re questioning everything, which in my mind is a positive thing.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that s good to know.
2
SPEAKER_00
Is there anything that is missing in your life?
2
SPEAKER_00
You feel like something s missing.
2
SPEAKER_01
I know, I feel like I m living a pretty good life right now.
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I m totally blessed.
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I got a great family.
2
SPEAKER_01
I got great kids.
2
SPEAKER_01
I got a great company.
2
SPEAKER_01
I got working with great people.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
Healthy, you know, I get to work out, train.
2
SPEAKER_01
I m feeling good.
2
SPEAKER_00
Living the dream, man.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
Living the dream.
2
SPEAKER_00
You never feel like there s something missing for you right now.
2
SPEAKER_00
If there is, you re working towards it.
2
SPEAKER_00
You re working on the next book.
2
SPEAKER_00
You re building the business.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
Well, there s a difference between something missing and am I satisfied?
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
Right.
2
SPEAKER_01
Cause I m not satisfied.
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I always want to go, like I never, I never get done with the end of the day and go, cool.
2
SPEAKER_01
Mission accomplished.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like it s like, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
So you re not satisfied, but you feel like nothing s missing.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I d say that s a fair statement.
2
SPEAKER_00
What brings you the most joy in your life and makes you smile the most?
2
SPEAKER_01
Oh, I mean, my kids.
2
SPEAKER_01
My kids are cool.
2
SPEAKER_01
They re funny.
2
SPEAKER_01
You know, my wife and kids.
2
SPEAKER_01
My wife and kids are cool and funny and we have a good time and lots of inside jokes and all that.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I trained jujitsu, and that s very fun.
2
SPEAKER_01
And surf, that s fun.
2
SPEAKER_01
Playing guitar, that s fun.
2
SPEAKER_01
How old are your kids again?
2
SPEAKER_00
20, 18, 16, and 10.
2
SPEAKER_00
And what s the biggest lesson you learned about yourself being a father to them?
2
SPEAKER_01
Your kids are not going to be who you want them to be.
2
SPEAKER_01
You can t train them to be.
2
SPEAKER_01
They re going to be who they are.
2
SPEAKER_01
And you can give them some course corrections a little bit, but they re going to be who they
2
SPEAKER_01
who they are.
2
SPEAKER_01
And the more you try and force them into what you want them to be, the harder they re going to push back and rebel.
2
SPEAKER_00
Wow.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yep.
2
SPEAKER_00
Did you learn that the hard way or did you get, so you tried to train them into a certain way or?
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, somewhat.
2
SPEAKER_01
And it s pretty obvious, like from my perspective, I was having a similar conversation with a bunch of executives
2
SPEAKER_01
And we went down the road, because we re having dinner now, so we re done talking about work.
2
SPEAKER_01
But now everyone wants to ask me about parenting and everything else.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I said at the table, I m like, hey, who here ended up doing exactly what their parents wanted them to do?
2
SPEAKER_01
And there s like one guy out of 10, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
Because most people.
2
SPEAKER_01
Your parents are wanting you to do this thing, and you do something else.
2
SPEAKER_01
I joined the Navy when I was 18 years old.
2
SPEAKER_01
That probably wasn t even on the checklist of top 20 things that my parents wanted me to do.
2
SPEAKER_00
Not even in the same ballpark, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
They didn t want you to go to war.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, they didn t want that, so here you go.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, see ya.
2
SPEAKER_01
So the more you try and kind of pigeonhole your kids into being something that you want them to be, the worse off it s gonna be.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s the same thing with leadership.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s the same thing with leadership.
2
SPEAKER_01
If I m trying to force my plan down my team s throat, the more resistance I m gonna get from it.
2
SPEAKER_01
Whereas if I plant the seed and I allow that plan to grow with them, the better it s gonna be received.
2
SPEAKER_01
Like when people ask me, how do you get people to buy in?
2
SPEAKER_01
Well, you allow them to come up with
2
SPEAKER_01
Come up with a plan yourself.
2
SPEAKER_00
What if in your mind you re like, you really know that plan s not that good?
2
SPEAKER_01
It depends on how bad it is.
2
SPEAKER_01
How bad is it?
2
SPEAKER_01
Or what s at stake?
2
SPEAKER_01
If you re working for me and you re going to meet with a client and you have a bad pitch that you re gonna give them.
2
SPEAKER_01
and the client is some tiny client that I think is a low probability of us working with and the contract doesn t really matter, I d be like, hey, hey, give it a shot.
2
SPEAKER_01
Here s a couple, I might give you a couple adjustments and give you some coaching on it.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then you go and you do your thing and you come back and you re like, oh no, we didn t land it.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I say, well, what do you think?
2
SPEAKER_01
Let s debrief.
2
SPEAKER_01
And now we talk about it.
2
SPEAKER_01
I said, you know, you said this and you said that, here s some other ways to go about it.
2
SPEAKER_01
I might even actually have you do it to me.
2
SPEAKER_01
So then I could sit there and take some notes and say, hey, here s some other things that might ve worked.
2
SPEAKER_01
Now, if you were going to meet with a big client that really was going to add value to our company, I�m going to step in and be like, �Okay, let�s think about that.� What�s their reaction going to be?
2
SPEAKER_01
By the way, I�m not going to say, �No, don�t do it that way.� I�m going to say, �Tell me that again, and let me give you some objections that you might hear from them.�
2
SPEAKER_01
And all of a sudden, I ll let you come up with the solutions.
2
SPEAKER_01
Even though I m sitting there going, yeah, what he needs to say is this.
2
SPEAKER_01
No, I ll let you come up with a solution.
