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Proven Podcast
Navy SEAL Mind Techniques That Work
01:08:52
In this episode, Charles plunges into the battlefield of purpose and mental mastery with Garrett Unclebach, a former Navy SEAL who's transformed elite military tactics into powerful business and life strategies. Garrett reveals his playbook for...
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- [00:00]
Charles Schwartz
Hey prime members, Are you tired of ads interfering with your favorite podcasts?
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Garrett Unclebach
Good news.
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Charles Schwartz
With Amazon Music, you have access to.
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Garrett Unclebach
The largest catalog of ad free top.
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Charles Schwartz
Podcasts included with your prime membership. To start listening, download the Amazon Music app for free or go to Amazon.com ADFreePodcasts that's Amazon.com ADFreeP Podcasts to catch up on the latest episodes without the.
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- [00:56]
Charles Schwartz
Welcome to the I Am Charles Schwartz Show. In this episode we explore the power of mental mastery with former Navy SEAL Garrett Uncle Bach. As a combat veteran who's transitioned into leadership training and entrepreneurship, Garrett shares battle tested techniques for maintaining calm under extreme pressure and finding purpose that drives sustainable success. From the SEAL Big four metal techniques to practical approaches for self regulation, Garrett breaks down actionable strategies anyone can use to overcome challenges. We dive into how visualization, intentional breathing, self talk and breaking tasks into manageable segments can transform your performance in business and life. If you've ever wondered how elite operators maintain composure when everything's falling apart, or how to find deeper purpose beyond simple motivation, this conversation delivers remarkable insights. Be prepared to challenge your current thinking about resilience and discover methods that can help you thrive under pressure rather than just survive. Grab a notebook. These practical mental mastery techniques are worth revisiting long after our conversation ends. The show starts now. Welcome to the I Am Charles Schwartz.
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Co-Host
Show where we don't just discuss success, we show you how to create it.
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Charles Schwartz
On every episode, we uncover the strategies and tactics that turned everyday entrepreneurs into unstoppable powerhouses in their businesses and their lives.
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Co-Host
Whether your goal is to transform your.
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Charles Schwartz
Life or hit that elusive seven, eight.
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Co-Host
Or nine figure mark, we've got the.
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Charles Schwartz
Blueprint to get you there. The show starts now.
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Co-Host
All right everybody, welcome back to the show. I am really excited about this one. This is an individual who's coming on who builds men and he talks about purpose and can really change your life and has done Things that I could only dream of. So first and foremost, welcome to the show.
- [02:34]
Garrett Unclebach
Oh, Charles, I'm honored. Thank you for having me. Appreciate that intro. You know, I was built by a great man. People, a lot of people look at me and they go like, oh, you know, Navy seal. Wow, right? That's so impressive. And one of the first things I like to remind people of, whether it's on a podcast or I'm in front of a small audience or a large audience, and I'll tell them, I say, look, the things that you think of me as a Navy SEAL has nothing to do with me. Right? Yes, I did go through their program, of course, but the reputation that the seals have, they had it before I ever got there. Right. And all I get to do is help uphold that. I get to be a part of it. Really. What you think of Navy seals? I didn't make that reputation, but I do get to walk in and. And I take that as a. It's a weight. One of my instructors early on, you know, in SEAL training, he pulled me to the side, pulled a few of us to the side. And one of the things they would always start, kind of all of these, like, mentorship talks with, is they would preface with, in the unlikely event you make it through training, because they're talking, which is like a great way to start every conversation. They would say, in the unlikely event that you make it through training, and then they'll give you some wisdom, right? Wisdom for the SEAL teams. And he said, for the rest of your life, this will be a curse, right, that you're a seal. And he didn't mean that in a negative way. A curse usually implies a negative thing. What he meant was, you'll carry this for the rest of your life, and wherever you go, people will compare themselves to you. People will count it as a great victory if they can just beat you in a game of ping pong. I say that to say, I know where I've come from and I know what's built me. The SEAL teams helped built me. And having a great father in my life who spoke into me, who cared for me, who was consistent, who took me everywhere that he went, has helped shape me into who I am. And so one of the things I'm so passionate about is helping men become not just men, but be great men. I got the opportunity to do that, mentoring students going into the SEAL program, and now I do that with guys today, helping them deploy into life in their greatest capacity.
- [04:31]
Co-Host
I love that you bring that humility as your forefront you know, we talked about, you know, when we talked about privately, because whenever we connect with people, we always have an intro call and we talk. And I think you and I had one of the longer calls I had. And I remember we. We chatted about, you know, being the last person to pick up the sword. That is like, listen, I don't. I don't want to fight. And every person I've ever known who's an operator, who's ever served is always like, listen, please do everything possible. Do everything possible. So you don't send me my. My brothers. Don't make me pick up the sword, because if I do, I'm going to wreck some shit.
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Garrett Unclebach
But big fan of Teddy Roosevelt's foreign policy. Yes.
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Co-Host
Big fan of Teddy Roosevelt, period. So it's arguably my favorite president. It's between him and Lincoln. But one of the things that. That helps you do that and we talked about a lot was purposeful. And I think you define purpose in a way, and you do it really well on your podcast as well. You talk about purpose in a way that is different than what I've heard. Other people do this, and these are things. And one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you was the fact that these aren't ideas, these aren't concepts. These have been proven where nothing else matters. And one of the examples I give to that is there's an individual named Chris Voss. He's the former head of the FBI's hustle negotiation team. And Chris is a great guy. And we talked about negotiation, and I was learning negotiation at the time at Harvard, and I was learning negotiation at the same time from Chris. And I was like, I'm going to go with Chris. And I remember the professor was like, why are you refuting what I'm talking about? And I was like, well, if your negotiation tactics don't work where they were born, maybe I don't get 5% on the deal. Maybe I'm off. If his don't work, someone dies. So I'm going to go with that. So a lot of what you were taught has been proven where if this doesn't work, someone doesn't come home.
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Garrett Unclebach
Right.
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Co-Host
So having these. This proven way of doing things, especially when it talks of purpose, is huge. And it's one of the major reasons I want to bring you on. So if you could. Could you kind of describe how you entail purpose and where it comes from?
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Garrett Unclebach
Yes. Well, one of the things that's going to have a big influence, you know, I love this understanding that we're Both a physical and a spiritual creature. And, you know, if you haven't experienced that in your life, there's an encounter coming for you where you'll begin to figure that out, where we're more than just a piece of flesh. And so that's something that you have to wrestle with. And, and people put different terms and different meanings and different beliefs behind that. But your beliefs are going to shape your life greatly. And there's a, there's a nature, there's a part of the world that we can put clear terms on, that we can call science, that we can call fact. And there's also things that we can't really explain. We still struggle to explain how the brain works. We still struggle to fully explain how gravity works. So there's things that we know and there's things that we don't. And what you believe about the things that you can't call certain is going to have a massive impact on your life. My personal definition for beliefs is the things that you know are true but can't prove. Right. And I mean prove in a scientific sense. Right. Verifiable, demonstrable, repeatable. There's things that you can scientifically prove and there's things that you can't scientifically prove. I would say one of them. And some people believe themselves to be lucky, right? And this is. Beliefs inform your, your perspective and perspective is going to shape your life. You may believe yourself to be lucky, you may not believe yourself to be lucky. There's some evidence that you can put around that, but you can't necessarily frame it specifically. And for my own life, one of the beliefs that I've had, and this is something that my parents said to me all the time as a little kid, you know, and this is just a great little nugget for you if you have kids, is you have a great ability to influence them by the things that you repeatedly say. I can go back and look at my dad, I can look at some coaches, some men who helped shape my life, and I can kind of like put them in a box of five or ten quotes that they said all the time. And so if you have little kids, you know, there were things that my dad said when I was 5 years old and it didn't mean anything to a 5 year old. I couldn't comprehend the sentence he was telling me. But he said the same thing from when I was 5 until I was 25. And when I was 25, thinking, I've been hearing this for 20 years, I've seen it be consistent in his life, and now it's showing up consistent in mine. It starts to have a little bit more impact. So one of the great things you can do in your children is plant those seeds in them. One of the things that I heard all the time growing up is two things, right? And I call this the infinite potential unlock. This is what propelled me through the SEAL teams. This is what pushed me into some of the new areas I'm in today. And it's two beliefs, right? Remember, beliefs are things that you know are true but can't prove. And beliefs are going to shape your life. Number one belief. My parents would say it to me all the time. They'd say, God has a plan for your life, right? Meaning that, like, I. There's a reason that I'm alive. I may not know what it is, but there is a reason. There's something that you're supposed to do. And that purpose informs, like a sense of duty. I like the way Charlie Kirk says it. He says, there is a God and it's not you. The way I would say it is, you have a purpose, and the purpose isn't about you, but there is a purpose that you have. And so if you kind of grow up thinking that way, it almost sends you on somewhat of the hero's journey of, like, man. There's something that I'm supposed to do. There's a part that I'm supposed to play. There's people that I'm supposed to serve. I don't know what it is. So I should develop myself to prepare for this moment. One of my favorite Abraham Lincoln quotes is, I will prepare and my time will come. Lincoln knew there was a purpose on his life. He didn't know what it was. He knew he was supposed to be great, and so he prepared for us. That's the first thing my parents would say to me all the time. God has a great plan for your life. The second thing they would say to me is, you can have anything you want in life if you're willing to pay the price for it. And some people may not say that's true. I wrote a paper in high school about a quote that shaped my life. Henry Ford said, whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right. That's a belief. And I wrote my. I didn't. I didn't do well in school because I always ended up arguing with my teachers. And I wrote a paper my senior year in high school about that quote. And my teacher said, that's not true. And I said, you're right. It's all like. It's all I could say to her. I said, you're right. Because if you don't believe that, it's not true for you, for me, I accepted that and I said, this is true. I can have anything I want in life if I'm willing to pay the price for it, like Henry Ford says, I think I can, right? So I'm going to go down that road. And when you put those things together, that I have purpose and that I have potential, right? You're not owed anything. No one's going to give you anything. But you have potential. When you know you have purpose and you know you have potential, you become infinitely capable to go out and do what you've been put on the earth to do with the understanding that, hey, it's not about me.
