Episode #60 The Way Of The SEAL With Mark Divine
Episode Stats
Summary
Mark Devine is a former Navy SEAL and author of the book, The Way of the SEAL. In this episode, we talk about how civilians can take lessons from the Navy SEALs and apply them to their own lives.
Transcript
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All right. So I think at one time or another, every guy has thought about or fantasized about
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being a Navy SEAL. You watch the movies, you watch those shows on Discovery Channel where you
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go inside what it's like to train to be a Navy SEAL, what it's like to be a Navy SEAL,
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and it just looks freaking awesome, but also incredibly difficult. And my always thought is
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like, is this something that you're just born to do or can a Navy SEAL be created? And also,
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I mean, can we as civilians, even if you don't plan on being a Navy SEAL, are there lessons we can take
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from Navy SEALs on how to develop mental toughness, emotional and mental resilience,
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and sort of that focus and vision that the SEALs are famous for? Well, our guest today
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is a former Navy SEAL, and he has written a book on that topic, on how civilians can take lessons on
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mental and emotional resilience, on mental toughness, and apply it to their own life.
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His name is Mark Devine, and he is the author of the book, The Way of the SEAL. In today's podcast,
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we talk about The Way of the SEAL and how just average Joes can take lessons from the Navy SEALs
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and apply it to their own lives to improve it in every way possible. So stay tuned.
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Hey, thank you very much, Brett. Pleasure to be here.
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Before we begin, let's talk a little bit about your background, because first, it's so fascinating.
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And second, it seems like your book, The Way of the SEAL, is a culmination of just these awesome
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life experiences you've had. So let's start, like, I mean, how did you become a SEAL? Because you sort
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of had a, it wasn't your typical route to becoming a SEAL. So tell us, how did this all happen?
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Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah, I wasn't, you know, I didn't come out of high school or even
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college thinking I was going to be a SEAL. In fact, you know, from my upstate New York upbringing,
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you know, I was pretty much groomed to go into business. My family has a family business that's
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over 100 years old. And it was just kind of expected that I would get some business experience
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and then kind of come back and maybe head the charge for the family. And so I did the
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right things. You know, I went to Colgate University in upstate New York, which is a pretty good
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liberal arts school. I majored in economics. And I was, you know, an athlete, an endurance
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athlete during that time. But that didn't really mean much to me at the time. But then when I
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graduated, I got a job with a firm named Coopers & Library, which is now PricewaterhouseCoopers,
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which is one of the big eight accounting firms back in the day. It was 1985, believe it or not.
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And so the job was in Manhattan. So I went down to New York City, and they sent me to NYU to get my
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MBA. And, you know, I spent a couple of years cranking away, working as an auditor, and then
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a consultant, and then, you know, getting my MBA at night, and then, you know, sitting for the CPA exam.
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And so within a short period of time, by the time I was 24, I had an MBA and CPA and was doing all
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the right things, right, Brett? I'm just like, probably you're going to law school, and then
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end up, you know, running out of manliness, because you wondered what the hell you went to law school
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for at some point. Exactly. Right? Well, I kind of wonder what the heck I was doing
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in that corporate world, because it, you know, I just didn't sit well with me. I didn't really like
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the people I was around, you know, with all due respect to those folks in that environment.
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At the time, there was a lot of greed, and, you know, a lot of ego, and, you know, the long hours for
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really just what amounted to a paycheck, and I didn't, you know, I just had this growing sense
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of unease. And fortunately, I strolled into a martial arts studio one day, and the, you know,
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I was completely blown over by the type of training and the type of people that were at the studio.
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It was called Seido Karate, and so the founder, Tadashi Nakamura was his name, became my first,
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you know, kind of real mentor in life. And his training was very much of a integrated whole
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person nature, meaning that, you know, we worked our asses off on the training floor. But then we
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would sit in meditation, and we would have these discussions, like little, you know, kind of
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meditation lectures. And also, we went to a few retreats up at the Zen Mountain Monastery in New
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York. And that work kind of cultivating that, you know, the softer side of myself, I suppose you
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call it the, you know, the meditation and the, you know, the self-reflection and the awareness
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development really started to open my mind to, number one, the fact that I was kind of misaligned
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doing this corporate ladder job. And number two, that I really wanted to go out and challenge myself
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beyond measure in something that was going to, you know, inspire me and really teach me, you know,
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leadership and have me lead in kind of messy situations, you know, kind of real visceral type
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of leadership, which is what, you know, inspired me. And also that that was a physical calling,
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you know, because I really, you know, I love the physical life. And I obviously didn't appreciate
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the steady decline I saw of my body and in my peers. And so one day, I was walking down the street,
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and I saw a poster from the Navy Recruiting Command, and it said, be someone special. And I said,
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that sounds cool. And it was for the Navy SEALs. And so I really, that's what first inspired me.
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So I, you know, began to look into it. And one thing led to another and pretty much, you know,
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decided that I was going to head down that road. And so at 25 years old, I bolted from corporate
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America and went to Oster Cannon School, then through SEAL training. Of course, there's a lot
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of steps in between here that I'm leaving out, but I went through SEAL training in 1990 and was in
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class 170 and loved it. Graduated as a honor man of my class and, you know, never looked back.
