The Art of Manliness - #130： Be Unstoppable With Alden Mills

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast so one of the

00:00:18.440 things that I collect are antique success books from the late 19th century early 20th century

00:00:22.500 and I love these books because first they're super earnest and which is really refreshing

00:00:27.720 in this sort of age of irony and sarcasm that we live in and it's just nice to see someone who

00:00:33.000 wrote so sincerely I also like them because they focus on developing your character that was what

00:00:38.540 they're all about in the late 19th century is you develop a character and it doesn't matter if you're

00:00:42.780 rich or poor unless you had a strong character that's what mattered and I like that message

00:00:47.500 and the other reason I like them is that it usually they tell these ideas or impart teachings by stories

00:00:55.460 or allegories and that's why I love this book that just came out by Alden Mills he is the creator

00:01:00.940 of the perfect push-up retired navy seal and his book is called be unstoppable the eight essential

00:01:06.400 actions to succeed at anything and I love this book because it was almost it reminded me like these

00:01:12.580 antique success books that I collect super earnest all about developing your character and it uses a

00:01:18.540 story an allegory to impart these truths or these bits of wisdom along the way so today on the podcast

00:01:24.500 we're going to talk about this book the allegory of the the tugboat captain and what are the eight

00:01:30.860 essential actions to succeed at anything so without further ado Alden Mills be unstoppable

00:01:35.720 Alden Mills welcome to the show thank you it's great to be honest all right so your book is be

00:01:48.980 unstoppable the eight essential actions to succeed at anything and before we get to that let's talk a

00:01:54.400 little bit about your background because I think it's it's really unconventional it's really

00:01:56.880 interesting I'm sure there's a lot of people who might not have heard of your name but they know

00:02:00.440 about the product that you got to market so tell us a little about your your story you know the best

00:02:05.500 place when people ask me about my story they they hear about kind of some of the things we've done

00:02:10.480 Brett but at the end of the day you know I grew up in a small town outside of Boston about an in

00:02:17.620 central Massachusetts but I was kind of the uncoordinated two left seat asthmatic kid and I

00:02:25.280 ended up through a series of trials and tribulations overcoming that becoming a Navy SEAL and I then

00:02:32.960 invented the perfect push-up which everyone thinks just kind of happened overnight but perfect fitness

00:02:38.780 was what I call the overnight success story that took 10 years and throughout that period of inventing

00:02:46.160 products I invented my most important inventions my four little boys and ended up writing a book

00:02:54.660 called Be Unstoppable which was originally really just designed for them and then it grew to much

00:03:01.020 more it's fantastic you're sort of like a another Teddy Roosevelt Roosevelt started out as an asthmatic

00:03:06.860 kid and built himself up into a soldier uh you know that's interesting you bring him up

00:03:13.040 uh he is a big fan of mine or a big fan of mine I'm a big fan of his and uh I I've got a lot of

00:03:21.240 inspiration out of him especially uh early in life when my mother would tell me hey look at some of the

00:03:26.480 guys from the past for thinking about your future and he was one of them yeah well we're big fans of

00:03:32.860 Teddy Roosevelt at the art of manliness as well um so you said you wrote this book Be Unstoppable

00:03:37.960 for your your kids for your sons and I thought it was interesting so it's it's a it's a book that's

00:03:44.060 it's designed to pass on some values on on success and personal development but unlike a lot of like

00:03:49.880 airport business self-improvement books that sort of give bullet points uh you you use a story or a

00:03:55.920 parable why did you do that when to first you got to really understand why I wrote the book in the

00:04:05.560 first place um I had gone back in the reserves after going through business school in 2000 and

00:04:14.740 when I was back in the reserves um and I hadn't really thought much about it I started seeing some

00:04:21.240 of my buddies coming back on their shield uh in 2003 2004 in particular what I mean by that is they

00:04:29.040 gave the ultimate sacrifice for our country and it made me think about what I had to prepare for

00:04:36.640 before I'd go into battle um and in this case really what I'm referring to as battle is uh going on

00:04:43.180 deployments overseas and those were what were called just in case letters so if you came back on your