2
SPEAKER_01
So then you re kinda going in there like you got this dialed.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then you re gonna feel like you won, which you did.
2
SPEAKER_00
Which is great.
2
SPEAKER_00
It gives you more ownership, more respect in yourself, confidence, belief.
2
SPEAKER_00
How important is feedback for leaders?
2
SPEAKER_00
Getting feedback from peers, coaches, or employees, team members.
2
SPEAKER_00
Feedback is how you get better.
2
SPEAKER_01
No feedback, no improvement.
2
SPEAKER_01
And if you re not humble, you re not looking for feedback, and you re not listening to it.
2
SPEAKER_01
So if you think you know everything, you re not listening, you re definitely not asking for it, and even when it gets told to you, you don t listen to it.
2
SPEAKER_01
So feedback is built upon being humble.
2
SPEAKER_00
what would you say is in your way to getting to the next level?
2
SPEAKER_00
What feedback do you think you need to hear or receive from your team or people in order to reach the next goals that you have?
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, the weird thing about me is, even though you might think, look at me and think, oh, who s going to tell this guy anything, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
The reality is, if anyone of my friends, my team, anyone that works for me up and down the chain of command, if they think I m wrong, everyone will say, hey, I don t know if that s a good plan.
2
SPEAKER_01
So even, you know, when I was a task unit commander in
3
SPEAKER_01
And so I m in charge, and I m the head SEAL for this 40 SEALs.
3
SPEAKER_01
I m the main guy.
3
SPEAKER_01
Anyone in that chain of command, those guys would all come to me and say, hey, I don t know if this is a good way to do it.
3
SPEAKER_01
And you know what I d say?
3
SPEAKER_01
Why not?
3
SPEAKER_01
What do you think?
3
SPEAKER_01
What are you thinking?
3
SPEAKER_01
How do you think we should do it?
3
SPEAKER_01
My mind is open.
3
SPEAKER_01
If my plan is bad, please tell me.
3
SPEAKER_01
They would know that.
3
SPEAKER_01
My friends, my family, they ll tell me when I m doing something wrong all day long.
3
SPEAKER_00
They re not intimidated or scared of you?
3
SPEAKER_01
No.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s good.
3
SPEAKER_00
No.
3
SPEAKER_00
So how does a leader cultivate that with his family, friends, team, in order to welcome the feedback or the information?
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, what you do is when somebody gives you feedback, you listen to it.
3
SPEAKER_01
This is like, you know, just the other day we have a...
3
SPEAKER_01
a leadership event that we do two or three times a year, but the thing that I was telling this group of people was, as a leader, you should be listening 98% of the time and talking 2% of the time.
3
SPEAKER_01
So every time you come to me and you say, hey Jocko,
3
SPEAKER_01
I don t like this plan.
3
SPEAKER_01
I don t say shut up and do it my way.
3
SPEAKER_01
No, I say, how would you wanna do it?
3
SPEAKER_01
Tell me what you don t like about it and then tell me how you wanna do it.
3
SPEAKER_01
So therefore, the next time you have an objection, you re like, you know the door s open, you know that I m gonna be open-minded and listen to you and that s how you build it.
3
SPEAKER_01
Every time you shut someone down from speaking their mind, you actually are creating a negative environment where you re not gonna get the feedback and if there s no feedback, as we just said, you re not gonna improve.
3
SPEAKER_00
What are two things that any leader could do to improve their leadership skills?
3
SPEAKER_00
Right off the bat, two things you can think of.
3
SPEAKER_00
And what are two things that wannabe leaders do that hold them back from being great leaders?
3
SPEAKER_00
So what are the two things they could add to our skill sets?
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, two things that you add.
3
SPEAKER_01
Number one is listen, which we just talked about.
3
SPEAKER_01
So that s fresh on my mind.
3
SPEAKER_01
And you d be surprised about how many leaders are thinking that because they re in a leadership position, they should be talking all the time.
3
SPEAKER_01
Wrong answer.
3
SPEAKER_01
Wrong answer.
3
SPEAKER_01
I ll sit through a meeting with a client or with one of my companies, and I ll listen for 38 minutes.
3
SPEAKER_01
And at the end of those 38 minutes,
3
SPEAKER_01
I ll have already thought through every discussion that s been had.
3
SPEAKER_01
You wanna argue with him and he s arguing with her.
3
SPEAKER_01
And guess what?
3
SPEAKER_01
I get to sit there and assess those arguments and see which one is the most important.
3
SPEAKER_01
Meanwhile, you re expending all your ammunition.
3
SPEAKER_01
She s expending all her ammunition.
3
SPEAKER_01
He s giving up everything he s got.
3
SPEAKER_01
I m learning all their thought patterns.
3
SPEAKER_01
I m learning the pros and cons of each one of their arguments.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I do that for 38 minutes.
3
SPEAKER_01
And in the 39th minute, I say, hey, here s what I think we should do.
3
SPEAKER_01
And guess what, because I ve done an accurate assessment and listened, I m actually gonna be able to make the best decision.
3
SPEAKER_01
It wasn t because I was smarter.
3
SPEAKER_01
It wasn t because I had better tactical understanding.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s because I actually shut my mouth, listened to everyone spill their guts, learned everything that they knew, and did a good detached assessment of what the right thing to do was.
3
SPEAKER_01
So listen, and the other one is the word that I just used, which is detach, which is not getting
3
SPEAKER_01
emotional, not getting into the weeds about stuff that doesn t matter.
3
SPEAKER_01
If you can take a step back and look around, you re gonna see infinitely more than you can when you re in the weeds, staring the firefight in the face, looking down the sights of your weapon shooting.