- [10:51]
Co-Host
I think, you know, it goes back to the idea that there's a bunch of people go out there and what you say matters. And some of us have been given the gift of faith. Some of us have not. So it's always fun to have this conversation where it intertwined with each other. But if I sat down and I said, hey, I can't lose weight. I can't lose weight. I can't lose weight. I can't lose weight. And then he's trying to go, why can't I lose weight? And I'm like, well, your belief is that you can't lose weight. If you're like, I can't stop smoking. I can't stop smoking. I can't stop smoking. If you keep saying that over and over again. Your beliefs, as you said multiple times, influence your life. One of the things that is ridiculously impressive for what I know of your community, is the ability to embrace the suck, to somehow push through that. And when you're doing these exercises, especially because the seals are known for this, and this is a burden, as you said, you carry. So everyone's like, how do you do this? How do you continue to make it through each one of these evolutions? And how do you make it through Hell Week? And how do you make it through phase one and phase Two and phase three when your body has completely given up, when it's just. It's not. You're running on fumes? I think it's the biggest question I always get because I've done it on a much, much smaller level. I will never compare myself to any. Anyone who's ever been an operator, especially for the United States. That is a different evolution of humanity. And I'm. I'm just. I'm not. I haven't. That's not me.
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Garrett Unclebach
I ain't got that.
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Co-Host
But I've done triathlons, and I'm just being honest, I don't got that. I've been to Coronado. I put my feet in the water. I'm like, nope, let me go back to the hotel.
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Garrett Unclebach
So a lot of people, yeah, that.
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Co-Host
Oh, that water's cold. And I ice bath almost every day. So in this narrative, when you're, when you're doing this and you know, when I'm so. I do triathlons and I understand that after I get off the bike, it's purely a mental game at that point. And you just play a juggle. You're just juggling around different games and you're doing different things. You're distracting your mind. And there are times during the run because for anybody who doesn't know triathlons, you go swim, bike, run. That's just. It is what it is. The swim fries your upper body, the bike fries your lower body. And then your run is just pure mental at that point, no matter what the distance is, when you're going to push through that. Because the ability to have mental mastery is so important when you're doing that. When you've trained people and when you've done it yourself, what are some of the tactical ways that you've done it? What are the practical ways that you're going to into this and say, hey, I need to push through this. How do you handle those mental games?
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Garrett Unclebach
Yeah, great, great question. There's a lot of stuff for us to jump off into that one. It's, you know, people ask all the time. They're asking, hey, what's this especially related to SEAL training? You know, people ask me about hard things, or I have a lot of. We call them tadpoles, right? You want to become a frogman. It's a colloquialism for a Navy seal. You want to become a frogman. So we call these guys tadpoles. Tadpoles want to be frogmen. A lot of tadpoles, they'll ask me, they'll say, like, man, what's the secret? What's the secret to buds? And if you're asking what the secret is, you're asking for the hack. You're asking, how could it not be hard, right? What do I need to do to so that I can do it? And so really this relates to, like, anything that you'll do hard in life. Most people aren't going to try to go through SEAL training. But everyone I know has been put up against something that's very challenging for them. So let me. I will talk through some of the simples, and then I will talk through some of, like, my favorite part, and I think some of your favorite part too, Charles, is really some of, like, the philosophy and the thinking behind doing these things. Well, for one, every single person that I saw quit in seal, like, in Hell Week, specifically in Hell Week, but more so in SEAL training was that there was a common denominator because of the way I grew up. And some of the people I grew up around. I was questioning people in my class like, hey, why are you thinking this way? Like, what's helping you prepare for this? And they would just are like, what the heck are you talking about? You know, I was qu. A lot of these things I studied and questioned as I was going through. But I saw a great common denominator in people who completed training and people who did not get through Hell Week, which is like the hardest part of SEAL training. Just really quick, like, it starts on Sunday, goes all the way till Friday. So you're going to be awake for five and a half days. You'll sleep a maximum of two hours. In that five and a half days, you'll run over 200 miles. Most of that with a boat on your head, wearing a full uniform on the beach. It's tough, right? Go watch the Buds Class 234 Discovery Channel documentary if you want to see more about that. But anyways, people get through this, the hardest week in military training, and you ask them why they made it. How did you do it? How did you get through the toughest week of military training? And the people who made it, they'll begin to tell you a story about something that's not them. He'll tell you about his mom. He'll tell you about somebody in his boat crew. I talked about my dad. All of them will begin to tell you some story that's not them. Talk to the people who quit, people who quit. That all of their answers I could summarize into this statement. I just decided, I don't want to do this anymore. Right?
- [15:26]
Co-Host
I think we said it when we were having our previous conversation. You talked about, hey, if anybody comes to you and they ask for the hack, you're like, yeah, you're not going to make it.
- [15:34]
Garrett Unclebach
Well, and because here's what you're trying to do, right? Or people will ask, how hard is it? And when you're asking, how hard is it? You're trying to estimate the difficulty level and then make an approximation that based upon what you say the difficulty level is, and based upon how strong I think I am, I need certainty that I could make it through this program. Right. If it's harder, you know, just put it on a scale for a second. I know I can do a 7 out of 10 difficulty. So as long as you tell me it's a seven or less, I know I can do it. And when you're trying to estimate how hard it is and you want that the answer to that, you are determining there's a point when which I will quit. Right? Right. Whether it's getting through pregnancy, whether it's launching a business, or it's going through SEAL training. If you pre determine there's a point that it would be so hard, I would walk away, there's a high likelihood that you will walk away. The other way to step into difficult things is you say, like, this is what I went into the program with. I feel like I'm supposed to be here, and I know it's possible. Right. I'm not Edmund Hillary trying to be the first person to climb Everest and wondering, is it even humanly possible? What I knew prior to me going through SEAL training is that there's a few thousand men who've done this before, so it can be done. The only question is, am I willing to pay the price? And if you have something that gives you that fuel to say, especially more than yourself, right. Money is. And this is where I kind of talk about purpose, and we'll transition to that a little bit, is like, what is that fuel for you? What's driving you? Hey, Zig Ziglar said money's not the most important thing, but it's second only to oxygen. You know what money is? Money is important. But there are things that are more important than that. And no one's willing to die for money. And my friend Charlie Keating behind me died May 3, 2016, gave his life for this country and did so with a smile on his face. He didn't do that, and he didn't have a smile about it because of the $400,000 death benefit his brand new wife was going to receive. He did it because he believed in something that was more important than himself. And so in the same way, right, if you want to go far in life, if you want to do really difficult things, you've got to attach the journey that you're on to something that's sacrificially meaningful. Right. We're all going to die. Most of us won't die from a bullet, but all of us will die for something. You will have lived your life on a journey. And what you have to answer, hopefully now and not at the end of your life, was my journey a journey worth giving my life to. Right? And the thing that I don't think anybody's willing to die for is money. Hey, we'd all like to make more money, but no one's willing to die for that. There are things in life that you would say, this is actually a thing that's worth dying for. And so you'll go far in life when you're chasing after purpose, you will limit your ability to go in life when you are either running from pain or running towards pleasure. Right? Both of those are short loops. But running towards purpose is an infinite path.
