I Came With Fire
"An Uncommon Life" with Mark Divine
Hey everybody, welcome back to I came with fire podcast. We are joined tonight by a special guest mr. Mark divine I'll let him give himself an introduction But as you can see we have Chris hand Brock here again We've had Chris on before you guys may remember from a couple episodes and Zach had to step out But this is Chris's first official podcast as coho so Chris. Thank you for deciding to jump in full time with me I appreciate it. I'm excited to be here. Yo ho ho - man. Mm-hmm. Yeah, cool Well, Mark like I said before I thank you so much for being on with us It is an absolute honor To give you the opportunity to introduce yourself for those who mean I know who you are and then we'll get right in and have a conversation Sure first. Thanks so much for having me on the show. It's always an honor to do this thing especially with a couple of teammates So super stoked a commander Mark divine retired Navy Seal commander Went into the Navy In 1990 at 25. That's an interesting thing went through buds turned 26 and buds served to seal team three for six seven years or five or six years then over to sdv-team one and Then group one and then I went into the reserves after right before 9/11 actually I was gonna get out and then for nine months I was Not in uniform and then when those towers went down. I was like caged animal pacing around My wife's like you need to go back. So I went back and finished up my career as a reservist I got about 10 years active 10 years you deserve Anyways, I could go into more detail, but after that I I went into Entrepreneurship so might before the seals. I was actually a CPA I had my MBA from NYU Stern cold business. So I was out in the money rock and I turned my back on that When I left active duty, I decided I didn't want to go back to corporate America. I really didn't like what I saw there I thought no I know the entrepreneur path was more. So I am launched a brewing company called the cornado brewing company My kaburi brewery and brewing company down in the cornado Then I launched a company called Navy seals calm, which is an e-commerce and training forums you know information recruiting whatnot for anything to do with spec war Right. Yeah, and then from there. I parlayed that into government contracting where I developed the nationwide mentoring program for the seals the mentor seal candidates and Then that kind of parlayed or turn when I lost that kind of black water actually stole that contract from me It's that was my you know kicking the Jimmy story from don't do business Don't swim with charge you know But but the good news is the silver lining which there always is that that That incident led to the creation of seal fit and seal fits where I've done kind of I consider that to be where my real second career started To develop some really innovative training programs To the extent that the seals have adopted a good, you know chunk of my mental development program called an immutable mind Right it's a very creative period. Let's start it in 2006. I'm still running seal fit today. I'm still running on a bill of mine I've got a foundation for veterans called the mark to my encourage foundation, and I'm ready to put out my sixth book The principles for an extraordinary life so I'm a multiple New York Times best-selling offer and you know they kind of Do a lot of different things on common things on common things and have fun along the way Absolutely, so I feel like your book on this one in particular is right on time for a lot of the things we see going on In our country specifically and really just kind of generationally. I feel like First world Western society essentially, you know you could look at it and you'd be really pessimistic and say it's kind of collapsing in on itself A lot of these things that you talk about in the book about doing the hard thing the obstacle is the path some of these more They are in essence like stoic principles, right? Yeah, there's a lot of similarity with stores There there is and I think it's it is like I said It's right on time for a lot of the things we've got going on a lot of the things that people are facing I feel like a lot of these values sort of have been lost Is actually that especially the young men like you can really exactly there's a generation of young men that are just hungry for They're lost their list list and yeah, absolutely. I agree with you Brendan. Yeah Yeah, you're you're right originally you see this book is actually more like six years in the making It's been through four iterations Originally, I wrote it for younger Generation people kind of getting you know started in their in their profession before the pandemic and I was gonna call it launch Similar principle just more oriented to like getting your life on track Right and then the pandemic hit and you know everything kind of all focused went to like survival and getting you know getting through that and And then so this thing sat on the shelf for a while and then I started to work on again thinking I'd self-publish it and I wasn't getting anywhere fast But then it started my PhD and getting my doctorate and global leadership right now I should be finishing up by now at the end of this year So it's just kind of languish there. Mm-hmm, and I woke up one morning actually and I meditated every day So one of my meditation sessions just came to me that I'm never gonna self-publish that book was always gonna be something It seems more important. I didn't have the discipline to really like set a deadline and drive toward it and so I called my publisher who had published my prior book and I said hey, I've got a manuscript. You don't take a look at it He said sure seven over and he literally emailed me back several hours late is like I love it full-take it And so it's awesome. Ellen picked it up St. Martin's Press is in for the McMillan and And so I decided to publish it through them Which we just got his pros and cons you know published. She's an interesting gig like I you don't earn the money from Big published books, but you can earn a lot from a cell called this book if you do it, right? Yeah, I've heard that before about people That's uh, yeah, that's that's that's super interesting. Listen to you talk about the dark times I had a similar experience when when COVID hit I actually my third son was born and Fort Bragg shut down the day that I got selected as special And so my yeah, so I'm standing there in Information right and the sort of majors, you know staff certain handbrak at the time and I hadn't heard my name in three weeks I was just sitting there my buddy like elbows means like he's talking to you and I'm like what look up He's like staffs are handbrak come up here. You're why I just had a baby Go go to the office go call or oh also you got selected congratulations, and I was like right so we go over information with fire hose all I want and So we get on the bus we go back to Fort Bragg we're turning in our gear, you know It's you go from camp McCall back to Fort Bragg there's there's like 30 40 miles in between And we get back over there and since I was a Fort Bragg local I just told the the people at CIF where we get the gear issued I was like I'll just keep it on my hand record. No my hand receipt and I'll turn it in when I PCS out of here, right? I was like getting me out of here now call my buddy. He comes over he picks me up And he's like trying to tell me while he's taking me over to the house So I can get changed go to the hospital meet my wife He's like hey, there's a few things that are changed because I was like dude I want you to swing me by a Chick-fil-A is what I was asking him on the way and he goes do Chick-fil-A is not open I'm like what do you mean? It's it's not Sunday. He goes no you don't understand like none of the businesses are open Because we we've been locked down on a kit McCall right so nobody knew and I swear as we're driving through Fort Bragg it looked like a scene out of the walking dead like there was something like a tumbleweed that like blue Vegas when I really was shut down. What a true. Wow it was But when you were when you were talking about you know just like being a caged animal and going crazy I thought you know it picked up my son. We drove home two hours before The hospital there Womack shut down and then everybody was locked inside I'd be I beat it by two hours. I got the family home and Got the call from you know my first sergeant. Hey, don't come into work. We're working remote I was like, what does that mean working remote? You know, we don't know. I'll let you know. Just stay Yeah, I was like I was I was civil affairs at the time getting ready to go to the cute course to train him But yeah, I was like I was like this and I thought it was gonna be great well that lasted for about 10 days and then and then they The claustrophobia set in right and I was climbing the wall and I didn't know what to do But best decision I ever made in my life was I was like if I'm gonna be stuck at home I'm gonna finish my bachelor's degree. Yeah, so that's what I did I just doubled triple classes and I was like I got my bachelor's knocked out while we were all locked and locked at home, right? I think I think it's a big thing, you know like having a mission having a purpose big time and What I told my wife was that was the experience that I was like, okay when I go to retire one of these days I have got to step out of this job into another one because if I go through that again Like god knows I'll probably drink myself into a coma because I just I didn't have a job I didn't have a purpose. Nothing was happening and yeah, it was like being a caged animal like I felt like an animal to zoo it was Yeah, you really hit me when you said a lot of people do like exactly what that dude's talking about like In a crisis, you know warriors needed to need to step up to the plate. So like after 9/11 It's it was really different than covid. It was like a military warrior response in me saying You know what? I'm a warrior and I just stepped off the battle ground and and they need me So I literally within six weeks of phone call. I was back at seal team three