Navy SEAL Mark Divine on cultivating mental toughness and the will to win

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Hey, this is Mike Matthews from muscleforlife. com. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for stopping by. In this episode, I’m going to be interviewing Mark Devine. Mark is a New York Times best selling author of several books and he’s the founder of NavySeals. com and of SealFit and a couple other businesses and cool things he’s doing that we’re going to be talking about in the podcast.

And he’s just an all around interesting dude, a really cool guy, nice guy, and he spent about 20 years in the Navy. His story of how he became a seal is pretty unique and pretty interesting. And I like it was found him through one of his books and liked a lot of what he had to say. So I thought that I’d get him on the podcast and we talk about some interesting stuff regarding like mental toughness and other things that are relevant, not just for getting in shape, but for doing well in life in general.

So let’s get to the interview. All right. Hey Mark, thanks for coming on the show. I appreciate it. Yeah, it’s my pleasure, Mike. Yeah, I’m looking forward to it. Yeah, I’m looking forward to it too. Growing [00:04:00] up I was all into G. I. Joe’s and all, we all had a military fantasy growing up. So people like you, I I don’t know.

I admire people like you. There you go. That’s cool. Yeah. So I think we should start with at least a kind of like a quick sketch of how you became a Navy SEAL. And just cause it’s a very unusual story. I’m know, I know you’ve told it a million times, but the if the readers haven’t heard it, it’s interesting.

So how did that go to exactly? I’ll just expect that no one’s nobody out there knows me, which is cool. That’s always a good plan to follow. Yeah, I was I’m from upstate New York and I went to Colgate University, which is upstate New York and my family is a business family and so I was like conditioned.

I studied economics at Colgate and then I was conditioned to be a business guy by my family, by our expectations, by the belief system, by the fact that we had a hundred year old family business. When I left college, I went down to, I got a job with a company called Coopers Libran, which is now PricewaterhouseCoopers, and it was a pretty good deal.

They were going to send me, actually it was an exceptional deal, they were going to send me and a group of [00:05:00] others to NYU Business School, get our masters in accounting, which most of us then defaulted into the MBA program. So I ended up with an MBA in finance and then we work basically we go to school at night, work during the day as an auditor.

And then the summertime was full time school. So two full time schools during the summer got my CPA over two years finished up my MBA with a third summer vacation application, but leave of absence. Three years out of Colgate. I had an CPA, and I was, working my way up the ranks at Coopers and Libran.

I actually had shifted over to Arthur Anderson toward the end of that. And was miserable, Mike. I just, aside from the goal focus. Which motivated me, right? To get the MBA and the CPA, the job itself really was uninspiring to me. I didn’t like the work. I didn’t like the people I was working with.

I thought there was a lot of greed and self, centeredness down on wall street. Most of my clients were wall street clients. Incidentally, none of them exist anymore. Like they’ve all. [00:06:00] Bombed as a result of ethical Laughs like Drexel Burnham and Land Baron and Salomon Brothers. So it’s really interesting that what I was sensing at 24 years old, you know actually became a reality because their behaviors torpedoed them, but I saw that, you know from my perspective I said, I don’t like this.

I don’t like these people. There’s got to be more, you know to what’s going on and More to life than just slogging it away climbing the corporate ladder Yeah. Dreaming of retirement one day so you can escape life or yeah, going back to the family business. So it’s like my option either.

I’m a good in the investment banking and make some big money. That was the path I started working on or I stay and become a partner and still do pretty good, fact, one of my peers is a fraternity brother of mine, he’s now running Ernst Young, and he started in that same exact program as I did, and that type of future was definitely there for me if I wanted it, or go back to the family business, and then I have three siblings who are now back running the family business in upstate New York, but none of those inspired me, and I tell this story to my, quite a bit, and I did in my book as well, but really what got [00:07:00] me to shift my focus is, was the I’d gotten involved in a really nice martial art called Sado Karate, the founder of the, school, had his headquarters two blocks from where I lived in Manhattan, and he became my, like my first true mentor, and what he did to me was essentially slow me down and sit me down on a meditation bench every day I was there, plus also once a week for an hour, and it was that.

It’s a quiet time of just sitting and watching my thoughts and, trying not to think that I was able to really start to plumb the depths, and to see what was Inside of me that I hadn’t seen before and what kept coming up was number, first thing that came up was that I was complete misfit as a CPA.