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But then even at, so you, you, but even after you did Navy, the Navy SEAL, you retired. I mean,
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actually don't really retire, but you know, you stopped doing that. You actually went back to
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Right, right. You know, you, I was, I was a 20 year SEAL, but only roughly nine of that
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was active duty years. And so I went through a, my first stint was seven years. My marriage to
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Sandy, who was a Coronado girl, you know, which is the, where the training command is that,
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that kind of sidetracked my active duty career, you know, it was really difficult. I like to say
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that if the SEALs had wanted me to have a wife, they would have issued me one because, you know,
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very, very soon after our marriage, I was gone for like, you know, close to nine months and,
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you know, through a couple of different deployments. And my wife was freaking out and
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saying, I'm not sure, you know, I, I thought I understood what I was getting into, but I don't
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think I can, you know, really hang for a 20 year career like this. And so I was forced to make a
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choice and I chose, you know, to, to keep the marriage and to get off active duty, but I stayed
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in the reserves. Uh, there's a few reserve officers, uh, you know, there's a, a few hundred SEAL
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reservists and, you know, handful of us officers. And so we were able to plug in and do some very,
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very interesting and important work on the reserve side. So, you know, over the next, uh,
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11 years, I've, I was mobilized a couple of times to act of duty to go to Iraq and other places.
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And, you know, I worked at a variety of commands in different positions doing special projects.
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And so that's how I finished out my 20 years. And, and, you know, during that reserve time,
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I was able to go back into business, as you said, and, and build a number of, um, of businesses that
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were, you know, varying degrees of success. You know, I built a microbrewery in, uh, San Diego
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called the Coronado Brewing Company. That's kicking ass to this day. No longer involved in
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that, but I went on to build a, uh, Navyseals.com, you know, which is a community and e-commerce
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website and my training business called seal fit. And now I'm working on unbeatle mind, which is,
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um, you know, about training mental, mental and emotional and, you know, spiritual toughness
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really. Um, so it's been, it's been pretty remarkable career actually. Yeah. So that
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means it's a, like a Renaissance man. I like that. Yeah. Um, so let's talk a little bit about,
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uh, your, your, uh, I guess business or your, the training programs you developed, not just
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for civilians, but for people who are, you know, would be seals. Right. And what's, what I found
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amazing is that through your, your programs, um, you know, training programs for buds, you were
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able to help reduce the attrition rate, like pretty significantly. Right. Well, let's there,
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we have to, you know, for my, my seal buddies who critique me, I have to be very specific,
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which we're talking about. So I started back in 2006, I started the nationwide, uh, seal mentor
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program, which is a, which was a government contract. And, uh, we took in, in the first year
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alone, we took the pass rate for the candidates, right. Who are going into the Navy wanting to be
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seals? Gotcha. Took the pass rate from 33% to over 85% on the tests that they took when they show up
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at bootcamp. So before, before me and the mentor program, 30, only 33% of the candidates even going
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into bootcamp wanting to be a seal were qualified. And after my first year of that program over 85%,
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that program, you know, went on and I'm not involved anymore, but that program today has been
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attributed with, uh, increasing the throughput or set another way, which is the way you said it
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decreasing the attrition rate by three to 5% at buds training. So that's powerful. But then,
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then one more thing, you know, because this is a stat I cite in my way of the seal. Sure. Um,
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I went on to create seal fit, which is for private, you know, citizens who pay me. It's not a government
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contract. I don't have any, a formal relationship in the Navy, but I have seal candidates and spec ops
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candidates from around the world who come train with me. And of the seal candidates that come
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train with me and spend, you know, time at my special ops immersion Academy, which is a three
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week, you know, live in Academy that ends with a simulated hell week experience called Kikoro camp.
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So the guys who want to be seals who come, you know, invest that amount of time with me,
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I have, they have over a 90% success rate getting through seal training. So those are the two different
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stats. One is the stat from when I actually was hired by the Navy. And the other is, you know,
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the results from the individuals who don't want to be a statistic. Yeah. Yeah. So here's a question.
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So, I mean, what did you find, like when you went in as a government contractor to help these
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candidates, you know, just get ready, right? Like what were the candidates doing or not doing
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that caused them to not succeed? Uh, and what, how did your training change that? I mean, what,
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what were your observations? My observations is a lot of the guys going into the program and this is,
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you know, we can translate this conversation to anything in life, anything challenge,
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challenging, right? Uh, the seals just tend to, you know, are one of the more challenging things
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you can choose to do in life, right? Well, many of them had a very, there are two, two ways. They,
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they didn't prepare properly because they didn't adequately, uh, research and understand the
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magnitude of the task that they were going to undertake. Right. And so, you know, maybe they spent too
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much time watching, uh, seal stuff on TV or in a video game and they didn't really get out and,
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and do things like come to my training and, and find a seal mentor and really get out there and
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spend a good two or three years preparing for it because that's really what it takes.
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So that was one. And the other thing is they had an unrealistic, um, expectation or view of their own,
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um, competency. Right. And so they really did. They lacked the awareness to understand their
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weaknesses, to understand, you know, um, the, the mental shortcomings and to really do the work to,
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to shore up their, you know, chances of success and, and to inoculate themselves against failure.
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So both, both of those are, you know, with the right training and guidance are easily overcome,
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right? You can, you can learn how to prepare properly for anything. I mean, you and I could go
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climb Mount Everest, but we're not going to get on the plane and go tomorrow. Right. And same thing with
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seal training. And then, you know, as part of that training, you've got to understand,
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you know, where your weak points are, where are you going to break, you know, and then you close
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those openings so that those are strong and then it's okay for you to focus on your strengths so
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that you can accelerate, but you got to at least close the openings for those weaknesses.
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Yeah. That, that second, um, observation you made that everyone, you know, overestimates their
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competency. That's that gets us. Everyone thinks they're above average, right? Right.
