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- [00:00]
A
This is Jocko podcast number 547 with Echo, Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo.
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B
Good evening.
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A
What if I told you that your past stumbles were merely echoes, not edicts, of your potential? Imagine what's possible if you unleash the natural prowess within you akin to the seals achieving their caliber of precision and resolve. Now imagine what's possible when this intrinsic ability is not just developed in you, but in every team you're part of. Consider the possibility of transforming life's trials into triumphs. You can consistently steer through frustrations and setbacks, always maximizing the chances of success. Seals and other high achievers, anyone who is adept in any circumstance are fundamentally similar to everyone else. Their edge is simply that they harness innate, yet often overlooked capabilities that we all possibly possess as masters of uncertainty. They are well practiced experts of navigating the intrinsic unpredictability of life, and you can be one, too. It merely requires a shift in perspective and applying one method that enables you to invigorate a suite of innate talents already within your grasp. Mastering uncertainty isn't akin to wielding a superpower. Over a decade of coaching elite performers has shown me that their standout performance doesn't stem from mysterious talents. And that right there is an excerpt from a book called Masters of Uncertainty, the Navy SEAL Way to Turn stress into success for you and your team. The book is written by Rich Devini, who is a retired SEAL officer who led troops in combat directed operations during 11 deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. And on top of his combat deployments, he also oversaw the assessment and selection process for the Navy's maritime component of the Joint Special Operations command, known as JSOC. He's been on this podcast before, episode 374, when we discussed his life, his experiences, and his last and his first book called the attributes 25 hidden drivers of Optimal Performance. And it's an honor to have him with us here again tonight to share some pointers on striving to become a master of uncertainty. Rich, thanks for joining us again, man.
- [02:26]
C
Yeah, thanks for having me back. It's good to be here.
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A
Notice I said striving to become a master because it's like, let's face it, the minute we start saying we're a master of anything, well, you're not. That's when we get in trouble.
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C
That's right.
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A
And Huberman wrote Andrew Huberman. Dr. Andrew Huberman wrote the Forward. So you've obviously, I know you guys are buddies. We've talked about that before. But little forward by Dr. Andrew Huberman putting out his word in the book. And it's interesting how many of the things that I was doing that I had no idea why I was doing them until I talked to him about a lot of that stuff and realized that a lot of the things that I did and that we did and that we learned, even though we didn't really know why we did it, we. We might not know the physiology behind it in a lot of situations, but they work.
- [03:19]
C
Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's a good place to start. I mean, when he and I first met, we immediately bonded because he was running his fear lab up there in Stanford, and his fear lab was really interesting. It's basically a VR room. And he'd put someone in a headset, hook up to nodes and things like that. And he could put the flavor of fear, whatever that person driving with great white sharks was one. I remember if you were afraid of heights, he could put you on the top of two buildings. You'd have to walk over or walk across a plank attacked by spiders, whatever it is, but then monitor the physiological effects of that. And so I was certainly fascinated with what he was doing in the lab. And then he was really fascinated with what we do in real world, like how do. How do we manage ourselves through this type of stuff? And that's when we really started collecting this information, kind of thinking about this stuff and this. And we thought about this. This book is actually a book I've always wanted to write because we started working on this together. The attributes I wrote first, and probably better because it was a. It's a lot of stuff. There's kind of a good foundation, but. But the attributes, simply as we'll talk about, is one element of what you need to know about yourself to actually step more effectively into uncertainty. Because it's never really going to be pretty, even if you're. And like you said, you can't call yourself a master. But even if you're really good at it, it's still not going to feel necessarily good. You're just going to be, you know, how to move through it. That's the idea.
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A
Yeah. It's funny, in Europe, in the last book, the attributes you were talking about, parachuting and your stance, you're talking about the fact that you don't like it, Right. I don't like this stuff. And I realized, actually, Chris Williamson asked me a question on his podcast, you know, about, oh, dealing with fear. And I was like, go. And what I realized is, you know, you start off, they condition you to deal with fear, because the first thing you got to do is climb over the cargo net, right? And that's pretty tall. If you're scared of heights, that sucks.
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C
It does suck. As someone who does like heights, it does suck. Yes, every time.
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A
And then it's the, and then it's the slide for life where you're kind of hanging yourself out over whatever 40 foot drop or something like that. And then you're going to rappel out of the tower and then you're going to rappel out of a helicopter and then you're going to static line jump. And each one of those and then you're going to freefall and you're going to free fall at night. They're going to free fall at night with combat equipment on O2. It's an escalation each time it is. And each time you learn how to overcome that thing, hopefully.
- [05:32]
C
Well, I would say this because the fear never leaves. What you learn are the processes by which you can move through them. Because again, and I would say there is an element of truth to fear. Fear inoculation and. Or stress inoculation. So what I would do, for example, for the cargo net, because I don't like heights, which is ironic because I love flying and I'm learning how to fly now, but I would literally time my runs to go past that cargo net and I'd climb up it and I just sit at the top and I'd breathe in that fear. And I'd do that over and over again. Of course, as I did that, if I did that every day or for a couple weeks, then slowly I would stop being as afraid up there. So a fear inoculation does exist. Just like if we sometimes do jump trips and you do like 50 jumps in a week by jump 50, you're not really thinking about the fear anymore. But take a break. That tends to atrophy and the fear will come back. And so the secret, I think, to the success of training pipelines like the seals or any other hardcore military unit is that they inadvertently teach you how to step through that stuff constantly. Because again, combat is going to be like that. You're not going to be able to expect what's coming on.
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A
So, yeah, yeah. And I was, I was skiing last year and it was like in the spring and there wasn't much snow, but there was like, still some hard terrain. And I was with another guy. And he's a good skier, I'm a good skier. And we kind of got out on the sketchy, sketchy piece of terrain. And I'm looking down and it's a sketchy drop and you can see rocks and it's steep and there's no run out. And I remember I started to have thoughts about, like, things that could happen, and then I just went. I just, like, felt. And looking back, I was like, oh. I just. I felt some sort of hesitation and it was like, okay, go.
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C
Yes.
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A
Because sitting up here is not going to help you. You're going to imagine all kinds of torn ACLs and broken necks and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
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C
Yeah.
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A
And so I just. Looking back, I realized, oh, yeah. Whenever I was, you know, whether it was the cargo net or jumping out of a plane or going through a breach, like, it was always just like, go. Just, just freaking go.
- [07:35]
C
Well, one of the aspects that's going on there, and it's kind of a side aspect to what I talk about in the book, although I do mention it, is that. And we'll talk about this combination of uncertainty plus anxiety equaling fear and how to kind of combat those. But when we think about anxiety, anxiety is quite literally fiction. That's all it is. It's thinking about what's ahead. It's the future, which hasn't happened yet. Just like the past is history, the future is fiction. And so I tell people one thing you'll never find Navy SEALs do, is worry about shit they can't control. It does not preclude proper planning. Obviously we plan, but we don't over plan. We say, okay, on any op, like five phases of an op, we say, okay, what are the two or three things that could happen? Let's have a plan for that. After that, we'll just go. But we don't sit in the helicopter while we're on insert worrying too much about what's going to happen. We're thinking about stuff and we're worried about the moment, or we're concerned and thinking about the moment because this fiction will drain our neural energy. It really will. And so to think about and to create scenarios, you're literally living in the future. You're living in a fictitious world. It could happen. It couldn't happen. So you don't waste your time doing that.
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A
Yeah, I feel sorry for those guys with good imaginations because they're imagining all kinds of great stuff. Yeah. Something I told many MMA fighters over the years was because, you know, you're going out to fight in a cage and, you know, if it's the UFC and there's 20,000 people in the stands and there's millions of people watching, and you might get KO'd.
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C
Yes.
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A
Like, that can happen to anybody at any time. That's why they call it a punch Hunter's chance. That can happen. And what I would tell these guys, because they would worry about that, and I'd say, you know, when we would go out on an operation, there's a chance that despite all your planning, despite all your preparation, despite having all your SOPs dialed in, despite rehearsals, despite all that stuff, you can just drive down the road and hit a roadside IED and you lose, you die, or even worse, some of your friends die. And that's what's going to happen. And if you worry about that, you're not focused on what you can actually impact and influence. So it's the same thing if you're worried about getting knocked out. I mean, now what? You should be focused on keeping your hands up. You should be focused on your takedown defense. There's all kinds of things you can practically do that will help you in the situation, but worrying about a chance knockout is not one of them. Just like worrying about a chance id. I don't know if that's even. I don't know. I don't know if you. I don't know how you deal with that. If you think every time, hey, I'm going to get blown up with an id, this is probably going to happen to me today. Like, that's got to hurt. Although I did have one guy who. Every operation, my first deployment to Iraq, every operation that we went on, he. He thought he was going to die, and we were all going to die.
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C
Yeah.
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B
He was one.
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C
He might have been a Murphy's Law guy. He's just like, I'm not going to let Murphy.
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A
He was so freaking classic because he be like, I'm not feeling good about this one.
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B
Hey.
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A
Hey, boss. What's up with this one tonight? What? You look at that route, you know, I. And every night, you know, he'd be in the vehicle because he was my jtac. He'd be, like, sitting behind me in the vehicle and, you know, here it comes. Every time we got to a bridge, it was great. I loved it. We used to scare the hell out of him, too, because I think I see something, you know, the whole nine yards. But point being, don't worry about things you can't control.
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C
Yeah.
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A
And focus on the things you can't control.
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B
Yeah.
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A
So masters of uncertainty, let's get into this book a little bit.
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C
Yeah.
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A
I'm jumping ahead. Our culture Sees seldom see stress as an opportunity. It's uncomfortable and therefore unwanted. Itching for relief. We often react instinctively and counterproductively in two ways. Panic or procrastination. Panic happens when the discomfort becomes so intolerable that you're driven to quell it, impulsively forgiving the wisdom of a measured breath. Procrastination happens when the discomfort of auto autonomic arousal, or even just anticipation of it, makes the task seem too daunting to confront head on. You take refuge in diversion and distraction while deep down secretly harboring hope that the trouble will untangle itself. But this seldom happens. So these are two responses to stress. One of them is panic and the other one is procrastination. Yeah, how's that look?
- [11:40]
C
Well, so we have to understand the autonomic arousal. So, you know, we get stressed, we get fear, our amygdala gets tickled, our autonomic arousal goes up. As our autonomic arousal goes up and we approach that amygdala hijack or autonomic overload, our frontal lobe, the decision making, conscious decision making part of our brain is beginning to recede. And our limbic brain, our lizard brain, is starting to come to the fore. And so what happens in those cases of autonomic overload or amygdala hijack is that now our frontal lobe has taken a complete back seat and we are acting without thinking. That can manifest in a couple of different ways. Now, now neuroscientists like Cuban will say that, that, that freeze, there's not that freeze behavior is more of an oscillation as to whether or not you're going to fight or flight. But, but in the case of full autonomic, autonomic overload or amygdala hijacked, you are literally acting without thinking. Now, like I say, this comes in handy when you're jumping out of the way of the moving train or running from the bear. But in 99% of cases in modern world, you want your frontal lobe engaged in to make decisions as you're doing it. And so that allows us to act. And so we just have to be aware that those responses are coming from an autonomic arousal of stress. But the good news is, as we'll get into, you can control that. You can actually bring your frontal lobe to the fore and begin stepping through and making decisions. So you can suffer no longer from either panic or procrastination.
- [13:04]
A
Yeah, we did a podcast a little while ago and it was one of the most interesting thing about this is physiologically your Body will stop sending blood to your frontal cortex, where you think, and it will send the blood and therefore oxygen and therefore energy to your amygdala. So your amygdala is literally taking over your prefrontal cortex and your ability to think. And that's why, you know, you get someone when something stressful happens, and they don't really. They reacted to it, and they don't really remember. I don't really even remember what happened, you know, sometimes. You ever talk to somebody that did cutaway parachuting?
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C
Yeah. Yeah.
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A
Depending on how good they are at parachuting. Sometimes it looks. Oh, man. I don't know. I just saw. Next thing you know, I was under reserve. But they did all their things properly, but they just. They just did them without even thinking. They just did it and. Or people get into a fight or someone gets in their face and they just do something. It's like full amygdala hijack, no thought process happening.
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C
And this is where. This is, by the way, where training matters. Because if you train to a level of mastery, like in the seals, we say shoot, move, and communicate. Those are the three elemental things we train to master in any environment. Because when we fall back to that very raw, elemental thing, if we happen to be acting without thinking, we want to actually lean upon those muscle memory things we've trained. So the guy who does the cutaway does all those procedures because he's trained himself to actually do that reactively, instinctively, which is great.
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A
Without thought, without his prefrontal cortex, it's
- [14:35]
C
hard to get to. You have to do. There's a lot of work that it takes to get to that level. And what I'm saying is we don't all have to be that way. And, oh, by the way, in true uncertainty, you can't do it anyway because you can't predict uncertainty.
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B
So.
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C
So how can we actually leverage those things about our humanity, about our physiology, that allow us to actually take control in the moment?
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A
Back to the book here. But it doesn't always have to be this way. In fact, it wasn't meant to be this way. In truth, autonomic arousal is a call to arms. It is a mobilizing force. It's your body offering you alertness and energy meant to equip you to tackle perceived threats, hence jumping out of the way of a car, running from a bear. The great news is that you're innately prepared to transform this stress response from a hindrance that hurts your performance into a surge of vitality that propels it forward you can embrace and channel your body's energy, pairing it with composure and strategic control. How? By tapping into a primal capability you already possess that I call moving horizons. So talk to us about moving horizons.
- [15:34]
C
Yeah, so moving horizons. So to kind of go back to this definition, one of the things human huberman and I worked on and kind of hypothesized when we were doing this work on fear was that fear is the result of two specific things, uncertainty plus anxiety. In other words, you could have one or the other. You don't necessarily have fear. You can be anxious without being uncertain. So that might be. I have a presentation to give next week. I know the presentation, I know the people I'm giving to. So there's no real uncertainty there. I'm just anxious about it. Not real fear. You know, you can be uncertain without being anxious. Well, that's every kid on Christmas Eve. Okay, we know there's no fear there, right? So it's when you combine the two that you get fear. And this is the type of uncertainty that I'm talking about that we want to really start to work against. Because fear, that fear based stuff is going to hinder us. And so the strategy becomes if uncertainty plus anxiety equals fear, then to buy down the fear, we need to buy down one or both of those equations, buy down uncertainty and or buy down anxiety. So Moving Horizons is quite literally a neurological way we can buy down uncertainty. And the way it works is it focuses on the three elements of our environment that our brain is automatically in every situation trying to figure out. Those three elements are duration, how long is it going to last? Pathway, what's my route in, out or through, and then outcome. What's the end state? Now if we are in absence of one or more of those three things, we begin to feel that stress, that fear, that stuff bubble up. So here's a good example would be illness. So, for example, strep throat is an illness we all know. Most of us have had strep throat. We know there's an antibiotic that can cure strep throat. So if we get strep throat, we are only in the absence of one of those things, we know the pathway, antibiotic, we know the outcome, we're going to get better. What we don't know necessarily is duration, because it might take you four days to respond to the antibiotics. It might take me seven days. Our anxiety uncertainty level is mild. Now let's take the flu. The flu is also a known disease in most modern countries. We recover from the flu, we don't die from it. But there's no known cures for the flu, right? There's a lot of people who have ideas on what you could do for the flu, but there's no, nothing. There's nothing you can take. So if we have the flu, then we are in absence of two. We're absence of pathway and we're absence of duration. All we know is outcome. So our anxiety, our uncertain level is moderate. Now let's think about a disease showing up on the planet we've never seen before. There's no vaccine, there's no cure. Some people are dying, some people are not. We don't know how long this is going to last. Okay, enter 2020. This is Covid. And all of us were in absence immediately of all three. This is when we have this full blown kind of, okay, what the hell's going on? What Moving Horizons does is it allows us to generate certainty in our environment in the moment by focusing on something that we can then anchor on and move to. So the example would be we're in, you know, we're in buds. And I know this has happened, this happened to you too. But obviously your listeners know as much about, you know, they know a lot about buds. You're carrying those damp boats forever, especially in Hell Week all the time. I remember during Hell week it was sometime, I don't know, three or four in the morning, one of those days, and we're on the beach carrying these boats. We're next to the sand berm. And I remember saying to myself, I was miserable, saying to myself, you know what, I'm just going to focus on getting to the end of the sand. Bermuda. Now, what I did in that moment was I picked a horizon and in essence created my own dpo, my own duration pathway. Outcome duration from now until end of San Berm pathway from here to end of San Berm and an outcome end of San Berm. And in doing so I manipulated my dopamine system, which we'll talk about in more depth. But I also created a reward so that when I conducted, when I finished that and I completed that task, I got another dopamine hit and allowed me to come back out and pick a new horizon. And so what Moving Horizons is, it's just basically a step by step process. We're picking something to focus on generating certainty. We're moving to it, we're registering a reward and we're doing it again. And we can do that over and over and over. It's a cyclical cycle there that we can do over and over again until one of three things happens. Either we've moved through everything, there's no more, we've moved through the challenge, or stress, we've accomplished our goal, or, or there's no more. You know, we've generated enough certainty in our environment that we don't need to do anymore. And so it's, it's quite literally when people ask me, and I know you get it all the time, people, you know, you know, young men ask you, how can I go to buds? Maybe they want to get help. Or they say, what's the advice for buds? You know, should I, should I get cold? Should I, like, sit in the ice bath? And it's like, you can't rehearse cold. But this is the secret. This is what all of us do. We talk about not worrying about shit we can't control. The reason why that selection process is so genius is because the selection of post is designed that if you worry about what's coming, you will quit. And I know they've done exit interviews. They started doing this about a decade or more ago, which they should have been doing for years, by the way of guys who quit. Asking them why they quit. And one of the most common, common comments from guys who quit is we had been doing xyz. We were doing xyz and I couldn't imagine doing XYZ forever, right? Like, they could not. They were too focused on too far of a horizon. And we all know, I mean, the saying at BUDS is on Hell Week is if you think about Friday, on Monday, you're going to quit. We all know that. The secret is we never worried. I remember being in Hell Week and it's like I just, I worried about what I was doing in the moment. I didn't worry about what the next thing was. I just picked the moment. I was picking my horizons constantly. And I think all of us who make it through have somewhere in our lives trained to do this to some extent so that we're prepared to do it. Because if you don't, if you're not able to do it at the extreme levels, you'll quit.