3
SPEAKER_01
If you re doing that, you can t see anything else.
3
SPEAKER_01
Just think about that metaphor right there.
3
SPEAKER_01
If I m looking down the sights of my weapon and I m shooting, my world is this big.
3
SPEAKER_01
The minute that I stop shooting, point my weapon at high port, take a step back and actually look around, I can see infinitely more.
3
SPEAKER_01
Apply that to a meeting.
3
SPEAKER_01
This is the meeting that we just talked about, a 38-minute meeting.
3
SPEAKER_01
All this chaos is happening.
3
SPEAKER_01
Sure, I m the boss.
3
SPEAKER_01
I could jump in there and start arguing and giving my opinion, but what am I really doing then?
3
SPEAKER_01
I m in the weeds and I m not able to assess what is actually happening.
3
SPEAKER_01
So there you apply it there to your personal life.
3
SPEAKER_01
If you and I are arguing, you re my friend and you did something and now we re starting to escalate an argument and I m starting to get emotional.
3
SPEAKER_01
Am I able to listen to you anymore?
3
SPEAKER_01
Am I able to logically figure out what s going on?
3
SPEAKER_01
If I m talking to my wife and she did something that made me mad and now I m starting to raise my voice, is that whole situation going in the right direction?
3
SPEAKER_01
No, it s not.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s not.
3
SPEAKER_01
So what I need to do is take a step back, detach, calm down, listen to what she s saying, and then try and assemble a logical thing to say back without
3
SPEAKER_01
without saying, you need to calm down, or you re too emotional.
3
SPEAKER_01
No, no, no, no, no.
3
SPEAKER_01
Because if you come to me and you re mad about something, you come to me, whether it s my wife or whether you re a business partner, you come to me and you say, the dang, the supply department didn t give me the stuff I needed.
3
SPEAKER_01
If I say, hey, calm down, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
If that s my reaction,
3
SPEAKER_01
then you realize that I m against you, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
I don t get it.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so now it s me and the supply department against you.
3
SPEAKER_01
No one understands me.
3
SPEAKER_01
No one understands.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I do a little technique.
3
SPEAKER_01
I call it reflect and diminish.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I m going to reflect your emotions back to you, but I m going to diminish them a little bit so that we re not escalating the situation.
3
SPEAKER_00
How would you do this with your wife?
3
SPEAKER_01
So if you come to me and you go, the supply department s been late.
3
SPEAKER_01
They re two weeks late on this stuff.
3
SPEAKER_01
I don t say calm down, I say, oh, you gotta be kidding me.
3
SPEAKER_01
Two weeks?
3
SPEAKER_01
And you go, yeah, can you believe it?
3
SPEAKER_01
Ah, that s horrible.
3
SPEAKER_01
We gotta put a solution, we gotta get that figured out.
3
SPEAKER_01
In the meantime, what do we need to do right now to get the problem solved, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
So we already, now we re on the same team so we can work together to find a solution.
3
SPEAKER_01
We bonded on the pain.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yes, yes.
3
SPEAKER_01
We felt the pain.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yes, we re on the same team.
3
SPEAKER_01
Okay, my wife, what s gonna make my wife mad?
3
SPEAKER_01
The ice machine s not working.
3
SPEAKER_01
The ice machine s not working.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s your fault.
3
SPEAKER_01
Whether it s my fault, we don t know.
3
SPEAKER_01
The ice machine s not working.
3
SPEAKER_01
By the way, this is a real story.
3
SPEAKER_01
This is happening today.
3
SPEAKER_01
The ice machine s not working.
3
SPEAKER_01
She didn t get mad about it, but the ice machine s not working.
3
SPEAKER_01
If I go, hey, you have a refrigerator and a house and you got plenty of things, just calm down, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
How s that going to go?
3
SPEAKER_01
It s not going to go good.
3
SPEAKER_01
Now she s going to get mad.
3
SPEAKER_01
Now it s me against her.
3
SPEAKER_01
So instead, the ice machine s not working.
3
SPEAKER_01
Ah, man, that thing is junk.
3
SPEAKER_01
Have you called the repair guy?
3
SPEAKER_00
You know what I mean?
3
SPEAKER_01
And then all of a sudden, we re on the same team.
3
SPEAKER_01
And she s like, well, no, I haven t, but I m about to.
3
SPEAKER_01
OK, cool.
3
SPEAKER_01
As opposed to the ice machine s not working, well, OK, do you want me to have ice shipped in from Alaska there, princess?
3
SPEAKER_00
What would you say were the strategies of the SEALs in accomplishing your goals at the highest level?
3
SPEAKER_00
What are some of the things that you guys did strategy-wise to make that happen?
3
SPEAKER_02
Structure and discipline.
3
SPEAKER_02
So muscle memory would be the biggest one, which is now many of the things that I teach in both Overcome and in my Point Man for Life program.
3
SPEAKER_02
And it was something that I was missing.
3
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I felt like I was missing when I left the military.
3
SPEAKER_02
And I think a lot of military members feel the same way.
3
SPEAKER_02
The SEAL teams are incredibly effective at what we do for a lot of reasons.
3
SPEAKER_02
One of the reasons is selection.
3
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And that selection is critical.
3
SPEAKER_02
There s a lot of things you have to do to qualify just to get to SEAL training.
3
SPEAKER_02
A lot of people don t realize how smart SEALs have to be.
3
SPEAKER_02
So there s a level of intelligence.
3
SPEAKER_02
There s a level of physical ability.
3
SPEAKER_02
There s a level of, obviously, resiliency that has to come into this.
3
SPEAKER_02
And then we put everybody through this meat grinder called SEAL training that eliminates anybody that doesn t have that ability.