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But that's not possible. It's not, you know, it's really, this brings up a really interesting
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thing. I've been toying around with Lumosity, which is, you know, brain training. I'm sure
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you're familiar with that. And, you know, I, I honestly, you know, I, I do a lot of mental
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training and, you know, I'm a former Navy SEAL and have an MBA and everything. And so I,
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you know, I ripped through a few rounds of Lumosity and I'm like, man, I must be doing great.
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You know, and then I checked myself against the standards and I'm like below 50% on every one of them.
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I'm like, what the hell? Like, you just made me feel like a dunce. Yeah. I better start
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training, you know? Yeah. That's really funny. To your point, you know, everyone overestimates.
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Everyone estimates. And I think maybe there's also, um, I guess a popular conception that like,
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you know, Navy SEALs are born, not made like you either, either got it or you don't. And like,
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you know, buds, well, there is like the, sort of the filtering factor that determines whether
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you got it or you don't. Right. That's not true at all. Yeah. You know, physical and mental
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toughness are developed right now. They can be developed deliberately through training or they
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can develop by your life circumstances, but either way they're developed. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So let's
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talk, uh, let's get into your book, the way of the SEAL, um, because basically you take all these life
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experiences from your martial arts training to your experience, uh, serving as a Navy SEAL, um,
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your experience as a entrepreneur, and you sort of set out these principles and lay out these
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principles. And one of the, what I found interesting is that as I was reading it, I, I'm really into
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this stuff, right? I'm, I'm all into like, you know, building your mental resilience and meditation.
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And I was reading, I was reading, I was thinking, you know, a lot of people could read this and,
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you know, pick it up and they thought, Oh, this could be like a Navy SEAL book. Hoorah.
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But you know, a lot of people would read it and be like, this is sort of woo woo. It's like,
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you know, visualization, developing your intuition. Right. Um, but what I, what I found is
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interesting is I, it seems like the military is actually sort of embracing this mental development.
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They are. Yeah, very much so. And so, I mean, can you talk about that a little bit? I mean,
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did your, um, the principles you laid out sort of the mental development,
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did you see some of that, um, used in the military or is that, you're just starting to
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see that develop now what's going on there? Um, the answer is both. It was not prevalent at all.
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When I went through training, having said that back in the, you know, eighties, there were a couple
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projects that were, you know, kind of forerunners of what's, what we see happening on a broader scale
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today. Uh, the Trojan horse project is a good example where they took some seals and green berets
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and they trained them in meditation and Aikido and, you know, awareness practices and, you know,
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tested them over the six month period. And they found that they were more resilient. They were more
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focused, they were calmer and they were performing better. Right. And, you know, of course,
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those programs ended up getting scrapped when, you know, um, it just was deemed as impractical.
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And all it takes is one guy, one skeptic to strike a pen, pen through that. And so they didn't really
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go anywhere, but I remember reading about those and thinking about those early on when I went into
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the seals and because of my martial arts experience before the seals and my experience with meditation,
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I, I understood that advanced warrior traditions from many cultures throughout history had used
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a combination of hard and soft training to develop warriors. And, and I, I figured, you know, why,
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why should I be any different? Even if the seals weren't actively teaching me this stuff, I continued
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to train and on my own. And, and there were a few other people in the teams that were, you know,
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had the same warrior ethos that, uh, were developing themselves along these ways. And having said that
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the nature of special ops really is, you know, so, um, you know, there's a couple aspects that
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really, really support that type of training, for instance. Um, and most notably is that you're
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really spend a lot of time in silence in the spec ops community. You can imagine that, right? We have
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to sneak everywhere we get. And, you know, if you, if you get caught, basically you screwed up or,
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you know, you might spend like for me, you know, 10 hours in a submarine, you know,
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a mini submarine surrounded by a cone of cold water. Uh, the only thing you can hear is your
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breathing. Well, then you tend to get, you know, you can either just waste that time and get to the
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target and do your op, or you can use that time to condition yourself mentally and emotionally and,
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you know, do some training, right. That, that internal training, like concentration and deep
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breathing and stuff like that. And so, you know, there's a lot of opportunity to develop,
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you know, and a lot of the guys do develop deep intuition and some of those other aspects that
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come out of that type of training. And the SEALs tend to be very instinctual, intuitive
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and accelerated learners because of the nature of the, uh, operations and the training that they go
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through. Interesting. Yeah. And then one more thing, you know, I want to do say is today, um,
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first of all, you know, I've trained, you know, hundreds of, of SEALs now who are in the forest
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have gotten through and they've all been doing yoga and visualization and breathing practices,
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you know, since I trained them. And so, you know, and they're now leading teams. And so it's become
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a lot more common. And I know a bunch of Marines who are being, you know, getting trained in yoga
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and mindfulness. And then there's some tests going on. In fact, uh, Doug Johnson is a Dr. Doug Johnson
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was with us, uh, worked with me at our SEALs fit training center as an athlete. And now he's with
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like a Naval Health Research Lab or something like that. And they, they're actually testing
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the effects of meditation and breath control and visualization on active duty SEALs. So there's a
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few, you know, very, um, you know, interesting and, um, you know, optimistic type projects going on
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where, you know, I think, you know, the, the prevailing view is that within 10 years that this type of
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training will be commonplace in the military. Yeah. Um, we've actually, I did a, an article about that
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sort of researching like biofeedback in the military and they're hoping not only does it
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make them makes, make people better soldiers, um, but it could also help with the PTSD that's
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become very prevalent. And that's where it all started initially. It's like, oh, the, the rehabilitation
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of the warriors coming back, but then, you know, there, there was also another interesting thing
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with a lot of the EOD guys coming back saying that they, you know, reporting, you know, really
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intuitive experiences or, you know, insight experiences where they could, you know, sense that
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there was a, a bomb in the road right ahead, or they could see, you know, have a image of it being
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placed by someone. And then they started to pay attention to these and it saved a lot of lives.