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A
Yeah, I, I remember going through Hell Week a little bit. I don't remember. I don't remember much about. To be honest with you, it's like a long time ago.
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C
Yeah, I mean, so we've been 30 years. For me, probably what, 35.
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A
And I was young. How old were you when you're at the buds?
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C
22.
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A
Okay. I was, I was like 19, but I remember just like whatever I wasn't thinking about anything in the future. I was just like, what are we doing right now? And having a good time with what we're doing right now. Okay, we're gonna do rock portage.
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C
Cool.
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A
Like, stroke. Stroke. Like I did. I. I felt no impending weight.
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C
Yes.
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A
From the future. At all.
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C
Right.
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A
Like, at all. And that's pretty much the way I felt through most of buds. There was no impending. Like, I can't believe. How long is this going to last? How long have we been doing this? I didn't think about that all. Just like, what are we doing right now?
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C
Okay, cool.
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A
They want me to run over this berm. I'm running over this berm and I don't even know what they're going to ask us to do next. They could ask us to do it a thousand more times or one more time. I didn't think either one of those.
- [22:05]
C
You were think in the moment and you're picking your own horizons based on you. Now, the horizons have to be subjective to us as individuals because. And also the intensity of the environment. So, for example, freezing in the surf zone, sometimes the horizon is really close. Sometimes the horizon can move out. Freezing the surf zone. My horizon was, I'm just going to count 10 waves sometimes, whatever that was. But the reason why that's the case is because what we're doing with our dopamine system when we pick a horizon is we're actually using dopamine to engage in the act of the Gullah. I know you've had Huberman and others on talking about dopamine, but dopamine is much more than just a reward chemical. It's a motivation chemical. And so they've done this experiments with. This experiment with rats. They put a rat in an enclosure, and in that enclosure there's a device where the rat just has to tap this lever and a tasty pellet comes out. And so, of course, the rat just sits next to that lever and just taps it over and over and gets that tasty pellet. Then, of course, they move the rat to the other side of the enclosure. The rat runs over and starts tapping it again. But then they removed the dopamine from the rat. And what they did was once they did that, they put the rat just a rat's length away from that device. The rat never moved. The rat would have actually sat there and starved if they'd let it. Right. So they recognize that dopamine, it engages upon the act of the goal. And why does this matter is because if we pick a horizon that's too far out. Then we are going to run out of dopamine before we get there. And we will quit. Anytime we've quit anything, it's because we've run out of dopamine. And so. And if we pick a horizon that's too short, by the way, we won't register enough of a reward. We're like, that didn't really feel that. And so, and so these horizons have to be subjective to us. And what's happening to those of us who actually make it through is we're constantly managing the horizon in a meaningful way. These guys who quit, they have. They have not. They've picked too far of a horizon, and so they quit before they get there. In fact, the instructors will capitalize on this. Now, it's unconscious genius, as most stuff in the SEAL team is. But I know you're from friends with Andy Stumpf, and I was talking to him about this. He was an instructor and he said he would literally, because he was second phase. But of course they do shifts and he would literally just deliberately fuck with guys and be like, hey, we're doing this all night, you know, or hey, just stand by because this is the whole week. I mean, what they're doing is they're constantly messing with our horizons. They do it micro. They do it in micro ways. To us, we all know buds. Well, again, for the audience, I think it's third phase. Every time the instructor says drop, you have to do 30. Second phase is 40. And third phase is 50 pushups, right? And so instructors will just walk by and say, drop, and you have to do 30 push ups or 40, whatever. But then what they'll do is they'll watch you doing push ups. And what do they inevitably do when you hit 29?
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A
Yeah, start again, Start again.
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C
Right. And so they are deliberately messing with your own internal DPOs and forcing you to pick other ones. And so the guys who get really good at this are the guys who make it through. And we don't. We start to not pay attention to other people's forced DPOs. We start to manage our own dopamine system and say, okay, I mean, for some of us, it was 10 waves. Sometimes it was make the next meal. Sometimes it's like, well, just see how this works out. I mean, it could be anything. But we're constantly modulating those. And here's the good news. The good news is you don't have to get it right the first time. You can pick a horizon if it feels too far in the moment, you can pull that horizon in. Anybody who's worked out has done this. You start your set, whatever, bench or whatever, I'm going to do 12 reps, you get to eight, and you're like, okay, just four more. What you've done in that moment is you've pulled that horizon in, and it works psychologically because you've just pulled that horizon and reset it, and you're doing four more. And so anybody can practice this. You can do it in any environment. It doesn't have to be an uncertainty to do it. But if you do this in uncertainty, what you're doing is you're mitigating that one factor of the equation. You're generating certainty by focusing on something. I am certain about this. You're moving to it, and you're picking something else.
- [25:54]
A
You ever heard, like, some people say, hey, if you have some goal, announce it to everyone and tell everyone that you have this goal. And other people say, hey, if you have a goal, keep it to yourself. These are, you know, Internet gurus say these things all day confidently.
- [26:09]
C
Both sides?
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A
Yeah, confidently, both sides. And I'm sure there's some sort of examples or something that they lived. But one thing I have seen is people that they get the dopamine hit from talking about doing something. So someone, you know, I'm writing a book.
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C
Yeah.
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A
And when they say that, it sort of gives them the reward that they're looking for of, like, now, you know, now Rich knows that I'm writing a book, and he thinks that I'm pretty. You know, he's impressed with that. He's got to think I'm a pretty disciplined guy because I'm, you know, hunkering down and writing a book or, you know, so you have to watch out for that. I remember guys that would talk about going to buds when I was in boot camp. You know, like, they talked about it a lot, and that was enough. They got enough dopamine right there. They say, I'm going to buds, too. And I'd be like, oh, do you want to do some, like, squats and jumping jacks with me? Well, I gotta make my bed or whatever. And so, yeah, you gotta be careful. I don't know which one of those is right there. I'm sure there's situations where both those are right. You know, I. I think certainly putting yourself out there into the world and claiming you're gonna achieve something is a really exaggerated form of that. And I think that might be beneficial for some people and also other people that are like, I'm not telling anyone. This is. I'm just gonna make this thing happen, and everyone's gonna look up one day and here's the book that I wrote or whatever.
- [27:19]
C
Well, here's what I will say. I think if I were to guess, it has probably something to do with our level of insouciance. Now, insouciance is an attribute we talked about. It's in the book. Insouciance is an attribute that is defined as the indifference or casual indifference of caring what people think. So in other words, person who's high in insouciance is the person who walks around life and they just don't seem to care what other people think. They march to be their own drum. They just do their own thing. And we know those people. They're out there. They're often quite iconoclastic. They set trends. They're often quite attractive to. I mean, they're like bees to honey. People are attracted to that lower insouciance folks. We're the type of folks who walk around and we look around and we try to gauge what people are thinking, and we actually adjust our behavior. Now, I would maintain that most Navy SEALs are lower on the insouciant scale. And the reason is because a lot of what we do is based upon, oh, I just. I'm not going to look bad in front of my teammates, right? You know, a classic, classic thing you'll hear from guys who didn't quit BUDS is, why didn't you quit? Is like, there was no fucking way I was going to get up and ring that bell. I was not going to be that guy. Right? I jumped out of. Why did I. I hated jumping out of airplanes. Why did I do it 100 times? The guy next to me was doing it. There was no way. I was not going to do that. Right? So I think the reason why this matters is for the lower insouciance person, the person who cares, they can announce a goal, and part of their drive will be, hey, I announced this. I can't now not do it. Right, because they care what people think. Your higher insouciance person is not going to give a fuck. They're going to be like, yeah, I announced it, but I don't care. I'm just my own person. So that might have a. I'm not saying that's the answer, but I think that might be why it works for some and doesn't work for other people.
- [29:01]
A
So, you know, they. When they brought the bell to buds, that was the reason that they brought it Was because when in the old days before they had the bell, when you quit, you just kind of walked around the back and you just disappeared.
- [29:13]
C
Yeah.
- [29:13]
A
And so the instructors. And it was actually specifically one guy said. Who was in charge of the phase, said, wait a second. If I make this, for lack of a word, like a humiliating process, visible humiliating process, were you have to stand up in front of everyone and say, I'm quitting. I can't take this anymore. And it seemed to help from what they said. And of course, then they took the bell away for a little while because it was too humiliating and all this stuff, but then they brought it back.
- [29:39]
C
You know what's interesting is it had a dual effect, because on one side, it had an effect on the person who's quitting, but on the other side, what did. When you heard the bell, when you were in BUDS or Hell Week, how did you feel?
- [29:51]
A
We got their power.
- [29:53]
C
Totally. I felt that I'm still here, right? I am. So. So it actually, every time I heard the bell, it pumped me up. It gave me more energy. And so. So it actually, I think it's a brilliant. Again, unconscious genius, brilliant addition. Because on one hand, it's. It's forcing a candidate to really come to terms with the fact that they are willing to. And again, we don't. I want to emphasize, we don't judge people quit, ever. We, for us, it's like, hey, if you don't want to be here, that's fine. We'd rather you make that decision. We respect you for trying. And, oh, by the way, it's a super small percentage of guys who actually get to the beaches of Bud, so we have ultimate respect for anybody who tries however it pumps us up, man, when you see all those helmets and you're in Hell Week, and you're like, I remember it was probably Tuesday morning or Wednesday morning, Hell Week, and it's probably Tuesday morning because I think one of the coldest nights was Tuesday or Monday. Anyway, I remember being at breakfast, being at chow, and looking around and being like, they must have the rest of the class out doing stuff, because this is not all of us. And I. It didn't hit me until later. I was like, oh, so many people had quit that it's just us now. You know, it pumps you up.
- [30:56]
A
It's like a video game where you kill someone and you get their power. You know, say it's that.
- [31:01]
C
Yeah, yeah. Well, David. David Goggins. Crushing souls or taking people's souls or something like that. It's kind of Like, I mean, it's. It's all related. So.
- [31:09]
A
Yeah, Jack, I'm going to fast forward a little bit. You got three additional ideas. Number one, the difference between planning and worrying.
- [31:17]
C
Yeah, yeah, we hit that. I mean, we hit that. It's good to plan, but you don't over plan. If you over plan, it's paralysis through analysis. And you say, and what. What planning does in. In small chunks is it allows you to commit to certainty and mastery. Some sops like, hey, if this happens, I don't. I've. I've. It allows you to close that uncertainty cone. In other words, if this or this happens, we know we'll do this. That closes that uncertainty cone. We know. Which means I can now open that aperture for other things I can't. Can't see coming. It's like this. It's like the, what, five or six parachute malfunctions you rehearse so that if something happens that you've never seen before is like, okay, I have all of my brain that I can use to put to this, you know, so, you
- [31:57]
A
know, number two, accept your limits. It's a good one to think about.
- [32:01]
C
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think. I think the. I think what I try to say in that is that. Is that nothing. You know, we. If we think we're invincible, if we think we. If we. If we don't accept the fact that we are. Are what are probably going to. To fail on certain things and, And. And not achieve, then we're. We're. We're setting ourselves up for failure. Nothing's perfect. And, oh, by the way, it's going to suck no matter what. So. Yeah.
- [32:36]
A
Yeah, I was kind of tap into this a little bit from a leadership perspective when someone, you know, I'm working with Echo, and we're on a project, and Echo's not really doing what he's supposed to be doing. So I try and take stuff off his plate, try and help him, try and support him, and at some point, I can't really. I can't really do anything else. And I, you know, say, hey, Rich, you're my boss. Hey, I need another guy. You know? Why. Why do you need another guy? Well, here's what I'm doing, and I've reached kind of my limits. Well, isn't Echo supposed to be doing that? Yeah, but Echo's at his limits over here, so can you give me someone else? Because if. If I just bury myself in all of the work, I'm not going to be successful. At a certain point, you have to say, hey, this is my max capacity. And by the way, Rich, if you don't want to give me someone else, okay, here's some. Here's what I need to prioritize. Do you want this or do you want that?
- [33:21]
C
Right.
- [33:21]
A
Do you need this now or that later? And we got to figure that out because everyone has limitations and there's only so many man hours in the day to make stuff happen. So something that we all have to do.
- [33:31]
C
Also let me add to that because I give the master some certainty content to all sorts of different organizations and teams and businesses. And I was doing a workshop at one point and one of the guys, I was doing several. So I did the uncertainty one the day before. The next day he comes back, say, hey, I was using the horizons thing. I did it for email and it was really hard for me. I couldn't go longer than five minutes on focusing. I said, well, this is part of accepting your limits. We are in a society now where the dopamine injections that we are able to get on a consistent basis are immense. I mean, just the doom scrolling is an example of that. And so some people may find themselves having to set very, very short horizons. That's okay as long as you're practicing that, you can extend those out later on. But accepting the fact that it's not a mature.
- [34:17]
A
What does he want to do with his email?
- [34:19]
C
He wanted to focus on getting them done. So I said, well, focus on just this email. Don't block out everything else. Answer this to your best of your ability and then go to the next one. And he just found himself, his attention was getting pulled right. Which is a common thing, a common occurrence, especially in today's environment. So just I say usually if you want to practice focusing, you could put a clock timer and you can set it. And I'm like, I'll set it for half hour. So no, no, no, half hour is probably too much for you right now. You might have to set it for five minutes or two minutes or whatever and just start feeling what it feels like to achieve that horizon and set a new one.
- [34:53]
A
Yeah, and the last one three help your brain, help you. And this is getting back to the frontal lobe piece.
- [35:02]
C
The good news is I'm sure everybody who's listening to this right now can think of an example where they've done this naturally. In other words, we are designed to do this to move horizons. We were designed to chunk our environments because our brains are constantly looking for certainty. And so the idea is let your natural processes take Over. And if you are picking horizons as well, what's happening is you are stemming that retreat of your frontal lobe because you're forcing your frontal lobe to focus on something and make a decision. So help your brain help you means your brain wants to do right by you. Because by the way, even if you do reach autonomic arousal or overload or amygdala hijack and you do jump out of the way of the moving train without thinking, your brain just helped you, right? And so, so help it along.
- [35:49]
A
Next section here. Actualize your neurology with better questions to remain grounded in the sphere of what you know and control. Cultivate a habit of asking yourself better questions. When you introduce a. And by the way, obviously I'm skipping chunks of the book. Get the book. I'm skipping a bunch of stuff so we can talk through it, but a lot of detail that I'm skipping. So get the book so you can get the detail. When you introduce a question into conscious thought, the mind is compelled to come up with answers. The problem is that it's all too common to default to reactive, negative, and sometimes emotion laden questions such as why am I so bad at this? Or why can't I succeed? Your brain will immediately begin to give you these answers. Yet the answers will not lead to enlightenment. Rather, they will spiral you into further negativity and anxiety. Masters of uncertainty steer their thoughts with better, more effective questions. Questions that center on what they can ascertain and influence. Well aware that knowledge morphs into power, they prime their minds with inquiries like what do I know? What can I control? The brain can't help but answer these questions in ways that put you at the helm. Yeah, that's a classic. Why do I suck at this?
- [36:57]
C
Well, our brain does that. I mean, we, we, our brain will answer any question we put it put into it. I do this exercise with, with teams. I say, I give them 30 seconds. I say, okay, answer this question. How can I double my income in the next six months? I give them 30 seconds. Anything that pops into your head, write down. And they do. And I don't even ask for the answers, even though I'm super curious. I say, how many things did you write down? And mostly you get five, six things. The reason why that is because whatever we ask our brain, our brain will begin to give us the answers. If you ask yourself, why am I so pissed off? You're going to get some phenomenal reasons as to why you're pissed off. However, if you ask yourself, why am I grateful? Or what can I do better. You're going to get those answers as well. And so really it's kind of a reframing tool. But you're working with your neurology. I mean, teams, we do that. Our natural debrief is what went right, what went wrong, what could we do better? But we don't focus on what went wrong. We focus on all three. Because we know that these avenues are. They can be sinkholes if we let them. That's not how we operate.