- [18:34]
Co-Host
And there's so many of us that are driven by fear, and there's so many driven by I don't want to be in pain or I don't want to. And that's a normal loop, especially in our society.
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Garrett Unclebach
And you can make a lot of progress that way.
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Co-Host
You absolutely can. But pain, I always talk about before pain won't sustain you. When I. When I was pitching as a kid, I would listen to Rage against the Machine and I would sit there and I would vibrate because I was 16 years old listening to Rage against the Machine, vibrating on the mound to throw a ball. And it worked out great. And I was like, hey, I'm gonna use this fuel source to go now, take a social studies test. I didn't. That didn't work so well. It just different. Different fuel sources and different things.
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Garrett Unclebach
And I laugh at the saying of breakups make bodybuilders, right? And it's. It's true, right? Like diet girl and they become bodybuilders. And I've known a few that they became a bodybuilder and they went three or four years down that journey and then said, well, wait, why am I even do. I got on this journey because I broke up with that girl who has nothing to do with my life anymore. I just gave four years of my life to something that was really. Just felt good because I was making progress. But this wasn't the journey I wanted to be on.
- [19:33]
Co-Host
Correct. And there's a lot of people I know on my side of the world have become multimillionaires or even billionaires who are miserable, absolutely miserable, because they were serving something that wasn't their truth in any way, shape or form. And most people don't know what their truth is because to your point, they're running away from pain, right? They're running towards pleasure. Whatever it is, whatever that dopamine fix is, be it your little iPad playing video games or stuffing stuff up your nose or drinking or chemical induced whatever it is that is going to burn you out and you're going to crash into a wall no matter which side you're on. So if someone's sitting there right now going, okay, these are two individuals that have a certain level of success and they've worked with individuals who have had an immense amount of success and have done hard things. What are the kind of the tactical steps that you walk through and you say, hey, I understand where you are now. You've been through this for. Because a lot of people come to you. A lot of people have come on your podcast and they've done coaching with you, and it's okay. I clearly have been spending my entire life running away from pain or running towards pleasure or trying to serve my own needs and be all about me. I have no clue what my truth is, which I think, you know, you would call purpose. What my truth is, I really don't know who I am as a whole outside of this person who runs away from pain or whatever it is. If they weren't blessed with a parent lottery where you had an amazing father, what do you. How do you walk them through that to say, okay, I've reached this awareness. How do I do this? How do I start pivoting my life and who I am as a being and pivoting my purpose so that I can start living the rest of my life as the best of my life.
- [20:59]
Garrett Unclebach
So I'm going to talk about. I'm going to answer that question, and I'm not going to answer it maybe the way that you want me to answer it, Charles. But I promise it's. It'll be beneficial for, for every audience member. I'm going to talk about two pieces that come from scripture, but you don't have to believe in scripture to see the truth in this. Right? Because here's where I think purpose really comes from. The way that, the way that I see it is God made us with a purpose. But if you, if you are into scripture, you'll be like, well, hold on a second. It says I have a purpose, but it doesn't say anywhere in here what mine is. Why isn't he telling me, okay, if I believe in God, why isn't he telling me what my purpose is? Why did he put me in this place and didn't tell me what it is. And that's because really, the greatness of life is discovering that. And I don't think scripture or life leaves us blank on what those things are. It's where multiple things that we have come together. And I'll talk about two things that I think will guide you into your purpose. Number one is what's in your heart, right? This is real. Like, the heart is, you know, in a biblical sense, the heart is the desire center, right? Where your treasure is, there your heart will be. Also, the things that you desire is the type of life that you're going to get, right? If what you care about most is relationships, that's the types of problems you're going to have. Right out of the heart flow the issues of life. If you like those things, you're going to get those kind of problems. If you chase money, you're going to get money problems, right? But whatever kind of things are in your heart, that's one thing that'll guide you. The other thing, I'll come back to that in a second. The other thing that's going to guide you is what's in your hand. What are the resources that you've been given. You may have wanted to be, you know, an NBA player, But if you're 5 foot 1, maybe you're supposed to take that desire to be an NBA player and do something else with it. It was a part of where it was taking you, but maybe you didn't get the resources for that. What you and I both know, Charles, is that life isn't fair, right? Some people get given more than other people. But I think what makes life beautiful is when you realize it's. I'm supposed to play my part. One of the greatest conductors, I'm blanking on his name because it's a German name that's hard to remember. And he says someone asked him what's the hardest position to fill in the orchestra? And he said, second chair. He said, everybody wants to be number one, but it's hard. And everyone knows who number three and four are. You know, you're a number three, but the hardest position to fill is the second chair. And. But what I mean, what I'm getting at is I think the greatness in life is finding the place where it's like, this is exactly where I'm supposed to be. No one else can do what I'm doing. And so I think where that comes from is unique desires in your heart and the things that are in your Hand. It's an interesting biblical story where God asked Moses a question. And if God's asking you a question or the universe is asking you a question, it's not because he needs the answer. He's knocking on your forehead saying, hey, dummy, this question's for you.
- [23:49]
Co-Host
So when it comes to those questions, I think, you know, people really want to know if they have the gift of faith or not. If they're, if they're Judeo Christian or if they're not in that ball game. They, I think people will regrettably, they're looking for hacks, they're looking for a place to start. Some people are not coming from a place of I want to cheat the system. They're coming from a place of being lost in the wilderness, going, you know, I was educated in a system that is faulty at best is the nicest way I could say it. What are some of the things that someone sits down and say, hey, you know, I'm going to journal this stuff out. I'm going to start climbing this, I'm going to start eating this elephant, which is done one bite at a time. What are some of the questions that you ask yourself and you say, okay, well, what is in my heart? Because, you know, you talked about it earlier. I'm 6 foot 202, 203 and size 13ft as a white kid. I am not dunking a basketball. It's not happening. I wanted to be an Ironman. I've got stuff, you know, 17 inch tabs. Can't run with those things. It'll blow out my leg. I'll never finish the Iron Man. It just, it is what it is. That's what I got. So when the people come in and say, okay, this is the cards I was dealt, which I think, and I think you could, you could speak to this. We far underestimate our capacity as human beings. Just, we have no idea. I think most people die with a full tank because they never really tap into anything. And even the stuff I've done, I still think I've got a 95 full tank. Even with everything I've accomplished, I barely touched my capacity. So when people are looking at this going, okay, these are my cards, you know, because life's an equation. There's constants and there's variables. I know what my constants are. I am this. I am this. I am this. I am this. Those I cannot change because those are constants. Everything else is variable. What are some of the ways and the questions when you sit down and you journal or you sit down and you work with your clients, and you sit down and you work with the people that you've had the blessing to instruct. What are some of the things. What are the processes that you walk them through in that?
- [25:43]
Garrett Unclebach
So you just mentioned one of the beliefs that you and I both share. Right. You're saying, hey, I got 95% more in the tank, and that's because Charles shares the belief that I do, that I can have anything I want as long as I'm willing to pay the price for it. Really? That's what Carol Dweck would call a growth mindset. And I had a master chief in the Navy who told me all complicated problems are just a bunch of simple problems put together. And. But until you get great at the simple problems, complicated problems will always seem complex to you. When you get really great at simple problems, you just go, oh, this is problem A, C, and F. And I know how to solve all of those individually. It just looks funky when you put them together. Right. So what? The journey that you and I both go on is us having to decide one, what is it that I want? Right. Where if you can't tell me what you want, I can't help you get anywhere that you want to go. Right. But if you'll decide, this is what I want, and I don't really know what I'm capable of, but I know I'm willing to pay whatever price is required for me.