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And so the, uh, uh, another, I'm not sure which, you know, group in the Navy is studying this,
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but they're really studying intuition and the role that played in the, in the combat warrior as well.
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And so it's going to be both, um, you know, from the post recovery, you know, using the tools to
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help facilitate recovery from PTSD, but also, you know, in the training phase to make the warrior
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more resilient and more aware and to be able to handle the chaos and the confusion a lot better.
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Very cool. Uh, so let's talk about some of your specific principles. The ones that really leaped
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out to me while I was reading the book was the first one was, uh, you have to establish your set
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point, right? You know, what is your set point? Why is that so important that you do that first?
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Well, one of the things that again, was powerful about the SEAL experience is that we, we had, um,
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we very clearly understood where we were at because of the training, right? The training,
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you know, itself, um, baselined us and we could see where we were at compared to our peers and
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where we were at compared to where we needed to be to operate at an elite level. And so, you know,
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the delta between, uh, where we're at and where we needed to be was, was measured. And then a roadmap
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was created so that we can get from here to there. And of course there was to be able to accomplish a
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Navy SEAL, you know, mission set. Um, and so this idea, you know, what, what I carried forward into
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the way of the SEAL and that I try to teach people is that, you know, in order to know where you want
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to go in life, you know, if you can radar lock on your, on your future mission and your purpose in
00:21:22.860
life or your purpose, and then the mission's kind of tied to that purpose, that's really powerful,
00:21:27.040
but you can't get there until you also know where you are today. Right. And that's your set point.
00:21:32.620
And the elements of the set point are to be very, very clear about your, uh, what you're passionate
00:21:37.760
about and what your principles are. And those principles then are going to be like guardrails
00:21:42.300
that guide you, uh, and hold you steady as you, you know, progress toward, you know, that future
00:21:49.460
mission and, and, uh, you know, future state that you're looking for. So the set point is like
00:21:55.020
looking deep within yourself and determining, okay, where am I right now? What are, what are
00:21:59.520
my passions? What are my purpose? What is my principles? Where do I stand? What are the
00:22:05.020
skills and knowledge that I possess and what do I need to develop in order to get where I want to go
00:22:10.100
in life? Yeah. I like that idea of figuring out where you are first, before you begin, uh, sort of
00:22:15.120
takes away the illusion of that I'm above average, right? Exactly. Yeah. I mean, everyone's got unique
00:22:20.780
skills and stuff, but if you really want to, um, to break through to another level and to live an
00:22:26.160
incredible life, uh, you know, you have to step back and acknowledge that, you know, you're probably
00:22:31.200
operating at, at just a fraction of a percentage or at a, you know, at least a small percentage of
00:22:36.960
your potential. Yeah. And that potential is ever expanding as we deepen our own awareness and our
00:22:42.380
creativity opens up and we start to use, you know, the full capacity of our human intelligences.
00:22:48.460
And I say that with a plural S, you know, intelligences. So you have to have a pretty
00:22:53.360
honest and humble acceptance of where you are today so that you can start, uh, driving forward.
00:22:59.660
Yeah. And that can be really hard. It can be, it can be very hard, but it's, it's worth it in the end.
00:23:03.940
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00:24:05.080
So, okay, like after you establish your step point, then you start talking about some,
00:24:08.760
what I love about it, what the way this feels all about, and it's something I'm loving,
00:24:11.940
because I'm constantly working on this, is developing mental toughness, developing emotional and mental
00:24:16.900
resilience. And so, I mean, what are some specific tactics? We talked about meditation,
00:24:22.300
but beyond meditation, what are some other specific things that people can do to develop
00:24:27.900
that sort of mental resilience? Right. You know, mental toughness and
00:24:32.060
emotional resiliency are like two sides of the same coin, right? And so emotional resiliency
00:24:37.920
really is best developed through challenging yourself, putting yourself in circumstances
00:24:45.700
that are very uncomfortable, you know, learning to take some risks and to put yourself out there.
00:24:51.260
And, you know, that's, that causes you to, and that doesn't have to be physical, right? It can be,
00:24:57.240
you know, it can be a task or a skill like jumping out of an airplane or, you know, just engaging in,
00:25:02.640
you know, really difficult conversations that are hard for some, you know, for a guy to engage in.
00:25:07.720
And so you've got to take risk and you've got to open yourself up and, and that develops emotional
00:25:11.800
awareness and emotional resiliency. Another thing that develops resiliency is really having a,
00:25:19.340
really taking your eyes off yourself and putting them on others, you know, and this is another area,
00:25:25.200
again, that guys can be slow to the bat on, right? Be, you know, to, you know, women, you know,
00:25:31.100
typically are quicker to be able to serve others. That's the way they're wired. But when a,
00:25:35.860
when, when men can start to take their eyes off themselves and put themselves, you know,
00:25:39.820
put their eyes on their teammate and really seek to serve their teammate and to honor
00:25:44.340
teammate, you know, this is a powerful concept for Navy SEALs because we learned to rely on our
00:25:52.640
teammates with our lives. And so, you know, I had to trust you in order to trust you, I had to be
00:25:57.200
trustworthy and, you know, by me taking care of you, I understand that you're implicitly going to
00:26:02.920
take care of me. And so if I had a, a platoon of, you know, 16 SEALs and I'm, I'm watching out for
00:26:07.940
15 of them, well, there's 15 guys watching out for me. How cool is that? You know, that is really
00:26:13.200
cool. That's a powerful way to develop emotional resiliency. Mental toughness. There's a whole bunch
00:26:17.480
of, you know, really cool things that we could talk about, but one of the, one of the most powerful
00:26:21.540
ones is to, you know, you keep your, your front site focused on your major goal or your mission,
00:26:26.700
but then you, when it comes to the day-to-day tasks, you chunk it down into micro goals and
00:26:31.900
really achievable bite-sized chunks that you can, you know, bite off, have a success, you know,
00:26:38.480
note the success, develop momentum and confidence around those small successes. And then, you know,
00:26:43.880
pretty soon you've already achieved the big one without even thinking about it.