3
SPEAKER_02
And then once you get to the SEAL team, it s how we train.
3
SPEAKER_02
and build teams, and it s forged through tremendous adversity.
3
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Because our training, even once you get to a team, is designed to be very hard.
3
SPEAKER_02
I mean, some people would say almost sadistic in the way we would train.
3
SPEAKER_02
We would look for what is the absolute worst case scenario we can think of, and then how do we amplify that just a little more.
3
SPEAKER_02
To make it even worse.
3
SPEAKER_02
To make it even worse.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then train from that.
3
SPEAKER_02
And then train from that.
3
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And it was grueling and painful.
3
SPEAKER_02
And sometimes we got guys killed in training.
3
SPEAKER_02
I mean, you try to reduce the level of risk, but we also recognize that in order to be ready for combat, we have to train at the highest level.
3
SPEAKER_02
And in order to do that, it was a lot of repetition.
3
SPEAKER_02
And crawl, walk, run was the mentality.
3
SPEAKER_02
And it was not these big goals of,
3
SPEAKER_02
hey, I m gonna take down this entire town, like, you know, right off the bat, because that s really complicated.
3
SPEAKER_02
That starts to get into all kinds of very complicated things.
3
SPEAKER_02
It was, how do I take down a single room?
3
SPEAKER_02
And we walk as we flow through it.
3
SPEAKER_02
And then it became, well, how do I take two rooms?
3
SPEAKER_02
How do I take three rooms?
3
SPEAKER_02
How do I take a house?
3
SPEAKER_02
How do I take a compound of three houses?
3
SPEAKER_02
How do I take a village?
3
SPEAKER_02
So it was a crawl, walk, run mentality all the time.
3
SPEAKER_02
And then structure and discipline and the way we trained.
3
SPEAKER_02
Everything was built up that way from shooting.
3
SPEAKER_02
Oftentimes I was a marksmanship instructor.
4
SPEAKER_00
instructor and I ve trained some other people to shoot and they re always they re a little funny because the very first thing to do when I train anybody to shoot is you shoot at the you know at the three yard line.
4
SPEAKER_00
A little black dot and we re shooting at the three yard line and they re like hey man this is stupid.
4
SPEAKER_00
I m like, no, you re not.
4
SPEAKER_00
You re learning the repetition that you need to effectively pull your weapon out and get a positive sight picture, trigger squeeze, release that round, second sight picture, and follow through so that we can do that over and over and over again until, you know, at that whatever point, you know, you re shooting from 50, 100 yards or
4
SPEAKER_00
So all of that comes together to create small victories and repetition, structure, and discipline that all come together to be successful.
4
SPEAKER_01
How does someone create that for themselves when they re not in the military?
4
SPEAKER_00
Or not on a sports team?
4
SPEAKER_00
When I left, so what I began to realize, so overcome
4
SPEAKER_00
When I wrote The Trident, which was my first book, it was just the story.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s a story, it s my story of a young punk kid who did well enough to become an officer or a leader and then totally failed because of ego and arrogance, got a second chance and then redeemed himself and then got wounded and kind of realized there was another level of leadership.
4
SPEAKER_00
And when people would read that, people would say, how d you do that?
4
SPEAKER_00
And I couldn t definitively answer that question.
4
SPEAKER_00
So Overcome became, I mean it took, Overcome came out in I think five years after I wrote The Trident because it took that long to kind of think about what enabled that.
4
SPEAKER_00
And a lot of that had to do with when I got out of the military, I missed that structure and discipline.
4
SPEAKER_00
I missed
4
SPEAKER_00
You know, a lot of people don t understand that the military is sometimes a really simple existence, especially when you re deployed.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like when you re in the combat zone, it s a very simple existence.
4
SPEAKER_00
You eat, you sleep, you work out, and then you train and conduct missions.
4
SPEAKER_00
And you worry about the guys around you.
4
SPEAKER_00
And the real world s really complicated.
4
SPEAKER_00
There s all these distractions.
4
SPEAKER_00
There s no one that gives you the guidance.
4
SPEAKER_00
No one hands you a mission and says, hey man, this is what you re doing today.
4
SPEAKER_00
You gotta figure out your own mission.
4
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
4
SPEAKER_00
And as I got out, I realized that I had to figure out my own mission.
4
SPEAKER_00
And all these things were not there.
4
SPEAKER_00
So I started with, okay, so how was I successful coming out of these injuries?
4
SPEAKER_00
Because that s what everybody wanted to see.
4
SPEAKER_00
How were you so positive?
4
SPEAKER_00
How did you write that sign on the door?
4
SPEAKER_00
How did you, you know, lessen
4
SPEAKER_00
a year and a half after your injuries, launch a nonprofit.
4
SPEAKER_00
How did you later create your own speaking company and all these things?
4
SPEAKER_00
And I realized that I was super balanced as a leader when I was wounded.
4
SPEAKER_00
When you were wounded?
4
SPEAKER_00
When I was wounded.
4
SPEAKER_00
I wasn t prior to being wounded.
4
SPEAKER_00
Really?
4
SPEAKER_00
Not when I had the leadership failure.
4
SPEAKER_00
And at other points in crisis in my life, I realized I wasn t as balanced.
4
SPEAKER_01
I think I saw one of your videos recently talking about the key to successful leadership is balance.
4
SPEAKER_00
It is.
4
SPEAKER_00
I believe it.
4
SPEAKER_00
But balance is a misnomer, too, because it s not like, well, I put 20% in this bucket and this bucket and this bucket.
4
SPEAKER_00
I teach something called the Pentagon of Peak Performance, so five key areas that a leader should be balanced in.