00:04:50.720 shield when they handed the flag over to a loved one there was a letter that was written from the

00:04:58.160 deceased to their loved ones and I had written three of those for the three different deployments

00:05:03.960 I had gone on and uh it made me start wondering why what those guys my friends had written to their

00:05:12.960 children uh and I was a new father at the time and that put me down the path after ended up uh having

00:05:20.340 four boys uh wondering how I could pass along some tidbits to them and as I started to look at it

00:05:29.580 persistence by far and away was the overarching theme that I wanted to pass along to them but I didn't

00:05:37.740 want to do it just standing on a soapbox saying okay do this then do that I wanted to create something

00:05:44.760 interesting that they could remember and of course you know I had to work the navy and or at least the

00:05:51.200 sea into it and that's how the parable came to be awesome so basically the the reader's digest version

00:05:58.120 is about this young it's it's this sort of it's a town where everyone gets a a boat right and they

00:06:04.780 go to the school and they go out and they can add on to their boat to take on better and bigger jobs

00:06:11.220 or they can just kind of be a barge boat if they wanted to um this one young guy he uh just was

00:06:18.440 having problems he wasn't he didn't do very well in school finally got out there and he flubbed his

00:06:24.120 first trip uh across the harbor then he encounters this magical captain um tell us about this captain

00:06:32.740 like what were you trying to he's not just a regular captain he is a a master and commander what is a

00:06:38.280 master and commander and what were you trying what kind of archetype were you were you trying to reach

00:06:42.940 or connect with with this this captain uh captain peter the master and commander really what I was

00:06:52.680 trying to inspire my boys and those that are really have the courage to go after their dreams and uh by the

00:07:03.520 way dreams don't mean that you have to go just be an entrepreneur but what dreams do do is they have

00:07:10.960 to be I mean real dreams in my mind are ones that are unique to you uh it doesn't mean that there

00:07:17.840 aren't other people have similar dreams where you can team up but the whole idea behind the master and

00:07:23.660 commander is that you have enough independence and courage that you're not beholden to one job or

00:07:32.320 somebody else's dream uh if it's not in alignment with yours that you have that courage to go out

00:07:38.700 and live the life that you want to live and not be forced into some box of well I've got to do this

00:07:48.160 for x number of years and then that and captain peter was really amalgam of different people that had

00:07:56.740 come true in my life that that whispered sometimes shouted in my ears uh different elements of what

00:08:05.700 it takes to succeed and these elements as I started really pulling my belly button out over seven years

00:08:12.140 uh they all added up to one thing and that was

00:08:16.200 persisting persevering understanding that there's only two limitations in life your imagination and your

00:08:25.420 determination okay so this uh learning how to persist you know the whole idea of becoming

00:08:33.100 unstoppable and and to do that uh captain peter teaches is it tim ted ted was the bad guy right

00:08:40.760 or he wasn't the bad guy correct ted was the guy who was sort of a he had he had a fixed mindset

00:08:45.680 thought that uh tim was it tim tim tim had the growth mindset so captain peter teaches tim

00:08:53.380 the master's code um so the first one of that i thought that was really interesting is that

00:09:00.100 to become unstoppable to learn the master's code you have to understand your why first why is that

00:09:07.880 the most important understanding your why and why do people have such a hard time figuring out their why

00:09:14.180 in life okay so those are two big questions sure and to me it is really it's the foundation for

00:09:23.980 not just the book but any important thing you want to do in life um the the first part about well why do

00:09:31.900 people what what's the why and why is it hard for lots of different people to to find it or you know

00:09:39.940 even try to find their why now the first piece is the why to me is if you look at the most important

00:09:49.320 verb in life i would say that verb is called care so i may say well no it's love well care is really

00:09:57.000 the basis of love and for you to really understand and continue to get up when you get knocked down

00:10:06.680 you've got to be in alignment with what you truly care about look at every great

00:10:15.360 dynamic person and dynamic meaning they've got they've been going after dreams whether it's martin

00:10:23.780 luther king whether it's gandhi or whether it was michael monsoor who jumped on a grenade to

00:10:30.660 save his fellow seals in ramadi they all had something so powerful that they believed in that