00:26:46.840
Yeah. Very cool. I love that point about developing emotional resilience, uh, you know,
00:26:51.180
focusing on others because, um, right now we're, I'm doing a series of articles about attention,
00:26:55.340
right? The science of attention. And one of the things that we've discovered or research has
00:26:59.280
discovered is that whenever we start thinking about ourselves, sort of like that, you know,
00:27:03.840
going inward and just think about ourselves, like we tend to focus on the negative, right?
00:27:08.100
And that's what our brain does automatically. We have that bias. Um, so yeah, once you start
00:27:13.240
thinking about yourself, you start thinking about, you start getting down, you turn into an Eeyore basically.
00:27:16.840
Um, and what they say is that once you start, like the research has done, like they've done the MRI
00:27:21.240
scans of the brain, that once people start thinking about others, that negativity, those that, you
00:27:26.220
know, the place in our brain, that sort of flashes negativity to goes away, it silences, it quiets
00:27:30.480
down. It does. Yeah. Well, you can't, you know, it's a, it's the ultimate act of positivity,
00:27:35.060
right? When you, when you're taking care of someone else, when you're serving someone else,
00:27:38.720
you, you, the act is positive in, by its very nature. And so it, you know, it eradicates or
00:27:44.800
shuts off any negativity, both emotionally and thought wise in your, in your body, in
00:27:50.500
your mind. So you're right. You know, let me talk about that whole point you just brought
00:27:54.920
up. You know, we do have these two sides to our lives, the intentional, which is basically
00:28:03.860
just our own thoughts and feelings and desires. And then the attentional, as you said, which
00:28:10.120
is, you know, how we focus on others and how we interact with the others. I call those two
00:28:15.360
spheres, the I and the we, right? The we is the team and the attention and the, and the,
00:28:19.700
or the I is the intentional. That's just me. And then the we is the attentional. Now, one
00:28:25.060
of the keys to mental toughness is to learn to interrupt and to shift that negativity bias
00:28:32.820
and to acknowledge it and to interrupt it and shift it. And that, you know, that takes a little
00:28:37.660
bit of practice, right? And so the tools that we teach to basically become intentionally
00:28:45.500
positive to where it's mostly, I'm not going to suggest that you can 100% be positive because
00:28:52.180
I don't think that's really realistic because you write that the human brain is wired and
00:28:56.100
to, you know, always be on guard for, for danger. And your amygdala takes that information
00:29:02.760
and process everything. And it's got a negativity bias, but you can, and I've proven through my,
00:29:06.980
in my training, you can be aware of it and create a nice gap between the arising of that negative
00:29:14.220
response and your reaction to it. And so within that gap, you have a choice to essentially shift
00:29:21.400
fire and to cancel that out and to move toward positive territory. That's one of the things I
00:29:26.680
teach. So intentionally, it's very powerful to maintain, you know, to learn how to maintain
00:29:33.760
what I call positivity, which is a positive mental dialogue and a positive imagery and
00:29:38.500
a positive emotional state. And when you do this, it tends to supercharge your performance
00:29:43.680
because you are able to, you know, really affect others a little bit more positively from an example
00:29:50.100
standpoint. Even if you're not in an attentional stage or, you know, working with another team,
00:29:55.120
your attitude, your, you know, your optimism, all these things are going to be attractive to the
00:30:03.300
right kind of people and are going to, you know, put you in their leadership role because you're
00:30:08.600
motivating, right? And you're optimistic. And so part of being a great leader is to, to be both
00:30:15.840
intentionally positive and attentionally positive. Does that make sense?
00:30:20.580
Yeah. That makes sense. So, yeah. Well, so this sort of leads me to my next question. Um, sort of
00:30:24.980
that, you know, being aware of that negativity bias or being aware of just what's going on in your,
00:30:30.900
your mind and your body. Um, so I'm not, I'm not a law enforcement, I'm not a military, but like,
00:30:36.660
I, I do sort of like, I love learning about tactical stuff. And one of the things I learned
00:30:40.980
about is the, the Cooper color code, uh, which you cover, which is sort of like a, for those of you
00:30:45.320
don't know, it's sort of a, a color code that this one, I guess a gunfighter, right. And one of the
00:30:50.020
best gunfighters who really revolutionized gunfighting in America, um, developed to
00:30:55.040
sort of be the sort of like situational awareness. Right. Um, so how do you apply that to a civilian?
00:31:01.980
I mean, cause it seems like it's just like, if you got a gun, okay, I'm on yellow, you know,
00:31:06.760
or I'm on red, like how, how can you apply that just to a guy who is not caring?
00:31:11.280
Well, a lot of it's, you know, about, uh, again, coming back to developing, um, awareness,
00:31:17.280
you, you call it situational awareness. I'm going to go back to the, what I was just talking about.
00:31:20.920
Situational awareness is awareness of what's going on around you in the situation you're around.