- [37:57]
A
Yeah, when. When situations or scenarios in business, in life are getting. I'm watching them kind of start to morph into something that is going to be negative. You know, sometimes I just go back to situation. You know, situation. Mission admins like Smiak, let's just get back to the basics because people, hold on a second. Hold on. Everyone stop. What's the situation we're in right now? Let's just talk through that.
- [38:20]
C
Yes.
- [38:20]
A
Okay. Now, what is our mission? Okay, how are we going to execute that? And that right there. I've. I've pulled myself or my teams out of a lot of bad scenarios just by saying, hey, okay, everyone stop. Because what are they worried about? Like, they're worried about beyond the situation that we're in. They're thinking about the situation that we might be and that we could end up.
- [38:37]
C
And anxiety.
- [38:38]
A
It's anxiety. It's all that best of.
- [38:39]
C
Hold on.
- [38:39]
A
What's the situation we're in now? Okay, what is our mission? Because now we're thinking we're trying to solve a thing that we created in our mind that's negative. And we're trying to come up with a mission to solve. That's not even where we're at right now. What are we doing right now?
- [38:50]
C
Yes, what do I know? What can I control? That's the very first question. And that anchors you. I've done this with my boys before. They're stressed out about something and they're like going off whatever. And I say, okay, stop. What do we know? What can we control right now? And you anchor that certainty and basically you're creating certainty and thereby negating that equation of fear. By the way, this is the best example of this, or one of the best. I heard Buzz Aldrin being interviewed about him and Neil Armstrong going to the moon or landing the lunar module on the moon. And the question was, hey, when you were landing in that process, were you afraid? And he said, no, I wasn't afraid because I was so focused on what I was doing. He had a myriad of things could have happened. I mean, they could have been trapped there, whatever. All he could focus on was what I was doing in the moment. I think you probably can attest to this. I've been asked if I was ever. If there were times in my career where we're in a situation or in combat or something where I was afraid. And I answer very honestly, and I say no. And that's not because I'm macho. It doesn't mean I'm cool or whatever. It's because in those moments, all I was doing was solving the current problem. I was moving from one thing to the other to the other. Now, what's interesting about, and I'm sure you've had this experience, is sometimes I'd get back from that mission, all the debriefs were done, all this stuff, I was back in my hooch by myself, and I'd be like, holy shit, that was close. And all that fear would come back. Right. But that's a much better place to experience the fear once it's done and over with. But the reason why. So we're almost delaying the fear because we're focused on the. The moment.
- [40:20]
A
Yeah, I, I would have the experience, too, of rolling to a target. So you're in vehicles, you're in a pretty, you know, sure, you can get id, but you're going to a target. And that's when I would have the most like, oh, what could go wrong? What's going to happen on a breach? This bad guy's waiting for us. I hope my guys don't get hurt, like, all that stuff. And then once the breach goes, you're just like, no, again, no fear. And like, you're saying, not to say, I'm not afraid of anything. But you're definitely not thinking about fear. You're thinking about doing your job. Right now, this is what we got going on. Hey, hold on. That room secured? Hey, let's get people on the other rooftop. Like, we're just. You have a job to do. You're just focused on it. And. But prior to, I would feel like, oh, the knot in my stomach sometimes of, hey, I hope everything goes well. And then when you get back, you're like, God's a frogman.
- [41:09]
C
Yeah. Or the counterfactual thinking comes in. What if. What if that had happened? Right. Yeah. But again, what you, you. What you just described is actually really indicative of this process working well, and that is you were in a specific phase in the mission. And I can remember being at a GFC or whatever doing the same thing. Where in that phase, you were asking yourself, okay, what could go wrong right now? What do I need to worry about right now? This could happen as I'm rolling up. Boom, boom, boom. Breach goes. Phase is over. You put all that stuff away, and now you're saying, okay, now what can I ensure? You're. You're. You're literally creating your own horizons and. And compartmentalizing your thought process. And it's not like you're not asking what ifs, but all of your what ifs are very anchored in the present moment or present. Or anchored in what your responsibility is. Right. So this is very. And your frontal lobes engage the whole time, so it really, really works. And most people can do it or have done it. We just have to practice this stuff.
- [42:00]
B
Yeah.
- [42:00]
A
And the more you're conscious of what you're doing, the better you'll get at it. Chapter two. Keep going. And you got a section here. Fast forward. The grit myth. Many harbor a misconception I refer to as the grit myth. The belief that sheer willpower and unyielding effort are the keys to overcoming challenges. As if depleting one's energy is a badge of honor. They often assume high achievers have an almost supernatural amount of stamina that exceeds normal bounds. This is a fallacy. What's the reality?
- [42:30]
C
Well, the reality is it always sucks. You know, people. I mean, it's just not. You know, we're. We're. It's like. It's like the cold. So. By the way, one of the best. And Huberman and I actually thought of this. One of the best places one can rehearse the. The moving horizons process is in the ice bath, because the ice bath sucks. And I always joke, and I know this for you. I have an ice bath in my garage, and I dread every single time I'm getting into that thing. I hate it. Okay. And it's when guys say, hey, should I get in the ice bath? It's like, you can't rehearse the cold. It's like getting. It's like rehearsing. Getting kicked in the. So you can't do that. Right. So. So. So the idea is it's not just about gutting it out. It's about actually applying processes so that you may actually move through that effectively. Yeah. Being tough. Being just tough. I mean, I guess there's. You know, you can be tough and dumb and maybe, but that's because you're just. Your. Your brain's operating at different. Different levels. So, yeah, it's not going to be Easy.
- [43:23]
A
If you're going to be stupid, you got to be tough.
- [43:24]
C
That's right.
- [43:25]
A
That whole thing, I use that all the time.
- [43:26]
B
Yeah.
- [43:26]
C
If you're going to be. If you're going to be dumb, you better be hard.
- [43:31]
A
Fast forward. To truly harness motivation, one must appropriately engage with the body's inherent drive system. This concept, combined with the strategy of moving horizons, resonates a profound instinctual level set. Meaningful horizons. A meaningful horizon is judiciously sized. And this is what you already talked about. It's challenging enough. It's a challenge that's within reach, yet still calls for a stretch. It's that sweet spot just beyond the borders of your comfort zone. It possesses a duration, pathway and outcome dpo, as you call it in the book, that are attainable, yet it demands a measure of exertion. It's the kind of goal that sparks a reassuring yes, I've got this. And rewards you with a fulfilling nod of achievement upon completion. This is interesting. One of the things I talk about is one of my favorite tools for leadership is leadership itself. So if I've got a guy who, let's say, is not very confident, give him something, get, you know, task and put him in charge of an, of a, of a mission or an operation that I know he can handle, but you can't make it so easy that it's just nothing for him. It's got to be something that's a little bit of a challenge, but not overwhelming. And you allow them. It's a stretch for them, but they get it done and their confidence increases. So that's a good tool to think about and it's a good thing to think about with your own goals that you have for yourself.
- [44:42]
C
Yeah, and the easy, the ease of which is actually important as well, because if we do, if we're not setting long enough horizons, that matters, I think. I talk about the guy I met in the book. I talk about the guy I met who introduced himself after a talk. He's an ultra runner and people do ultra run. I mean, 150, 100 mile races. I would never run that far. So it's always curious to me. I said, how did you get into that? He said, well, you may not believe this, but I used to be £450. And I was like, whoa. I said, tell me that story. And he said, well, I was so sick one day of my health and my weight that I said to myself, I'm going to, I'm going to run a marathon. He decided he's going to run a Marathon. I said, what did you do? He said, well, first thing I did is I went home, I ordered running shoes, and then the running shoes came. And then I said, tomorrow morning I'm going to get up and put on my running shoes. Next morning, I'm going to put on my running shoes, walk to the front door. Next morning, walk to the mailbox. Next morning, I'd walk to the. So he set his horizons. So I always joke, like, I try to when I'm home, run maybe once a week if I can. I enjoy it. 3 miles, 3.2 miles is the longest. But if I can't run for several weeks and I get home and I say, you know what, I want to run again. And I say, tomorrow, I'm just going to walk to my mailbox. It's not going to be a large enough thing. So we have to stretch ourselves to a degree where it's kind of. It's outside our comfort zone. Yes. But it's not so far that we're not going to make it. And the good news is, if you do pick something too far, you can pull it in in the moment, depending. But, yeah, it can't be too easy.
- [46:02]
A
We just had a guy on the podcast named Mason Wright who ran a thousand miles around a track.
- [46:07]
C
Oh, my goodness.
- [46:08]
A
Yeah. And I didn't really realize how psycho that was until we started talking about it. And when you're out running in. In the normal world, you get all these little micro adjustments and you get to, you know, you're going left, you're going right, you're looking at different things and your body has to adapt. And so that means your body's not doing the same exact repetitive motion, which is way harder on your body than even the little micro adjustments. Uphill, downhil, trail, take going left, going right. It was brutal. And there's not. He's the third person ever to do this.
- [46:43]
C
There were actually three people who did it that surprised me.
- [46:46]
A
And. And one of the guys who was like, maybe the first guy to do it, who was like, apparently this ultra, ultra hardcore dude and was like, annihilated him, like, he got permanently injured from it. It's crazy. It's crazy.
- [47:03]
C
How long did that take, by the way?
- [47:04]
A
It took him. Do you remember what it took him? It took him like, I want to say night. It took him a couple weeks, like 19 days.
- [47:11]
C
Just running the whole time.
- [47:13]
A
I mean, no, he's. You're stopping. Like, you have to sleep, you have to, like, lay down, but you're all day. But you Stay on the track. And I want to say the. The. It was more than eight hours a day. It's like, probably. I forget the number of hours a day, but he was running. I think the average was 56 miles a day. And then, you know, lay down, get massages, you know, hydrate and get back to it again. But that repetitive. And even I said, did you run the opposite way around the track? And he did, but he only did about a third of the laps the opposite way because it was like. It's psychologically weird for human beings to run clock. I guess it's clockwise. Or is it counterclockwise? One of them is. Yeah, counterclockwise. It's like, psychologically, we're not. We don't like it.
- [47:56]
C
Interesting.
- [47:56]
A
And so you just. You just freak out when you're doing. He even said he was like, it was so hard for me to run.
- [48:01]
C
Yeah.
- [48:02]
A
The opposite direction. I was like, okay, bro.
- [48:04]
C
He had set his horizons very specifically.
- [48:06]
A
Yeah, yeah. But, you know, one of the talks I had with him before he did it was. This is something I tell people. It's a very similar thing, but, you know, when you're shooting. And I explained to people that when you're shooting, when you. The target's far off in the distance, and when you look at it, you. I can see the target, but if you continue to look at it becomes blurry. And so what do we do? We focus on our front sight. Right? And this is what I always explain to people. Sometimes you gotta focus on your front sight. Like, hey, I'm just gonna do what I need to do today, like this. Just this next step or whatever you said to the end of the berm.
- [48:35]
C
Right.
- [48:35]
A
But then sometimes when that grind starts to take an impact on you, you gotta, you know, hold on a second. Let me look at the far target here. Oh, yeah, that's right. I wanna complete this ultra marathon or I wanna make it through buds or whatever. You look out. Okay. Yeah, I can see that thing. But again, sometimes that just gets too far away. When it's too far away, that seems like a dream.
- [48:55]
C
Yeah.
- [48:56]
A
And so I'm gonna look right back at my front side again. What do I got to do today? What do I got to do in the next 20 minutes to move towards that reality?
- [49:02]
C
So 100%.
- [49:03]
A
That's one of the ways that I describe this thing of the horizons. Fast forward a little bit. Meaningful goals boost rather than drain motivation because of how dopamine functions. Often dubbed the molecule of pleasure or reward. Reward. Dopamine does create a feeling of reward for pleasurable activities. Yes, it spikes. You indulge in something like a tasty dessert. Echo Charles. But there's more to it, Brian. I was on a bunch of travel and I was explaining, and I ended up at an event for Echelon Front, it's called the Council. And I was talking through dopamine and rewards and overcoming an amygdala. And I was explaining that I got on this plane and I hadn't eaten because I don't like to eat when I'm speaking, blah, blah, blah. So I was at an event, so I didn't eat. And then next thing you know, I travel. And so I'm on this plane and I just got into three bags of lay's potato chips, bro. Like a. Like a. Like a savage, bro. Just total amygdala override hijack. Just greasy. Just like porn, you know, and just in my. This is exactly what I need, thankfully, you know, because I was gonna starve to death if I didn't eat these chips. If I didn't eat these Lays potato chips, I was gonna starve to death. So I just had crumbs on my chin, just greased up, just getting in there. But that dopamine. That dopamine is real, man. Dopamine is actually the driving force that enables you to seek outside pleasurable experiences in the first place. It is the motivational push behind the pursuit of rewarding.
- [50:31]
C
Because.
- [50:32]
A
What a great example, though, because I was like, there's no world where my frontal cortex is like, hey, eat these three bags of lay's potato chips. There's no world where that happens, right? No, I'm breaking those things open like a straight savage. It powers the pursuit of all goals, from getting a slice of cheesecake to enduring surf torture. But here's the catch. If the goal seems too daunting, your body can't produce enough dopamine to propel you toward it. You end up feeling unmotivated. That's what I was just talking about. That far distance thing.
- [51:03]
C
That's right. Too far of a horizon.
- [51:05]
A
Too far of a horizon. In picture, standing at the base of a mountain with a thousand steps cut into it. That's a hefty number. On the flip side, if your goal is too modest, the feeling of reward would you achieve it will be minimal or even zero. So there you go.
- [51:17]
C
There it is. Yeah, Just manage your dopamine. It's all very subjective. We can all do it, practice it.
- [51:21]
A
So here's another interesting one. And it ties into what we're just saying you. But you, you use the term keep your eyes off the prize, which is kind of what I was just saying. If that thing is so far in the distance, it doesn't even have meaning anymore.
- [51:34]
C
Right.
- [51:34]
A
You know, oh, I want, I really want to buy a house. So for the next four years I need to save up five years for a down payment on a house.
- [51:43]
C
Right.
- [51:43]
A
But then you're, you know, you're out in the mall or, no, even worse, you're on Amazon.com and you can have this thing, whatever this thing that you do not need in any sense of the word.
- [51:54]
C
Which is most things on Amazon.
- [51:55]
A
Yeah, which is most things on Amazon. But Echo Charles, he's addicted to knives and flashlights. So he's just like, oh, new flashlight. How many, what candle power is that thing?
- [52:06]
B
Lumens.
- [52:07]
A
How many lumens? Next thing you know, he's clicking on a, on a eighty dollar flashlight of which he has four already. Five. Twelve.
- [52:17]
B
Yeah, twelve.
- [52:19]
C
Probably be well lit when the apocalypse comes.
- [52:24]
B
Yeah.
- [52:25]
A
Next one here. Stay cool.
- [52:26]
C
Yeah.
- [52:27]
A
Tools to modulate autonomic arousal. Autonomic arousal is the body's natural boost. Ignites a cascade of biochemical changes to energize us. When facing a challenge or threat, however, there's a threshold and this is where we're talking about the amygdala hijack. If this shift goes unchecked, it can spiral into what's known as autonomic overload or amygdala hijack. As the amygdala plays a key role in initiating a. On an autonomic arousal, actions become reflective, reflexive rather than reflective. And there we go. This is what we're going to watch out for. And so then you get into the tools to get control of this situation.
- [53:09]
C
So this is basically taking that other part of that equation. So Moving Horizons is buying down uncertainty. If we want to buy down anxiety, we can take control of our physiology. And so in the chapter there, I talk about so some visual tools and some breath tools. But the idea is when we get autonomically aroused, our physiology reacts in very specific ways. Our vision tunnels, our breathing gets more shorter and more and more, more choppy. We can reverse that process by doing things with our vision and doing things with our breath. Breathwork is probably the most powerful and there's several different breath tools. Breathwork is cool because breath work you can, you can do, one of you can, you can increase your autonomic arousal with breath work. You can do decrease it, you can hold the steady Visual tools or some, some things you can do in there. But, but the idea is you can literally bring down your autonomic arousal, which is quite literally bringing your frontal lobe back online. And you can combine the two. In other words, your first horizon can be, I'm going to take 10 breaths. And so you're combining that, you're getting your frontal lobe back online, you're getting into a decision making process and you're saying, okay, now where I can go from, where can I go from here?