4
SPEAKER_00
The foundational level is physical leadership.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it s something that I ve come to find that all of us, as we get older, have a tendency to let slide.
4
SPEAKER_00
We do the opposite of probably what we should be doing.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s becoming harder.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, because as we get older, we re breaking down.
4
SPEAKER_00
We need to take care of ourselves better.
4
SPEAKER_00
than we do when we re younger, where your body s so much more resilient.
4
SPEAKER_00
And that s why I tell people, as a leader, you need a lot of energy.
4
SPEAKER_00
You need to be able to think clearly.
4
SPEAKER_00
You need sound mind in everything that you re doing.
4
SPEAKER_00
So that foundational level of physical leadership is critical to what you re doing.
4
SPEAKER_00
And that consists of sleep, nutrition, and fitness.
4
SPEAKER_00
So those three components.
4
SPEAKER_00
my physical leadership saved my life when I was wounded.
4
SPEAKER_00
Now, for most people, hopefully, you re never at that level, but in some ways, right now, you look at today, but for the most part, it is individuals who are not healthy that are having the greatest problems.
4
SPEAKER_00
and those with a stronger immune system seem to be doing better.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it s like that with other diseases.
4
SPEAKER_00
So once again, physical leadership to have the energy and the ability, we manage stress better.
4
SPEAKER_00
So that s the foundational level.
4
SPEAKER_00
Number two was mental leadership.
4
SPEAKER_00
And when I became a junior officer and I was super arrogant, I really thought I knew everything.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I didn t challenge my beliefs.
4
SPEAKER_00
I didn t question my own capabilities.
4
SPEAKER_00
Do as I say, not as I do.
4
SPEAKER_00
I didn t do things to get out of my comfort zone.
4
SPEAKER_00
And those are the things that make up mental leadership.
4
SPEAKER_00
Constantly educating ourselves.
4
SPEAKER_00
Constantly challenging our beliefs.
4
SPEAKER_00
We re in a day and age where it s dangerous, in my opinion, because social media feeds you the information that you like to see.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so many people don t go seek out
4
SPEAKER_00
they don t challenge that belief system of what they re being fed.
4
SPEAKER_00
So it only furthers their belief in things that may or may not be true, but because you keep clicking on that line of thought, you re being fed all that information.
4
SPEAKER_00
The news is no different.
4
SPEAKER_00
The media, people watch what they like to see, and it s very biased in this day and age.
4
SPEAKER_00
So mental leadership is constantly challenging your beliefs.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s doing your due diligence to
4
SPEAKER_00
Find out what s really true and how does it play into who I am and what I m trying to do.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s getting outside of your comfort zone.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s finding the individuals who are where you want to be and identifying them as mentors so you can be better, so that you re not surrounding yourself with individuals who are pulling you away from where you want to go.
4
SPEAKER_00
Number three, and this is the biggest one and my weakest point, and that s something I found about the Pentagon.
4
SPEAKER_00
Most people have one area that they re super strong, naturally, and then they have an area where they re super weak.
4
SPEAKER_00
And my weakest area was emotional leadership.
4
SPEAKER_00
And emotional leadership is our ability to maintain.
4
SPEAKER_00
As a leader, it s critical to be even keeled.
4
SPEAKER_00
We re not too hot.
4
SPEAKER_00
We re not too cold.
4
SPEAKER_00
We re not too excited.
4
SPEAKER_00
We re not too angry.
4
SPEAKER_00
Because people can count on you with that consistency.
4
SPEAKER_00
They know as a leader, I can come to you and tell you bad news.
4
SPEAKER_00
And you re going to take it well, and I can come in and tell you amazing news, and you re not going to burn it down drinking and being an idiot.
4
SPEAKER_00
You ve got to ride that balance.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I really struggled with that, because I was an emotional roller coaster when I was younger.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I came to realize that that really damaged my credibility as a leader.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it s also choosing that positivity in the face of negativity.
4
SPEAKER_00
Nobody wants that leader that is just an emotional train wreck or a negative Nelly.
4
SPEAKER_00
They want that leader who they can count on, that s positive, that s going to push you forward.
4
SPEAKER_00
They also don t want that leader that s something I call a leadership wrecking ball.
4
SPEAKER_00
a leader who they re all about the result, but they leave a path of destruction behind them.
4
SPEAKER_00
They ll crush you in their path to get things done.
4
SPEAKER_00
And that, in my opinion, is weak emotional leadership also.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, as a leader, we got to think about the others.
4
SPEAKER_00
The health of others, yes.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then for the last point, well, the last part of emotional leadership is,
4
SPEAKER_00
managing our mouths, because- Our mouth?
4
SPEAKER_00
Our mouth.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, because so many people- So true.
4
SPEAKER_00
So many people, and I was guilty of this, and I m not impervious to this.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like I said, this is my weakest area, but I m really aware of myself now, because when we let that zinger fly, 90% of the time, it doesn t do anything to further what we re trying to accomplish as a leader.
4
SPEAKER_00
All it does is massages our ego, you know?
4
SPEAKER_00
Well, I was angry in the moment, so I wanted to say this.
4
SPEAKER_00
I see this in relationships all the time.
4
SPEAKER_00
Husband and wife that let these zingers fly.
4
SPEAKER_00
It does nothing to further that situation in a positive way.
4
SPEAKER_00
No.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s part of being a leader also.
4
SPEAKER_00
Right.
4
SPEAKER_00
That people are going to disagree with you.
4
SPEAKER_00
So what?