00:31:25.020
Well, in order to have situational awareness around you, you also have to have situational
00:31:30.220
awareness of what's going on inside of you. And if you're, you know, a great, great example that I
00:31:34.900
like to use is my trainees, you know, how many times have you gone shopping? Right. And, you know,
00:31:40.540
some, some women or guy literally is so unaware of you that they literally run their cart right
00:31:46.440
into you. Right. And, you know, that practically happens to me every time I go to a shopping,
00:31:50.960
uh, you know, you know, whatever I go to a store. And so they're clearly not situation aware. Now,
00:31:57.180
what I, what I teach, um, my trainees is that, you know, the color code system, you know,
00:32:02.740
white is ignorance, yellow is passive alertness. Okay. And passive alertness is the state that we want
00:32:09.240
to develop to be always in. Now, it doesn't mean you're going around like, you know, sneaking
00:32:13.720
around corners and you're some paranoid nut. No, it just means that you, you're always scanning.
00:32:19.080
It's like you've activated a radar scan and your scan is, um, you know, out there and it's active.
00:32:25.360
It's, it's looking for threats externally and internally. And it doesn't mean you're not having
00:32:30.420
a good time and stuff, but you don't let your guard down. You know, for instance, you go into a
00:32:35.080
restaurant at night and you scan the environment before you go in and you just look for
00:32:38.640
anything unusual and you want to sense, is there anything unusual? Do you get a sense of,
00:32:43.400
you know, something being off and 99% of the time you're not going to have any sense. So,
00:32:48.720
you know, walk into the restaurant, but instead of just sitting next to the door with your back to
00:32:52.500
the door and start pounding beers or a glass of wine or something, you, you move to the rear of
00:32:57.600
the restaurant, position yourself with your back to the wall. So you can see the entrance and you can
00:33:02.040
scan the environment and, and then just have a good time, but, you know, maintain control of your
00:33:07.620
situation because you're out in public. And when anytime you're out in public, you know, you want
00:33:10.640
to be a little bit more cautious and a little bit more alert than if you're behind a locked door
00:33:15.980
in your home. Right. And so you're always have that state of yellow, you know, using Cooper's system
00:33:21.820
of yellow passive alertness. Right. Now let's say using this restaurant example, you know, some big
00:33:27.820
burly dude comes marching through the front door and he's starting to move toward you. And you're
00:33:33.700
sitting there with your wife and son and he's coming straight toward you. Now, all of a sudden
00:33:37.340
you're going to start to, you're going to jack up from yellow to what's called orange, which is active
00:33:42.280
alert. And now orange is like preparing for action, ratcheting up the DEF CON, you know, from DEF CON
00:33:49.660
four to two maybe. And you don't know what this guy's intentions are. You don't have any clue yet.
00:33:56.100
It seems like danger is coming your way. Right. A loud noise would do this for people. You know,
00:34:01.560
if you hear a car crash or screech and all of a sudden, you know, that's when people go from,
00:34:05.960
you know, either white to orange in their normal life. Well, I'm suggesting, you know,
00:34:09.840
you stay in this data level and you go to orange when necessary. Now, in my example, let's say this
00:34:16.300
guy is coming toward you. Then he smiles, turns and walks into the bathroom. Yeah. Well, you might
00:34:24.260
go back down to the yellow at that point, or you might stay in orange until you see him leave the
00:34:29.540
bathroom and depart the restaurant. But my point is you're, you're still ready for action. Now
00:34:34.060
you're a little bit more relieved that he didn't, you know, didn't take action. He didn't have to
00:34:38.200
escalate you to red, which is, you know, some sort of massive action is going to happen. Yeah.
00:34:44.420
So I say, I guess the point of it is just, uh, remind, it's a way to remind yourself like not to
00:34:48.720
be passive in life. Right. It's not, it's part of it is just to think through it and be like,
00:34:54.120
oh yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I want to, I want to be more alert. But then in the book,
00:34:57.620
I also have drills to, to really develop that alertness, right. To develop the sensitivity to
00:35:04.060
your, you know, intuitive self and to develop an awareness of your surroundings. And those are
00:35:09.160
the things that we taught or we trained for actively in the seals. Very good. So another
00:35:13.820
thing throughout the book, you kind of mentioned this, uh, earlier in the podcast, but, um, throughout
00:35:18.000
the book, you mentioned 20 X challenges as a way, you know, you need to plan for those. I mean,
00:35:22.380
so what are 20 X challenges and, you know, how do they help forge mental toughness?
00:35:27.600
Right. You know, to preface this, you know, we, as human beings, we grow through challenge
00:35:32.500
and you and your listeners are very aware of that. And it's probably a big part of what
00:35:35.680
you encourage people to do is to get out and challenge yourself. You know, if you can't
00:35:39.260
do pull-ups and get on the pull-up bar and freaking, you know, challenge yourself to be
00:35:42.560
able to do 10 pull-ups. Right. Um, and so we grow through challenge. Well, interesting thing
00:35:48.380
about the human experience is if you don't go for the challenge, if you don't go after
00:35:52.120
it, then the challenge will find you anyways. And oftentimes we'll find you unprepared.
00:35:57.280
Right. And so that can be in the form of an accident or an illness or, you know, death
00:36:02.200
of a loved one. And now you've got to go through it, but you're not prepared. So what, you know,
00:36:06.320
the 20 X concept is that first of all, you're capable of so much more than you think you
00:36:10.600
are, but you're not going to find it unless you challenge yourself. So go out and find a
00:36:15.200
challenge that's going to prove to you that you're capable of 20 times more than you think
00:36:18.700
you are. You know, for me, the Navy SEAL hell week was such a challenge. Now I don't expect
00:36:23.040
everyone to go join the SEALs and go through hell week, right? Obviously that's not realistic.