00:10:38.320 they cared about they were willing to give their life for that and and that is understanding the why

00:10:48.520 of why it is you want to go after what you want to do the why is the hard part the what is actually

00:10:54.680 not as hard it you've got to be consistent at knocking out the doing but until you understand

00:11:02.400 why you're going to get up every morning at x hour to do y work then it's not gonna you you won't have

00:11:11.880 to stick with in this to stick with it and that brings me to the second piece of your question which

00:11:18.340 is well gee you know why is it so hard for people to stick with their why or why is it so hard people

00:11:24.760 to find a why it's that so many folks get caught up and well everybody likes red ferrari so i guess i

00:11:32.480 need to have a red ferrari everybody needs to have x number of dollars in the bank account so i've got to

00:11:38.060 do that well everybody goes to college then they go to this job and then this job and then i got to be a

00:11:43.820 vp by 30 or something because there's this group think of society that hey no no no i we all got to

00:11:51.540 compete for this social hierarchy when the great things that happened in what made this country great

00:11:58.740 were people bucking the trend finding their own course and going after what they were willing to

00:12:05.740 give their lives to do most of us today is it's really figuratively it's not literally uh except

00:12:13.420 for our great men and women and armed services everybody else for the most part it's about

00:12:20.640 alignment with what's so important in their life that they're willing to dedicate everything they got

00:12:26.720 to go for it how do you figure that out is it just self-reflection i mean how do you get away from that

00:12:32.900 group think is it just a lot of self-reflection is it what is it you know i think um you've got to

00:12:41.400 take three different angles to getting there much in the same way when we go out into the woods and

00:12:48.840 we're lost and they do this on purpose for land navigation and seal team they drop you out they

00:12:56.360 put you in a dark truck you have no idea where you are they give you a compass and a map and then you

00:13:02.480 got to go find three landmarks take take a and and you basically shoot different compass settings off the

00:13:10.160 three landmarks to get your one position right but the three lines cross in that intersection like

00:13:16.060 okay i think i know our app so in the case of your why one great intersection is saying hey what would

00:13:23.480 i do if i knew i couldn't fail what would be the things that i would just love to be doing in my life

00:13:30.980 if i could not fail unfortunately somewhere along the line between high school college

00:13:38.160 and maybe even before high school kids stop dreaming up crazy ideas and they start thinking

00:13:46.780 okay well this is what society expects we all know how to dream we all know how to come up with really

00:13:53.780 cool helicopters that turn into submarines but at some point they forget that so after we stop thinking

00:14:00.480 what would i do that i couldn't fail go out and do another intersection of who would i like to

00:14:06.920 whose lifestyle would i like to follow who's who's life who's who's that mentor like when we talked

00:14:13.120 earlier about teddy roosevelt i started my mother started pointing me like go look at people in the

00:14:19.520 past and you'd be like man i'd love to have those kinds of experiences in life right so you've got

00:14:26.060 one intersection of what would i do if i knew i couldn't fail another intersection of hey these

00:14:32.880 are what people have done in the past boy i'd love to emulate what they were like and then the final

00:14:38.260 piece is do do a little account balance sheet of yourself of hey what are the things that i'm

00:14:44.980 passionate about and one of the things that i could really find a purpose in and i'm a big believer in

00:14:51.160 passion and purpose which by the way i think when you connect the two of them that really equals what

00:14:56.400 i really care about but if you were to say to yourself like well what's passion and purpose well

00:15:01.180 you can be passionate about lots of things but you got to find that purpose in them it's like

00:15:06.260 two oars in the water a port and a starboard if you can link up the passion and purpose as your

00:15:12.400 third intersection that's going to help you get to your why but in in a lot of cases brett the why

00:15:21.840 isn't just something that just pops out overnight i mean i started as a young kid i didn't wake up

00:15:26.860 one day going well i want to be a navy seal and vent the perfect push-up no i woke up one day and i had

00:15:32.440 a coach who i had all these kids making fun of me with my thunder thighs and then one day i ended up

00:15:38.140 seeing a coach who looked at my thighs and said whoa those are great big thighs you ought to be a 0.84