4
SPEAKER_00
You know, if you have conviction in who you are, it s just going to happen.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, in this world.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
Another Navy SEAL that I had on, Chad Wright said,
4
SPEAKER_01
Your tongue is like a rudder in a boat.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s like whatever you speak, it s gonna start guiding you in that direction or influencing you in certain directions in your life.
4
SPEAKER_01
So make sure you really use your words correctly based on where you wanna go.
4
SPEAKER_01
Kind of back to the no negativity.
4
SPEAKER_01
If you re negative, it s gonna affect you and take you down a negative path in your life.
4
SPEAKER_01
Feeling that way emotionally, you re gonna attract negative people.
4
SPEAKER_01
So you made that decision in that moment.
5
SPEAKER_01
to speak differently, use words differently, which I think was powerful.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_01
Okay, so that was three.
5
SPEAKER_01
Number four?
5
SPEAKER_00
Social leadership.
5
SPEAKER_01
Social leadership.
5
SPEAKER_00
How do we build the rings of influence around us?
5
SPEAKER_00
So, and I break that down into four rings of influence.
5
SPEAKER_00
The outermost ring is our work relationships.
5
SPEAKER_00
The innermost ring is a lot of times our work acquaintances slash friends.
5
SPEAKER_00
The third ring is our close friends.
5
SPEAKER_00
And then that bullseye is our immediate family.
5
SPEAKER_00
And in Western culture, there s a tendency to put a whole lot of time and effort into the two outermost rings, our work relationships and our work friends and acquaintances.
5
SPEAKER_00
And we have a tendency to take for granted our close friends and our family.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
5
SPEAKER_00
And we think they ll always be there for us.
5
SPEAKER_00
But when a major crisis comes, when you re on the X, that may or may not be true because that s when everything is being pressure tested.
5
SPEAKER_00
And if you haven t put the time and effort into your immediate family, then oftentimes it will break.
5
SPEAKER_00
And Jimmy Hatch, a friend of mine, described it like this.
5
SPEAKER_00
We all ride on trains in this life.
5
SPEAKER_00
I rode on the SEAL train, you rode on the football train.
5
SPEAKER_00
And we never know, all of us hope that someday we ll get to wherever we want to get off.
5
SPEAKER_00
For some of us, it s the end of the tracks, for others, there s a specific stop they want to get off on.
5
SPEAKER_00
But sometimes there s a catastrophic event that occurs in our life and we get thrown off the train.
5
SPEAKER_00
And those outermost rings don t get off with you because they re still on the train.
5
SPEAKER_00
And it s not that they don t like you or anything like that, they re just still riding the football train or the SEAL train and you re no longer on it.
5
SPEAKER_00
but who gets off with you is your close friends and family.
5
SPEAKER_00
And so often I have watched individuals that get into a major crisis and you also know so many successful people that have been super successful but got to the end of their career or even the end of their lives and said, why didn t I put more time into my family?
5
SPEAKER_00
That s true.
5
SPEAKER_00
So social leadership is making sure that we are investing in those relationships to be ready.
5
SPEAKER_00
The key question I ask everybody is, will you be ready?
5
SPEAKER_00
For what?
5
SPEAKER_00
It doesn t matter.
5
SPEAKER_00
Will you be ready for that moment when it comes?
5
SPEAKER_00
Because we don t know what that moment is.
5
SPEAKER_00
So that balance enables us to be ready for almost anything.
5
SPEAKER_00
Having a mindset of the next ambush is out on the horizon.
5
SPEAKER_00
If I maintain balance, if I have a leadership mindset of being ready for it, I ll be ready for it no matter what it is.
5
SPEAKER_00
It doesn t mean it s going to hurt less, but at least I ll be ready for it to drive forward, but it takes those things.
5
SPEAKER_00
That s why I was so successful.
5
SPEAKER_00
what I got wounded.
5
SPEAKER_00
I was balanced in those areas.
5
SPEAKER_00
The last one is spiritual leadership.
5
SPEAKER_00
And for me, faith played a part of that.
5
SPEAKER_00
But for others, I tell them it s our ability to get outside of ourselves and have perspective in this life, that what you re going through
5
SPEAKER_00
We all live in our own personal hell when we re in a crisis, but spiritual leadership enables us to recognize that there are a whole lot of other people out there that are going through much worse than you are.
5
SPEAKER_00
And if you can do things to get outside of yourself and recognize there s a great big world out there, that what you re going through is temporary, even though it s painful, super painful, you will get to the other side and
5
SPEAKER_00
and be able to get beyond it.
5
SPEAKER_00
And what I talk about is that if you re alive, man, it s a gift.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s a gift.
5
SPEAKER_00
And it may be hard.
5
SPEAKER_00
It may be tough, but it s still a good day.
5
SPEAKER_00
And it s up to you to drive forward to get off that X. So I have a motto.
5
SPEAKER_00
No bad days.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
You know, because I m still here.
5
SPEAKER_01
That s right, man.
5
SPEAKER_01
No bad days.
5
SPEAKER_01
What do you think is the skills that we should learn to master more to help us reach at the top of our field, our industry, or to set us up to be prepared when that ambush comes?
5
SPEAKER_01
So we stay ready, we don t have to get ready.
5
SPEAKER_00
So it comes, in my opinion, it comes back to four key things, which I call the point man principles.
5
SPEAKER_01
Point man principles.
5
SPEAKER_00
Last year I wrote a planner called the point man planner.
5
SPEAKER_00
And it came about because I got really sick.
5
SPEAKER_00
And while I was really sick, they were trying to figure out what was wrong with me.
5
SPEAKER_00
I had a parasite and a blood disorder that attacked my central nervous system, and I was super messed up.