- [54:11]
A
Yeah, this is. I was going through ult, which is unit level training with when I was a task unit commander and my, my, one of my platoon commanders, Seth Stone, we were in the vehicles and we're doing immediate action drills. And I was sitting behind him, you know, watching because I'm the tasking commander. So I'm just like watching how he's doing. And the first time he does one or second whatever it was, and he's like not making any calls. I'm watching him as the 50 Cal start shooting in the, the targets pop up. And I'm looking at him, he's just not, not doing anything. So I watched him do that a couple times. And so I said, all right, here's what you're gonna do. And I took a Sharpie Magic Marker and I wrote on the window in his Humvee in front of his face, one, relax to look around. Three, make a call. And I said, hey, next time you hear the.50 caliber, start shooting, follow these instructions. And he's like, roger. So I behind him and I'm watching him, machine gun starts firing and I see him and I go, okay, he just relaxed and I see him move his head. He looks around, he opens the Humvee door to see where the other one go. Okay, he's looking around and then boom, make a call. And guess what? It worked. And I didn't know this at the time, but those instructions of like, okay, relax, take a breath, that's what you need to do. That's step number one. Look around. That expands your horizons. The other story I tell about this, which I told Huberman as well, is I never wanted to sound panicked when I got on the radio, right, because everyone's going to make fun of you and everyone else is going to panic too. So regardless of what I had done in the previous 30 seconds to five minutes, when I got on the radio to say something to the boys, I would, hey, this is Jocko. Instead of, you know, I'm not doing that. No, it's not. We're not doing that.
- [55:57]
C
That's right.
- [55:57]
A
So there you have the components. And. And the other thing was, you know, what I ended up calling detaching is like take your head off your weapon, take a step back off the skirmish line, look to your left, look to your right, see what's happening. And these are all exactly as you prescribe in the book. Visual tools like take a step back and open up your. Your panoramic vision. That's what we have to do. And even when even I tell this to clients right now, they'll say, you know, I'll be in a meeting and I'll start getting frustrated. And I will say, hey, lean back from the. From the meeting. Like, push your seat back and look at. Look up and down the table. If you're having a conversation with someone, take a half a step back, just back away and just look around a little bit. Broaden your field of view, because it absolutely relaxes you. And I always say, you always feel relaxed when you're watching the sunset in the ocean. You're feeling relaxed when you're overlooking the mountains. That feels relaxing because you can see that there's no threats there. It opens up. That's your animal instinct is getting relaxed. And same thing with that breath. Just slow it down and you're going to be in it. You're going to be in a better. A much better spot.
- [57:02]
C
Well, you slice time differently to your brain when you get really good at this. It's why those who are good at this will describe a very kinetic event as time slowed down. Because your brain is actually slicing time in a different way. And we're able to consciously see that. And so first of all, I have to say I loved. We talked about Seth last time. I loved Seth. He was. He came to Seal Team 10 when I was exo. Great guy. But when we talk about this idea of slowing down, and I'm sure you get this, too, the most classic excuses. Well, just, I have no time. It's like we always have time, right? I mean, if we can be in calm. If I can have a parachute malfunction and I can take a half breath before I do something, I think you can take a half breath in a meeting. That's getting stressful, right? You can pull back, you can calm yourself. Time will seemingly, if you get good at this, slow down for you and you'll be able to make the call.
- [57:50]
A
So I have a very vivid memory of the first time that I ever had that happen. I was over in the Persian Gulf. It was like 1999 or 2000. And we were doing a ship boarding, and it was this big Russian ship, and there was a lot of hype around us doing this op, and we were fast roping onto it, and that fast open was. It was in slow motion and it was so cool. I was like, oh, this is it right here. This is. Is go. This is this. I'm just like seeing everything. I'm looking at the bridge as I'm fast roping down, looking around. I'm looking at the guys that are ahead of me. Just. It was crazy how much everything slowed down. I mean, how long does a fast rope take? 4 seconds, 3 seconds? It seemed like 25 seconds. It was how much everything slowed down. And it was really nice because then I was kind of got kind of knew what to expect. Like, okay, cool. That's pretty dope.
- [58:42]
B
Well, so.
- [58:42]
C
So one of my buddies, Matt Bissonnette, who obviously wrote no Easy Day and stuff, he talks about rehearsing the car wreck or the car accident and how if you're someone who's gotten to many car accidents, you're somewhere. The first one, you're like, oh, my God, everything happened. I couldn't. I can't remember. Then again, the second was like, oh, I noticed this third one, you're like, oh, I know. And so you do this often enough and you begin to notice stuff like you're saying. Even in the most kinetic environments, you kind of. You. Things slow down, you start noticing things. Yeah.
- [59:07]
A
The respiratory tools you mentioned some of them, there's oxygen. Oxygen dominated inhale breathing. I was thinking about this, you know which.
- [59:16]
C
Which ups your autonomic. Yep.
- [59:18]
A
Like. Like when you're getting ready to echo Charles. Oh, yeah. He knows what I'm gonna say. He's getting ready. He's getting ready to bench press those 120s.
- [59:26]
B
Right.
- [59:27]
A
It's a little. Am I wrong?
- [59:30]
B
No, you're correct.
- [59:30]
A
You're in the game right there.
- [59:31]
B
Huh.
- [59:32]
C
Wim Hof popularized this too. He's a lot of what he does. The Wim Hof breathing is very. It's oxygenating yourself, getting yourself amped up.
- [59:39]
A
So. And then there's the psychological side, which you talk about in the first book when you were parachuting and you'd be yawning even though you. Even though you were freaking horrified, you're like, why am I yawning? And you figured out that that's the. That's a psychological sigh.
- [59:55]
C
Well, yeah, physiological. Physiological. Physiological sigh. Yeah. What's. What's happening is you're. You're Yawning activates a couple. I can't remember the neuroscience, I have to refer to Huberman on that one. But it activates this nerve that hits the phagus nerve. So you're actually activating your system in a way that allows you to actually calm down. But physiological size is probably the easiest, most effective thing to do. And that's really easy. That's just a really deep breath in a top off and then a very slow exhale and you're blowing out carbon dioxide. That's what's happening. And so you're, you're releasing that anxiety.
- [60:29]
A
Then you got the 4, 7, 8 breathing technique again. Get the book.
- [60:33]
C
Yeah.
- [60:33]
A
There's a lot of these things, the box breathing and these things are all in the book to help you. Part two of this book, mastering Yourself. And now we get kind of a discussion about the attributes again, which is what you wrote an entire book about. And the big key point that you make in this book is that you have to identify your attributes.
- [60:55]
C
Yeah. The idea is, well, first of all, those first three things we talked about, they're all ubiquitous to all human beings. We all have the ability to do this physiologically and neurologically. We can move horizons. We've done that. We also have to understand what we're bringing into uncertainty subjectively. What are those things subjective about us that we're bringing into uncertainty? So those factors. So attributes, understanding our attributes, understanding our unique attribute stack, our ranking allows us to say, okay, this is me at my most raw. And that's what the tool and our assessment tool allows you to do, is it allows you to figure out your attributes from 1 to 36. And again, like I'll say, just because you're number 36 on the attribute doesn't mean you don't have it. So those a person who said number 36 is humor, it doesn't mean you don't have a sense of humor. It just means when the shit hits the fan, you're not the first person telling jokes. Right. You're going to be more serious. Someone who has number one as their humor, they're going to come up with a joke immediately, which we know these guys, we need them. Right. They're the class cons. So it's really about how your attributes stack so you understand how your behavior is going to be prioritized.
- [61:55]
A
Got it. So will your assessment force ranks the attributes, is that correct?
- [62:00]
C
That's correct, yes.
- [62:01]
A
So I couldn't be a nine on situational awareness and also a nine on persistence.
- [62:08]
C
That's Right, right. So in other words, and I would say we have 36. So it's one to 36 now. So you can be number one on situation awareness and number two on perseverance. Right. And that's going to manifest in very specific ways in your behavior. But you could also be number three on decisiveness and number 36 on patience. Now, that's going to be advantageous in the sense that you're not going to be someone who slows down or wastes time. You're going to make decisions rapidly. But like we describe, all of our attributes, highs and lows come with both advantages and disadvantages. Not even disadvantages, blind spots. So in other words, a blind spot of that particular one. High, decisive, low, patients that you may make decisions too quickly, too impulsively. And so what we have to recognize about ourselves is, first of all, our lower attributes are just as advantageous as our high ones. They're contributing in ways in our performance, and those combinations allow us to understand how and why we behave the way we do. You're going to want to push forward in situations where you need some very creative thinking. You're going to want to push forward that person who's higher and cunning because they're going to be naturally more inclined, especially in their most raw moments, to think of very creative, outside the box solutions. And I think this is the gift that we are given in buds, because day one of buds, you begin to understand yourself at your most raw. Now, you're not nuanced in the vocabulary of attributes, so you don't know exactly what it is, but you start knowing, oh, this is how I show up at my most raw. And you start learning that about your teammates and, and the secret to the SEAL teams is we all know each other at our most raw. And some of us are good at certain things, others are not. And we just, we kind of step up and step back in a very dynamic way. But understanding that ranking is really important.
- [63:48]
A
And then you, you talking here about developing your attributes. So if I'm not the best at situational awareness, can I get better at it?
- [63:58]
C
You can. However, I will. It comes with a caveat. So in other words, like I said, just because you're low on something doesn't mean you need to develop it. Okay? In fact, developing it may be detrimental to what you want to do. So here's a good example, and I think seals fall into this category too. But there's a group of people we consistently work with who are very high on caring. So caring is one of Our attributes as is empathy. Okay, Two separate things. So quick description. Empathy is I feel what you feel. Caring is. I'm acting to do something. Okay. Caring is an action arm. There's a group of people we consistently work with that are all high on caring, low on empathy. Who might you imagine that group is?
- [64:32]
A
Say it again.
- [64:33]
C
High on caring, Very high on caring, low on empathy.
- [64:38]
A
Doctors.
- [64:39]
C
Yeah, specifically emergency room doctors. Emergency room workers. They are people who say, if I get emotionally involved to any extent, I can't do my job. However, I will do everything in my power to care. So this is a factor where if they worked on their empathy, it may inhibit their ability to do their job. And so what we want to kind of describe for people is the way I describe attributes is that we are all automobiles. All of us human beings are automobiles. Some of us are Jeeps, some of us are SUVs, some of us are Ferraris. And you never judge a Ferrari. A Jeep would never judge a Ferrari for not being able to go off road, and a Ferrari would never judge a Jeep for not being able to go fast. Okay. What we have to understand is we have to understand what kind of vehicle we are and ask ourselves, will developing these attributes help in my Jeepness or my Ferrariness? Because you can be a Jeep and you can get a Ferrari engine, Ferrari tank tires, and you will both be a miserable Ferrari and a miserable Jeep. You will have destroyed your deepness. So that said, and I know you're someone, We've talked about this either last time or even offline seals are low in empathy. We have to be to do our job as a leader, as a father, as someone coming out of the military, as a civilian. I said, well, I actually have to develop my empathy. So I've been developing my empathy over the years. HB who, you know, he's. We talk about this all the time and. And we joke about the fact that we can be. We'd be in situations nowadays like I'll see a commercial and suddenly I'll feel emotional like, what the hell's going on with me? We've developed our empathy muscle because we haven't had to have low empathy the way we did in the teams. And so you can develop an attribute. It takes work, it takes self development. It takes your willingness to step into environments that test and tease that attribute. So develop your patients. Go find environments that test and tease your patients. But you have to do it in a very deliberate and thoughtful way because it may be inhibiting your performance if you're not careful.
- [66:23]
A
Yeah. You know, the. The classic question which you also pose in. In the attributes, which I pose in my book, as well as where does. I wrote about the book Leadership Strategy and tactics field Manual. You know, where are leaders born or made? And yes, the answer is both. And yes, you know, you can be a person that is naturally gifted at public speaking. Like, there's some people that they're just really good at public speaking. And you could be someone that is not naturally gifted at public speaking. And public speaking is very nice to have in a leadership position. And you can get better at that. You may not get as good as the person that was naturally gifted, but you can definitely get better at it. Being able to simplify things. That's a very great. That's a great skill to have as a leader. You might not be naturally gifted at that. You can get better at it. If you work on it and pay attention to it, you can get better at it. What other.
- [67:20]
C
Here's the good news about that, which I'll say is we don't necessarily have to develop attributes we're low on, because what we actually can do instead, and what we're doing mostly in everyday life is we are deliberately dialing up or dialing down attributes. And so someone might be low on patients, and they're saying, I'm going to this meeting. I got to dial up my patients. But it's taking conscious effort. I can't remember. The team guy was asking his number one was. He took the assessment, his number one was humor. And I said, do you ever have to dial down your humor? He's like, oh, yes. Because his joke I want to tell is completely inappropriate. Right? So he's dialing down his humor. And so we're dialing things all the time. We have to recognize that it takes conscious energy to do that. One and B and two, at our most raw, when the shit hits the fan, it's going to be very difficult and possible for us to dial it up. So in a leadership position, someone who didn't really. I'm not. I public speak all the time. It's not like I'm not. I think it's okay. I've gotten better at it. It's not something I do, you know, for the rest of my life. I've dialed certain aspects of my attributes. It does not mean that I'm naturally good at it anymore. And what it does mean is when I complete that task, usually I'm exhausted afterwards, which is fine, you know, but we can. We can all pick times and pick elements of which we can dial up for certain situations. That's mostly what's going on.
- [68:30]
A
Yeah. And then another important component of this is when you recognize what your attributes are and what other people's attributes are, you can build a team where everyone's complementary to your weaknesses. Right. So, you know, I was always looking for that person to work with me that was really good at paperwork and really enjoyed it, which. Some people enjoy it. You know, some people enjoy it. They like it. You know, you. I've. You know, I work with accountants, and my accountant loves, like, they love this stuff, which is awesome. That's exactly what you want. And so finding people that are complementary to your. Like, for instance, if you're not the funny guy and you have a platoon with no fun or a team with no funny guys, man, that's not a fun time. That's gonna be painful. Yeah, that's gonna be painful. I was on a call the other day. You know, it was a legal call. Lawyers, the whole nine yards. And I had to crack some jokes. I mean, I just had to. I just had to because it was just too. It was too much, you know, I just had someone. Yeah. All of a sudden, because lawyers are there to defend their ground at all costs, and all of a sudden, people that you think are your friends, you're like, wait a second. This isn't my friend. This is my enemy. Oh, no, no, no, wait. We're all just on a call with lawyers, and lawyers are doing their lawyer thing. So I'm going to make some jokes. Everyone remembers that. Who we all are.
- [69:46]
C
Yes.
- [69:46]
A
And that's the way it works.
- [69:48]
C
Well, and you and I talked before about our wives and our wives being opposite us. And this happens in great marriages. My wife, she's low patience. I'm high patience. Right. That's worked beautifully for us because when patience is required, I step up. When impatience is required, she steps up. Her impatience has prevented me from going too slow or procrastinating. My patience has prevented her, on occasion, from being too impulsive. Same thing with introversion. Extroversion. She's extroverted. I'm introverted. If it were up to me, I'd just be a hermit in my house. I go on gigs sometimes, and if I'm by myself, just because it's so energetically expensive for. For me to be in front of people will finish as soon as I'm done. I just want to be by myself. I'm on the plane home. I talk to nobody. Right. If she's with me and they're like, hey, there's a dinner, a cocktail. She's like, we're going. And she makes me, she forces me out there. Right, so. And then sometimes I force her to say, hey, let's just stay put here. Right. So if you can. The best teams are in many cases, or at least in certain attributes where they're meshing like zippers in terms of the representation of them.
- [70:46]
A
Yeah. Anytime you put together a good team, you know, it's always really obvious. With a good bull too. They had like the guy that was super risk averse with the guy that just didn't give a. About anything.
- [70:54]
C
That's right.
- [70:54]
A
And the guy that was super detail oriented about against the, you know, with the guy that was super big picture. And everyone just kind of finds a role and they create enough tension so that it all works.
- [71:05]
C
Yes, I'll say that. We, you know, we give these, we give these workshops and these, these businesses and teams take these assessments and people, when they come up low on courage, often they're upset. But then I explain to them what the advantage is in blind spots. And like I say, I give that literal example, like if I'm a platoon commander, I'm planning a mission and it's some crazy shit, I'm not going to go to my high courage guy and say, hey, are we good here? Because he's like, yeah, we're fucking fine. No issue. I'm going to go to the guy who's lower because he's going to see risk in a different way. He's going to start pointing things out. So there's advantages and blind spots to all of these things.
- [71:38]
A
Check next chapter. Identities the subconscious source of action. This section is called the rules and biases you follow. In the preceding chapter, I delineated the attributes as the essential code. Sculpting. Sculpting your behavior patterns. They are your fundamental hows. Your identity or identities define your fundamental what's. They furnish you with the instinctual guidelines and predispositions you adhere to amid uncertainty. Your few core identities play a vital role in what you do in any scenario. In the throes of profound uncertainty, they are often. They often emerge as the sole determinants. Deep uncertainty, challenge and stress often divest us of more surface level elements of who we are, such as our ideals, habits, preferences or even personality, revealing the core identities that lie beneath.