00:36:27.520
So, you know, you want to find challenges that are appropriate for your skill level and comfort
00:36:33.820
level and physical, you know, aptitude, but then, you know, you want these challenges to
00:36:38.400
grow in their magnitude. So you're constantly growing. So good examples like physically, you
00:36:43.220
know, if, if the, if your listeners are into physical training, you know, some of the challenges
00:36:47.540
that I have my athletes do is like, okay, well let's do a thousand pushups for time.
00:36:53.160
You know, and last time I did this, it's been a couple of years, I did it in 39 minutes,
00:36:56.780
you know, which was cool because that was, you know, that made me feel good. And I knew
00:37:00.520
that, wow, you know, I've still got it, you know, and at 49 years old, then I could still
00:37:05.680
do a thousand pushups in 49 minutes or 39 minutes. And it was very, very gratifying for the,
00:37:11.680
you know, one of the guys who I was doing it with, who did it an hour and 10 minutes,
00:37:14.580
but he finished it. And when he finished it, you know, he felt great about himself and it
00:37:20.920
wasn't something that he would have done. You know, it wasn't, you know, not everyone
00:37:24.140
just thinks, well, I'm going to do a thousand pushups right now, but you know, how empowering
00:37:29.720
You know, so we have a whole, I have a whole host of recommendations in the book and it
00:37:32.940
doesn't have to be physical, right? Can be, you know, like a reference earlier ago,
00:37:36.740
my stepdaughter, Catherine just went and did a, um, a tandem free fall jump. She'd always wanted
00:37:41.760
to do it. And finally she's like, I'm going to go do this. And man, did she have a ball?
00:37:44.960
And so now she can't wait to get back and to try like her own, you know, static line,
00:37:49.020
which is without the tandem guy and then something else. So that was a 20 X challenge
00:37:53.040
for her. And it expanded her sense of, you know, aliveness and, um, you know, ability
00:38:02.380
Now, is it a 20 X challenge, something you do like on a weekly basis or like quarterly?
00:38:06.460
I mean, how often should you plan for these? I mean, should they be in our, should
00:38:09.660
it be like really big, I guess. I mean, I guess the idea is they're supposed to push
00:38:13.480
Right. Well, the way I, you know, what works for me and what I think is really useful is
00:38:18.280
to have small, small challenges that you hit up every week. And then you have, you know,
00:38:23.420
a little bit bigger challenge that you hit up, you know, either quarterly or twice a year.
00:38:27.540
And then, you know, to schedule and plan for like a major 20 X challenge every year to year
00:38:34.680
and a half, you know what I mean? That would be like that, you know, go climb McKinley or,
00:38:38.420
you know, go to what our 20 X challenge that people do with seal fit. My company is what's
00:38:43.580
called Kokoro camp and Kokoro camp is 50 hours of nonstop physical training and it's modeled after
00:38:51.380
hell week. And so I, you know, you give people a taste of hell week, but you know, our main thing
00:38:56.600
is to help you get through it and to, to develop your mental toughness and your, you know, emotional
00:39:01.740
resiliency, not to just have you quit. And so we try to get you through it. About 80% of the people who do
00:39:06.480
it will make it as opposed to the seal training, which is 80% don't make it. So that's an example
00:39:11.820
of a 20 X challenge that people plan for over a year to a year and a half and train for. And it
00:39:18.680
becomes a big deal for them. And when they come and accomplish it, you know, their life has changed.
00:39:23.640
There's like pre Kokoro and post Kokoro life, just like there was for me and the seals, pre seals and
00:39:29.260
post seals. So I'm sure there's guys listening to this podcast. Um, they're thinking like, man,
00:39:34.740
sign me up. This is awesome. They read the book. Like, this is great. I'm super motivated. But then
00:39:38.520
like, you know, two weeks later they sort of just like, meh, they fall off the wagon. I think that
00:39:42.300
happens to a lot of people with sort of self development, self program. I think it's
00:39:45.440
interesting that your book's called the way of the seal. Right. So, I mean, how do you, how do you
00:39:51.260
help people get past it? I mean, what advice do you have for people who begin some sort of
00:39:54.500
self-improvement programs or building their mental resilience to get past those moments where they're
00:39:59.340
just like, I don't want to do this anymore. This is like too much work. Yeah. There's a couple of things.
00:40:03.720
First of all, you know, in the seals, we took a crawl, walk, run approach to training. You know,
00:40:08.860
we had to basically learn how to crawl when we were shooting or jumping or diving and, you know,
00:40:13.480
there were baby steps. And so, you know, the, the, um, the level of challenge was very doable and we
00:40:19.120
made it very fun. And, you know, we, we found victory where it was at in that crawl stage. And as
00:40:25.320
we were, as we developed our skills and we were more accurate and more confident, then we step it up and
00:40:31.260
run a little bit more and, and work at a little bit more, you know, intensity. And then our, as
00:40:35.920
our competence grew even more, it just kind of began to flow out of us in a more unconscious
00:40:41.100
competency. And so, you know, part of the training is number one is to look at, look at your, um,
00:40:49.240
look at this as a lifestyle and to develop a lifestyle around training yourself for ultimate
00:40:56.540
mastery that, that state of unconscious competence, you know, in many areas of your life to include,
00:41:02.660
you know, physical training and, you know, these mental toughness or mental development skills,
00:41:07.800
but you must begin where you're at, which is understanding your set point. And then,
00:41:12.940
you know, do a little bit every day. And so you can eat an elephant, you know, one bite at a time,
00:41:18.380
and you can master yourself one day at a time. And so instead of looking at the end state and say,
00:41:24.520
Hey, I want to be like coach divine, or I want to be, you know, like Tadashi Nakamura,
00:41:29.940
which was my mentor. You know, I didn't look at that. I just said, I'm going to come in and train
00:41:33.280
hard today and, you know, try to improve myself by 1% today. But, you know, 1% every day improvement,
00:41:40.820
you know, adds up pretty quickly, right. It's ultimately leads to geometric growth.