in the reserve side And they were seen the needed mousse de infest But to your point chris And it's a big kind of theme in the book in common Is that um if you don't Have a mission and you aren't clear about your purpose then you're you're going to have that Life of quiet desperation that throw talks about And you know, I've been training this tech ops candidates and and now business professionals entrepreneurs for years And that's one of the biggest challenges. I mean you can have 100 million dollars in the bank and I have coached a few people like that And and if they're if they lack clarity about why they're on this planet and what they're supposed to do About it. They're not happy Chasing chasing more degrees chasing more money chasing more of this and that it's not going to get you what you're really looking for And so I wanted to you know back to that idea. That's pretty fundamental like you know not the look very far, you know to find Other people who say that kind of stuff But the there's a difference between saying or reading it somewhere and actually doing it Right like learning how to find your purpose like how do you do that? And so I've got right? I've got a lot of exercises. I literally from the very start like I say and and you guys will appreciate this You're not going to be fulfilled if you're not physically healthy In the first three chapters are all about what I call the physical mountain My training program at uh seal fit and then on beetlemind Is what we call the program of integration? You can almost say reintegration Yeah, and what you're doing is integrating the physical mental emotional and situational and spiritual aspects of yourselves, which have been um split apart in our western culture Right the you know the physical part is like, oh you drive this body around and sometimes it shows up the gym You know us military folks have a little bit more discipline. Hopefully Um, but the general population doesn't really understand how to optimize their health. They don't understand what effect that has undermined Yeah, and their emotions and also their spiritual awareness because the body is Not separate from any of that. No it is that So you got to start training the body You know if you even back to this idea if you want to really find your purpose in life start by getting healthy Because you're going to start thinking better. You're going to have more insight and more clarity Yes Well, you're what you're talking about. I've said this a few times on the podcast is one of my favorite quotes by The roman philosopher Seneca. He says to make hard the body so that it does not disobey the mind And I love that quote so much because it does talk about just how much your mind and body are together And then pushing yourself through something like like buds or or the cue course, right? If your body and your mind are in sync with one another and your your mind is telling you what to do and you're not quitting, right? Then that's that's sort of when you listen except never been through, you know, I'm not special operations I was military police, right? But listening to other people who've been through something that Difficult, right is their mind has to be locked in more than your body and listening to people who both have It is a still fit training. We say an untrained individual wherever their body leads their mind follows For a trained individual wherever your mind leads your body follows I like that. And so the training of the body and your mind go hand in glove, right? It's impossible to have a strong mind in a weak body, right? I can guarantee it. I mean there's a lot of like academics who are, you know, Sitting in their chairs in their offices who might listen to this and they're way out of shape and they're like What's he talking about? I got a strong mind. I can guarantee you they do not Right. They do not not not my mind standard, right? In terms of stability to endure hardship, you know, staunch discipline that, you know, that The thing that we what we used to take for granted probably Yeah, so you got it you got to train the body and if you're training the body you're training your mind Period, it's the doorway in Absolutely, it makes me think I'm not to bring a bunch of quotes up, but it does make me think of That quote about how a society that separates its warriors from its philosophers is doomed to fail Yeah, and um, yeah, it is it you can be that warrior poet so to speak And this the states go to hand. I know see chris over there and he knows what i'm talking about But one of the things you mentioned when you were talking about meditating on your book and writing it is is the meditation piece And it seems to be a thing for people who have strong minds And input their selves to it is they have protocols And that these protocols they they involve a lot of repetition and they involve doing things over and over again building these habits How important is that to getting to where you want to be defining your purpose? This is extraordinarily important. I mean, that's that's what discipline means the root word of this discipline is disciple It's to be a disciple to something bigger than you Yeah in order and so to be a disciple to something bigger than you It's going to require some work. This is how Discipline now means you got to do the work in order to earn that right And to end to to standard round So what is doing the work mean while it means showing up every day and doing certain things and habituating them And we'll call it. We call those habits of excellence, right? Well certain Some just bill if they will certain habits of excellence when you When you begin to hone them in And they become such a part of you that it becomes a ritual So discipline can you know way I look at is like it's it It's a component of your daily ritual and I don't say routine because routine is wrote It's a ritual, right? You you approach your morning ritual with a sacred quality to it You approach your evening ritual with a sacred quality to it You know, maybe like for us as operators, you know Before going out and out there's a pre-op ritual that you have and every team has and it's sacred You don't mess with someone in their pre-op ritual post-op ritual You know, we've got the debrief everyone's got their gear cleaning. You don't ever mess with that It's a ritual, right? It's not just a routine. So you have these rituals you have Habits that you're you're trying to improve and so you're trying to you know always refining that 1% every day Approach like okay, I'm you know, I've got my rituals locked in my rituals are going to be around physical health nutrition Sleep meditation, you know All those things become part of your daily fabric, but then there's other things you're like well, I could still dial in I would like to and these are tied to goals. So I'd like to maybe improve my My body mass index, right? Or I want to go to silphits cacoral camp, which is basically hell week for civilians It's 50 hours and non-stop training hardcore People that pay to come do that. Yeah, we still do it and then they are just amazing people That has always that has always cracked me up not to derail you but I see I see some of these like Corporate types and like like I would say in earlier is men are hungry and they're they're looking for something bigger than themselves to be a part of But some of these guys that will pay to go get the hazing experience of like a hell week or like day one shark attack Assessment selection that cracks me up because it's like man if you guys are that hungry Like I always judge chairs always open. I'm like dude. I'll do it for free I'll go beat some dudes for a weekend I want to draw distinction. There are those programs Right and there's tons of people who get paid just to get yelled at and beat up Yeah, we're not doing that right. We're um, ours is a program of transformation Developing those five mountains over 50 hours the um The instruct we've we have an extraordinarily high standards for our instructors And yes, we do have navy seal button structures, but they're they're not the guys who are just trying to play whack them all or Then they're either you know the taming of the ego is the prerequisite to be even considered Um, so there's a real difference between what I consider entertainment, which is basically like ypo group hiring, you know I want any one of my teammates. I won't say any names to put them to a six or a 12 hour kind of beat down Versus a program of integration that you know requires nine months of training to prepare for And you go through it with a team and they become your lifelong friends And you know, yes, maybe 30 or 40 percent of the people make it through but It's it's an extraordinary um program. We call it kakoro kakoro is a japanese term that means merge Merging your heart and mind into your actions It also means whole mind um, it's part of our training model actually if you think of it this way like the Developing yourself along those five mountains physically mentally emotionally and spiritually is something that this happens Daily weekly quarterly monthly through the way you organize your life those daily rituals We organize your your physical training. So even physical training becomes uh integrated development In my model because you're not just dragging your body and checking out, you know and getting on your ipad or your iphone You know earphones in uh Or sitting on them, you know like a stationary bike and reading the paper reading the paper or magazine, right? So that is not training. That's that's just going through the motions working out. Sure. It's better than doing nothing But you know, you know, so for us training is a full Immersion experience where you're you're you're doing your breath work. You're doing your visualization You're doing your mindfulness while you're training. You're usually training with a team or partner so you've got maintain your situational awareness and Set standards and don't cheat, you know, especially yourself and put your eyes on your teammate and study yourself classic things that we learned in buds about being an exceptional teammate And um and also hooking the training