- [26:43]
Co-Host
Yes. That. That pivot right there is so important. And this I. This is why I'm interrupting you. I don't care what people want. What are you willing to do? Like, I want to lose weight. Cool. Are you willing to go to the gym three times a day? No. Then I don't want to hear about it anymore.
- [26:56]
Garrett Unclebach
Yeah. The coaching question, the start of a progress is, what do you want? But in parentheses, what do you want that you're willing to pay the price for?
- [27:02]
Co-Host
A hundred percent. And that goes back to the things that you believe you can have whatever you want if you're willing to pay the price. And I think a lot of people don't understand what it really means to sacrifice and deal with that temporary inconvenience. Because we ban the word problems in my world, not a lot of call them problems. They're temporary inconveniences. You'll get through it. But when you go through that, knowing who you are and what your truth is, do I have the capacity in my core, in my being, If I went back when I was 20 years old to do and become what you guys and what your brothers did. Maybe, but it's not my truth in any way.
- [27:36]
Garrett Unclebach
Here's where you'll fail in your journey is have a transactional. And this is, you know, whether you believe in God or not, faith shows up in this. Because when you have a transactional relationship with success, you'll never get there. Transactional is, I will only do this.
- [27:53]
Co-Host
If I get this back.
- [27:55]
Garrett Unclebach
If this is. If this is guaranteed to return to me, right? When you have a perp, when you're going after something that leads you, that prepares in you a lifestyle, a philosophy of mindset that you would live sacrificially, what you can do is potentially get massive big bet outcomes in your life because you decided whether I win or lose. This is a pursuit worth following, right? And when you'll live in that way, only then will you reach some of these mountaintops that people aspire to. You'll never get to those great places with a transactional mindset. So you're gonna have to say, this is the thing that I'm willing to give it all to. I hope I win, but even if I lose, this was the right thing for me to pursue.
- [28:37]
Co-Host
And it's part of the process. We talk about this all the time. You know, you've got little ones and I mean, when your little one was first learning how to walk and it fell down for the fifth time, you're like, nope, that's it. I'm just gonna put in a wheelchair. Of course not. You actually said, all right, well, you keep going, keep going. But our school system says, hey, you failed, you are a failure. When we're learning how to walk, we just keep going and going and going and going. As an entrepreneur, as the person I've become in my life, I've had a wa of failures. And the only reason I've succeeded is because I failed. I cannot succeed my way to success. I can only fail my way to success. Every day I go to the gym, I have fail 100%. I fail. It just. It is what it is. I try to. My mate, my. My form isn't proper, or this isn't, or I didn't stretch out. It's part of the process is to fail your way to success. And as long as to your point of not being transactional, it's important. So I always try and get people to identify their truth. For you, I think truth and purpose are very similar for you, I think we're using those interchangeably. How do you get people to. Towards that Purpose to find out what's truly in their heart.
- [29:36]
Garrett Unclebach
So what purpose. When you get a purpose, that's what shifts your perspective, right? Purpose and beliefs and truth, these things all connect. But eventually it's like, right, the way that you think turns into the way that you act. And so we. Okay, so we shift some thinking. We've got to shift some action. And let me talk about perspective for a second. Really, the question of your life is not like, what does everyone else see? The question is, what do you see? When I was going through SEAL training, I was one of the. I was one of only two in my class and are 20 years old. Most people are 24 or 25. I went through at 19. I was also. I thought I was an athlete until I met one. Then I got there, and I was like, oh, those are athletes, not me. I'm not. I was a high school athlete. A bunch of the guys in my class were all NCAA athletes. So where that left me, bottom third of my class, athletically, one of the youngest people in the class. So you know what that meant. When we did peer reviews, peer rankings, I was always in the bottom third of my class. I was not as mature as everyone else was. And I had a lot of people tell me, from my recruiter getting into the Navy to boot camp, to my first instructors, to my roommates, they all said, uncle Bach, you have no chance here. How did. How did you end up in this place? And so all throughout my journey, I'm continuing to hear this, but I'm remembering some of the things that my dad said. Now, what they're saying is true. I was bottom third of the class. It's a fact, right? And so they have evidence in their sayings of, you don't belong here. I'm. I'm relying on some other things that I believe that are also true that maybe they don't see. We get to. We get later on in the program, and we're Before Hell Week. We're about to go into Hell Week. Now. Let me back up for just a second. When we had first gotten to San Diego, which is where SEAL training happens, I got to see a class who had just finished Hell Week, right? So it's like you're. You're like, man, these are the guys. They did it. And this whole class of guys who just finished Hell Week, they could. They looked like a bunch of zombies. Some of them, their heads are swollen up. Some of them, you know, their fingers are literally two or three times the size. They can't hardly walk. The Inside of their legs and their waist is chafed, looks like hamburger meat. They're on crutches, they're coughing up blood out of their lungs. They all look like they've been, you know, run over by an 18 wheeler. And then the 18 wheeler backed up and ran them over again. That's what the whole class looked like. And I remember seeing that for the first time. This was the thought that I had, Charles. I said, I'm going to finish this program, but I won't look like that when I do it. And I began to visualize for myself what completing this, what completing Hell Week looked like and how I would look when I finished. Not just visualizing success, but visualizing the entire picture. And so fast forward I've been getting all of this discouragement. And now we're on Sunday night, we're about to start Hell Week. And the guys start asking each other, hey, do you think you'll make it? Do you think you'll make it? Everyone's asking each other at this point. I didn't really talk very much because when you're not popular, it's best for you to just stay quiet, right? But my classmates or my boat crewmates, the guys who I'm about to go through Hell Week, they ask me, uncle Bach, what do you think? I said, I don't think I'll make it. I know I'll make it. And when we finish next Friday, when everyone else is busted, and then when we go to med checks on Saturday and people are on crutches and coughing up lungs, I'm going to go for a run by myself on the beach on Saturday. It's what I said to all of my classmates, and they're like, okay, whatever. Well, fast forward. That was. That is what happened, right? I completed Hell Week. And then on Saturday, I was perfectly fine. I didn't even have any chafe on my body, believe it or not. Charles.
- [33:05]
Co-Host
Okay, so I need to ask you how you did that, because I. Because I know what sugar. So for those who don't know sugar cooking. Sugar cooking is very simple, actually. You know what? You're the seal. You explain getting what it means to be sugar cookie.
- [33:14]
Garrett Unclebach
Yeah, sugar cookie. Like, instructors don't really call it that very much, but that is what they say to the. They do. Instructors say wet and sandy, but that's essentially what a sugar cookie is. They want you, the sand in. The sand in Coronado has gold flakes in it. So it kind of turns you into a snickerdoodle cookie. What they. What they want you to do is get wet completely, not one dry part on your body, and then cover your entire body in sand. Not that there's sand on your clothes. That the instructors say, I don't want to see your skin or your uniform. If I can see your uniform or I can see skin, you're wrong, right? So we get really good at this through lots of repetition.
- [33:53]
Co-Host
So how did you not chafe when they turned every aspect of your body into sandpaper?
- [33:57]
Garrett Unclebach
I don't. I honestly don't have an answer for that. I have no practical guide for how I didn't chafe. I can just tell you.
- [34:02]
Co-Host
I was like, I don't know how you did that. Because even on some tries that I've done, I chafe. I'm like, how the hell is he doing that?