5
SPEAKER_00
I thought I was dying, to be honest.
5
SPEAKER_00
And at one point, I was like, man, I wish I had a point man, like when I was in the SEAL teams to lead me out of some of these bad situations.
5
SPEAKER_00
And it made me think, well, why?
5
SPEAKER_00
What made them so effective?
5
SPEAKER_00
And when we were talking about what makes the SEALs effective,
5
SPEAKER_00
Like it became really clear to me that a really good point man, a lot of shields live their life in this way and there s four principles and I think this is how anybody out there.
5
SPEAKER_00
Can be effective and bring their game to the highest level number one.
5
SPEAKER_00
a relentless belief in your mission.
5
SPEAKER_00
And there s a lot of people who don t know what their mission is.
5
SPEAKER_00
They ve never written it down.
5
SPEAKER_00
They ve never defined it.
5
SPEAKER_00
And if you write down your mission, it s got to be built on the foundation of your values.
5
SPEAKER_00
And there s a lot of people that don t know what their values are.
5
SPEAKER_00
They ll tell you cliche things.
5
SPEAKER_00
They ll say, you know, faith, family, finance, fitness.
5
SPEAKER_00
But when you hear those things, you re like,
5
SPEAKER_00
Dude, you haven t been in church in two years, you haven t been in a gym, I haven t seen you in a gym this year.
5
SPEAKER_00
You know, we just throw these things out there and understanding, because whether you know what your values are or not, know what your values are or not, they are driving you and they re driving your decision making.
5
SPEAKER_00
Right.
5
SPEAKER_00
So if one of your values maybe is fame or recognition,
5
SPEAKER_00
that s okay, you should be aware of it.
5
SPEAKER_00
It doesn t mean it s a negative thing, unless you re stabbing somebody else in the back to get it.
5
SPEAKER_00
But knowing that is important, because now you can build your mission in this life upon it.
5
SPEAKER_00
Because my mission now, now that I m out of the SEAL teams, it s about setting that example as a leader.
5
SPEAKER_00
I want people to regard me as a point man for my own life, someone that they want to learn from, someone that is a leader, that sets the example, that communicates well.
5
SPEAKER_00
So that has become my new mission.
5
SPEAKER_00
Number two is a clearly defined destination and a set course.
5
SPEAKER_00
So in the military, we always knew exactly where we were going.
5
SPEAKER_00
And in life, people often don t.
5
SPEAKER_00
In life, people say, well, I want to be rich or I want to be in better shape.
5
SPEAKER_00
Well, those are not clearly defined things.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s kind of like saying, I want to go west.
5
SPEAKER_00
If I needed to go someplace, you know?
5
SPEAKER_00
So a clearly defined destination.
5
SPEAKER_00
In the military, we use something called the universal transverse Mercator system.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s a grid system that covers the entire earth.
5
SPEAKER_00
And it breaks it down into a- It s the exact point.
5
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
5
SPEAKER_00
A one meter square, almost the size of this table.
5
SPEAKER_00
Wow, really?
5
SPEAKER_00
Yep.
5
SPEAKER_00
That s crazy.
5
SPEAKER_00
In the whole world.
5
SPEAKER_00
Well, all the way, the North and South Poles become an issue.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, sure.
5
SPEAKER_00
But yeah, all the way, almost to the North and South Poles.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yes, where most of the people live.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
5
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
5
SPEAKER_00
So when we identify a target, it s broken down usually all the way to that 10 digit grid, meaning a one by one meter square.
5
SPEAKER_01
Wow, that s crazy.
5
SPEAKER_00
So a very clearly defined destination, and that enables us to not have any deviation, you know, and we re not going west, we know exactly where we re going.
5
SPEAKER_00
And then the second part of it is a clearly defined course.
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And that course is a bearing on how we get there, or how we follow our compass to get there.
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Most people may have one, but they don t have the other.
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And you can t get to where you re going without having both.
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They may have the destination, but not know the how to get there.
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That s right.
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Because the course becomes the how-to.
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It becomes our waypoints.
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Like, I give the example of when I wanted to be a SEAL as a kid, I knew that was my destination.
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That was a very clearly defined destination.
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And the course was all the things that I had to do.
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So I had to enlist in the Navy.
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I had to get accepted.
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I had to get a SEAL contract.
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I had to physically pass the SEAL screening test.
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I had to academically pass the ASVAB score with a high enough score to get picked up for SEALs.
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I had to get a SEAL rating.
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I had to graduate from my A school.
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I had to get the SEAL training.
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I had to make it through SEAL training.
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I had to make it through Hell Week.
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All these things were waypoints on the course.
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So if people can break their goals down in this manner, and I break them down in the point man planner quarterly, and then every day we make sure I do something called the rule of three Ps, one physical, one personal, one professional, every day we re moving the needle just a little bit.
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towards those goals, that s how we stay on course.
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Number three of the point man principles is risk assessment and situational awareness.
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So many people walk through life totally blind.
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When we talk about will you be ready, they re not ready for the ambushes that are coming and oftentimes they never see them coming even though
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the signs were there.
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So one, are we regularly doing
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of where we are in our life.
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Are we still balanced?
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Are we still taking care of ourselves, you know, both in the Pentagon at peak performance?
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Are we making sure that our destination is front site focus, that we re on course, that we re hitting the waypoints we should?
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So we re consistently doing a risk assessment.
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We re also looking for the indicators that an ambush is on the horizon.
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Yes.
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And so many people don t.
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So then they walk into these ambushes and they re like, oh my God, I never saw that coming.
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Okay.
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And number four, so it s risk assessment and situational awareness, right?
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Yep.
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And the fourth one?