to your why and to your mission. So suddenly just going to the gym That whole idea is out of the window, right? And first of all, we don't even promote gym based training because it's um, you know, it's really kind of Linear and we really much rather have you be outside doing something functional in nature Uh, something more dynamic, um and multi-dimensional So anyways, what I was going with this is so we you develop this training plan And this is a big part of what I talk about in the book on common And I have the saying that if you're not training yourself, you're not training your mind someone else is training it for you And so why is why is it that men are weak or maybe Um feeling kind of emasculated or lack kind of purpose? It's because they've been trained That way If you are a mass media through our, you know, academic institutions, you know I believe in an attempt to kind of weaken the fabric of this country to make it easier to basically come in and you know to People in fear I agree and keep people unhealthy. There's a lot of profit in that. There's a lot a lot of profit and people are just making a fortune By keeping people unclear Separated unhealthy Broken families you don't see any of the government really trying to build up the core essence of what it means to be human You know, you know throwing lipstick on social justice causes, which make things worse I'm so glad you said that because you it's good to hear you recognize those things too And of course you would um, we just had a conversation last week about dei specifically and in the military and um sort of the the I guess conditioning of the american mind to be softer, right? And um, which is which is why I said that your book is so relevant right now But for me, I think it ties a lot in with ego to go back what you said before That there is a lot of of ego and and sort of nihilism as well in a lot of our society And I think that that ego, um is built up a lot by social media Um, what what sort of tactics I guess I should ask and put it that way Do you employer or author in this book the like the corpus of your work about ego and why? Overcoming that is so important Well This We could go down a pretty deep rabbit hole here Um, but you're really talking about his hubris, right or an overinflated cell A sense of its self-importance because ego is essentially just your self-identity smallness self-identity That's all that ego is We just happen to use it in the terms of thinking that if someone has an ego, they have a big ego meaning They have a you know, overinflated narcissistic sense of self-importance Sure So if that's the case If you are if you are someone who has gone overflated his sense of self-worth There's a good chance that you don't Believe that or you don't see it, right? Because you are it's like what comes with that Is also a false humility And so you see some of the biggest narcissists and the biggest egos projecting a sense of of humility and humbleness um And they're doing it to actually aggrandize your ego because they've read somewhere and they know that Oh, humility is an important quality to have and you see that written as well So self-awareness really is the Is the benefit the outcome? This is straight out of markers. Really it's like again. I'm letting you amongst us is I'm much more of a yogi And a Zen master at heart, but they ultimately they all end up Saying the same thing right because the closer you get to capital t truth and the more everything starts to make sense And gain clarity. I love that but ultimately by training your mind What we're what we're really saying is your body's getting healthy and because your body's getting healthy or Your body's getting healthy result of your mind basically taking on certain Um objectives and adopting certain behaviors or certain ideas and beliefs, right? I first of all that it's important to have a healthy body for longevity for you know overall Comfort avoid disease Oh, you're look better. I know by the way, you're gonna feel better. And so therefore it makes sense great I adopt that beliefs that then I can translate that through discipline Into the behavioral patterns that lead to optimal health daily exercise and movement proper nutrition and fasting um sleep and recovery Stress management time and nature and and being around positive people who are who've got your back We call those the six but those are the six core things that you need to do for optimal health and longevity So already you're you're training your mind by training your body And then what that does is it your brain then becomes a little bit Your brain gets healthier and your mind gets more focused Right and we know this through athletics the discipline of athletics for the discipline of military training You're able to concentrate more you're able to focus more you've got more attention control so So what i'm describing here are literally the the three Beginning steps or stages of training your mind the first is arousal control Now arousal control generally is associated with the physiology of the body, right? So arousal control is using controlled breathing And we teach something called box breathing I'm like the og of box breathing because I introduced it back in 2006 Um, yeah, so okay. Now they teach that in the in the special operations courses like it's They started teaching it at buds Yeah, because of all the seals that I trained started going through and like well, how come you're not teaching box breathing? You know, that's amazing. Yeah, so um arousal control is really important as a prerequisite to like any kind of meditative path because Most people fail at meditation because they sit down and their their brain is just jumping around all over the place Yeah, they call it the monkey mind and your body is super agitated because you you're in state of hyper arousal and you got all this energy How the heck are you gonna sit down and meditate? Right So most athletes and warriors are like well, I don't need to meditate because going to the range is my meditation or Going out for a run or a rock is my meditation and i'm here to tell you those are healthy but that's not meditation Meditation is stopping all activity And turning the flashlight to look inward for self awareness develop deep deep self awareness still this is free requisite is arousal control Through deep diaphragmatic breathing in a controlled setting i.e. It looks like meditation, but you're really just breathing That bleeds off the stress because you're you're massaging that vagus nerve Activating the parasympathetic rest digest nervous system and you're rebalancing and actually what happens in especially for military folks You get stuck in hyper arousal because you're always being jacked always pumping cortisol in your system always in fight or flight This isn't just military operas, but any any achiever any professional who's got tight deadlines a lot of duos you're um You're parasympathetic nervous system the pathway that activates it which is you know, basically a neural come over gets Atrophied it literally will not work And so you're in a state of hyper arousal and then you learn to it becomes the new normal and you compensate with You know hardcore workout or three cups of coffee in the morning or red bull or micro dosing You know any sort of hack hot cold treatment. These are all going to get you out of that Kind of like oh, you know i'm in a hyper arousal state, but it doesn't really get you out of it so It's extraordinarily important to start your training tomorrow with box breathing I recommend to my clients 20 minutes a day Ideally 20 minutes in the morning 20 minutes evening, but if not just 20 in the morning If you don't think you have the time to 10 if you don't think you have the time for that do five But no less than five minutes, but do it every day The way better to do five minutes every day that it do once a week for an hour Right, it's a disciplined daily routine that that develops arousal control so it bleeds off all that excess stress that you build out Build up and then also anytime you do it they put you in a state of calm now. Here's what happens your brain Is suddenly calm because your brain waves start to down regulate from high beta or low gamut down to high alpha low beta Which is optimal for for concentration for creativity flow states That's all physiological so far. We haven't done anything besides activate the arousal response and breathe consistently day in and day out for five to 20 minutes that way Five count inhale five count hold five count exhale five count hold And it's just incredibly peaceful so what happens then is naturally the way I teach this Is um first don't worry about what your mind's doing just breathe And what you'll find over time is that your mind starts to calm down And you you have a little bit more clarity It's uh, it is an incredibly incredibly powerful tool and for anybody it's like never tried it Uh, like I said, they're teaching it at the course now And it's something that i've used uh like in my medic training where i've been in clinics And all of a sudden you get that feeling, you know, in the population Where it's like you feel like this situation is running away with without you Right here. You can't keep up Uh, and that's something that i've used like next to a simulated patient where i'm just like I need to do like four counts of just breathing. That's right. Refocus my mind. This guy is not going to die You know in two minutes And then come up with my plan and then like re-attack and go back in and like you would be You wouldn't be amazed obviously the godfather of box breathing But it's like people out there like if you come into that situation like that Like i'm telling you a game changer. It Is everything You feel like you have your hand on the on the steering wheel again, right? You know, and so yeah, what's important So you're right for an intervention, you know You get cut off in your car start box breathing or at least do Um, you know a relaxation breath, which is like a five count inhale and a seven or eight, you know count exhale And there's plenty of research done on like people will say well the optimal