- [34:08]
Garrett Unclebach
That was. I didn't chafe in Hell Week. And on Saturday, after med checks, I went for a run by myself on the beach. And I ran down to the rocks in front of. And I got, you know, it's about a mile down there to the rocks in front of the Dell from the base. I ran down there and stopped, you know, to sit for a minute, climb up on the rocks in front of the Dell. And I sat there, Charles. And I realized it didn't really matter what anybody else saw. It mattered what I see, right? And so, really, one of my favorite stories in the Bible of, you know, this is history of when the Israelites come out. God takes the Israelites out of Egypt, takes them to the edge of the Promised land. It's a great story, right? Takes them, hey, I'll bring you out of slavery, and I'll bring you to the edge of the place. That's your destiny. It's the Promised Land. And so through all of that journey from slavery to the edge of the Promised land, God does everything, performs every miracle. But then he says, okay, it's time for you to go in the Promised Land. You go and take it. And what's really interesting is at the beginning of this journey, spies go into the Promised Land. And then they come back. 10 of the 12 spies gave a report. Hey, the land's beautiful. It's wonderful. But there's giants there, right? I don't know how we could take it. Only two men said, this is the land. This is for us. And that 10 convinced 600,000 other Israelite men that, hey, I don't. I don't know how we could take this land. Thus, 40 years of lapse in the desert, and so fast again. It's a very great, It's a great story. Fast forward 40 years later. The only two men who left Egypt that are still alive are the two spies who had said this is our land. And now they're talking to the sons of all the men who left Egypt, who died, who left the slave mindset behind. And they said, here's what it's going to take for you to go into the promised land to be strong and courageous. Right. You're going to have to look at your situation and say, we can do this. The question isn't what is the reality. The question is what do you see in your reality?
- [36:08]
Co-Host
So your reality's been one side of it's been a seal. You now have transitioned over and you've done other things. You've gotten into business, you've become very successful in business.
- [36:17]
Garrett Unclebach
Could you share some of your stuff.
- [36:18]
Co-Host
On what you've done? I know you've done some amazing speaking as well. Can you share a little bit with the audience of what that looks like?
- [36:25]
Garrett Unclebach
Yeah. So when I left the military I worked for, I did one job. My dad told me, he says you're gonna, says you're gonna, you're gonna figure out really quickly you just wanna work for yourself. Which I did. It was a fantastic journey. Got to help do the IT portion of a billion dollar divestiture. Did that and then transition. They I about to sign up for round two and I realized I had a lot more value than what they were paying me. And I had that conversation with them and I came to the realization that many entrepreneurs have to come to. It wasn't that they weren't telling me that you're not worth more. What they were saying was that's that they didn't help me understand this. My framing the situation helped me understand this. They weren't saying I wasn't worth more. They said the role that you're in isn't worth anymore. Right. We only pay the role this much and I can put someone else in the role. They weren't defining my value, they were defining the role's value. And what I realized was I had greater value than the role. And so what I said was if I'm. This is what I said to myself, if you're worth it, then prove it. Right? Right. If you're really worth it, you're worth it. So go prove it. And so thus I went on a entrepreneurial journey. Done a few different things. Started off with a ax throwing mobile trailer. At the same time as getting into just trying all the things I Could try. Got into real estate development and construction. Have loved that. At the same time as I was doing construction and real estate development, I was doing coaching and speaking specifically around leadership and teamwork. Get to work with people like Oracle today on those topics. And then today I'm also. I lead a large men's movement in Frisco, Texas. We have over 400 guys that meet every Saturday. And today I'm also involved in a defense tech company where we're changing what the future looks like in the manufacturing realm.
- [38:11]
Co-Host
So you went in and you said, hey, I know my worth and I know my value. But you also had a belief system, because there's a lot of people who don't want to leave that certainty of a paycheck. This is why we call them wage slaves, or you call them the golden handcuffs. Because it's a tough thing to do, it's a tough thing to take that leap of faith. But when I sat down and I was taught, you're never going to retire, you're never going to have the life you want working for someone else, that was a really hard thing for me to listen to and have.
- [38:38]
Garrett Unclebach
I want people to have some mercy for themselves. If you've had that thought that, you know, you're stuck in the wage slave mode. Because some of my peers, guys who lead the SEAL teams who are willing to run into machine gun fire, I've watched them get out and they fall victim to the same thing. Money has a great level of control on the way that we think. And if you can separate the way that you think from money, you'll free yourself. I had to help some of my peers see this. I'm like, dude, you are not afraid to die. You've proven that. But you're acting like if your bank account hits 0.00 for one second, that you will die instantly. I'm like, bro, you can lose all of your money. You could lose it all. And I promise your family will still eat, and I promise you'll still be safe, because I know what type of man you are. You'll figure it out.
- [39:32]
Co-Host
And, yeah, your worth as a human being isn't dictated by your. Your bank account. That's it. It's not how it works. And there's individuals who believe, hey, I have XYZ balance in my bank account, therefore I'm worth this. And it's, it's not, it's. It's not in any way, shape or form. So if it's not true for them that they are this elite, ooh, La la. Because they're billionaires, then the opposite must be true as well. Worth has nothing to do with money. Money, I tell people all the time, it's an amplifier. It's very much like alcohol. If you're a really funny guy and you drink a bunch of alcohol, you're probably going to be a really funny guy drinking, you know, when you get drunk, if you're a putz or a schmuck, when you drink alcohol before you drink alcohol, you're just going to be a bigger schmuck. Same thing with money, makes you more.
- [40:11]
Garrett Unclebach
Of who you are.
- [40:12]
Co-Host
Yeah, it just, it just, it's an amplifier. That's all it is. But getting over that, that fear factor, I think what I always tell entrepreneurs when they go around and they go, well, I'm an entrepreneur, I'm like, have you lost your first million yet? And they're like, no, I'm like, no, you're not an entrepreneur yet. Don't worry, you will. And then I get into rooms where I've had clients who are like, oh yeah, wait till you lose your first 8 million or your first 80 million. They were like, oh yeah. And everyone's got these stories where they've lost just immense amount of wealth and it doesn't matter. It's a bit like having your bicycle stolen. It doesn't matter. You still know how to ride a bike. You'll just get a different bike. Just is what it is. You get smarter through the process. You go and you purchase sustainable companies versus agencies or things of that nature. So you can scale it definitely outside of you. And you learn the systems and you learn operations and you learn human behavior. Those you learn along the way. You mentioned you worked with Oracle and you teach them literacy skills. And you, and you go into that environment, what are some of the things that people go, okay, you know, I see his transition. I see how he went from as a kid and then his dad influenced him and then he became a seal and he used those, that, those things. And now we're into leadership going, okay, I'm in this role, how do I, I'm learning how to lead myself from what everything you told us in the first half, how do you start leading others? How do you start showing up authentically to lead them?
- [41:22]
Garrett Unclebach
Yeah, let me talk about one of my favorite qualities that it's a team quality. It's leadership quality. Because you said it. You've got to be able to lead yourself before you can lead other people. It's from the Bible. It's also Jordan Peterson One of his rules for life, don't tell other people how to manage their household before you learn how to manage your own. Right. It's a great rule for anywhere in life. And so if you can't lead yourself, you're not worthy of leading anybody else. And so let me talk about, like one of the first places that starts. It shows up in many ways. We could talk about fitness. I'll talk about, for me, what I think is one of the most important leadership traits, one of the most important self control traits. Right. Is that you can govern your attitude. Your attitude is your response to what happens to you. Right. It's not. No one assigns it. No one makes you act a certain way. People will say that. You say, you're making me angry. Right. My daughter, she's four years old and she loves the Inside Out TV show with all the different characters. I don't know if you know that show with joy and anger.
- [42:20]
Co-Host
Yeah.
- [42:21]
Garrett Unclebach
The movies.
- [42:21]
Co-Host
Yeah.