00:15:43.460 rower and then i ended up rowing and then rowing took me to to the naval academy and then the naval

00:15:50.500 academy rowing took me to field team and field team rowing took me to having the confidence to start my

00:15:57.100 own business so it's not like you've got to develop your why immediately overnight for the rest of your

00:16:03.460 life think about your why for the next three to six months of boy what would i do that would just

00:16:08.640 get me so excited that i'd be thinking about it when i pee in the middle of the night

00:16:12.840 i love that all right so figure out your why the next principle of a master commander is they have

00:16:20.080 to know how to plan and i thought it was really interesting you you talked about 3d planning or

00:16:25.580 planning in three dimensions how do you do that sort of planning

00:16:28.840 um so first of all 3d planning and it is 3d it's meant in uh it's a double entendre between

00:16:40.400 three dimensions and what i mean on three dimensions and i give talks around the country on this

00:16:46.540 most people think of x and y axis the x and y axis would be um more dollars less dollars and on the

00:16:54.740 other side of the axis would be more function less function of something well if you then remember

00:17:00.860 going back to our earlier days of how to figure out volume on something there's a z axis out there

00:17:07.160 that z axis is what i bring in as the third dimension or it's time and if you apply those three elements

00:17:15.600 you then start realizing that the whole thing about planning is the preparation of it because no plan

00:17:22.720 never goes according to plan but the preparation of the planning helps you in dealing with the

00:17:30.060 things that are going to go wrong it's just going to happen and once you start doing that planning

00:17:36.220 process you start to appreciate what i call the other element of 3d is hey at the end of the day

00:17:43.940 it's not all about the plan it's about the preparation and the preparation is

00:17:49.820 by first defining what you're going after dividing it up into bite-sized chunks and doing it daily

00:17:57.040 because no plan is worth its salt unless you do the execution yeah well you said an interesting

00:18:03.880 point about how no plan like it's the same like plans often fail when they first come in contact with

00:18:08.880 the enemy um no plan ever goes according to plan and so improvisation is required um and it's a skill

00:18:16.800 that i think is really important for young people to develop i feel like a lot of young people have

00:18:21.140 this hard time of adapting on the fly um because they they're so used to having people this is what

00:18:27.260 you do here's here's this uh this path you need to follow so how do you learn to improvise um overcome

00:18:33.820 unforeseen changes um the first thing i think you need to do is understand what i call the three i's

00:18:41.240 of improvise the three i's of improvise are the three most important verbs around improvise if you

00:18:48.080 look at improvise is the main verb there is invent innovate and improve those are the three basic ways

00:18:56.420 you can improvise when i say invent invent is like creating a segue so creating something that is

00:19:03.320 completely revolutionary it has no reference point it's going to take a lot of time to educate people on

00:19:10.420 it now innovation on the other hand or innovating is the one that most of society is used to seeing

00:19:17.900 there's a reference point as an example the perfect push-up the perfect push-up was an invention or an

00:19:24.680 innovation not an invention which was my first product the body rep that was and i almost lost my

00:19:30.560 company around it because i didn't understand that difference but in the innovation the reference

00:19:36.940 point on the perfect push-up was a u-shaped push-up candle that went on to a rotating bass clip

00:19:42.800 so it was just a tweak on an existing product and then the final improvising which you see a lot of

00:19:50.160 you end up seeing a lot of kind of failed products or a lot of me too products is improving improving is

00:19:57.860 nothing more than going from a little basic step to another one uh we're gonna this year our improvement

00:20:05.100 on the product will be adding different colors or we're gonna add a new texture or we'll do a little

00:20:10.260 tweak and a nip and a tuck it's not anything more than just incremental improving of something so first

00:20:17.800 helping people understand hey there are three basic ways to improvise and then the third thing and then the

00:20:24.580 second thing to understand is you gotta fail you just have to be prepared to do lots of failing

00:20:32.140 and think of it like thomas edison when he would say hey it's i learned 10 000 ways not to make a

00:20:39.100 light bulb the first thing is empowering the next generation any generation for that matter that the