pattern is right six two seven Like okay, whatever it really depends upon the circumstances and the individual Um, what i'm saying is one of the most safe One of the safest and most valuable breathing patterns and i've studied hundreds of them Because i've got over a thousand hours of yoga training and i've been a martial artist since 1985 Um is box breathing Because it's it's it's even it's balanced on all four legs of the breath pattern And so you're not favoring any, you know, any parasympathetic or sympathetic nervous system It's very very calming and centering and balancing and that's what most people need, right? And it bleeds off that stress The other thing though is when it's done so we talked about that as an intervention But what i'm suggesting is do that but also do it as a daily practice Because then it becomes a bridge or a gateway To the mental development and the first thing that needs to be done with mental development is deepening your power as a concentration and developing attention control And so we do that by just following the box with our mind Simple First just just breathe through the rosy control your mind can wander but now you know after a month of that i tell my clients now Now just focus intently On the breath like every little nuance of the inhale as it goes to your nostrils and up your navel academy And you feel the tingling your head and down and you're allowing you feel the diaphragm pulling the area and your belly is relaxing So there's like seven or eight discrete phases of that inhale that you can track with your mind And then you've got that inhale hold and you're holding with a lifting sensation And you and you have your mind it's like expanding out in all directions and you're just Relaxing the mind, but you're hooking it on the breath. You're watching the breath And the breath is life. It's life force. It's chi it's pranor It's energy as well as oxygen carbon dioxide nitrogen So when you watch the breath you're watching life itself Yeah, even the holy even in the holy scriptures right in genesis what is what is it that god breathes into adam? And he said he breathed in the man the breath of life. Yes, that's right So it's profound, you know We say that the breath work breath control is the bridge between the body and the mind and the spirit because it has that arousal It's really healthy for your body if that's all you want Box breathing every day will ultimately lead to optimal health and guarantee it right people lose weight Is that you expel a lot? A lot of fat when you breathe and so we're really learning how to breathe fully and deeply Full lung capacity and exhale all that stuff all those toxins out of your body Enormous benefits, but then the more line what we're talking about You could go from oh, this is just a physiological and a physical thing to all of a sudden you're like wow I'm like really really deepening my power as a concentration. I can hold my attention It's a little bit of a mindfulness practice because anytime I notice that I'm not following the breath. That's an opportunity to bring it back. So i'm developing that ability to really Observe my mind in action And to notice when I've lost focus and to bring it back and then you do that you lose focus less and less often But you also then develop this Kind of deep situational awareness. So as the concentration kind of takes root You don't have to work as hard and so your mind You know at first it's like takes a lot of energy That's why we call it concentration concentrate your energy by following the box pattern or following a box pattern with a mantra You know because that's one of my key techniques was you got to have positive internal dialogue Right or else you're really weakening your body. We know that to be true from kinesiology So um I would inhale and hold and I would say i'm feeling good. I'm looking good And then I would exhale and hold and I say i ought to be in hollywood And that was that was my go-to of buds and it stuck with me. I've got some other positive mantras, but so Now i'm getting a double quadruple with me. So arousal control is happening Attention control is happening Deepening my power as a concentration is happening Developing my witnessing capacity to notice when i've lost focus is happening and i'm constantly refining Positive energy in my mind and my energetic state through that positive mantra That is an extraordinary practice right there and still we're only talking maybe about A half of what end up, you know what we end up doing with mental development You know, especially the part that bridges into the bridges into the spiritual dimensions Right. Well, I really like what you said earlier about routine versus ritual Because anything that's just a routine like I I can find myself and i'm sure everybody does Getting to the end of a Tuesday and then just realizing like Man, I just kind of like Slept walk through this whole day because it's just it's just routine, you know, it's like hey We're in the army. So I don't have to I don't have to think about what i'm gonna wear every morning, you know, 19 So it's like I don't want any thought into that, you know But it's like when when things become ritual like you said the word that came to my mind was intentionality Doing things with intentionality and making them You know a ritual so that you're you're mindful and you're in the moment You're not you know, it's like you have a hand on the steering wheel of what's going on You're not letting the day drive you You know, that's that's kind of what I thought when you said that But I I really like that point that you made and then I think you're next reading and going back to that I just right to me. I just keep hearing this intentionality is your spot on and But you have you know the intention around what i'm talking about is To live your fullest life, you know to be uncommon is essentially you were put on this planet for a reason now There are people who are putting this planet to loaf off and to be at holes, right? So i'm not talking to you. I'm talking if that if you think that's you i'm not mean you too, but some listener No, you wouldn't be listening to this podcast if that was you Most people Have a higher order Purpose right they're here to serve in some way and And they have a unique set of skills Right that that only they possess Right. No a certain creative bent certain kind of ability to use your mind in a body that is singularly unique right And so you also have things that you're passionate about Right and things that you could care less about And you also have a set of principles usually generally guided by your upbringing by your culture your religion, you know Different values family values And then for those of us who begin to become self-aware through deep study Introspection as well as study of like the stoics and the ogies and the You know different traditions and do you kind of examining carefully how other people live Other value systems so you can kind of parse through what's working and what's not and what you really want to hang your hat on So what i'm describing is really Four things you have you have your purpose and generally purpose is an archetypal purpose It's not like for me. I was to be a warrior and then more your leader um It wasn't to be a navy seal commander Right So archetypal purposes leave room that's a beingness instead of doing this it leaves room for you know a lot of different types of professions and careers So It behooves you to figure out what that purpose is now some people are very lucky and they just happen to know it when they're younger Right it's going to be a common thing Others have to discover it or uncover it like as in my case. I I went into Manhattan I mentioned I went to seal training at 25. It's because I got out of college and I went right to New York to work, you know basically on wall street starting as a public accountant auditor and then Management consultant and I was going to get into you know trading or investment banking While I was fin after I finished my mba So I got my mba stern business school became a CPA work for coupers and librarian, which is not press arrest coupers That was the story that I was living And that story wouldn't have changed if I hadn't met mr Nakamura grandmaster founder of this style of karate that I started studying months after I moved on in New York And he happened to be a Zen master as well And so I started studying Zen 21 years old with him and I took it up as a daily practice And it radically transformed my mind And my identity my sense of self And and sitting on that little wooden bench that the Zen people use they call the zazan bench is how I uncovered This deep drive To be a warrior and I call my archetypal purpose I I wasn't I am I had no clue and I would have had no clue had not sat on that bench and just sat still And learned how to come open up to my heart So everyone's got that but you know if you're unclear about it you you're not going to find it by doing more By trying more jobs and this that you you know You might inch a little bit closer, but the most important thing to do is just slow down and just sit still But like I said earlier, you got to you got to have a pathway to where you're able to do that And that's where box breathing comes in you you slow down sistil and box breathe And then you develop the arousal control and concentration or the attention control and concentration And then as you're able to hold your mind steady on the breathing pattern you're able to take the a little bit of the energy out of that concentration and to expand out into Monitoring just monitoring this and and you begin to see these patterns You develop what I call the witnessing capacity Where you see yourself as not your thoughts, but separate from your thoughts. You can almost see them from Over there, right? They're happening over there So your center of identity becomes situated more in the ephemeral Absolute witnessing all present Capacity aspect of all of us that all of us have yeah and thoughts, you know, you know Liking that to being a mountain it's firm. It's never changing I mean even though we know mountains do but in this metaphor