00:41:45.600
Yeah. But, um, well, and then how do you, but how do you deal with setbacks? Like, say like you
00:41:49.120
wake up one day and like, it just, yeah, you know, you were trying to be like cool,
00:41:53.460
calm and collected, but you couldn't keep it together. And you're just like,
00:41:56.740
cause that happens to me sometimes like, man, I screwed up today. I'm just going to give up,
00:42:00.660
you know? So what, how do you deal with setbacks with like, in the, with the way the seal,
00:42:04.420
uh, method to be attached to, uh, not be attached to the outcomes of those things. Like you do the
00:42:11.880
best you can. And one of my, uh, one of my daily training drills is, is called the evening,
00:42:17.480
uh, ritual. And the evening ritual really is a, it's a look back at your day and then it's a
00:42:22.860
silver line. You find the silver lining. So anything you did, if, if you're, if you're comfortable and
00:42:27.680
happy with the results, you know, you acknowledge that, Hey, I did a good job with that. That was
00:42:31.560
cool. Good. You know, so you're, you're developing confidence, but then anything like you just
00:42:36.440
suggested that, that really didn't sit right with you, like you screwed up or you really embarrassed
00:42:41.640
yourself, you know, that kind of situation where you just want to throw in the towel, you know,
00:42:45.960
you basically look at that and say, you know what, I'm not perfect. I tried my best. What can
00:42:50.080
I learn from that situation? And you will inevitably find a really important lesson when you, uh, when
00:42:57.660
you get out of your own way and say, okay, yeah, that's the lesson there. And so then you clear
00:43:02.580
the ground and you go to, you know, go to bed that night with a victory, you know, so everything
00:43:06.760
was a victory, even your screw ups. And so then, you know, you get up the next day and you do it again,
00:43:11.920
right. And you, and you just do the best you can try to improve by 1%. And then you look back at
00:43:17.040
the end of the evening and say, okay, what, what I do well, what didn't go so well. And then what did
00:43:20.620
I learn from those? And then, so turn the failures into victories and then just keep on rolling forward.
00:43:26.580
And, you know, it tends to be very motivating. You know, you, you really, I call it a lifetime of no
00:43:31.220
regrets, right? In fact, there's a great quote. It's like better to suffer the temporary pain of
00:43:37.120
discipline than a lifetime of regret. And that's one way to do that.
00:43:41.620
That's awesome. Great stuff. Well, thanks. I appreciate the advice. Um, so your book way,
00:43:46.600
the seals is directed at both genders, both men and women. And I know that both men and women can
00:43:50.480
attend your, um, your training camps, right. Um, but is there something specific or a specific
00:43:55.980
benefit that you think men can get from following the way of the seal?
00:44:00.360
Absolutely. You know, I think that, um, what I've noticed in society is that people who find
00:44:07.820
seal fit, it's very much of a aspirational and an inspirational training. And when people start
00:44:13.800
to train the way that I recommend, which is what I call integrated warrior development,
00:44:19.000
meaning we're actively not just trying to kick your ass, but we're trying to make you a better
00:44:23.020
human being. And I focus on five human capacities, your physical development as a
00:44:30.100
human, your mental development, your emotional development, your intuitional development and
00:44:34.860
awareness. I use those two words interchangeably, and then your spiritual development. And we,
00:44:38.860
and we train those through our, um, through our different training methods so that you, uh,
00:44:45.260
develop in a more balanced manner. And it leads to kind of an accelerated growth and a greater sense of,
00:44:53.260
um, being in control. And you feel really good about yourself and you feel like a man,
00:44:59.840
you know, you feel really freaking solid. And a lot of people, you know, look to the seals and say,
00:45:04.740
wow, guys, you're kind of like the modern day Spartans, you know, and it's very aspirational.
00:45:09.860
People think seals are all studs and, you know, physically they are mentally, they're smart,
00:45:14.320
but it's because they train for it. Right. They're not just, you know, we're not just born this way.
00:45:18.980
We've decided that we wanted to be unique and wanted to show up as uncommon in the world. And so we
00:45:24.640
train for it, you know, but if, if a seal gets out of the Navy and stops training,
00:45:28.140
guess what? He's going to backslide until he's kind of common, you know, and I actually know a
00:45:32.360
couple of guys who backslid and got into alcohol and then, you know, they were, they were pretty
00:45:36.980
damn common and miserable. Right. And so it's the training. That's the secret sauce, you know,
00:45:43.460
and the training in a, in a lifetime manner, you know, it's every day, it's not just for an event
00:45:48.100
and to train in an integrated manner so that you're, you're covering all these capacities. So you don't
00:45:53.660
grow unbalanced and teeter totter over someday. Very good. Well, Mark Devine, this has been a
00:45:58.800
fantastic conversation. Hoo-yah. Thank you for your time. Hoo-yah indeed. Yeah, it's been great. I
00:46:03.980
really appreciate it, man. Our guest today was Mark Devine. Mark is the author of the book,
00:46:07.820
The Way of the Seal, and you can find that on amazon.com. Well, that wraps up another edition
00:46:14.780
of the Art of Manliness podcast. For more manly tips and advice, make sure to check out the Art of
00:46:19.480
Manliness website at artofmanliness.com. And if you'd like to support our podcast,
00:46:24.800
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00:46:29.500
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00:46:34.560
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