00:20:46.740 only time you really fail is when you don't learn from what didn't work i'd love to come up with a new

00:20:52.440 word that's not failing it's just oh okay i figured it out another way from something not to work

00:20:57.300 great that's that can be its own success but getting people in the mindset of just trying

00:21:03.100 something because anybody can do any through any one of the three eyes that i just discussed

00:21:08.820 for those who are like our listeners who are managers right how do you encourage that with the people

00:21:16.040 you are you're managing or you're you're you're not managing you work with them right you don't you

00:21:20.720 don't boss people around you work with them learn that from captain peter oh brad i'm so glad you

00:21:26.080 clarified that there you go i know captain pete got really started that means yeah if you work

00:21:32.560 with people i have never met anybody that says hey chi uh i really can't wait to be managed yeah

00:21:39.640 want to grow up and be managed no we manage time and money and resources but we don't manage people

00:21:45.740 so um the people that we're leading so how do we how do we how do we encourage that you know you can you

00:21:51.240 can fail that and figure things out and that's okay because i think a lot of people they play it

00:21:56.880 safe because they don't want to lose their job they don't want they want to they want to get in

00:21:59.940 trouble but how do you encourage that that uh the improvisation that risk-taking that can actually lead

00:22:05.520 to bigger and better things uh the first way that i do the encouragement is the same way that i learned

00:22:12.660 when i was a young platoon commander and seal team and i came back from my first big training exam

00:22:19.400 which is um this large operation that you plan for several weeks on and and my commanding officer

00:22:28.220 in front of the entire team was like melz give us your report i give him the report and like so

00:22:34.360 you're telling me you're you're off went perfectly melz i'm like yes sir he's like that's not what i want

00:22:40.360 here i'm like uh i'm not tracking when he goes no i want to understand where are the areas that are

00:22:48.080 going to break if you're not training hard enough to understand what's going to break then you're

00:22:52.980 going to learn in the battlefield what's breaking we want you to learn what's breaking in the training

00:22:58.000 ground and so the public encouragement in front of entire teams letting them know hey i'm not asking

00:23:07.560 you to just fail for failure's sake but as we're going out and creating whatever it is whether it's

00:23:14.380 a service whether it's a product in our case we make lots of products here at perfect fitness

00:23:19.660 we actually design the product in the beginning of what we think is the minimal amount of material

00:23:24.840 that can get by testing but set really high testing results and it turns out the products usually

00:23:31.400 fail the first couple of test runs through there because we're trying to understand

00:23:35.560 okay what is safe what's not safe in figuring out that breaking point early the same thing goes

00:23:43.200 when you're bringing in teams and they're working on you know if you're in a service industry the failure

00:23:47.820 could be all right we're getting a whole bunch of disgruntled callers saying we don't like that anymore

00:23:53.240 then that's telling you then we just figured out our failure for this but the idea of encouraging

00:24:00.880 people to push the envelope and i would say this safely at the same time knowing that it's going

00:24:08.080 to go up and down the chain of command that there's support through there where it's also documented what

00:24:13.520 you're learning from your failure is the first step to encouraging teams to work together to push the

00:24:20.220 boundaries gotcha so one of the other principles of the code of the mastering commander and i thought it was

00:24:27.360 really interesting uh was physical exercise what is it about physical exercise that can help you become

00:24:34.560 unstoppable in business or in your family or whatever venture you're you're going in so exercise is and

00:24:43.840 that's another double entendre hold on one second

00:24:47.200 okay okay people walking around giving me hugs here uh

00:24:57.840 the whole thing about exercise and i think this is what people forget

00:25:02.900 is for you to go out and persist for you to go out and go after big dreams for you to go out

00:25:10.300 and and really live an extraordinary life you need stamina you need strength you need the ability to

00:25:21.740 get up again and again day after day and slug it out well that that just doesn't come from a cup of

00:25:30.140 coffee it comes from your own platform of making things happen which would be your body and so when people

00:25:39.020 start to understand hey you know what actually my body has a symbiotic relationship with its

00:25:44.800 most important organ which can't be transplanted that would be the brain seal team they call the body