and your thoughts and emotions are like clouds that are just passing by in the sky You're not writing them like a kite, you know, you're just watching them That all happens as part of this process of meditation and self-awareness And especially you know for for a young person with all the neuroplasticity going on, you know, if you start this process in your 20s early 20s Magic can happen really quickly Yeah Complete transform your idea of who you are and what you meant for on this planet and you will uncover that purpose And then you know really get clear about your passions and principles And then what you want to do is intersect those and find out this like general center of sweet spot Of like wow wherever my purpose passion and principles intersect That's my target And then you just have to decide what what what skills you bring to the table And maybe you need to develop some new skills like I didn't have the skills to be a navy seal I did have the physical body in the mind, but I needed to develop those warrior skills. And of course, right You can only do that in the seals Through muds one of the things that you're talking about a lot is the spirit spirituality aspect of this I really like listening to that And when you're talking to about passion and linked to purpose And then before you mention flow state and that's something a state of mind that you get into right And I like that you reference that it doesn't have to be something that's physical or you don't have to be an athlete or somebody doing A physically hard thing to achieve that right because I'll use Jimi Hendrix as a reference You know, he is a master of his craft You know, I don't think anybody would just dispute that and one of the things he talked about Was flow state in a in a sense and he called it in his electric church where he was getting Right where he was getting his inspiration sort of that What's what's the word? I'm looking for here. I'll just stick with their inspiration Yeah, it was coming to him and it was coming through a spiritual sense It was something separate of him and he was sort of that conduit for that because He was able to put himself in that state because playing was a passion. It was more than he was not A passive bystander in his his playing the guitar, right? It was intentionality to use your word chris and ritual and you use the word worst of LSD Well lsd sure you get spiritual aspect, right? But you you know, you're talking you to say ritual and the electric church, right? You know church ritual those things go hand-in-hand So you don't have to be somebody who is going to buds or or An athlete to visualize those things and I love that and I was going to ask you You know, what a sieve with you on that idea of spirituality and what it means to you specifically and It seems like you are very in tune with that In what you referenced some of these concepts within and things like that What does that mean to you specifically in and um, and how do you tie that into uncommon? Yeah, that's that's a great question um Let me start with the second half so I mentioned five mountain development, right? So in common you want a simple principle to store in your life It's develop yourself physically mentally emotionally intuitionally and spiritually And so people thought that sounds great, you know, I've heard of that mind-body spirit No Develop yourself now. How do we do that? Right? So we've already talked about some ways that we develop ourselves physically through through the breath And obviously through those six pillars exercise nutrition sleep recovery, you know Time and nature, etc training Then we get into the training of the mind specifically and now we want to talk about Things that we've alluded to concentration training attention control mindful awareness and visualization and Curating extremely positive abundant mindset because now we're getting into a little bit of the spiritual side Because you know, of course body is very physical mind seems like it's generated from the brain This turns out to be doesn't it doesn't hold up under great scrutiny, right? Okay um, the mind Is something that happens to us or through us And it's so you just have to shift your perspective, right? Everything is consciousness, which is energy life force karana A set shit nanda in the Hindu or yogi sense, which means being consciousness and bliss Those are the three attributes same thing as a father son in the Holy Ghost, right? There's very very similar qualities to that of what those three aspects of this Thing that you might call spirit Art is like it's not something over there. It's not something that is an individual sitting in a chair. It is Everything it is life itself But it expresses in infinite form So the unmanifest reality isn't anywhere Except that constantly expressing in manifest reality through form and and so we are part of that form Some some forms are very very low energy vibration Low consciousness like a rock And then some are much higher consciousness like a human or I would dare say dolphins are higher than humans and there might other be There might be other animals who are higher than human consciousness. You see dolphins confused on what bathroom to use. Yeah, they don't Thank you There's much gender dissident in the dolphin They kind of live in their bathroom Dolphins are extraordinarily intelligent. So anyways, yeah So when this this energy manifest it manifests as In the birth of a child, right? And then suddenly, you know, conception and then you have the beginnings and then the energy flows and then it You know, boom. There's a baby as soon as that baby is born even prior. It's the conditioning begins So there's that degenerate conditioning there's karma conditioning and then day one, right? Moment one as soon as the eyes are open the brain is starting to be trained in condition the body mind I should say yeah So this is why Spirit expressing through infinite form expresses radically different through every form is because of the conditioning Now deep meditation practice Reveals to you That all of those concepts and ideas that you had including your name and your self identity like they're just ideas There's no actual real center In of an individual being that you can find you can point to And most people say well, I got a body and even then you're like, okay. Well, the body is just a bunch of energy right Right, that's all it's just a bunch of energy it's thought structure, right? and so At the at the relative level right which when I mean by eta at a body level where you're you know living in this Manifest 3d reality We all appear as individuals and the mind is designed to create the sense that we are separate individuals The body experiences space and the mind experiences time But upon examination space and time are proven to be a construct of the mind They're not real Perception It's perception. Yeah, it's the way that the mind is rigged It kind of reminds me. Let me just let me finish this real quick. Chris. I'm sorry. I'm gonna lose my train of thought. So Could you ask me two things how you know what my ideas of spirituality were and how it relates to the book? and Developing and training your mind Through this process where you can then have these deep moments of total stillness total silence total All stoppage of the of the brain not the brain activity, but of your Thought activity What happens is You don't lose any sense of self You realize that That your former sense of self your identity was all based upon memory and and and thoughts And yet when thoughts go away and you're not having any thoughts Your identity remains and you but it's non-personal It's not mark It's all is right. It's everything. Right. It's universal. It's So it's spirit So you learn that you when you when I talked about the term witnessing like you can learn to witness the reality is you are witness And you have this mistaken identity as mark right or branded I mean, that's fine because it's necessary to have function in this world If we're all going around talking like i'm talking right now, you know We wouldn't you know, we wouldn't function for very long as a society for sure Just a very deep deep spiritual truth that you you can find at the very beginning of all great spiritual traditions It's just very obscured and misunderstood that we are spirit. We are cautious living these instruments living through these body-mind instruments That's what spirit is And all of us are that And one of the primary benefits of understanding that and recognizing it experiencing that Is that all fear goes away all separation goes away all Lack goes away and there's not a bone in your body that everyone to judge another human being or fight them Because we're all made of the same thing A lot of that at a very, you know, the serial level are very being this it's the same In a way the same consciousness is looking out through my eyes that you too is the same consciousness is looking out your eyes at me It's only colored by the conditioning and the belief systems And the thought structures of the brain and the mind slash minds that you guys have and I have Right, even at the simplest level what you're talking about there were so many times where I realized that I was doing something You're going through the motions and that it really wasn't what I wanted or what was making me happy It was just because I had made it a habit in my pursuit of whatever it was and The quicker you are at realizing that you do have habits that are unintentional that aren't actually pursuing The the best version of yourself the more you're going to let those things fall away and the meditation the protocol is the ritual that you talk about I think it's a great way to self-actualize right and I love you. You talk about it that way Chris you were trying to make a point. Yeah, sorry cut you off earlier. Oh, no. No, you're absolutely fine No, you reminded me of the scene uh not to get like too pedantic dantic plate Uh or childish, but uh in the final installment of the harry potter book right after after he's You know killed by the curse he goes to crossway station Right and he meets with double door there and then he asks him