- [42:21]
Garrett Unclebach
Right. And she'll say, like, you're making me angry. And I. And I help her understand. I go, no, you're choosing to be angry. I may have done things that you don't like, but you choose and that this is one of those beliefs that you have to take on, that you get to choose your thoughts, your attitudes, your response to things. Viktor Frankl said, between stimulus and response, there's a space, and in that space is your freedom, which is your ability to choose. And in the military, we called this equanimity, right? We didn't use a lot of $10 words in the military, but this was one of them, right? Equanimity meaning, it comes from two Latin words meaning even soul or even mind, Right. What that means for the military, what equanimity was is that you don't panic when you're getting shot at. It's a pretty important character trait for what I used to do. But what I like to help people understand is that you got to have equanimity. Doesn't matter what you do, doesn't matter where you come from. And there's two pieces to equanimity. One side people see a lot of which is the don't panic when you're getting shot at. Right? That's a big deal. Meaning like that you can sustain like great difficulty, that you can sustain despair and you, that you're always going to be someone who is not a thermometer, right? Where you tell the temperature, where, but where you're a thermostat, where you determine what the temperature is going to Be things are going horrible in my life, and it's not going to make me act a certain way. That's. That's the bottom side. I call it no pity parties. Literally. Believe it or not, this is a true story, Charles. When I was dating my wife, before we were married, her father was away working, and I was out of town on a training trip. And she calls me, she's living in California at the time. She calls me, she's living in California. She's pulled over on the wrong side of the highway in California, which is a dangerous place to be with a flat tire. And she's crying, right, Telling me her situation. And I literally, I said, like, very quickly in this conversation, and you would think I wouldn't be married to this girl, but very quickly in this conversation, I said, stop crying. No amount of tears is going to change that flat tire. I'm going to help you. Because what I knew was the longer she sat there, yes, you know what? You. Maybe you are worthy of crying in this situation, but crying is a risk to you. And what I cared more about than right, like, you've got to be able to hurt your business partner's feelings. You got to be able to hurt your spouse's feelings sometimes. Other than that, you don't have a relationship. Relationship is your ability to walk in truth together, right? So I told my, I told. She wasn't my spouse at the time. I said, stop crying. I'm going to help you fix this. Because what I cared more about was not seeing my girlfriend, future wife, get run over on the highway in California, right? So, hey, we needed to stop crying because crying is going to impact our safety, is going to impact our livelihood here. But there's the other side of equanimity. The other side of equanimity. Charlie Munger talks about this. The late Charlie Munger, so wise. He talked about, to be a great investor, you've got to be able to govern your mindset. You got to be able to govern your relationships, that you can sustain despair. But also he said that you can sustain great success because success can influence you and manipulate you the same way that great despair can. And to be a leader means to like, if you're leading yourself, it means you're directing yourself. If success is leading you, if despair is leading you, you're no longer in charge. And so what you've got to be able to do is govern your emotions, to have an even mind in any situation and then make decisions. And this sounds incredibly hard to do, and it is getting Shot at and staying calm is not an easy thing to do, but it starts with believing that you can.
- [45:58]
Co-Host
Right? So how do you. How do you do that? If you're in a situation where you are taking rounds and you're in. You're being engaged and you're having that hurdle, how do you sit there and re. Center your emotions and say, listen, there's a time and a place to be panicked and there's a time and a place to be scared. There's a time and a place to cry. Right now, none of those things are going to get me through this. I'll get to do that later. How do you do that? How do you actively. Because we've all had road rage. How do you end up doing that? How do you find a way to pivot your road?
- [46:24]
Garrett Unclebach
You'll never be ready for that battle if you didn't prepare to be ready for that battle. I cannot show up with you on the battlefield untrained and coach you into survival. It's too late for you, right? You're going to get whatever happens to you. What you've got to do is begin to prepare for every single one of these situations. The first time I got shot at, I had been there before. I hadn't actually been there before, but I had been there before because they had trained me and prepared me. I had mentally rehearsed. When this happens, here's what I'm going to do. Everything in the military came down to emergency procedures, or EPS, as we called them. When this happens, what do you do? When my parachute malfunctioned, I didn't say, oh, my God, I'm going to die. I said, okay, I need to release this piece of equipment and deploy the next one. And so it's preparation that prepares you for those moments. And so it starts with, right, I've got to believe that I can. That I can govern myself, that I can govern my emotions. You won't do that perfectly, but you're 100% capable in any situation you're in of governing yourself. And then you begin to train accordingly so that when these moments come. Because there's two different types of men on the battlefield, Charles, and there are the men who wish that the battle would never come for them. There's. There are people who are hoping that the dark side of the world never shows up at their door. And then there are the other men that prepare and prepare and prepare, hoping it's never going to come. But they're 100% ready. And on the day that it does, you're like a 19 year old Spartan young man. If you great book I love called Gates of Fire. It's historical fiction about the Spartans, talks about their level of preparation and training. And when a 19 year old man stands on the battlefield for the first time, he's drooling because he says, I've waited my whole life for this moment to come. The moment where many people are pissing themselves the most scared they've ever been in their life. A person's level of preparation brings them to the same moment and says I've waited for this. My time has come.
- [48:27]
Co-Host
One of the, I think one of the best examples I've ever seen of anyone regulating their emotions. They're going through it and their toddler actually had a massive breakdown. Screaming, yelling. Just because they're toddlers and whatever it is, they're going to go through that. And he went into this mode where he was like, okay, I've got two choices. I can be either this type of dad or I can be this type of dad. And he went in and he did what's known as box breathing, which is four in four and hold. Four and out, four in four and hold. It just, it's a routine. And he sat there and he got down to the kid's level and he just started breathing in front of the child and the child's freaking, he's like, watch me breathe. And then all of a sudden his toddler started doing it and he started regulating and it got the breathing under control. And I've always learned that when I'm having. Because I live in South Florida, so I think it's a rule when you come into Florida you tear up your license and you turn into Mad Max down here. Just, it is what it is. It's wild. And I used to respond in a very specific way when I was a teenager because I didn't know. And I remember I was outside of this very, very nice place and I was talking to the valet and I was like, what is the one thing about the. That would surprise me? He goes, the amount of guns that are just sitting on the, the, the side seats that are just out there when you're driving around. I was like, are you serious? He's like, probably 90 of the cars out here have guns. And I was like, okay, I need to approach my emotions now differently. When Susie cuts me off, all of a sudden I'm not going to go drive home and light her catfish on fire. I'm like, okay, I need to start regulating my things. Like, listen, it's not really that important. And I've started to learn how to do these type of breathings when you're doing it. You know, I'm a, I'm a scuba diver. So we learned very quickly how to regulate your breath because sooner or later you're going to see a shark. Sooner or later you are going to have equipment failure. And to your point of talking about it, we go through that all the time. Before you get certified as a diver, they take your mask away from you, they turn your reg off, they take, they take one of your, you know, your flippers away. And as I was working with individuals and we were recording things, they would mess with me all the time. And I thought I was being hazed. I was like, you bastards. They would swim by and they turn my air off slowly when I was doing it, like jerks or they'd pull my weights or they'd sit there and they just mess with me the whole time. And I didn't understand why they were doing it. I just thought they were being guys being jerks and they weren't. They were preparing me for that when it did happen and they weren't around because I have a torn labrum, my left arm, and I was in Galapagos, my arm ripped out of socket. And for me that is paralyzing. I cannot, there's just, I cannot function when that happens. And the only thing I could do is because I'd gone through it so many times, I got to relax my breathing and it's the only way to get it back into socket. I relax and it slams in and it sucks. It's not fun. It really hurts.