I didn’t belong there. And there was a reason I didn’t like the job and the people is because I didn’t belong there. And then the second thing that came up is okay, if I don’t belong there, where do I belong? And I went through all the business options and I didn’t like any of them. So it forced me to really.

Take the courageous step of contemplating something completely new. [00:08:00] Yeah. And that’s when I started to think, okay how do I define myself? Who am I, right? Why am I on this planet? And those are questions I’d never asked and never been taught to ask. And started to try to define that. And of course, that was all done on the meditation bench.

It wasn’t done by any specific exercises or thinking or classes, right? There was nothing like that, at least back then. And but the contemplation and the tapping my intuition, that all did its work. And so what came up is that, I wanted to be a warrior and I wanted to be a leader and I had to be in a risky, high stakes field, for some reason I was drawn toward that.

And then once I got something when you were growing up as well, like you were, or did, Oh, were you into risky adrenaline type of junkie kid Definitely. And I think part of, your, I have this thing I teach called, your three P’s. You develop your stand in life by understanding your purpose, your passion, and your principles.

And what I was defining at that point in time were my passion. What was I passionate about? And that helped lead me to my purpose. And then I defined my [00:09:00] principles around all that. And that became my ethical stand. And that stand said, okay, I don’t belong, as a money grub and, CPA.

At this point in my life I’m a warrior and a leader and I need to get out and lead. And so then I had to define how am I going to fulfill that new vision. So then the next stage was to look at I can fly for the Marine Corps, I could go work on an oil rig, I could go, around the world and I just have a grand adventure or I could be a Navy SEAL.

That one had entered my consciousness. And so I kept coming back to the SEALs and it just really inspired me because it captured everything about what. I saw inside of myself, I was a warrior, it was a leadership, required intense leadership. It was risky, it was extreme athletics and I was a, I was an extreme athlete as you alluded to not in the way that extreme athletes are today because, we didn’t have that mindset back then, we didn’t know we could do a lot of that stuff and tools weren’t available.

I used to run up and down the Adirondacks we would run up, a buddy and I, and we would literally wrap our ankles, put knee pads on, and then run. Play tag on the way down, leaping off of [00:10:00] boulders, doing flips in the air and doing crazy stuff. And it’s amazing we survived that kind of stuff.

But so I was I looked at the seals as representing that. And so long story short, I finally grew the cojones to at 25 to go to the recruiter. And it took a long time, right? Recruiter basically said, don’t get your hopes up. Yeah, because I wanted to go into Officer Canyon School, the officer route, instead of enlist.

If I had just wanted to enlist, it would have been a lot quicker and easier process, but that’s a whole other story. Yeah. And so how did the, how, so you went and did that and then I think you said you, you were nine years active duty and then 11 in the reserve. I remember, Greg, something like that.

Yeah. So I spent my first active tour, SEAL Team 3 and SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team 1, this little mini submarine. So that was about seven years. What led me out of active duty was my marriage. And I learned very quickly that if the Navy had wanted me to have a wife, they would have issued me one.

Yeah. That’s the joke, right? Exactly. Cause the first. Six months of my marriage, I was home for just a couple of weeks. And my wife, Lily, she gave me that come to Jesus talk and said, [00:11:00] listen, it’s not going to work unless it’s either me or the Navy. Yeah. Yeah. And I thought hard about it, but I chose her.

And that led me back into the business world, but as an entrepreneur, but I stayed in the reserves, which kind of was having, the best of both worlds. Because I was a Navy SEAL officer and I could continue to maintain my skills and my relationship with the teammates and that bond, and I would train once a month and then there would be, literally 30 days a year that I would plug in and do some cool project.

And then of course after 9 11, I needed to go fight again, so I got mobilized to go to Iraq. I got mobilized to go to the Middle East, and then that, that put me in around 15 years, and the last 16 years, and the last few years, I really served my last tour out in Hawaii at Special Operations Command Pacific, doing projects for them, and doing, going to the Middle East, or not the Middle East, but mostly in Asia.

Oh, cool. So it was pretty neat to be a reserve officer because it kept me in the game, but not as a full time job and it also Allowed me to develop skills and to now observe, because I was on the business side I was I [00:12:00] had started a business to mentor Navy SEAL candidates as a government contract and then after a year I shifted that to private and that’s another story too is why and how that happened But I launched SEAL fit which is our one of my businesses, which is to train spec ops candidates and Any professional or athlete who wants to work at that level of mental toughness and resiliency to develop, to develop that level of mental toughness, resiliency through a physical training program.