he goes is this real or is this all in my head? Wait double door is one of my favorite quotes in the series. He goes. Well, of course. It's all in your head Why should I make it any less real? I love that long right? You know, it's like that's that's just what uh Right Mm-hmm. It's again. Some people use this Information as an escape cross station. Excuse me, right? It's it's not meant to be like you don't excuse you don't get to escape You you join it. You chose this game Play it full out Right, that's why it's important to know your purpose and and align with your principles and to stand your ground and to develop a mission And to go out and fulfill that and in order to do that you have to be physically mentally emotionally and spiritually strong And that's what i'm trying to teach people in this book on comms like You know step up right be who you are worthy of being The person within that knows That it's capable of doing great things that is worthy It's screw what social media says or what the network news says or what your teachers say or what your parents say or what government says Not yeah, I mean your parents. Yes, most parents have your good and your best interest in the heart But the rest of that list I just talked about with the exception of a very few good teachers They're thinking about themselves and their needs not yours And for the most part especially the big tech in the government and all those institutions we talked about earlier Their needs are for you to stay down. Yeah Not to find your awesomeness and not to fulfill your dreams and not to become Less of a victim and completely autonomous human being Because otherwise you're no good to them if you're free and you're autonomous or the product So i'm just about becoming free again. Yeah One of the things you said earlier when we started talking is that you wanted to write this book for the younger generation Was there something specifically that you recognized in the younger generation that sort of gave you an inspiration or or the message you wanted to convey? specifically Well, you know, I grew up in the 60s and 70s upstate new york and we had literally p.e Physical education training where you wrestle and we played dodgeball and oh, yeah, you know We did all sorts of our other things. I remember like you. Yeah, remember that now you guys do So but most city folks do others don't get a chance to do that. You know, you grew up in rural areas They still have good problem We did not have social media. We did not have an iphone pinned or you know hip all the time Um, we spent a ton of time outside. We didn't worry my parents didn't worry if I was gonna fall out of a tree or fall off my bike We had a a doctor who would take Basically we go to the doctor and he would write it down and then send the bill to my mom once a month That's how it worked There was an insurance in between us and our our care providers wrecking everything and creating this like distant relationship so Everything has gotten so You know under the under this idea that things are supposed to get simpler And easier as we progress and I put air quotes around progress Everything has gotten actually harder And we're feeling more Separate and disconnected the more connected we are And we're getting we're feeling more negative and down about ourselves because we don't spend any time outside And we don't hang out and communicate with positive people because they're all obsessed about their, you know, the latest tick-tock thing And so that's what's happening and not not to mention, you know, the whole Bull stuff that, you know, that's happening in academia and whatnot So young people are really, you know, if you're a gen z And the next one is coming after man. You're just you're just getting hit on multiple fronts And you don't even know what's You don't even know what's happening because it's all trading your mind is just soaking it up The world of these kids is strong The world of these kids live in is artificial and produced Like everything that they see Is is produced for them Maybe you're talking earlier about why social media is like so pervasive and why Uh, you know, why young Younger generation is so narcissistic. It's like Well, even the psychology of social media if you go out and actually have to spend time in a friend group You know, you may not be the most popular person in that friend group You may not be the most athletic you may not write, but it's like you have to figure out how to Navigate and your social IQ has to You know Develop so that you can learn how to fit in You sit down and you look at your phone all these all these people are seeing is an entire world that is seen through the lens of You right and set up through the lens of somebody else. It's like I my feed And I only have to communicate with the people that I want to communicate with and then it's like when i'm commenting on their thing It's not about what they did. It's my comment on you know, and so it's like everything is just through this lens of and then you wonder Well, it's like how are these kids not supposed to become narcissistic the entire world through their phone is literally about them That's a great way to look at it. I agree with it You know, it's kind of reminds me of an old joke. We used to say like how many navy seals take the screw and light bulbs Say one because the world revolves around him. Oh, that's awesome I like what you said mark. You said they don't even know why they're not strong Um, I think a lot of the what you were talking about to christ is that a lot of what social media is is it helps Or it forces you to focus on outcomes rather than the journey And as you see everybody in this happy state or they're achieving constantly and it's all about outcomes And so I want to sit on that for a second and think about why like The reward really is the work and the journey and the your ability to do the work and that's where that comes from and I think that that is sort of The what you're trying to say right that the the journey you're on finding your purpose That's the reward and that's the worst. It's not the outcome, right? That's why I called it five moms because you know each of these moms has to be climbed It's a journey and there's no there there's you know, you guys know in the military, you know There's false peaks all along the way and even when you get the gross whatever finish line It's the beginning of the next journey. It is. Yeah, and you may not even get a break You know and that's fine. That's just the way things are and so you learn to appreciate The journey instead of the destination because destination is a false flag anyways. Yeah, it's you know, it's a false Ten in the ground, but you're right. So, you know, people are taught that to look for that an extrinsic, you know Validation right so they they're finding it through the likes of social media, which is very addictive um Or you know, yeah, if you're an overachiever you find it through, you know Degrees and certifications and sure putting points in the board like CrossFit, which is very Great training system, but attracts a lot of narcissists, you know, it does thing All right, I used to have a CrossFit gym, so I know that firsthand It just interesting That anyway you five minutes of box breathing before you come in here and run around with these we did we implement Yeah, and so we that's often transformed our membership That was a foundation of seal fit because we forced everyone to box breathe We forced everyone to do yoga amazing became really integrated training and eventually everyone absolutely loved it at first You know, we lost a few people who thought I was nuts and um Back to what I was saying Everything is designed these days our culture is all biased toward external Is external focus and external validation, right? So this is why you know people like I said earlier making hundreds of millions of dollars and they're still unhappy And they're looking for the next level and the next level. I work with clients like that Like it's addiction when's enough enough like what you really need to be doing is finding Meaning right and purpose and and clarity around why you're here and how maybe how you're going to Do good with that money instead of like keep driving for the next wicked and the next notch Because it's not going to lead you to the fulfillment that you're looking for and in fact you're going to have Yeah, significantly diminishing returns the older you get into you literally hit a wall And then get burned out. So if you can figure this out when you're younger Now it's a real balancing act too because there are there are young people I'm you know reading about that are like kind of like checking out Like they don't really want to put in the effort because they see that oh, well if I put in the effort It's not going to lead to any reward. That's not true. Anything worthy requires significant effort Immeffort if it was easy everybody would do it, right? Yes, right at the same time at the same time You don't need to burn yourself out, right? I disagree with the 80 to 100 hour work weeks That some of you know general corporate firms It's not healthy and ultimately leads to diminishing returns for the organization as well. Sure. So You've got to have this balance you got to bring the yin into you into the western way of life Both in terms of how we structure our lives and how you structure individually your life including your day So you have the hard and then you have the soft and recovery then you have the hard and then you have the soft And sometimes you have that really hard and then you need a little bit more recovery after that And science neuroscience is starting to prove all this, right? So after every time period of like deep intense work you're giving a speech or a podcast or or thinking writing You need to take five minutes and just sit there and do nothing just box breathe And relax and recover because your mind needs to like a little bit of time To just stop everything and let all that information and all the new connections that you just made kind of like sink in Percolate and find the connections and then you learn Like dramatically