- [72:36]
C
So this is. I am fascinated with identity. I really am. In fact, spoiler alert, that's going to be the third book I'm going to start writing all on identity. Because it's that big of a topic. But the idea is that I am are the two most powerful words in the human language. Everything we put after those two words is how we behave. It's how it begins to form that. However, we have to understand that we are a collection of IMs, and we collect these throughout a lifetime, some very benign and some very powerful. So I went to this high school. I'm a lacrosse player. I'm a Navy seal, I'm a husband, I'm a father, I'm a Metallica fan, whatever that is. Right? Every single one of those I ams comes with that or with them some rules and conditions that define behavior in that identity. And what we have to recognize is we behave towards that either consciously or unconsciously. And in uncertainty, challenge, and stress, we're going to prioritize or behave towards whichever identity we prioritizing in the moment. And so in a positive sense, we could say, well, obviously, and I know you're the same as me, two very powerful identities. Navy seal, husband, father. And of course, those of us whose marriages survived, we tended to prioritize husband and father or try to. Sometimes the neighbor's like, no, no, Navy SEAL first, right? So deployment, we're in Iraq, Navy SEAL is number one, okay? However, sometimes the target would change. You'd be dealing with women, children, civilians, and you bubble up that husband, father, you change the behavior and follow those rules in the negative sense. We've all heard of the. Or heard the story of the fanatical sports fan who beats the shit out of the other sports fan. And then in standing in front of the judge is like. The judge is like, what were you thinking? The guy's like, I didn't know. I don't know what I was thinking. That person was behaving and prioritizing identity in the moment and was deprioritizing other things. If in that moment that person had said, oh, wait a second, yes, I'm a whatever fan, I could name some teams. It'd be hilarious. But, you know, yes, I'm a whatever fan, but I'm also a husband, father, I'm a businessman. That person may have behaved in a different way. So the idea is, start getting a sense of all of your identities. Start to understand which are powerful, which are benign, which ones you can get rid of, you can discard. Maybe you can build a new one. You can create a new one. Which is really probably the ultimate challenge for anybody transitioning from the military career or any career. It's that loss of that identity. And I always joke, I think the Marines have always been brilliant about this because the Marines are once a Marine, always a Marine. This is why you can meet 90 year old guys who say, who refer to themselves As a gunning sergeant SEALs is not the same way. Our thing is earn your trident every day. As soon as you put that trident down, you're no longer a Navy seal. We're a former seal and so that can be a real dearth in your identity. And if you're not, I think it probably happened for you, but certainly for me, my husband, father was so powerful that when the Navy SEAL went away I had some, something to fall back on. But then I said to myself, okay, I'm going to create a new one author, entrepreneur and I can be, I can build a new identity. And so, so I talk to a lot of folks who are transitioning, I'm starting to talk to, we're starting to do this work with organizations whose, who they have employees whose roles are becoming obsolete because of AI and suddenly their identities are in question. You know, coders especially. Right. You know, coding is going in the way of the dodo because AI is doing it. So we're working with them to help them understand how these, how they can help these folks figure out and build new identities. And part of it is falling back on your own attributes and what your massive value proposition is because the attributes that allowed you to do this thing, the attributes that allowed us to be Navy SEALs are the same things we put forth to any other endeavor. Which is why you and I were talking before. You get Navy SEALs doing everything. I mean from investing to writing a lot, writing books, I guess, but investing to real estate, to contracting to, to, to entrepreneurship, all that stuff. It's because we're falling back on attributes as the identity versus the SEAL thing.
- [76:12]
A
Yeah. And you know, when I work with businesses, obviously we talk about culture and I always say that culture is the ultimate form of decentralized command because when people have the embedded culture of the organization, they know how to behave. They know 99% of the decisions they need to make based on just the culture of the organization. That's the same with, you know, a family. You know, if your family has a culture within the family, the children know how to behave not based on you telling them what to do because you can't be there all the time. But they know, oh, this, this is a part of this is okay for me to do this or this is not okay for me to do this. And it's interesting, like I Never. I never like hounded my kids about their grades when they were in school, but they all did exceptionally well. And I never said one word to, it was just like, this is, this is what we do. This is the standard and that kind of thing. Because I was just having a discussion with, with people from, from Echelon front. You know, people were talking about kids. It comes up a lot like, well, how do you, you know, one, one person said I need to, I need to set the standards for my kids so they know clearly what they are. And I said as much as you can allow them to figure out what those standards are, you know, ask them where they want to be and what standards will bring them to that ultimate person place and that becomes more embedded them and now that becomes part of their culture. And if we do a good job as leaders, we actually can, can create a culture that becomes people's identities which is like, like you said, the Marine Corps does an outstanding job of that. You know, you go, they play the Marine Corps. Him, there's a hundred year old Marine in a wheelchair and he will look around and other Marines will come and help him stand up for that. Yeah, that's what they're doing because it's part of their identity, it's part of their culture and it works. And they can make decisions based on that. And when it's positive identity, man, it's a beautiful thing. It can carry, like you said, in the really stressful times, in the bad times, in the times where perhaps amygdala hijack is a possibility. If you have a really strong identity, it can override that and you can do the right thing instead of the wrong thing even in stressful environments or
- [78:21]
C
do the thing that's consistent with your identity, regardless of what that thing is. And I would say this, we have to be careful. And I talk about when it comes to culture, culture is simply a group identity, what that is. And there's a difference between behaviors and standards. And I think behaviors come first and standards come after that. But what are the core behaviors? Because we know standards can change. I know you probably the same way. If my sons came back with low grades. It's not like I'm not going to punish them for the low grades. I'm going to get on them for how they're responding to the, the low grades and what are the behaviors that they're applying or what were the behaviors they were applying in the first place that got them low grades. That's what we're going to talk about. Because identity is about behavior. And if we're not careful in any culture, if we're not more deliberate in defining what it looks like to behave, to be part of this thing, the group's going to sort itself out. And you may not like the answers. As a leader, you have to really be on top of that.
- [79:17]
A
Yeah. I always talk about the fact that a gang polices itself. And when you're. Well, certainly in a SEAL platoon, it's a gang.
- [79:26]
C
Yeah.
- [79:26]
A
And, you know, I always say, hey, I was a platoon commander. What did I have to do when someone was late? I didn't have to do anything when someone was late. What I have to do when somebody's forgot a piece of gear. I didn't have to do anything. That shit was getting handled. It was getting handled. The gang is going to police itself, which is as it should be.
- [79:40]
C
Yeah.
- [79:43]
A
The potency identities for teams is what we just talked about. The potency of a collective identity within a team is immeasurable. This alignment isn't just about the common goal. It's a synergy of values and a unison of intent where each member's actions are harmonized by shared principles and expectations. So that's the culture that we're talking about.
- [80:00]
C
So what I did when I was commanding officer, I talk about in the book was, was instead of doing a command philosophy, I basically. We did a command identity. We basically designed a series of I am statements. Now what I did is I designed them and then I took them to team leaders and troop chiefs and said, hey, this looks good, and we use them, and they actually worked. And the one mistake I made in looking back was I recognized that as soon as I left command, the identities, those IAMs disappeared. And I said, you know what? I made a mistake here. And the mistake I made was I never. That first initial trough of IAMs I made and I got approved through the team leaders. What I should have done about six months into my command tour was say, okay, guys, come together, and as a group, let's figure out what these statements are. And then it becomes a team thing versus a Rich thing. And so my mistake was it worked for the time being, but it didn't endure. Because when Rich left, it left. And had I done the job of getting the team to do it, then it would still be in existence. But anyway, these are lessons. And by the way, the best people, one of the best groups on the world who does this, I mentioned them, are the greatest girl scouts. The girl scouts have what are called the girl Scout code, and they're A series of behaviors that they memorize. I am this, I do this, and go anywhere around the world. And they know exactly how to behave.
- [81:22]
A
Yeah, I wrote a series of books called the Way of the Warrior Kid. And the process in the book that the kid goes through is, you know, he's a kind of a wimpy kid, can't do any pull ups. Doesn't is getting picked on by the school bully, Kenny Williamson, followed by Nathan James. He doesn't know his times tables, so he thinks he's stupid. And he doesn't know how to swim. And so he's all sad about all that stuff. And luckily his uncle Jake comes to stay with him for the summer. And his uncle Jake says, you know, what do you want to do? You want to go out? You want to go for a swim tomorrow? You want to go play ball? He's like, well, I can't play ball. I suck at sports. I don't even know how to swim. And Uncle Jake says, hey, because Uncle Jake was a seal and Uncle Jake says, hey, we can fix these problems, but you know, you gotta, you gotta be commit. It's gonna be hard. So they spend the summer, teaches them how to do pull ups, teaches him how to work out, teaches them how to eat right, teaches them how to study all these things. But in researching, he has to figure out what it means to be a warrior. And he researches, he finds all these different codes. The ranger creed, the, the seal code, the Viking code, the samurai, the Bushido, the, the, the knights of Chivalry, the chivalry code. So he finds all those codes and ultimately he writes his own code for the warrior kid. And it is a bunch of I am this. And then he goes through each thing of what it means to be a warrior kid. So very similar idea that I did. And now what's cool is I get kids that write their own warrior kid codes. And it's cool because, you know, different kids. And that's the, that's the drill in the book is you write your own.
- [83:00]
C
Yeah.
- [83:01]
A
Or he writes the kid mark writes his own code. His uncle doesn't dictate it to him.
- [83:06]
C
Right.
- [83:06]
A
And that's what a lot of kids do. They. Because, you know, some kids are into soccer, some kids are into jiu jitsu, some kids are into wrestling. So. And some kids work on a farm. And so they have different. Yeah, you know, they have different things that they have to do to support the situation that they're in. But very, you know, living without a code is, is very rudderless. Way to go through life well.
- [83:27]
C
And we're often just subject to other people's codes. Whatever identity we're slapping on ourselves, we just take along those rules. And if we're not careful, like, I went to Purdue. As a Purdue guy, I'm supposed to hate Notre Dame. You know, that's what I'm supposed to do. But sometimes I don't hate it. Sometimes I enjoy. I like Notre Dame. Right. So you just have to make a conscious. Really, the idea is, become more conscious of this stuff because we are being directed. Our behavior is being directed in myriad ways throughout our lives. And sometimes if we're not conscious of it, we're going to be behaving in a way like, wait a second, we're going to look back. It's like, why the hell did I do that? It's because you were just kind of the mob mentality in the negative sense, no doubt.
- [84:02]
A
Next chapter is called Objectives Turn Purpose into Concrete Goals. What is your purpose in life? This is a critical question, one that guides us towards understanding our values, our vision for the world and our place within it. What ideals inspire you? What vision do you bring, want to bring to life? What legacy do you aspire to leave behind? These reflections help us define our purpose. However, while having a purpose is powerful, it can sometimes feel too vast and abstract, making it difficult to target high performers. Those who thrive amid life's uncertainties and challenges don't just linger on lofty ideals. They transform their purposes into concrete objectives.
- [84:42]
C
Yeah, so, I mean, again, this is the. This is me as a. As a teenager, knowing that I wanted to serve. I wanted to do something special, something unique, be. Be different. Okay. It wasn't until I said, I'm going to be a Navy seal that I began to move towards something. You can't DPO your way towards a. Towards a purpose. It's just too soft. You have to pick concrete objectives. This is the guy I met who I want to be healthy. But healthy is a huge goal. So it was like, I'm going to run a marathon. And he was able to DPO his way to running a marathon. And so. So we just have to understand that purpose is fine and it's valuable, but if we want to actually take action on something, generate a specific objective and start moving your way. But again, kind of like keep your eyes off the prize. It's that target. I love your target analogy. That has to say, soft most of the time, because if you focus on it, it's way too far away. So you focus on your front Sight, but you still. I always call. The objective is like that lighthouse in the distance. It's always kind of guiding in a very soft way. You just know the cardinal direction basically. But the cardinal direction you may be on your. As you're focusing on your front sight here, moving horizons, it may sometimes feel like you're moving away from it. I always use the climber analogy. The climber stands at that base of that hill or mountain and looks at the top and says, that's my objective. And then usually maps out a general pathway. But they know they have to get climbing to start doing that. And inevitably on their climb they're going to find a place where they thought they could go one way, but they realized I can't go that way. I have to look for a better handhold or foothold. Well, that next best handhold or foothold might be to the left, to the right and down. Which means it's going to feel like they're moving away from their goal when they're doing that. But they're not. All they're doing is picking a new horizon and they're ultimately they keep that goal in mind, that lighthouse. So we have to turn purpose into objectives and move towards them.
- [86:30]
B
Check.
- [86:31]
A
Another little techniques you got in here is acknowledge and release. This is talking about your objective. What is your objective? This is the acknowledge section. What is your objective? Maybe you already have one. Acknowledge it. Be clear and specific with yourself about its parameters, any relevant constraints and your degree of commitment to it. And then the other offset or the, the other section is release. Once you set an objective, release it. There's no need to dwell because it's important to you. You won't forget it. When you zoom out to set horizons, acknowledge it. But the rest of the time focus on what is happening in the present moment. You have a long way to go to reach your objective. The unpredictable strike. You will need to be attentive to current circumstances to perform your best. Releasing fully and giving 100 of your attention to the present moment is especially important in acute challenges. So that's.
- [87:23]
C
This is, this is. I don't think about Friday of Hell Week on Monday. You know, I know finish the finish. Hell Week is the objective, but I'm releasing it because if I think about that on Monday I'm going to quit. So just like we have an objective on a mission, we know what the instate, we know what the, what we want the end state to be. I'm not thinking about that when I'm in the helicopter doing insertion. That's not the part I'm thinking about. So.
- [87:41]
A
And you talk about adjusting objectives for teams as well. Set clear objective for your team. If you have multiple objectives, be extremely clear about which is the focus at any given in time. Every member must know this and use it as their clear and cardinal direction.
- [87:56]
C
And you, you mentioned this by the way because you do this naturally when you said you're in sometimes can be in a meeting and people are kind of going down rabbit holes or whatever and you re anchor them. What are we here for? What's the mission? Right. Let's re anchor for a second and now let's figure out from here, you know, then we're going to let it go and start figuring out what we want to DPO towards.
- [88:12]
A
So next chapter. Dynamic subordination Dynamic subordination is team synergy at its finest. Team members remain present and move in unison, working seamlessly to enhance one another, one another's strengths and buttress weaknesses. When one team member specific skills or attributes are needed, they step up and lead. The others are then automatically moved to support them fully. Once their particular expertise is no longer required, they step back, allowing someone else to take the lead. This ensures that the most capable person for the current task or challenges are always at the forefront, taking the fullest possible advantage of each member's strengths.
- [88:49]
C
Yeah, this is quite literally how high performing teams operate. It's a, instead of a pyramid or a flat line or an upside down pyramid, it's a blob. And what that tells us, it's kind of called alpha hopping. That alpha position hops to where it needs to be. But what this tells us is that our role on a team has nothing to do with our position. Our role on a team has everything to do with what we are there to contribute to the team. And as a leader, it's our responsibility to build a dynamically subordinating team. You and I know experientially we were in charge. We did hundreds of missions. We were in charge of every single one. It did not mean we were always being supported. In fact, most of the time was the opposite. Now sometimes the environment would shift and they'd be in support of us. But it's all environmentally based and we're creating a team that steps up and steps back. The only way you can do that is you have to have the team understand themselves, their attributes, what they're bringing to the equation. If you have a team, I need to know who the jeeps are, I need to know who Ferraris are. I know who the Ambulance is the party bus. So we know who we're pushing. And then we have to give the opportunity for people to step up and allow them to start building that. That confidence and exercising that muscle.
- [89:54]
A
Yeah, it's thinking about the attribute thing. It's kind of funny when new guys show up to the SEAL platoons and they get assigned what their job is going to be. It's like, I was just thinking the Ferrari versus the.
- [90:06]
C
The.
- [90:07]
A
The F350. Like, the F350 dude is getting a machine gun, and the Ferrari guy is going to be a point man or lead climber. Lead climber. And then the smart guy, he's going to be a radio man. And that's what's happening.
- [90:22]
C
That's what's happening. Yeah. It's that immediate kind of recognition. I'm going to make a judgment about you. Hopefully I'm right. Sometimes we're wrong. Right. But. And then they. And then people, we, you know, guys who. They start one thing and they don't like it, or we, you know, guys who stay in something and they're just. They become the best. We see the Jeep early. I'm like, okay, guys, like, Jeep, that's gonna be my jeep for the platoon. Right. So. And it works out.
- [90:45]
A
Yeah. And then this. This idea of dynamic subordination. This is, you know, decentralized command. You have different people that are gonna step up and make things happen.
- [90:54]
C
Yeah.
- [90:54]
A
And they're gonna be. Usually they have. If there's something going on that's a prop, that's a problem or an issue, the people that are there closest to it, generally speaking, are going to have. Going to be the best person to find solutions to that problem. Although it's the person that's overall in charge looking at going, hold on a second. You don't know. You have these other assets available. So we can help you out here. Which is, you know, why it. Why it all works.
- [91:16]
C
Yeah.