00:25:50.900 the brain housing group and that the brain is only as good as what the body delivers to it that's both

00:25:58.900 in the nutrient side of the equation but also in blood flow and blood flow is directly dependent

00:26:05.020 on cardiovascular capability the two of those and then if the brain is telling the body hey i want

00:26:11.380 you to go climb that mountain or you need to do uh pull your body up over this or push your body away

00:26:15.640 from that wall your body your body can't do it you can't perform the work you can't go after the

00:26:20.440 things in life you really want to do so the chapter i call is exercise to execute is really another play

00:26:28.160 on verbs of saying it is all about execution it is all about taking action but you're only going to

00:26:36.420 be able to take as much action as your body is conditioned for which is why exercise and getting

00:26:43.820 in that mindset and by the way i'm not talking about turning people in an arnold schwarzenegger here

00:26:48.340 we're talking about 30 minutes of walking a day we're talking about doing some basic body conditioning

00:26:55.180 okay that makes sense yeah it makes perfect sense so here's a question that i i had when i finished

00:27:03.620 the book we're not gonna we haven't gotten into all the principles i want people to go and read it

00:27:07.520 because it's really great but what do you do once you're a master and commander figuratively how do you

00:27:14.540 stay hungry and humble even after you've had success um and some of the biggest fears are like how do you

00:27:22.780 how do you maintain that drive to keep keep going after new and bigger and better goals

00:27:27.360 the first one in my mind is to to never rest on your laurels to always say what's the next thing i can

00:27:37.400 learn i think everyone should be adopting a life a mindset in life of never stop learning you know i love

00:27:47.300 hearing about the 90 year old that's gone back to college or um the 80 year old that's decided i'm

00:27:55.980 going to try a new job or a new instrument i mean we ought to constantly be learning until the day we get

00:28:02.900 promoted and in first in having that mindset and then second and i remember a commanding officer

00:28:13.440 telling me this right after i thought hey i was pretty cool doing a particular operation

00:28:19.700 was hey mils there's always somebody better out there there is always somebody better out there

00:28:27.100 than you and so whether it's somebody in the arena that you want to play in or on the battlefield

00:28:34.360 there's always somebody better and if you want to be the best of whatever it is you want to be the

00:28:40.920 best or if it's just gee i think i've learned everything i don't need to learn anything more

00:28:45.600 well that's a big red flag and the more you can start catching yourself and it won't happen in the

00:28:53.600 beginning we'll all make those mistakes we all do because we're human we got the ego which is our

00:29:00.660 our number one ally and can be our worst enemy at the same time but the more we can encourage

00:29:07.040 ourselves to be humble and be a humble servant of those around us i think the more we'll appreciate

00:29:14.800 how much we can get out of life fantastic well the book was fantastic and i think it's a i'd

00:29:22.900 recommend it if you're listening if you have sons or just daughters too it's great for them um

00:29:28.560 but all the work people find out more about your work and about the book

00:29:31.420 i i have a website called be unstoppable with alden mills i know it's a mouthful but i'll post

00:29:42.080 i usually post uh speeches that i do around the country on that i always encourage people to

00:29:49.020 send notes they can find me on facebook instagram and linkedin and i it really is a joy to inspire others

00:29:59.520 to to go after living the life that they've just imagined great well we'll be sure to post those

00:30:07.900 link up on our site when we publish the podcast well alden it's been a great conversation thank you

00:30:13.520 so much for your time it's been a pleasure hey brett thank you i appreciate it and i love what you do

00:30:19.300 at art of manliness keep it up thank you our guest today was alden mills he is the author of the book

00:30:24.660 be unstoppable the eight essential actions to succeed at anything you can find that on amazon.com

00:30:29.420 well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice

00:30:36.980 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com and if you enjoy

00:30:41.080 the podcast i'd really appreciate if you give us review on itunes or stitcher or whatever it is you

00:30:45.120 use to listen to the podcast that help get the word out about the show and help us get some feedback

00:30:48.780 so we can learn how to improve it so until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay

00:30:52.920 manly

The Art of Manliness - August 17, 2015

#130： Be Unstoppable With Alden Mills

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