faster. Otherwise, it's all got everything your entire day's worth of learning It gets to try just to be consolidated and integrated at night If you have a lousy sleep cycle, then you just lose that whole entire day Like you're barely going to remember, you know 5 or 10 percent of it You won't integrate it and learn it So you need that effort and recovery you need that with a training session You know that was one of my issues with CrossFit it people were getting really burned out Right So you need to go hard, but then you need to spend time in you know, literally like shavasana Like at the end of a yoga session that whole dead men's pose is the most important pose the entire series Because you know you have all this effort and then that was just a complete surrender And that was your best opportunity for spiritual advancement is in the shavasana. It's in the surrender. It's not in the action So we want to develop ourselves Especially emotionally intuitively and spiritually you've got a big in times of doing nothing into your life And it doesn't have to look like nothing though like in the morning ritual You know, you've got your journaling your box breathing Your meditation and your visualization now if someone were to open the door and see you doing that they're like look at mark He's doing nothing Yeah, but i'm doing things with my mind Right Um, and then there's times where you just want to do nothing like quite literally do nothing like after a hardcore workout Sit down And just i'm hundred percent relaxed Or you know the sweating. I don't love the sweat angel because you know as a navy seal Like I feel pretty vulnerable down there. Yes, I would never let my seal fit athletes lay down to the sweat angel after hardcore work I'm like sure get out in your feet and walk it off and breathe Yeah, but there's benefit there and I think too, um, you keep going back to this idea of stillness It ties into people one of the things I know people have a lot of hard times with is getting up early and being awake before everybody else Um, but that truly contributes to that stillness and that um idea of Doing nothing and being there with your thoughts and it kind of it really does just Create the opportunity for that in a in a optimal Environment, excuse me And um, is that something that you encourage as well? Setting up that time for yourself in the morning to give yourself the best opportunity to do that Yeah, we have um Four Opportunities during the day Four ways that we train. Okay. One is the morning ritual and the other is the evening ritual. So the evening ritual You know originally I used to say do it in the evening before bed But I I realized that most people don't do that and so I I shifted it to like actually and it makes more sense It's the transition from your work time back into your family life And I know as we were talking about that kind of get kind of weird during covid and some people still haven't found their way back To like a separated work and family true, but um generally right you're gonna have an end of a work day Most you know the preponderance of the work even if you have to do a little, you know Whatever research or correspondence later on That that transition time really between you being focused on your team and your work and your family is what i'm really talking Yeah, so that's a good time for an evening ritual and the morning ritual evening ritual have different qualities to them So those are two the third is um something we call spot drills and so this is finding those little times for recovery Uh finding the little times for a little awareness development. So it could be like you could set your timer You know for 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock for 20 minutes and do box breathing. That would be a long spot drill Uh at the you know, I recommend that that you break you look at, you know, your schedule has all these chunks in it, right? So you You might have let i'll use myself for example. I might have a company meeting and then I might have a podcast and then it might have a you know Another meeting about something so this then I might have a chunk for writing um And so at the end of every significant Event in my calendar I block time so I try to have a 15 minute buffer because My brain you need time to like recover like we talked about but also it's it's perfect opportunity for a spot drill And a spot drill can be of just get up and walk around the building Or me. I'm really close to the ocean walk up and you know Just breathe a few times look in the ocean soft gaze come back down. Oh, it's like an etch sketch for the brain Amazing Um, it could be something around heart opening right emotional mountain development. So we're like, oh, you know, go Uh tell someone you're grateful for them and how much you appreciate them and you know, how much they mean to you enormous benefits for you and for that person uh could be You know Something physical like banging out of 50 push-ups or 100 air squats Again, all of these are or could be a more intense breathing exercise You know kind of like we have a warrior breathing which is sort of like whim huff or or relaxation breathing Or five minutes of box breathing every one of these things like I said is like an etch a sketch for the brain Come clear clears your mind and clears the energy of whatever you were doing before It helps your brain integrate and learn the lessons or the important salient points from the last hour or 45 minutes or whatever it was And it prepares you for what's coming for the next Thing and you go into the next thing like radically focused more aware More open and more energized And so we like to recommend that you do that three to five times during the day You know if each one is five minutes and some are usually longer Uh, that's 20 minutes or 25 minutes of extra training. So your morning ritual i'm saying, okay You get up you do your journaling and you do your box breathing 20 minutes and then you do your You know at the end of the box freezing you drop into your meditation and then you do your visualization And the visualization we have got a few of them But we're really talking about your future self, which is aligned with purpose and fulfilling your mission, right? You begin to get that imagery of what that looks like and then you practice it in your mind's eye Yes, and so that's that's like a half an hour in the morning your evening ritual is more of a Similar to the military debrief you look back at your day. I call it a recapitulation So eyes closed your box breathe And then you go back to the beginning of your day and you relive it and you look at all the highs and all the lows And you ask what went well what didn't go well? What did I learn? And then finally is there anything I need to clean up That I haven't done I like that and so this is a way to really avoid regrets You just clean it up right then or you make a note to do a first thing in the morning, right? So that you know that was the things like oh man, you know you get off the phone and then you're just You know 20 minutes later an hour later. You're like, oh wait, that didn't go as well as I thought it did Sure, it was off. You don't even know being there 100% practically every day. Yeah, yeah It's it's true have an opportunity to look at that in the evening ritual and be like, you know what? It's not good enough anymore for me to just go to bed and to pretend this never happened Or do they let it just go and hope they'll forget about it They won't and you won't Right, so people go if you don't learn to do this and you go through days Just accumulating these little tiny regrets here and there and these those are good start to You know way down and you weigh you down like dragon kettlebells lying behind you So you got to eradicate regrets in real time as best can And then through your meditation practice and your journaling over time you begin to see all the patterns of your life and much more clarity And you see where you were real asshole Right and where where patterns conditioning from your childhood whether it's from your parents or whatever Weren't serving you or aren't serving you. Yeah, and so that becomes the intimate, you know, the real Inspiration for the emotional mountain work shadow work, you know overcoming the the traumas are over and the conditioning It all ties together ultimately five mountains Development, you know, they start out becoming very distinct. There's the physical. There's the mental. There's the emotional That's the intuitive and then you know within the spiritual We we really put all that purpose-finding future meaning and envisioning work Over time Everything starts to come together. Right. So we're training in this integrated fashion Daily and then some things are weekly and some things are monthly But over time you have this this sense that All of that is actually the same thing Right body mind spirit are all one right It's not you know, it's not separate. Yeah If I could ask you one more question before we let you go mark is We want to talk about failure, right? One of these things that we deal with everybody all the time Um, what is an example where you put a lot of effort into something and it did not go the way that you wanted it to? And what you did to recover from that and move forward and learn the lesson from it? No, man. What's happened a lot of times Sure, it's having a lot of times. I mentioned earlier, you know, we'll talk around business I've had a lot of personal failures But everyone everyone has absolutely failures and the key is to um to kind of Change your perspective on failure first of all things happen, right? You can't prevent things from happening You know, the the sense of failure comes from thinking that you were in control to begin with But you're not I like that. Wow So oh, yeah I learned this when black, you know, I had this I got this out of navy seal calm because we were mentoring candidates and we actually knew what we were doing uh, this this seals put out a Recruiting command, but it was at the seals request put out a uh a subcontract Through this company that they already worked with, you know that provided services to