That was really my original premise with seal fit. So I shifted to, training individuals and anyone who really wanted to to work that hard and to spend the time with me. And we have extremely high success rate actually, by the way, Mike was like seal fit. The only ones I track and I wish I could track it even better.

But it’s really hard. But those who spend a week or more with me and finish my academy at Kokoro Camp, I got a 90 percent success rate getting them through Navy SEAL training. And there’s probably 50 to 75 SEALs who are SEALFIT athletes who trained with me. And that’s, people who don’t know the [00:13:00] seals only make 200 new guys a year.

It’s actually the dropping into one 75. That’s how small the community is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No I’ve watched documentaries and read books. Yeah. So out of the 13 or 1400 people who go to buds only. 175 come out the other end and that’s not including the thousands who try to go to buds and don’t make it.

Yeah, I definitely want to talk more about seal fit. We’ll get to that. So so my last little question with your native experiences Okay, so you how did it compare? I’m just curious Like how did the actual experience compare to what you were expecting going in? Wasn’t a ton of information back in 19 89 when I went in I mean I had one recruiting video.

I knew it was going to be Early. The legends were there in 89 just as they are today. It’s just, we didn’t have all the resources to train into really the mental pictures cause it wasn’t, discovery channel back then. I prepared for the worst and part of my preparation is what I teach now.

I prepared physically and I prepared mentally and the mental training included a deep visualization program where every day [00:14:00] I practiced, I trained in my mind to be a seal. And I think that had the most profound impact than anything else because it it led to a sense of certainty about it. I often relate that I had a moment nine months into the my training for the SEALs when I, made the, went from, I want to be a SEAL to I’m going to be a SEAL and I started training in earnest and I still hadn’t been contacted by my recruiter.

My recruiter was still saying, it doesn’t look good, doesn’t look good, doesn’t look good. And I said I’m just going to. Press forward as if this is happening. Like I know it’s gonna happen. He’s gonna say yes, and I’m gonna be a SEAL. And so I trained my ass off every day, and I trained for about a half hour to 45 minutes visualizing myself every day as a SEAL.

Doing SEAL stuff. And nine months into that, I had this shift. It was like a cognitive or consciousness shift where I had this sense of total certainty that I was gonna be a SEAL. That it already, I’d already basically earned it. Through my training, and then I just needed to show up and go through the motions.

And literally a week later the recruiter called and said, [00:15:00] mark, I got great news. You’re one of two people that got selected to go to Officer Kenon school with a follow on to go to SEAL training. I was like, awesome. I knew that it was gonna happen, but Awesome. Yeah, no, that’s very cool.

And when I showed up at SEAL training, I was, it was like, I’d been there before and really I just had to, make my bed, put on my boots and pants and show up and just. Crank it out, but there was no thought of quitting. I was very clear about why I was there and one of my mantras was they’d have to kill me to get me to quit

They tried, but they didn’t succeed. . Yeah I’ve heard that type of mentality or that approach to really taking on the. The being, because obviously if you’re looking at anything, there are things you’re going to be doing and there are things that are going to be you’re going to be having an experience because of that.

But first you really have to make sure that you understand what the, what do you have to be, to be able to do the things you want to do and to have the experience you want to have. So I’m not surprised that worked well for you because I’ve come across that in reading other people’s autobiographies and biographies and whatever.

They just stumbled on it themselves in a similar way, and [00:16:00] that’s what I did, and that that’s become a hallmark of what I try to teach people. And I try to get them to experience it, I write about it, but then, if you want the experience of that, you come and train with me and I’ll give you that experience.

It’s like a, it’s like a benchmark workout for buds, which happens to be incredibly powerful for anyone in life because if you got the, if you got the knowingness that you can make through, make it through SEAL training, that’s incredibly empowering. Anything else is easy in life.

Yeah. I can see that for sure. That’s all. That’s one of the reasons why I want to get you on the show because yeah, of course, I mean with seal fit, there’s you’re doing there, there’s a fitness side to it, but there’s a lot more in that mental toughness and self doubt, self discipline, self control and all that stuff.

So in your book the way of the seal, which is what led me to you actually, it was on my wishlist and I grabbed it, started reading it and I was like, I like this. I don’t want to. I want to get him on the show. I want to get him on the show. So you talk about envisioning your future me as a way of motivating yourself for what you need to do now in the present for that future.