- [91:17]
A
Because everyone's has a solid ability to communicate with each other and tell each other what's going on. And by the way, when I say, hey, Rich, I got a problem over here, I'm going to enter this building. And Rich goes, hold on a second. We have overhead assets. There's no one in that building. And I'm not like, well, you don't know what it's like down here. And I go, oh, thanks for the information. But if I say, hey, Rich, there's actually movement behind the building I need to go check out, you don't go, well, don't listen to you need to listen to me. No, we listen to each other. We trust each other, and that's what makes this work.
- [91:44]
C
It's why I actually emphasize. I call it dynamic subordination, because you could call it dynamic leadership or whatever, but it emphasizes the humility of the. Of the act in terms of I am willing to. To listen and show everything about my strengths and weaknesses so that I can support you when I need to and step up when I need to.
- [91:59]
A
Yeah. This is a section of my book, Leadership Strategy and Tactics. Subordinate your ego.
- [92:03]
C
There you go.
- [92:04]
A
And you absolutely have to. And the amazing thing is, you know, if. If I've got a giant ego and you have to work with me, you. You can be mad that I have a big ego all day, but if you come at me and say, hey, you need a. You got a big ego, jocko, what's that going to do?
- [92:19]
B
Yeah.
- [92:19]
A
Oh, I'm sorry. Hey, Rich, I'm sorry. I didn't know my ego was big. Hold on.
- [92:22]
C
Let me.
- [92:22]
A
Let me just. Let me just. The only person's ego you can support in is your own.
- [92:27]
C
Yeah.
- [92:27]
A
And you go, hey, John, you know, sounds like a good plan. How can I support that thing? And all of a sudden I go, oh, well, he's here to support. So I don't see this. I don't see. I don't see you as a threat anymore.
- [92:36]
C
Right.
- [92:36]
A
I don't see your ego as a threat to my ego. So I can actually. We can have a. We can. We can talk and we can communicate. We can figure out the best way to do things. So some of the things you talk about with. With this utilizing dynamic subordination is build trust.
- [92:49]
C
Yep.
- [92:50]
B
Right.
- [92:51]
A
Obviously, in the way that you build trust, you have to give trust. You have to give people some level of trust. Now, does that mean when Rich shows up to work for me, the first thing I do is say, hey, Rich, we got an op going tomorrow night. Why don't you go ahead and lead it?
- [93:01]
C
Right.
- [93:01]
A
No, that's. We're not there yet. But I give you something small. Say, hey, can you run the vehicles tonight? Hey, can you. Can you clear this out building here? You take your team and click. Oh, yeah, got it. No problem.
- [93:11]
C
Yeah.
- [93:11]
A
So we start small and we build from there. That's number one. Number two, establish communication.
- [93:18]
C
Yeah. The idea is, and I talk about the four elements of trust in there. There's competence, consistency, character, and compassion. So competence is do the thing right. Consistency is do the thing right. Over time, character is do the right thing. Compassion is do the right thing because you care about me as a human being. And so I think all four factors are important. People who think that competence doesn't matter and it's all lofty and lovey stuff. It's not. You have to be good and be competent. What you're talking about is giving people the chance to explore their competence and dial in their competence and then begin to show some consistency in that. So you hit the first two. I think the real message on this is most people, they miss those other two ones and they try to form trust. They think it's all about competency and consistency. And it's not. If we're not doing the right thing and if we're not showing people that they're cared for, right. That this person really cares about me, you're not going to have that really strong bond of trust, that long lasting, that enduring trust. And so all four of these are specific. They all require behaviors. So like you said, it's a generative act. I behave in a way that allows someone to receive that and then reciprocate. It's a very much I go first. And that's what leaders have to get across. The leader who says, you know what, I'll trust them when they prove it to me. No, no, it doesn't work that way. You got to go first, you've got to be vulnerable first. Just like you're saying, you got to give that person a chance to, you got to give them the rope. And like I say, you give them responsibility, you keep accountability. You know, you also encourage accountability because they'll see that. But you need to model these behaviors, you want to model the behavior you want to see more of and then reward the behavior you want to see more of. And so most teams, I think we could certainly make an argument for, for certain teams erring more towards certain of those factors. I think seal team competence and consistency probably carry maybe even more weight, a little bit more weight than the other ones. Who knows? Athletics, probably skills and competency might carry more weight, but at the end of the day, all four factors are going to be involved. And if we're not wary of all four factors and if we're not deliberately working on all four factors as leaders, we're going to have a very temporary trust.
- [95:27]
A
Yeah. One of the things that we talk about at Echelon front is the idea of what is a relationship. And we got five components of a relationship. Trust, listen, respect, influence and care. And though all those things, in order to get them, you have to give Them?
- [95:44]
C
Yes.
- [95:44]
A
You know, if I want you to listen to me, I have to listen to you. If I want you to trust me, I have to trust you. If I want you to treat me with respect, I got to treat you with respect. If I want to have influence over you, I've got to allow you to influence me. And if I want you to care about me, I better show that I care about you. And if you give those things to other people, they will reciprocate. Hey, will you end up with some 1 out of 20 people that's a sociopath and that will try and take advantage of you? Yep. And it'll be so obvious. It's not. It's not. It's actually no factor. It's no factor. And you. That's why you give a little bit of trust.
- [96:14]
C
Yeah, it's a. It's a choice. Trust is a choice. We. We choose to trust people based on the way they behave. And if you think about someone you trust in your life, you do so because of the way they behaved. You made a choice. If you think about someone who trusts you, it's because you've behaved in a way that allows them to choose you. But I say the same thing about leadership. And I think one of the things I'll add to our leaders, born or made, the big addition, I would say, is leaders are chosen because you can call yourself a leader all day long if you don't have people following you. I got bad news for you. And so we behave in a way that allows someone to say, that is someone I will follow. And that's why all of us had the experience in the military, where there'd be, on occasion, someone who outranked us, above us in the chain of command. And we'd look at that person and say, I wouldn't follow that person anywhere. Meanwhile, there's someone over here to the right who has no hierarchical position whatsoever. I'd follow that person to hell and back, and it's because of the way we behave. So it's all about these behaviors. We have to go first in these behaviors.
- [97:05]
A
Yeah, there's the leadership on paper, and then there's the leadership in reality.
- [97:10]
C
I would actually say the stuff on paper is being in charge, and then the leadership is the reality.
- [97:13]
A
Right. Number two, establish communication. Number three, be vulnerable. Sharing strength and weaknesses. Openly understanding that vulnerability means being transparent about both. Yeah. If you're trying to. A key thing to remember about that that'll keep you in line, is everybody can see there's no one that you're fooling. You act like you either know what you're doing, you act like you have a good plan, you act like you're able to, you act like you're competent. You act like you have good character. You, if you're, if you're trying to do that, everybody sees it.
- [97:45]
C
It looks fake. Well, and the advantage, again, I'll say the, the, and I, I, I'm very cognitive and I, and I concede the fact that in the SEAL teams we had some of these advantages built in. But one of the advantages of the SEAL team environment is the environment itself. The environment will keep you humble all day long. The ocean, you turn back your back on the ocean, it will keep, kill you. I don't care how good of a surfer you are, it will kill you. Same thing at 20,000ft, jumping out of airplanes or whatever. The environment is deeply humbling. And so you are inculcated with a sense of humility right off the bat. That's what BUDS does. And that translates, that translates. There's no one, I mean anybody. And I don't think I ever saw it. But obviously if we did, if we saw someone on our team who refused to ever say they couldn't do something or admit they're wrong, that person's off the team. I mean, we're not going to, we're not going to work with that person. No one will, you know, so, so that humility is, it's not just, but it's also, I want to be emphasized, it's not just about showing our weaknesses, it's about also emphasizing our strengths. That's where the confidence comes in. Hey, I am a Jeep. I'm going to be good at this. I'm going to be phenomenal for you at this. Can't really do that. And that's where we start to dynamically
- [98:49]
A
subordinate very effectively and then create low risk opportunities for practice, which what I kind of talked about with like, hey, giving people the chance. And then, and then we go into this thing that, you know, you, you use the term the person, quote, in charge.
- [99:04]
C
Yeah.
- [99:05]
A
Dynamic subordination doesn't eliminate the need for someone to be in charge. This individual has three critical roles. Cultivate trust, which we talked about. Delegate responsibility. Pretty, pretty straightforward. And of course maintain accountability, which is what I call ownership. You know, you own this, it's yours.
- [99:22]
C
Yes. Yeah, but how many, I mean, we've seen this too. And unfortunately, fortunately, it wasn't too often where there was a leader who delegated both.
- [99:30]
A
Oh yeah, for sure.
- [99:31]
C
And you just don't trust those people. And I can, I can, I could, I could name a couple. I won't. But I could name a couple in my career that would do that. And I can also name the people who always held accountability. And, but again, by modeling that, it's not like you're taking accountability away from that person. You're modeling that so that they understand what that means and they will likely maintain accountability as well. But, but we don't delegate responsibility and accountability. We delegate responsibility. We, we own accountability. You know, at least, at least leaders do. People who are in charge, maybe not.
- [99:59]
A
So you got a section which you, you, you kind of mentioned already, but real leadership. And I'll fast forward here. True leaders don't celebrate or elevate themselves. Instead, they set the example for how they want their team members to perform. They seek opportunities to help and serve. Considering no task beneath them. They go the extra mile to serve the mission shared by everyone. True leaders don't seek to stand out or to be recognized as the leader. In fact, they don't even give themselves the label leader. It is given to them by their team members. True leaders are identifiable by having inspired followers eager to identify with them and be on their team. That's a lot different than hey, I outrank you all, so you work for me, so therefore I'm a leader.
- [100:37]
C
Yeah, that's right. Which we've seen.
- [100:39]
A
Oh, definitely. Trust. This is chapter eight, the frame.
- [100:46]
C
Yeah. So that gets into the four competencies. Yeah.
- [100:48]
A
Yep. Competence, do the right thing. Consistency, do the thing over and over again. Character, do the right thing and then compassion. Do the right thing because you care. These are things again, you got to build over time and they're going to be helpful. And then we get in chapter nine, which we've again we've touched on it already. But culture, the engine. I've described dynamic subordination and trust. The the necessary to sustain it. But there are three other key elements of building and maintaining team culture necessary for long term thriving. One, establish and leverage team identity. Two, properly evaluate team performance. Three, bring in the right team members.
- [101:28]
C
We have to understand that there are people who just don't fit on teams. Every team has its own unique identity. And if we try to force someone into that equation that doesn't fit those behaviors, it's not going to work. It's going to turn toxic and that person might be a fine person. This is the selection process for seals. The selection process is such because it's trying to distill these people who have this identity. The Same type of identity, these behaviors and the selection process does it for us. But yes, establish the ims. What does that look like? Bring in the model, that stuff. And then bring in the people. Form the right team. And understand that the teams have to be set up in a way where you're maximizing everybody's. This is the be vulnerable. We were maximizing everybody's unique contribution. So we may have a low performer, but that person might be performing low because we have them in the wrong position. And that's on us to do that. It shouldn't just be get rid of them. That might be the easy. I say it's the easy solution. Usually it's a hard solution, but it's on us. If they're in a position that they're not in the right seat on the bus, we have to put them on the right seat. And I had this happen. We had a. I was deployed, I had a supply department and it was like half innovative and future outlook kind of acquisition type stuff, half logistics log keeping type stuff. We had a sailor in the futures look section that was grossly underperforming, like bringing down morale. I brought her into my office and I had a conversation. I'd already done some of the attributes work. I didn't have the nuance that I do now, but I recognized quite quickly that her attribute set did not match at all for what I was asking her to do. Luckily, it was perfect for the other section. All I did was move her over. Her performance skyrocketed. And so that was on me. What I could have done. I could have said, oh, you're out of here. You're a low performer. Here's a low fit rip. Get out of here. Right. I think that's the coward's way of doing it. If you're there to truly empower the people that you are trying to lead or hoping that they'll see you as a leader, you need to help them bring out the best in themselves by putting the.
- [103:29]
A
Yeah, there's. In businesses, there's so many different things going on, so many different lines of operation that a lot of times it's like, well, this person didn't quite fit there, but they have a good attitude, like, oh, maybe they'll fit in over here, maybe they can do this. They might not be able to pull that off. And that's exactly what we should always be doing. And, you know, I get asked a lot of times, you know, I've got someone that just, you know, they come in, you know, nine to five at 4:59. They're clocked out, but, you know, what can I do to motivate them? And I'm like, well, you got a really good worker. You know, you got someone that's consistent, shows up every day, balance the whole day. Their balance is good. Like, you know, I wouldn't discount them ever wanting to do more, but check in with them every six months. Hey, is everything still going well? Yeah, I'm having a All solid. Yeah, you know. Are you looking to get promoted? Well, honestly, like, I have three kids right now and it's wrestling season and you know, maybe talk to me in, you know, in the spring. Yeah, okay, sounds good. Check with them in the spring. Well, one of the kids did really well. We're sending them to camp. I'm going to be driving.
- [104:28]
B
Okay, cool.
- [104:29]
A
And, you know, you look up in two years. The guy goes, you know what? I'm ready to. I'm ready to move up. I want some more responsibility. Okay, great.
- [104:35]
C
You know, the other ugly truth of that might be is that I've had this happen. I've had leaders sometimes say, these people, they're just. Or one or two people and they're just, they're just. They're there at this time, they're gone this time. And I've dug into it. I was like, you know what the problem is here is it's your task organization, your ability to prioritize. Because this person, this leader was horrible at. They'd waste so much time throughout the day. Meanwhile, these people were nine to five. They were getting their shit done. They was like, do this, this, this. They were very organized and getting their shit done. So. So economy of work also has to be like, don't judge someone's economy of work. They might just be getting their shit done and they're balancing their lives. They're, you know, getting their workout in or whatever.
- [105:09]
A
I don't know the reality behind the situation, but my older daughters would spend so much time doing homework hours and hours every day. My son a lot less still great grades, all of them. And. And also Covid, So you can kind of discount those couple years because my son figured out how to work that system.
- [105:33]
C
Yeah.
- [105:34]
A
But I was talking to my youngest daughter, who does not do as much homework. We'll say yes. As my older kids did. And you know, I was saying, you know, your sisters used to do three, four, five hours of homework a night. You're doing like a half an hour an hour. And I was like, what? Why is that? And you know what she said? I'M more efficient. She just. She just put out the word.
- [106:00]
C
That's right.
- [106:01]
A
I'm more efficient than they were. Okay.
- [106:03]
C
Yeah. You know, my younger son, he the same thing. And he was like, yeah, Dad, I have. I have free blocks, free periods at school. I just go. I get my. I knock on my home before I come home, and he has the grades to prove it.
- [106:12]
A
That's the same exact. My daughter said the same thing. She says, oh, well, we get time in class and I get to work.
- [106:17]
C
Yeah.
- [106:18]
A
So there you go.
- [106:19]
C
There you go. Efficiency.
- [106:20]
A
That's what Echo Charles claims a lot of. Around this unit right here. He claims a lot of efficiency. You know, a lot of efficiency gets called out on. You say if everyone commit. Everyone on the team commits to an identity they truly care about, they are instantly bound together, sharing not just of values, but also specific rules and conditions by which they uphold those values. This is why many organizations display their values prominently. You want something fun to do with your clients, kick off whatever section you're doing about culture and read the. No, tell them who they are. But you read the Enron values. Have you ever read the Enron values are like clap. Like the. The absolute, absolute highest standard of integrity. It's just the most epic thing to read. And you go, man, this must be a great. This must be a great organization. And it's freaking Enron. And it's specifically about, like, integrity and all this stuff. It's so comical to see that that's what they allegedly aspired to be.
- [107:19]
C
Well, this is a great example also of people don't do what you say. They do what you do.
- [107:24]
A
Yeah.
- [107:25]
C
And. And kids are the same way, by the way. But. But yeah, I mean, if you purport that you're an organization, does this, this, and you're doing the opposite, or you're not doing that. People, you know, there's a reason why in certain commands, you'd be like, oh, the skipper's not here today, and behavior would change. Right. I mean, there's a reason, you know, so we have to be cognizant that our behavior is way more. Like you said, people. Fakeness can be seen. People will see what you're doing. And whatever the leader is doing, they are setting the culture with their behavior. They really are.
- [107:53]
B
That is the.
- [107:54]
A
That is the foundation of so many problems is a lack of awareness. And people think that people don't see what they're doing.
- [108:00]
C
That's right.
- [108:00]
A
You know, I learned this because as a young enlisted guy, I was the youngest and most junior Guy in my first two SEAL platoons. So I was always watching. And man, the things that I would notice about my leadership. Three minutes late. Oh, I guess. Oh, forgot a piece of gear. Oh, guess you didn't need it. Oh, didn't, you know, took his h. Gear off in our. In our perimeter.
- [108:23]
B
Oh, okay.
- [108:24]
C
So I guess I can do that.
- [108:25]
A
I guess that's what you're doing. You know, like, it was always judging, always judging, always judging. And. And, you know, they would act like none of us could see what they're doing.
- [108:34]
C
Right.
- [108:34]
A
They would act like none of us could see what they're doing. And it's like, you're crazy. You're crazy if you think we can't see this stuff. It was a level of arrogance. And to think that they're just a little bit smarter.
- [108:47]
B
Right.