recruiting commands to mentor navy seal candidates And I knew how to do that And so I put a bid in on it And The subcontractor didn't know any of the other bidders one of them was blackwater. I told you about them Another one was like seic this multi-billion dollar company And then then there's mark divine who changed his navy or put a wrap around navy seal calm called us tactical to make us Unfigure So they gave they gave the subcontract to us it's a 10 million dollar contract We want it so blackwater was pissed. Yeah, now eric prince's company billion dollar, you know brat um And I heard he was he was like Storming the wall all the pentagon like i'm gonna get that contract back because he was having all these troubles in iraq Remember the blackwater. Oh, yeah, right? They're extraordinarily aggressive over there getting people killed And they needed a pr win and the pr win was hey, we're mentoring navy seals. This is what we do, you know And here's this little company out in california. What does he think he is right and so So he he went to town right and sure enough We knocked the ball out of the park in that contract by the way We took the one of the big problems with was recruiters didn't really know How to prepare any of these seal candidates. They were gun decking the screening tests So 85 percent of the seal candidates would get to boot camp and fail the navy seal Physical standard test she was supposed to be a prerequisite. Yeah And we by the time we one year was done with this contract We had 90 percent We're passing That's it that's amazing 100 percent turnaround project. Yeah. Yeah, the recruiting crew man absolutely loved us But Blackwater challenged this prime contractor jht Saying that they were too big for a small business contract And it just so happens during that year. They went over 75 million dollars in revenue, which was the Cliff areas and so they got the whole thing thrown out and the recruiting command instead of putting it out And soul sourcing it to us put it back out to a full and open competition any size company and lo and behold blackwater Wins right. Yeah, so this is getting to the root of the question now I had all my guys who were doing the actual work on a non-compete and Blackwater immediately started calling and trying to hire every one of my guys They had a proposal when said they had their guys. That's why they won this proposal Right, and so I called you know, I was like, okay, they owe us the debrief So I kept calling fists and Norfolk wouldn't give me and finally they legally have to give me a debrief Right literally it lasted for about two minutes Why did we lose the contract? Blackwater won it because they had a superior staffing plan And I was like the why the hell are they hiring all of my guys? Right They just did the bait and switch they stacked their they stacked their Proposal with all these debdrew guys so they had no intention of pulling out of the field Because they knew you know contrast like this all these guys want to keep their jobs And so they they and they run hundreds of millions of dollars and take all these Contractors out to dinner and plan with alcohol and it's the classic Capture government, right? So yeah So I got my ass handed to me lost that contract, you know, I want you know, I'm taking yeah I'm off to the race. They got a 10 million dollar government contract doing something incredible. I'm training maybe seal future Navy seals right and then Passionate purpose then suddenly yes, I'm exactly And I'm making a work and we're making good money And I literally had to fund that project myself to get it up and running for three months, you know, that was all it was insane Yeah, we crushed it and we lost the contract to a corrupt organization Who did a bait and switch and and so my advisors were telling me to fight it and said you can fight this and um And there was part of my ego that wanted to fight it But because I had been meditating for many years at that point. This happened in 2005 I've been meditating since 1985 Uh, I I didn't react that way and I just sat with it He sat and meditated on it for about a week And my guys were getting desperate right? You will because I had him on non-compete and um So while I was sitting on the meditation bench, I had another one of those kind of like Aha's I'm like, oh, yeah, okay So this is not I'm not I can't fight this right? It's not because I had I was fearful It's because this was supposed to happen and So if I fight this then basically I'm going to be wasting my energy and I'm going to be fighting for something that wasn't meant for me this whole thing happened to basically get me into The training the real training that I ended up doing was still fit Which was radically different than anything I would have been allowed to do or was allowed to do under the government contract And so I decided not to fight it and um, I I released all my guys from their non-compete and blackwater hired him the next day And they and they held that contract until like last year when they were finding that kit So I could have looked at that as a failure and instead I looked at that and said that's a blessing Right and any and here's the probably the the the shortest Way for someone to prove this point is to look back at your life And all the crazy shit that you're like at that time. You thought it was the biggest disaster The breakups right the relationship breakups where life was over Yeah, the loss of a business the loss of a contract like this Um, and with the probably the exception of loss of loved ones. I wouldn't say that but even that can have incredible lessons And you look back and you say you know what? There by the grace of god go I like that I see now why that happened Right and it was an important it was an important moment sometimes a pivotal moment Sounds like a yeah, and so well, I'm talking about everyone and everything Definitely you can find it you look back and you realize it just happens right? Life is messy life is lifey. You say There's an infinite number of causes for everything that happens, but we want to take ownership of it and say oh, I fucked up Yeah, right. You want to give yourself a break Shit happens There's like I said infinite number of reasons that everything happens And so if you stop taking so much ownership of it, which is your ego And a lot of things to just happen and to and to be like, okay now. What was the lesson? Instead of playing the victim like oh, that shouldn't happen. Why am I so stupid? What did I why why can't I stop doing this? Why can't I do better? You're just like, oh, wow, that was a doozy. Look at that one happened What's the lesson? Yeah, where's the silver lining right get to get to the lesson as quick as possible So you can move on That's an incredibly valuable saying, you know, in fact, I learned a lot of that in the seals They have it, you know, their version of that is you know failure is not an option That was literally on the wall of buds didn't mean you had to be too good You couldn't fail it meant the idea of failure is not an option Right. All there is is a whole bunch of ways to figure out how to get shit done. Someone we're going to be messier than others Period There's a quote on the wall of the gym that I used to work out at in Fort Bragg and I was like man I can't remember who the quote is by but I was like that describes me to a tee and it said I'm afraid of failure more than I love success And I was just like that is me like a hundred percent the fear of failure is is always What uh, what's driven me so? Yeah, again, let's let's define it right failure I like this idea. There's no such failure. There's there's just better ways to do things Right, you might find an optimal way to do thing and thinking this is a great success until all of a sudden that doesn't work anymore And then you can say well and shit now I'm a failure. No Things are always changing Well, I've got you here. We won't get you there. That's right. These things are always changing What you're really trying to say with that core what they're trying to say is that excellence is is is Excellence requires that you Um You have a high standard And that standard says that I'm not going to let myself and my teammates down and I'm going to do the best work that I can all the time And not doing so Is enough my to me And so you could then say oh what is not doing that that that is that failure You could say that but uh, I think it's just um, I think failure is a corrupted term and and it really is it's negative and It should be retired frankly Josh mark seriously. What an incredible conversation. This has been I have thoroughly enjoyed listening to you I could do a couple podcasts in a row with you. I'm sure that you just have It's it's incredible to listen to you. Absolutely. Your book is coming out. I believe in july um Specifically I think july 16th, right Um, thank you so much for coming on and and sharing some of your time with us and definitely the lessons And um, I encourage everybody to check out you have an entire body of work seal fit right you have other other books You have a youtube channel Um, there's a lot of ways to discover you and a lot of the things that you talk about so Um, and the book by the way, um, randon is there's a pre-order website read uncommon.com Okay, ad uncommon.com and so you can get a couple cool bonuses Um, you can get a signed copy through warwicks So yeah, that would be a great place to go and then um mark divine.com is kind of like my general site If you wanted to reach out to me info mark divine for coaching or for for anything really great Stand by to support. I really appreciate you guys having me on this show Absolutely. I'll get those websites. Um, put in our show notes as well for everybody listening so you guys can discover that And then um, obviously to be post, um, this episode will drop this coming friday And then um, we'll link your your social media and all that stuff as well So it's really genuinely. Thank you for coming on and having this conversation with us. It was awesome to listen to you And um, yeah, genuinely. Thank you so much. I appreciate you guys. Thanks very much. Nice image of both