- [50:58]
Garrett Unclebach
But I know, I know you love tools and tips, right? And so maybe some of the other seals you've had on your show mention this, maybe they didn't. But one of the big tools and tips they teach us is what they call the seal big four. Okay. And you mentioned one of them. Breathing is one of them, right? And exactly what you. There's, if you go hire like a breath coach, they'll teach you like some better breathing. But just like with working out, the best workout is the one that you'll do with breath work. The best breath work is the breath work that you'll remember, the breath work you can utilize. So what you said, the four, four in, four hold, four out, four hold, that's a four second box breath. That's one of the tools that they teach us, right? This is tools for extreme difficulty, right? When you're getting shot at, deplore these Deploy these four tools. And they actually taught them to us at the beginning of SEAL training. They, they want you to have this, like they're not trying to hold you back. I practice all of these things through buds, right? It helps you get through those moments. So breath work is one of them. Another one is visualization, right? Similar to what, what I talked about with my own visualization of, of completing Hell Week. You can do that in like a midterm. You can do it in like a way long term. You can also do it in like a short term, right? Like you're angry and you got to step into a meeting, Visualize yourself performing correctly, having the right attitude, and that'll help you step into that attitude. So visualization is one of them. Segmentation is another one. So we've, we've talked about breathwork, we've talked about visualization. Segmentation is the third one, and that's breaking it down into bite sized chunks. Like the saying goes, how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time? Well, first you have to kill an elephant, which is not a small undertaking. But after you complete that task to eat an elephant, you do it one bite at a time. Or as Mark Twain said, if you have to eat a frog, eat it first thing in the morning. If you have to eat two frogs, eat the biggest one first, right? And so, but you have to make an take big stuff, break it down into meaningful pieces. In SEAL training, it wasn't like, oh man, I gotta finish today or only one more week, or no, it was, hey, I'm gonna make it to breakfast, right? Because they've beat so much out of you by 5am you're just like saying, man, if I can just make it to breakfast, that'll be a good milestone for today. And then the last one is self talk. Two of these four specifically have a biological physiological impact on you. Breath work is one of them. Self talk is the other. You probably are familiar and your audience is probably somewhat familiar with amygdala hijack, right? When you start experiencing fear, you go into the weakest, smallest survival portion of your brain. You cannot think clearly. You cannot process logic. Small motor function goes away. Shortness of breath. And this is all you do is see red or see fear. And there's two ways to get yourself out of amygdala hijack. Number one is intentional breathing. And the other is self talk. And so with, I know you probably talk a lot about self talk with, with your audience, and I know you, you teach and train on it. But the really the big piece is that it's intentional versus passive, not listening. And, and really, like my. My podcast co host Nick, who does the Impossible Life with me, one of the first things that, like, he, He. He finds me peculiar, and so he finds interesting things about me and one of the things that he thought was so interesting. So if you're around me, you'll hear me talk to myself. All right? Like in third person, sometimes I will talk to myself. Because as as much as self talk works, I've found it's even better when you verbalize it. Yes, right, Verbal.
- [54:24]
Co-Host
Because you're actually hearing it twice. When you talk out externally, you hear it, it's going to rattle inside your head and then it's going to come back through your ears. You're actually hearing. And we've scientifically proven this, you're going to hear it twice.
- [54:34]
Garrett Unclebach
As a man speaks, so is he. Right. And so the, the four things, like, four tools to address, like, any difficult circumstance you're in. So breath work, right? We got that visualization. You got to see it. Create a picture in your mind, segmentation, break it down into small pieces. And then selft talk. Start talking to yourself and start saying the right things.
- [54:53]
Co-Host
Gotcha. It's funny because as you were going through that, because we all have this self talk going on our heads all the time. We have different versions of ourselves. We have a version of ourselves that doesn't think we're enough. We have a version of ourselves that's worried. We have all of that, and being able to listen to it is important. And I've talked about this for years because you went through like, hey, there's these four things that you talk about. And there's a version of me that popped up. They're like, okay, the four things that Seals talk about is like cookies, ice cream, chocolate cake. And I was like, no, shut up. So you'll have those things and those that'll come in, you get to have those conversations. Because where that one was a humor one, we'll have that in a negative way, a negative loop as well. They'll sit there and say, oh, well, you shouldn't be here. You're not enough. You're going to fail. Da, da, da. Those will still come up. And the same way I laughed away, the cookies, ice cream, cupcakes, whatever it is, whatever. You have to be able to pivot that and choose what you listen to as well. Because there's multiple voices that people have in their heads because it's different versions of you and they're all designed for the same thing. It's all the lizard brain trying to keep you alive. And what you say out loud over and over and what you reinforce allows you to get there and allows you to do that.
- [55:55]
Garrett Unclebach
There's a duality within us in a lot of the natures that we have. And the way I kind of see it is the one that's going to lead the most is the one that you feed the most. Right.
- [56:04]
Co-Host
You know the rest of that story, by the way, the rest of that famous story. So it's a story of the wolves for those who guys aren't playing at home. I'll catch everybody up. There's a. There's a story about the two wolves that the grandfather sitting with his granddaughter.
- [56:16]
Garrett Unclebach
And he says, oh, right, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [56:18]
Co-Host
I'm just gonna get the audience caught up. So they sit there and says, you know, you know, there's a war inside you. There's these two wolves and they're battling for your existence. One is the one of doubt and fear and hatred and violence and. And the other one is the one of hope, joy, love and all that. And the little girl says, well, which one to a grandfather, you know, grandpa, which one wins? And the thing that most people think is it's the one you feed. It is not the true original story that it was done by in the 1940s, 19, late 30s, late 40s. It was done by a pastor. He. That was the ending. He did. The original story comes from indigenous people, Native Americans, that it sits and goes. She goes, well, which one do you feed? He goes, both. You need them all. You need to be able to hear this one of doubt and pain because that will tell you what's happening. And then you need these other versions of you to come in and get there. So we need to listen to it all. And it teaches you how to balance the yin and the yang, to listen to those and to be part of that process.
- [57:14]
Garrett Unclebach
I would agree with that almost entirely. But I would say there's probably some wolves in us that need to be starved. There might be some natures contained, I would say.
- [57:22]
Co-Host
Contained, yeah. Because there's some versions of us that. Again, back to when I'm driving, you know, there was a video game that I'm not allowed to play anymore because I get it. I have an addictive personality to nothing in my life except video games. Games. It's the only thing that I have. So I'm just not allowed to play them. But I would play GTA 6. 5 GTA 5, 6, hasn't come out yet. And people like, why are you playing this? I was like, I can skydive into a military base and fly a plane. Why wouldn't I play that? But when I was driving, I would sit there, and in the game, it's a. You drive around and you can do all these things, but someone would cut me off in the game, and I would get out of the car and I, you know, fire an RPG at them or, you know, have a seat and blow them up. Because I was like, oh, you cut me off in the game. Because It's. It's. It's NPCs. They're not real people giving that version of me an outlet to say, okay, you can contain here, you can have that, but I'm gonna go to the supermarket. And I remember one time I'd been playing for way too long, and I spun my tires coming out of the garage in my actual house, because that's how I normally drive in the game. As soon as that happened, I had the discipline enough to turn the car off. I was like, I'm done. I'm going back inside. I'm having delivery dudes. I don't get to do this. So finding a way to feed it, because whatever you. Whatever you repress, it will come out sooner or later. Like it or not, you're going to have your willpower. You're going to do something with alcohol or whatever. It's coming out. So having a place that you can contain it and release that, ooh, so important. So important. So. But we don't allow it to do certain things on the.
- [58:50]
Garrett Unclebach
On the nature of alcohol, really, just like, with. Of the duality within us. I think within most people, there's a voice of you that, like, you know, would. Wants to consume alcohol, sees the joy in alcohol. And there might be another voice in you that says, like, hey, man, this isn't good for us. We don't need this. And the more you lean into one, the voice changes in the other, right? If you lean into the voice that says, hey, you don't need alcohol, it does nothing for you. You'll begin to hear the other voice that's screaming, saying, what do you mean, we could never have this again? Right?
- [59:23]
Co-Host
And that's a different conversation. And it's the conversation that. That I found that works really well is like, okay, who do you want to be? Yeah, that's what I was.
- [59:29]
Garrett Unclebach
That's what I was getting at.
- [59:30]
Co-Host
Yeah, who do you want? Who are you trying to become? And what are you ultimately trying to achieve. Will this help you? And you have a choice? Absolutely. Do you hear it is here is because for me, I'm allergic to alcohol. I take three sips of it, comes right back out. It's a gift from my grandmother. I just. It views it as sour milk. That's how my body views it. But sugar. So I sit down and I have, you know, a cannoli or whatever is in front of me. I'm like, okay, does this serve who I want to be and the life I want to live? And the answer norm, to that is no, man. And then it's like, to your point, can I never have this again? You can have it. We just have to decide if this makes sense. Do we eat three cannolis? Do we have a cannoli? Do we have it four times a week? Do we have it once a month? It's a different conversation. You've talked about self mastery on a high level. I'd love to have your conversations about how to motivate and how to lead and how to connect with other individuals who haven't gone through these evolutions. Right. There's a. There's a large group of the population who've never done this work. This is for a lot of people, even this podcast and how your podcast, you know, it's. It's very new to them. They're like, I've never done this. I've always done this through brute force or relied on raw talent or been the smartest person in the room. And that was easy. Which, again, the comment that we have all the time of, if you're the smartest person in the room, get the hell out of that room. You're in the wrong room. So as you're leading and you go into this environment and you have to lead individuals who maybe aren't operating at their best or haven't gone through and haven't done the visualization and the self work and the self talk. How do you motivate them and connect with them? And how have you learned how to do that in an effective manner?