- [108:47]
A
No one can kind of see what's going on. No one can see what we're doing. I'm telling you, your troops can absolutely see what you do. You might as well own it.
- [108:56]
C
Yeah. Well, I know we have to say this to forgive even those who may not be as arrogant. It's just an ignorance.
- [109:03]
A
Yeah.
- [109:03]
C
And a blindness to say because to. And I've been. I think we've all been guilty once in a while. Certainly as a leader, I've been guilty of. Oh, yeah. It doesn't matter. Matter. You know what? I, you know, it doesn't. I mean, that's. My behavior is not going to affect them. I mean, it's just. It matters. It matters.
- [109:17]
A
I guess I do. Definitely. I pin it on arrogance because I can't imagine someone thinking like, oh, the team. If I show up a few minutes late, that won't impact the team. To me, it's like they're not going to see that I, you know, showed up a little bit.
- [109:30]
C
Yeah.
- [109:30]
B
Yeah.
- [109:30]
A
You know, so then maybe that's my blonde spot. Thinking that someone could not think that.
- [109:35]
C
Right. Yeah, no, it's. I think people just. They just don't know. There's an ignorance there sometimes that it doesn't. But again, not everybody's designed to be a leader.
- [109:44]
A
True that.
- [109:44]
C
No, I mean, really not so.
- [109:46]
A
Evaluating performance. The behaviors of the list of I am statements also double as performance evaluation tools. They allow you to clearly see if someone is acting in line with the team's values. Team members must uphold the values with the actions outlined in support of them. If the team members operate according to different rules and conditions, they are out of alignment with identity. Conduct honest and supportive conversations about whether they can start enacting proper behaviors and what it might take to achieve that. You know, Echelon front. We've got, we have. Our evaluations are based on our principles of combat. Right. So cover move, simple prioritize next to decentralized command, extreme ownership. So when we rank our employees, it's like, oh, yeah, hey, how do you think you're doing a cover move right now?
- [110:33]
B
Yes.
- [110:33]
A
You know, oh, are you doing a good job with simplifying? Do you understand what the priorities are? How's your decentralized command? Are you empowering your people? Are you taking ownership? Like, that's literally how we rank our people. Because those are our, those are our values, those are, that's our identity.
- [110:46]
C
And that, by the way, stems into how they behave on a daily basis. Like, if you have this very clear, then in a decision making moment, they can lean right on that. I did right on that im. And it's very fast, very. It's actually the one. I loved our SEAL
- [111:02]
A
ethos.
- [111:02]
C
Ethos. I really did. But my one complaint was it was too complex. It was just too many words. You could not. Even though the trainees memorize it, they forget it as soon as they. Yeah, we couldn't lean on it. It needed to be simple. And like, this is. This is it.
- [111:16]
A
I was there when we wrote that.
- [111:17]
C
Yeah. I think you remember you saying, yeah, yeah.
- [111:19]
A
And I was, I was like, Mr. Simplicity.
- [111:22]
C
Yeah.
- [111:22]
A
And I literally asked the group, I said, hey, are we writing this for the O5 and above or are we writing for this for the E5s? I don't think that fives. This shouldn't be directed at them.
- [111:32]
C
Right.
- [111:32]
A
This should be directed at the E5s that are coming in, the teams that are out, you know, doing things without supervision. This is what's going to supervise them.
- [111:41]
C
Right.
- [111:41]
A
And I made a little bit. Trust me, if I would have said that stuff, this thing would have been a Shakespearean soliloquy. And they did have a, like a flip side to the card that was like four things.
- [111:54]
C
Yeah.
- [111:55]
A
And I forget what they were, but they did simplify. They made like a fully simplified version. But again. Yeah, I thought it was a little bit too verbose.
- [112:04]
C
Yeah, it's beautiful and it's great. It's great for retirements and change of commands. But you kind of, kind of remember it in the, in the, in the. Yeah.
- [112:12]
A
You know, we used to do something with, with clients. We would do something called mission and mantra where we would have them write out a mission statement. And you know, the mission statement could be 3 4, 5 sentences long. But even that, you know, you get to four or five sentences, it's hard for, you know, a person on the front lines to keep that front of mind. So we'd come up with mantras that they could then within their different departments. So, you know, the logistics part might have the mantra of on time, on target. The sales might have the mantra of, you know, customers always. Right, whatever. But they. But then those would be tied back into the mission of the organization. So mission and mantra. It's a good drill. And we kind of did that. Again, I think that the C. Lethos was and is needed and then breaking it down. And again, I forget what they called, like, the shorter version of it, but it obviously didn't get propagated the way it should have. If you didn't even ever seen it.
- [113:04]
C
I don't remember seeing. Here's a good question for you, and I have my own answers, but if you were to boil down the seal, the Navy SEAL identity into two or three sentences, two or three I am statements, what would those be?
- [113:20]
A
I would have to, like, think about it, but out of the gate is, I will never quit. Because I think that. I don't think there's anyone that would disagree with that. I think there has to be something about taking care or I will execute the mission. And I think the last part is, I will take care of my brothers.
- [113:44]
C
I totally agree. So the two that I thought of right out of the bat is I will never quit and I will take care of my teammates because that is core to everything we believe. And if I'll. Even in civilian life, and it's been 10 years now since retirement, more for you. I know, but that's still very true. And the way I behave even in regular, regular society is, you know, I always like this. The. The thing in that teams was like, don't be that guy. And the whole don't be that guy was this idea that never be the person who is behaving in a way that. That inhibits or slows your team. You know, so if it means that you have your luggage ready when you're putting in the overhead, you know, when you're getting on airlines, which drives me bananas. Right. Or. Or having everything. You just don't be that guy. And so. So, yeah, those. It's a tricky thing, but I think buds, even to some degree, even accomplish the mission may not be as drilled as hard as those other two things is I will not quit and I will not let down my teammates. Those would be the two I chose, and I think accomplish the mission gets there too. But we all know that sometimes, and we've talked about this, sometimes the best course of action in the moment is to actually quit. The mission is to actually turn around. Right. So. So the accomplishment mission becomes something we can by. By. By retreating now we can live to fight another day type thing. But it's certainly those two. So.
- [115:03]
A
Yeah. And to me, you know, one of the things that I. That I've explained to many young SEAL leaders over the years is taking care of your brothers and how that gets warped.
- [115:15]
C
Yes.
- [115:15]
A
And in unfortunate ways, because, you know, take. I take. You hear that from day one. You hear that in boot camp. Take care of your people, take care of the buds, take care of your. Your people. You get to the teams, take care of your brothers, take care of your team. Team first, all that stuff. But then it's like, hey, Rich, Rich wants to, you know, head home early for the weekend instead of finish training.
- [115:32]
C
Right.
- [115:33]
A
It's like, well, you don't want to take care of Rich, so go ahead.
- [115:35]
B
Right, right.
- [115:35]
A
Okay. Now Rich wants to, you know, he got in trouble, but I'm gonna cover it up for him because I'm gonna take care of Rich. Okay, well. And you look up, and all of a sudden, Rich is in real trouble.
- [115:43]
C
Yes.
- [115:43]
A
And has got real problems because I didn't take it. Or. Or even worse, he's not prepared for combat. And now we have problems in combat.
- [115:49]
C
That.
- [115:50]
A
So taking care of your brothers means you're making sure that they're doing everything they can be. They can do to be ready.
- [115:59]
C
Yes.
- [115:59]
A
To accomplish the mission. And so this is.
- [116:02]
C
By the way, this. I will say. I. There's a. You know, again, there's a joke, as you know, in the teams between officers who are academy guys or ocs or rotc, you know, and. And that, you know, the. The joke, the running joke is the academy guys are a little bit more stuffy and things like that, which is really largely not true. However, one of the things I noticed, I was the only ROTC guy to make it through my BUDS class. All the rest were academy guys. So all my buddies, they made me an honorary academy guy, which is great because I would have never made it in the Academy. But I was thinking about this identity thing, and in most cases, what I saw in the Naval Academy officers was something very interesting, and that is, in the Naval Academy, you are, for four years inculcated with this identity of Naval officer. Naval officer. Naval officer. Naval officer. It's everything about Naval officer And then once they finish the academy, they go to SEAL training and become a Navy seal. Ratc guys, I'll just speak for myself. We're not inculcated with that that much. I mean, rotc, I always joke, is the easiest commissioning source because you drill once a week, you do some stuff. You're an officer, right? So coming into the teams, the Navy SEAL identity is a very powerful one. And you have to consistently remind yourself of the officer of the Naval officer identity. If you prioritize Navy SEAL identity over Naval officer identity, there are situations where that's going to get you in trouble. And we've seen it, because then you're saying, then you're getting that thing, oh, take care of the boys type thing. I don't care what's going on. So I always found that my academy counterparts, certainly the guys, my friends and the guys I worked with, I just admired their, the solidness of that Naval officer identity. And they brought forth that for them, it was Naval officer, Navy seal. And I admittedly, for me was like, well, Navy Seal, Navy officer. I had to really work to get that other piece. So it does matter. It does matter. And the question then becomes for the enlisted guy, it's even quote, worse because. And it was for actually many years when they were starting to do the very specialized stuff for SEAL candidates at boot camp. They were separating them early. They were creating these guys, entitled guys, right? And so for them, they didn't take, take into account that, hey, if you create a person whose whole thing is Navy SEAL and that's the number one thing versus I serve this country, I'm a servant to the people of this country, you're going to have issues when, when, when the hard decisions start to need to be made. So identity is important. It really is.
- [118:22]
B
Yeah.
- [118:23]
A
The don't quit thing, and this is something, again, I wrote about it in Leadership Strategy and Tactics. You know, we take a guy, we would take like a hallway and we put a barricaded shooter at the end of the hallway. And you know, the hall boss, whoever it was, would send two guys down the hallway. They get killed. This is paintball. This is training. They get killed, paintball. What do you do? Two more guys, what happens? Them, they get killed. Two more guys, they get killed. And we would have young SEAL officers, in many cases, young SEAL officers who had, you know, they're out of buds. Don't quit, don't quit, don't quit. Don't quit. To not go down that hallway is mission failure. And so even the don't Quit thing. You have to be, you know, every one of these things, there's a dichotomy of all.
- [119:05]
C
Yes, there is.
- [119:05]
A
You take it to the nth degree, and you're gonna have a problem. And that's the other thing with. The reason that mission, I think, popped into my head is because if you don't prioritize mission accomplishment, then. Then. Then a lot of other things can start to take priority.
- [119:24]
C
Yes. Yes.
- [119:24]
A
You know, and so we have one job. You know, something I told my guys was like, hey, if you. This is. We get to Ramadi, we get to Ramadi. And I'm like, hey, because there's no drinking allowed. If you want to jeopardize us being able to conduct operations because you want to do some shit that you're not supposed to be doing, I'm going to send you out of here immediately, and you will not be. Be coming back, because if you're gonna disrupt the opportunity that we have to kill the enemy, you're gone.
- [119:53]
C
Yeah.
- [119:54]
A
Yeah. And so. But if you don't, if you pull the mission out of that, well, you know, we. We want to kind of like, you know, enjoy ourselves, too, or whatever the case may be. It's like, no. So that. Having that mission, top of mind. And plus, I always. I always thought that was the ultimate trump card when I was in. When I was running training. So I'm the. I'm the, you know, the OIC of the training detachment. And, you know, I used to say, guys, if you get in trouble and you can't go back to a team and go on deployment, you're doing Al Qaeda's job for them. You're taking yourself off the battlefield.
- [120:26]
C
Right, Right.
- [120:27]
A
So having that mission focus, taking care of your brothers, which you should be in all those important ways, and then never quit, because we don't give up. Now. Are there times we make a tactical retreat? Hell, yeah. There better be. You better have an open mind to that. So I think those would be the three that. That I would end up with.
- [120:46]
C
Well, you mentioned something really important there, and I actually wrote a blog post on this, and I titled it. It's okay to quit. Just never give up.
- [120:51]
A
Yeah.
- [120:52]
C
And I separated the difference, you know, because I tell the story. There's three out of the hundreds of missions I did, there are three occasions where I turned around. I basically quit that. We. I quit the mission for us, because everything wasn't lining up. I think we talked about this last time, but that's not giving up. That's just quitting. In the moment, because what we're doing is not right. And so we have to make that distinction in terms of quit or give up. And I think you're correct about that. And I will say this mission accomplishment also, it comes with nuance. I mean, if you are in a hostage rescue mission, the intensity of the accomplishment of that operation is going to be different than, say, you're going for the top facilitator of whatever of this thing. I'm gonna. We're gonna put more. I'm gonna put more emphasis, for example, on making sure we're doing safe movement. When I'm getting the facilitator versus hostage rescues, like, I mean, this is it our We. This is our business. Right. So everything becomes about that hostage. So. So, yeah, that. That nuance has to be explained and described as well. And it's like you said, it's all a gray area.
- [121:52]
A
So, yeah, yeah, fast forward a little bit. We're getting close to the end of this thing, but bringing in the right team members. Skills can be taught and experiences can be gained. But attributes and identity are much harder to change and far more important. Focus your hiring on attributes and identity, and your team will be more sustainably able to perform as needed, especially when it counts.
- [122:14]
C
Yep, that's like, that's. That's the new guy who is now a Navy seal. And you say, hey, you're our jump. You're our jump master. And the guy's never jumped before, right? You are, you are inculcating an identity. That person is, well, okay, I know nothing about this skill, but my identity as a Navy SEAL is. I'm not going to let down my teammates, so I'm going to figure everything out. Right. So inculcate those core elements and you'll have performance.
- [122:36]
A
So I'm going to close out the book with this. Life is an unpredictable voyage filled with challenges that test our resilience, adaptability, and courage. These moments of uncertainty are not obstacles to be feared, but opportunities to be seized. They are the crucibles in which our true capabilities are forged and refined. By recognizing and cultivating our innate attributes, we equip ourselves to navigate these turbulent waters with confidence and grace. The journey of self discovery and growth is ongoing. It requires a commitment to continuous reflection and development. It demands that we remain open to new experiences, willing to learn from our successes and our failures, and ready to adapt to ever changing circumstances in this journey. And every step, no matter how small, contributes to our overall growth and prepares us for the challenges ahead. So there you go.
- [123:28]
C
There it Is it's all there.
- [123:29]
A
Prepare for uncertainty. That's what we need to do. What uncertainties do you have ahead? What do you got going on? What's next?
- [123:36]
C
Well, we're, like I said before, we're building up a brand new platform for our assessment tool. So that's taken. That's taken a pretty sizable.
- [123:44]
A
So is this a digital platform?
- [123:46]
C
A digital platform that allows for clients to interact with the assessments in a more meaningful way. They can use it for hiring, they can use it for performance evaluating. They can see how people relate to each other on teams based on attributes and they can predict that that's a really cool project. My wife and I, we run the company together. So it's a dive into uncertainty because there's risk there and you never know what's going to happen. But it's a fun thing. Again, I calculated risks are what we do. And again, like I said, my son and I are getting our pilot's license, so there's uncertainty there. Especially when you're close to the airport, you're in the landing pattern, you don't want to stall. Right. But it's fun. So I think we have to stretch ourselves. One of the things that excites me about this is obviously this stuff I think will help people when uncertainty hits without warning. But the key thing is if you get really good at this stuff, you start finding yourself deliberately stepping into uncertainty. And that's where all the growth and evolution for us as human beings happen. That's where our potential is found. And that's one of the secrets that we come out of the SEAL teams with, is we are comfortable exploring our potential and we're good at doing this stuff. We know how to do it. So everybody has that opportunity.
- [124:51]
A
No doubt. Where can people find you? You got the attributes.com theattributes.com yeah, we got on it. On social media, you're rich, underscore Divini. And then on Twitter, you're richdevinny. And also Facebook rich.
- [125:06]
C
And LinkedIn. Also richdevichdevini. Yeah. So yeah, all those places, website, you can find all the stuff we do. Obviously the books are on Amazon and yeah, they can stop by, take the assessment, try that out, figure out where your attributes are and if you need us, come get us.
- [125:21]
A
Figure out where you rank in courage. Echo. Charles.
- [125:24]
C
Remember, low courage has advantages. By the way,
- [125:29]
A
it's going like that. Echo. Any questions?
- [125:31]
B
Yeah. You said there are some visual tools to deal with anxiety.
- [125:36]
C
Yes.
- [125:37]
B
What would be an example of.
- [125:38]
C
Let me give you one. The simple, most effective or one of the most. It's not the most effective, but quickest ways is called open gaze. Open gaze is literally the ability to soften your gaze. So if I were to ask you to stare at a point in the wall and then as you're staring that they just go soft with your gaze. So you begin to notice your periphery. That's open gaze. And what that's doing is that is bringing down your autonomic arousal. Because when we get autonomically aroused, we focus in on the threat. Open gaze, that soft gaze brings it's calm. That's why we sit on a beach and get calm. Because we're looking at the horizon or landscape or whatever we want to do. But martial artists and fighters know this and our reaction time actually increases when we're open gaze if we're not totally focused in. So that's a real quick one. When I used to start getting on stage, I'd get on the stage and I just kind of look at the back wall and just go open gaze and feel myself calm down a little bit.