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Is an overcome mindset to get off the X as quickly as possible.
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Overcome mindset.
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Yeah.
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So you can t, you can t prevent every ambush.
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I estimate that most people in this life will go through five, at a minimum, five major life ambushes.
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And I define a major life ambush as anything that will forever leave physical, mental, emotional, or deep financial scars.
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And you ll never fully recover from it.
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Or let me rephrase that.
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You will always carry the pain of that ambush.
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You will always look back and you will think, God, that was painful.
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It hurts when we think about it.
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And I tell people that on the lower end of the scale, it can be the ending of a relationship.
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It can be the ending of a marriage.
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Job.
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Job, personal failure, professional failure, lawsuit, bankruptcy, the failure of a business.
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It can be life-threatening illness or injury, life-threatening illness or injury to someone you love.
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It can be sexual trauma to you or someone you love.
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And then at the higher ends, it starts to get into the loss of a loved one or one of the highest I ve seen is the loss of a child.
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Oh, man.
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Yeah, that s tough.
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So having a mindset of readiness and knowing that unfortunately those things could happen, and I teach something called the REACT methodology, so it s a system to use when these ambushes come.
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What s that system?
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So REACT is an acronym for
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When an ambush comes, the very first thing we have to do is recognize that we are in a crisis.
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And it goes back to what we were talking about in the beginning.
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When you re on the X, there s a natural tendency to procrastinate and deny and look at the past or the future.
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It s hard to recognize, yeah.
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It s usually the hardest, and depending on the level of ambush.
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And I want to make sure that people understand
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if you lose a child, timeline is relative.
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I don t expect you to, you know, it s gonna take time to get off the edge from losing a child.
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But also recognizing that you re already thinking, I can t lay here forever.
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Like I have to... Some point get up, yeah.
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Exactly.
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So number one, recognizing you re in a crisis or recognizing the reality is what I say.
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Number two is evaluate your assets.
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So when we are hit by a life ambush, by any kind of crisis or catastrophic event, it s natural to feel totally overwhelmed in the moment because your world has just come to a grinding halt for whatever it is.
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It s like you suddenly stepped into a raging storm.
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You re in the darkness.
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You re trying to figure out what s happening in this chaos with the wind howling and lightning and thunder and people beating on you.
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And it s overwhelming.
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And we tend to think, you know, there s no hope.
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There s nothing I can do.
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It s all outside of my control.
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But we have to, in that moment, figure out how we control what we can.
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And one of the first things we can do is evaluate what assets do I have to bring to bear to this project.
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I also talk about it s like tools in our toolbox.
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So what can I either buy, borrow, use that I already have?
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If it s a business crisis, it may be an accountant, or an attorney, or it may be advisors, or a board, or maybe whoever that s helping you to get out of this crisis.
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you know, outsourcing someone that has specialties that help you deal with whatever problem you re in.
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If it s a personal crisis, maybe it s a relationship crisis, so it could be a marriage counselor, a priest, or, you know, whatever it is.
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Having those things, though, makes you suddenly say, okay, this is crisis, but I can deal with it.
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Sure.
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Number three is assess possible options and outcomes.
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And what usually tends to happen when we go, the slowest part is A, recognizing, B, starting to gather, hey, I have tools or I have what s in my inventory to deal with this.
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And then there tends to be this tendency, if you will, to suddenly rush.
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Like, oh my God, this sucks.
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I want to get off the X and I have these tools, so let me,
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Let me use these to get out of here as quickly as possible.
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And I tell people, you got to slow down.
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You got to take a tactical pause in the military, we called it, let the battlefield develop.
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And look at all the outcomes.
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Yeah, all the outcomes and also maybe there are things that are happening that you haven t seen yet.
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Behind the scenes, yeah.
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So getting your team together, whoever is helping you, whoever s part of this inventory, this is where we now assess both the short term and the long term impact of the decisions that we re going to make.
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Okay.
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And the C?
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Choose and communicate.
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So you choose the direction you re going to go and you communicate it to the people around you.
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You re never on the X by yourself.
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The X has its own gravitational pull, any kind of life ambush.
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So if you are in a, if it s a personal ambush, your family, your kids, your friends get pulled on the X with you.
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If it s a business ambush, your team, believe it or not, even your clients can get pulled on the X with you.
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So it s important that we choose and then communicate because
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Frequently as a leader, especially when we re in a crisis, sometimes we wanna internalize and we don t want to, even though everybody around us can see, you re in a storm, man, you re on the edge.
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But it s important to communicate for three different reasons.
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Number one, when we communicate, we verbalize what we re gonna do.
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And there s a level, and there s that lead yourself level of internal accountability.
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When we say we re gonna do something, now it s like, yes, this is what I m doing.
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Number two, it tells others and they re like, oh my God, yes, we have a plan.
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This sucks, let s go.
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And that third component of that is hope.
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It gives people hope.
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It s like a positive direction.
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Yes, we have a plan.
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This is where we re going.
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And then the last one is take action.
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Execute on that plan.
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There are so many people who will go through this process and then they re waiting for the perfect moment.
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And the perfect moment is never going to come.
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The time to act is now.
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Imperfect action is better than waiting for this perfect plan.
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And it creates momentum.
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It gets you off that X. And you may go from one X to the next, and that happens sometimes, but use that momentum to keep going.
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I hope you enjoyed today s episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness.
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Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today s episode with all the important links.
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And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our greatness plus channel exclusively on Apple podcasts.
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Share this with a friend on social media, and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well.
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Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review.
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I really love hearing feedback from you, and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward.
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And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately, that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter.
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And now, it s time to go out there and do something great.