- [61:00]
Garrett Unclebach
So how do I motivate and lead people? Clarify the question for me.
- [61:05]
Co-Host
So you're in charge of a team. You get assigned to it. You're brought into a company very similar to I am. You're there to scale them, to help them out, to reach whatever their goal is. Normally when I'm brought in an organization, they're like, hey, we're making seven figures. How do we get to eight? And I'm like, all right, well, I need to see who your team was and how they work with each other. And then people who I know nothing about their industry, I have to get them to completely pivot their systems and their operations fall behind a different way of doing it that is just proven. It is what it is. You just walk through the process getting them to pivot. There's very specific things I do in that process. When you come into those environments and you're teaching places like Oracle, it's like, hey, this is how you lead. This is how you motivate men or women teams. How do you do that?
- [61:45]
Garrett Unclebach
So I'll start with some quotes that kind of frame my parameter on leadership. John Maxwell says leadership is influence. Eisenhower said that leadership is getting people to do what you want them to do, when you want them to do it, and they want to do it right. And that's really the hard part of leadership, is to get them to want to do it right. So to be a great leader, you need to be someone who's very followable. Leadership is not just about authority. History has shown us that regardless of title and station, your authority can be taken away from you if you're not a worthy leader. And so what? So what? Instead, what you got to think is, how do I be someone that people would want to listen to, that people would want to follow? And I think you can drill it down to two basic qualities. Number one is strength. Strength is I can do what I say. If I say I can open this door, I can open it. If I say we're gonna. I can climb this mountain, I can climb it. I've proven to you that I can do what I say, that I'm capable, that I have ability. That's one quality. The other side of that, and this is where, again, I like talking about the duality, because I think there's so many natures within us that you have to learn how to work with both of them, right? You have the strength. But then the other side of that is warmth. And warmth is that the people on your team believe that you care about them, because it doesn't matter how capable someone is if they don't. If you don't think that they have your best interest in mind. If you have a few people in your life that you truly believe have 100% your best interest in mind, you. You are blessed and living in a wonderful life, because most people don't have that. But as a leader, if you can demonstrate those two qualities that like, hey, I capable, I can do this, I can fix problems. And I care about you. That's where people will follow you the other way. Like care is such a great and important piece of leadership. The other way that you can demonstrate care, if it's not specifically about your people, is care for the mission.
- [63:40]
Co-Host
Right.
- [63:41]
Garrett Unclebach
And so there's multiple ways to come across in that, but you have to have strength and warmth if you want to get people to follow you.
- [63:49]
Co-Host
There's. There's a lot of people who have followed us in our lives. And you talked about having certain people in our lives that give you blessings and that if you have enough of this, you are one of the blessed, most blessed individuals in the world. There's people behind you who are no longer with us, and I'd love to be able to kind of speak about them and share their story, because these are some of the most blessed individuals that you had the opportunity to meet and who have given more than any of us will ever understand the sacrifice they give. So I. You know, you talked about one of the individuals early on.
- [64:21]
Garrett Unclebach
Yeah, I'll just mention. I'll mention Charles. Won't go into all of them, but I will talk about Charles. Charlie keating again. Died May 3, 2016. He was someone that, to me, was a great leader. So much of what I learned about leadership, I learned from people who weren't great leaders, but also learned from some incredible leaders. And Charlie was someone who was a general, you know, a phase ahead of me in his time and in his leadership in the SEAL teams that took time to speak into me that demonstrated what excellence looked like. Yeah. Charlie Keating was. He was a leader in my own life. And it was. It was very hard in the. If you look him up, you'll see it was very hard in the entire community when he passed because of the man that he was. But served at SEAL Team 3. Died in Operation Enduring Freedom May 3, 2016.
- [65:07]
Co-Host
Can you. Can you remember one thing that Charlie told you that first, you know, really inspired you and then maybe also made you laugh so hard water came out of your nose?
- [65:16]
Garrett Unclebach
I would say one of the quality. Not something that he said. It was more so the qualities that he lived with. And Charlie was a guy that always had a smile on his face. Like I said earlier. Died with a smile on his face. And even when I watch things in his life not go the way that he wanted them to, when he was disciplining me, when he was just being an instructor, he always had a smile on his face. He was a guy that had a love for life, but also had, like, a huge Dedication to the mission, which I think is as a leader, that's one of those qualities that it makes you want to follow. It's one of the magical qualities, I would say, of leadership that makes you want to follow people because it seems like life isn't such a burden to them.
- [65:56]
Co-Host
You mentioned that he was an instructor to you. Can you remember, outside of always having a smile, one of the lessons that he shared with you or that you really just were like, wow, that. That really resonates still to this day.
- [66:07]
Garrett Unclebach
One of the biggest lessons I learned from. From Charlie was how to follow leader leadership and follow instruction. That was really poor. He. You know, my. My team went through a transition. Charlie was in a team next to me, right. I didn't get along well with some of the people in my team, but he was someone that I looked up to, and I had people in my life that. That would tell me, find the people you admire and do what they do. And Charlie was one of those people. I. A lot of things that he would do. The time that he got there, what he did with his time, I learned a bunch of those things from him. But I'd say one of the best qualities that he taught me was when. When you. When you're following a leader who's not a great leader, it's not about their level of leadership. It's how well that you guys can all row together for their level of leadership. My first leader in the military was not really a great leader, but all of my platoon said, hey, we're gonna row as hard as we can for this mission, and it doesn't matter how great their leadership is if we all row together. It was Patton who said, strategy and tactics. Right. Strategy is knowing what to do. Tactics is knowing how to do it. Right. Strategy is take the hill. Tactics is like the techniques that you're gonna use to take the hill. And. And Patton, who was known as one of the greatest strategists, he said, good tactics can save the worst strategy. Bad tactics will destroy the best strategy. So here he is, the greatest strategist of all time, or one of the greatest battlefield strategists, saying, it's not about how good my plans are, it's about how good your level of execution is. And Charlie taught that to me.
- [67:38]
Co-Host
So one of the. There's a lot we could go on. And I. I know if I don't put a cap on it, we're going to talk for another two hours like we did the first time, which was a lot of fun. How do people find you. How do people reach out? They were going to want to know more, they're going to want to learn how to do what you've done and to have some of the success you've had. You know, you, you're one of the few that I get to. It was a no brainer to have you. Come on. I was like, no, he's proven it. This is an individual who's proven this time and time again of his success. How do people track you down? How do people get ahold of you? What's the best way, best place to.
- [68:07]
Garrett Unclebach
Find me, if you want to hear more is the Impossible Life podcast. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you listen to podcasts, whatever platform, I promise we're on there. So the impossible. You can find me there. You can find me on Instagram. Garrett Unclebach I put a lot of my like individual message and content out there. You can also reach me if you want to shoot me an email. Would love to hear from you. You can hit me up@coacharrettunkelbach.com and Garrett.
- [68:33]
Co-Host
I really appreciate it. Thank you so very much for taking the time out and also for sharing the story of Charlie with us.
- [68:38]
Garrett Unclebach
Charles thank you so much for having me. Honor and a Privilege thank you for.
- [68:41]
Charles Schwartz
Tuning into this transformative conversation with Garrett Unclebach. We hope his insights have sparked new ideas for developing mental resilience and inspired you to approach challenges with renewed purpose. A heartfelt thank you to Garrett for sharing his powerful SEAL Big four techniques and leadership philosophy. His ability to translate battlefield wisdom into practical business strategies demonstrates why his guidance is sought by organizations like Oracle and his 400 strong men's movement in Frisco, Texas. To all the leaders, entrepreneurs and high performers listening, your commitment to personal growth and team development is why we do what we do. Ready to put Garrett's strategies into action, we've crafted a comprehensive guide summarizing the seal Big 4 mental mastery techniques, complete with daily practices to develop equanimity and purpose driven leadership. Download it now@podcast im charles schwartz.com Remember, as Garrett emphasized, purpose isn't about you. It's about finding something worth giving your life to. Now go strengthen your mental toughness and build leadership that inspires followership. Your journey to mastering both strength and warmth starts today.
- [69:48]
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- [70:19]
Charles Schwartz
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