- [126:27]
B
So it's like the opposite of tunnel vision.
- [126:28]
C
Opposite of tunnel vision.
- [126:29]
B
Anti tunnel vision scenario.
- [126:31]
A
Yeah.
- [126:31]
B
Okay. But.
- [126:32]
A
But you can manually do it. You know, it's like literally me writing a seth like look around, it's going to calm you down. You. You look around, you see the bigger picture as opposed to you hear machine gunfire. You just look at that thing like what the hell am I supposed to. That's tunnel vision and it's bad.
- [126:47]
B
Yep. Yeah, Makes sense. You ever see those computer generated art things that you got to look through
- [126:52]
C
or whatever to visualize it and it's only when you. Well, it's only on most of those, when you soften your gaze, everything pops out. Right?
- [126:58]
B
Yeah. So yeah. When you're not focused on.
- [127:00]
C
Right.
- [127:00]
B
You gotta focus kind of.
- [127:01]
C
Yeah. So that's a. That's a quick one.
- [127:02]
B
Yeah, yeah. Kind of the same thing. I don't know if I mentioned this last time, but the yawning before, something's going like before football games in the locker room, I'd be yawning all the time.
- [127:11]
C
Yeah.
- [127:11]
B
And I'm not tired or nothing. I'm just yawning all the time.
- [127:13]
C
Yeah. In fact, I just remember it's the trigeminal nerve anyway. Yeah, but that's connected to your vagus. Yeah. It actuates the trigeminal nerve which actually it starts to force. It starts to force yourself to breathe in a certain way. That starts to calm you. So yeah, if you're nervous and you start yawning, which I used to do before jumps, I'd be up on the ride up, I'd be yawning. I was like, what the hell's going on? Right. So, yeah, it's your body's way of getting more, getting more oxygen breathing out that.
- [127:41]
A
And by the way, when you see your buddy and you're on a skydive and you see him like in the plane, he's yawning, you think, man, he's so relaxed and so chill.
- [127:49]
C
That's advantageous in the SEAL teams, by
- [127:51]
A
the way, if you want to look super chill.
- [127:53]
C
Just.
- [127:53]
B
Yeah.
- [127:55]
A
30,000 foot with freaking combat equipment.
- [127:57]
C
Nighttime. Yeah.
- [127:59]
B
Speaking of which, your pilots, like, when did you start pursuing your pilots?
- [128:04]
C
We literally just started about a month and a half ago.
- [128:07]
B
And how many hours do you have?
- [128:08]
C
I mean, we each have like five or six right now, so it's not so. So my, my twin brother who is a Harrier pilot, right, he has like. And he's a FedEx pilot now. He has 5,000 hours. I saw him this last week and I was like, okay, I got some for you because I got five hours. Just so you know, I can fly anything. Yeah. So we're at the beginning stages.
- [128:25]
B
He's on the grid, bro. Yeah, I got zero hours so far. So you see, I'm saying a little bit different. So when's the. As far as hours go? Winds like the. What do you call it, like the benchmark, typically?
- [128:35]
C
Typically, well, solo. You do a solo around 20, 15, 20. But then you get your license. Usually it takes people about 50 hours, but it really depends on how often you're flying and then how quickly you pick it up. And so someone who's flying every single day could get their license in 40 hours. And that's just private pilot VFR. That's visual flight rules. The idea is then you get ifr, which is instrument, and if you want to go further, you can, can get multi engine and jet and all that stuff. But I just, it is. I love driving anything, anything to drive motorcycles, cars, boats, you know, forklifts, whatever. I've always wanted to drive an airplane or fly. It's the ultimate driving because you're, you're doing it across all the dimensions, which is fun. Yeah.
- [129:15]
A
Are you going to buy a plane?
- [129:16]
C
Yes, that's the goal.
- [129:17]
A
What, do you have one identified yet?
- [129:19]
C
Well, okay, so. So should the company do what I wanted to do? I'd love to. My ultimate goal is to get one of those cirrus Vision jets, because those are pretty badass until then, you know, maybe a single engine prop or something. But, but, but, you know, planes.
- [129:36]
A
We got the Cirrus Vision jet and on the other end, the Cessna.
- [129:40]
C
The Cessna.
- [129:41]
A
So hey, everyone go to theattributes.com and start to buy some books.
- [129:46]
C
Get some books, please. Yeah, we'll put a counter on that. Assessments until. Vision jet.
- [129:52]
B
Right.
- [129:54]
C
I think it's just, it's a very. My family grew up flying. My brother's flown. In fact, he's, he's doing his own. You know, he was the, he was the, he was a Harrier pilot who. He was the one guy who survived his Harrier crash and he crashed his Harrier inverted in the water and ejected. Inverted in the water? Yeah, and survived. So he's actually.
- [130:12]
A
How the hell did he survive? Was he high enough up that he slowed down?
- [130:15]
C
He was under. No, he was already underwater. The plane was inverted. Inverted already. And he ejected into the water.
- [130:21]
A
Wait, so no, he, the plane was in the water?
- [130:23]
C
Yeah, the plane crashed inverted and then he ejected.
- [130:25]
A
And then he ejected?
- [130:26]
C
Yes. Yeah.
- [130:27]
A
It didn't kill him?
- [130:28]
C
No, no. So. And he was, he's writing a book about it. Right.
- [130:31]
A
So what are the physics behind that?
- [130:33]
C
They're not sure other than it just. There could have been enough water in the cockpit at that point where the, where the pressure wasn't too bad. And, and again, that, that in the Harrier you're blowing. The explosives are on the canopy, so it, it blows the, the canopy open and then you go through the hole. So I don't. Who knows? I mean, physics or spirituality, whatever. That's wild. Yeah.
- [130:56]
A
So did you see that crash like a month ago with the two people that ejected out of the. I think it was two F18s hit each other and they both. One of them was inverted and, and the people ejected. But it. Them, they were high enough and they were not high. Yeah, but they were high enough that when they ejected the parachute came out and they, they lived.
- [131:16]
C
Yeah. And it was two.
- [131:17]
A
Two seaters, four people ejected. They all lived.
- [131:21]
B
All.
- [131:21]
A
I mean, it was such a compact area. The two, the two aircraft hit each other. Yeah, One of them inverted. One of them already was inverted, I think, but everyone ejected and they were on the ground in like three seconds. It was nuts to watch.
- [131:36]
C
Well, the technology is amazing and when it works, it works well. So. Yeah, no ejection seats in the Cessna 172. You have to, you have to fly that.
- [131:45]
A
But the Series has a, has a parachute, so you're good.
- [131:48]
C
It also has one of those emergency buttons. So if the pilot gets incapacitated, the passenger hits that button and it just finds it. It flies itself to the nearest landing. They're cool jets. Everything but flying is cool to me.
- [131:59]
A
Check Echo. Any more questions?
- [132:01]
B
No, that was it. Recently I was nerding out on planes and pilots license and stuff, you know.
- [132:08]
A
Do you have a flight simulator?
- [132:09]
C
Yes. Although I asked my instructor, what are the, what's the, what's the real value of that? He said it becomes the most valuable when you're doing your instrument flight writing. Because everything about what I'm learning, really having been a fan, but not doing it, is, it's so much about feeling the airplane and feeling the aircraft, because just like driving a stick shift car, you get in there and your front sight focused on the instruments and you're like here on the yoke and all that stuff. And then as soon as you start looking out, everything starts to be a little bit smoother. So, yeah, flight simulators, what I'm told are pretty good for learning the instruments.
- [132:40]
A
I would think for sure that would be good because that's where all you can see.
- [132:42]
C
It's all you can see.
- [132:43]
A
So it's an actual simulation.
- [132:45]
C
And with a modern aircraft with these glass cockpits, these Garmin systems have so much, it's like an iPhone. There's so much they can do that if you don't, you can get task saturated just managing that. So, so yeah, I'll, I'll do that once we get there.
- [132:57]
B
I, I simulator. Is that on the computer?
- [133:00]
C
Yeah, yeah.
- [133:01]
B
Do you have any extra equipment, like a joystick?
- [133:03]
C
You can, so that's another thing. You know, again, there you can add some, if you want to really spend some bucks. You can get your, your throttles, your yolks, your, your rudder pedals and all that stuff connect into your connect in the commuter and, and, and you fly the plane that way.
- [133:16]
A
I hear they're pretty good.
- [133:17]
C
Yes, they are.
- [133:18]
A
I hear they're pretty good.
- [133:19]
C
They are. So, so even what's the jsf, which is the, the, the simulator that has all the jets? My little brother has, he has a VR headset, so he gets really into it. My twin brother, we went and visited my little brother and he, he did the Harrier and he said that the, the way the Harrier was operating, he was doing things in the simulator they did in the real jet. He said it was phenomenally accurate in terms of just even little nuances. So they, they do a good job.
- [133:45]
A
I flew The Harrier simulator out at Yuma. At Yuma, when I was like, probably 23 or something like that. And I crashed it, like a lot. Very. With. No, I went in there with no, no, no training. They're like, you suck. I'm like, well, okay, cool.
- [134:01]
B
Thanks.
- [134:02]
C
I need some training.
- [134:02]
A
Yeah, One of my. I watch videos about plane crashes.
- [134:08]
C
Yeah.
- [134:09]
A
Like, just what peop. Mistakes that people make. You know, it's really interesting because the psychology of it. The psychology of these people that are learning how to fly. And some of them, you know, you're only seeing them because they had some kind of a. Usually some kind of a psychological situation going on, in my opinion. Like, you know, the person that I'm just going to. That, you know, they're. They either think they're really good or they're overconfident. Like, I. I explored that part of it.
- [134:33]
C
Yes.
- [134:33]
A
You know, the interviews with the people that were like, yeah. We told her, you know, it wouldn't be a good idea to fly today. And she said, no, I got this. You know, I've. I've been. Or, you know, they flew this plane that they'd never flown before. Hey, you might want to not fly in this kind of weather with this. You never flown that thing? No, I. I did the simulator or whatever the case may be. So it's interesting.
- [134:51]
C
I Enjoying. In fact, you bring that up. One of the reasons why I'm enjoying it, I know I'm going to enjoy it more is because I feel like it takes the same level of planning and risk assessment that even planning Ops did. And I really. That was part. I really enjoyed. I liked working through those processes and just understanding. I think flying. If you're not doing the same thing with flying, you're. You're probably going to make a.99.9% of aviation accidents are pilot error. That's what they are. So, so it's. Yeah, it's. It's good. It takes. It takes some risk assessment, risk management planning. And are you looking ahead? Are you actually depoing your way in a proper. In a proper way? So.
- [135:27]
A
So 99.9%. It's on you.
- [135:29]
C
Something like that. Yeah.
- [135:31]
A
That's a lot of extreme ownership happening when you crash your bird.
- [135:34]
B
I saw one, I think it was like a C. Which one's the big one? C17. Right.
- [135:38]
C
Not 130 C17s are the big ones.
- [135:41]
B
I think it was one of those where it said. It was a video and it said, arrogant pilot just crashes. The C17.
- [135:48]
A
That is a C17. Yeah, sure, I've seen that flight. It's in Germany, right where they takes
- [135:52]
C
off low and bank stalls. Yeah, yeah, there's. There's. Yeah, there's a couple out there. But yeah, you just have to be careful. I mean, it's just. But I like it. That's. That's the kind of thing. It's not like a car. I mean, cars you do have to do, but I mean, so many yahoos drive cars. They just don't. But the planes. The planes nowadays, they want to fly. I mean, these things are designed in a way that you got to work to crash them. I mean, you know, it's very rare that you have, you know, know, huge malfunctions in the. In the equipment itself at least, or multiple malfunctions, but.
- [136:20]
B
Well, you'd figure I could just see this happening, like, pretty much every single time. At least part of your brain is like, yeah, this is like, cool. Like, I kind of got the hang of it, but let me kind of push it a little bit, you know? Like, let me try. Freaking. Yeah, I don't know. Whatever.
- [136:33]
C
I think so. Except I think just given my background, I understand what that means. Yeah.
- [136:38]
B
Yeah.
- [136:38]
A
And you know, when you get older, you don't make sense. When you're 20, 24.
- [136:41]
C
That's right.
- [136:41]
B
Exactly.
- [136:42]
C
Yeah. You don't test Murphy.
- [136:45]
A
When you're 54, you're like, yeah, how
- [136:50]
C
about straight and level right now? Let's see how smooth that.
- [136:53]
A
Right on. Echo. Any other questions?
- [136:54]
B
No, that's it. Good to see you again, Rich.
- [136:57]
A
Any closing thoughts?
- [136:58]
C
No, man. Hey, thanks so much for having me back. Thanks for all your support. It's. It's great to. To see both of you and, and you're doing great work, which I, I appreciate too. I keep track of it.
- [137:06]
A
So, yeah, we're trying, man. Thanks once again for coming out. Thanks for joining us and thanks for sharing your lessons on leadership. Appreciate it. And of course, thanks for your service to the teams and to the nation.
- [137:17]
C
You as well.
- [137:18]
A
Thanks, brother. All right, good seeing you.
- [137:19]
C
You too.
- [137:21]
A
And with that, Rich Devini has left the building. Clearly, things are going to be uncertain when they get uncertain. There's some protocols we can take, but it's a good idea to be prepared mentally and physically. That means we're training. That means we're lifting, we're running, we're. We're doing jiu jitsu, we're shooting. We're just generally getting after it when we get after it. We need fuel, and we recommend a fuel. We have protein we have energy, we have greens, we have hydration, we have supplementation. We've got everything that you know need to keep you on the path. Recovery, growth, strength. We got you. Go to jockeyfuel.com or go to any store in your neighborhood and you should see some Jockey fuel for you. That's what we got.
- [138:13]
B
Firing on all cylinders. It'll keep you there.
- [138:16]
A
I like that. Also Origin USA.com this is where you can get American made clothing. American made boots, American made jiu jitsu gear, hoodies, geese, whatever you need to wear, hats, belts, we got you. So check out OriginUSA.com and get you some 100 communist free clothing. No communism at all. Zero percent to communism.
- [138:46]
B
Yeah, it's a good percentage because, because
- [138:47]
A
the stuff that it's made with is American made. The cotton is American grown and the buttons, the buttons here to tell you are American made. 100American made. That's what we're doing. So check it out. OriginUSA.com get some.
- [139:01]
B
Yep, it's true. Also don't forget about the aqua store. Discipline equals freedom. Good. Somebody get some. Get after it. All these things you can represent while you're on the path. I'm saying we got shirts on there, hats on their hoodies on there, shorts on there. I got a good review from the shorts by the way. Fully functional hybrid shorts, jiu jitsu, swimming workout, the whole deal. Also shirt locker. Don't forget about that. Different design every month. It's a subscription scenario. We already knew that but I'm going to tell you again. Subscription scenario, new design every month. People seem to like that one. The new design is, you know, the old school gold's gym vibe. That's all I'm gonna say. Okay. I'm saying anyway, go to jocko store.com you click on the shirt locker you can see what it, what it's all about. It's pretty cool. Every. You can see what the new design kind of is on that page. So it's pretty cool. Anyway, it's all@jocko store.com.
- [139:55]
A
check, check out some books. Masters of uncertainty by Rich Devini. Check out put your legs on by Rob Jones. Check out need to lead by Dave Burke. And then you can check out a bunch of books that I've written. I reference leadership strategy and tactics quite a few times today written by me. So you can check that one out. Also check out Colorado craft beef if you need some steak. Check out Echelon front if you want to. If you need leadership in your life, in your world, check out echelonfront.com I think we still have some seats open at the muster in San Diego July 8th through the 10th. So if you want to check that out, check that out. And then of course we have our online Training Academy, extreme ownership.com teaching these these skills. Leadership is a skill and if you want to get better at it, you can do an online training with us echelonfront.com or extremeownership.com and if you want to help service members active and retired, you want to help their families, you want to help gold star families, check out Mark Lee's mom. She's got an amazing charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org, also check out HeroesAndHorses.org and Jimmy Mae's organization Beyond the Brotherhood. Finally warriors in need.org and also stronghold rescue.org and single parent project project.org we're trying to help out some of these charities that are doing great stuff. If you want to connect with us for Richard of any on the interwebs, go to the attributes.com and he's on social media, Instagram, Rich Underscore Divini and then on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn he's at rich Devinnie. And for us you can check out jocko.com and then on social media I'm at Jocko Willink Echoes at Equa Charles Just be careful because the dopamine will grab your brain and twist it into little tiny things that you have no control over anymore. So just be careful. The dopamine machine, don't let it get you. Thanks to our military personnel around the world currently deployed protecting freedom and thanks to all the veterans that have served in the past for protecting us as Americans throughout history. Also thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, as well as all other first responders. Thank you for protecting us here at home and everyone else out there. It's an uncertain world that we live in. Things change all the time. So set some good horizons. Understand your attributes, know your identity and live it. And that's all we've got for tonight and until next time, this is Echo and Jocko out.