Can you tell us a bit about that? Yeah, this is a derivative of what I did when I, what I just described when I wanted to be a steel, I was [00:17:00] super clear about that goal. I was highly motivated toward it. So I literally put blinders on, blocked out everything else and visualize that only. So that became my daily vision.

I was going there. I didn’t know the path. The path was invisible to me, but I knew I was going there, and I knew I could figure out the path along the way. How do we relate this to everyday life? It’s the same process, right? If you’ve got let me back up. First, it’s really important to get very clear about what it is you need to do in life.

And what that is absolutely must be tied. To your sense of purpose and your unique value, unique gift to mankind, okay? And the step by step process to train this is to get clear about that first. And that could take some time. That’s where the practice of, meditation and my warrior yoga and all these kind of silent or non doing practices are so powerful for folks because most of us in the West, we just don’t take time to do that kind of stuff.

No, we weren’t [00:18:00] taught. And I was fortunate enough to be taught at 20, 2021 how to do that. And it shifted, changed my entire life. Getting clear about who you are, what you need to be doing, what’s the, the longterm vision in your life. And then how are you going to, how are you going to fulfill that vision now?

Like in this phase of your life, I call it your one thing. Like for me, when I wanted to be a SEAL, getting my trident was my one thing. There was nothing else that I thought about for literally a year and a half to two years while I was training, outside. And then once I got in the SEALs and was actually going through the training of Officer Canyon School and then going through BUDS.

I kept my vision. Now, I didn’t say goal. Obviously, it was a goal too, but it was a vision of me being a SEAL and getting the Trident. You were picturing like it actually being pinned on you kind of thing. Absolutely. I saw myself getting awarded the Trident on that day. I made that day like a super powerful day.

I would go there multiple times a week and envision myself getting pinned on the Trident. Down to the time of day, you know what the sun felt like on my face, [00:19:00] the other people there, my mom and dad in the audience stuff like that until it just became super believable in my subconscious mind.

This is happening. I was practicing being that person, if you will. It’s not unlike practicing a skill in a visualization like a sports athlete, but I was practicing that future version of myself. Yeah. And I’m quite confident that it had a profound impact on helping it come true, even if it was just the confidence that I felt in my neurobiology, and then I would also see myself doing SEAL stuff, and so I was gaining confidence in. Operational sense by, visualize myself being confident jumping out of airplanes and running and gunning and doing the stuff that I knew that seals would be doing. There’s scientific validity in that.

I just, what just came to mind is I’ve seen research. It was done with basketball players and it was, I don’t remember the exact design of the study, so it’s going to sound janky. I’m going to explain it. But basically you had one group of people, they were visualizing shots before taking them. The other were just taking shots and obviously they’re on the same team, same skill level or whatever.

And the people that had done the visualization exercises performed. [00:20:00] Dramatically better than the people that didn’t. And that’s just a simple thing of shooting a basketball. And you know why that worked is because the guys visualizing it were, had perfect form. Yeah, in their visualization.

Yeah, the guy’s shooting it. We’re shooting it You know what whatever the normal shot rate was 50 or 80 percent or 70. I don’t even know Yeah, they’re probably all over the place And so they were essentially greasing the groove of their subconscious to be able to hit that number That percentage.

Yeah. And then when it came time to tell their brain to shoot the ball, there was a difference there. There was a difference. Yeah. Whereas the guys visualizing, they visualize with the only thing you can do perfectly is visualize. Yeah. Yeah. But that takes practice. You can’t, it’s very difficult.

There’s no such thing as perfection except for perfect practice is what we used to say in the teams. And that perfect practice starts in your mind. That totally makes sense. So yeah, so that’s cool. That’s the future. And then obviously like that, I was picking things from the book. There’s a lot more, you find, talk about finding your purpose, finding your passion.

You talk about those things in the book. So I know that the people reading, that’s [00:21:00] obviously a hot button. I’ve written about it on my website both of those subjects and a lot of people do wonder what are they meant to, what are they meant? Why are they here? What is really going to be fulfilling?

And that definitely I think is a personal journey. And I liked how you explained it in your book and gave some exercises where there are no pat answers. There are no, Hey, just think about these couple of things. I think like you said, it really does take reflection and something people, you have to work it out for yourself.

And the key point I wanted to try to make there is that. That’s critical, right? That’s not just a nice foofy idea, like that is critical to living a good life, to living a full life. I agree. To experiencing, the kind of I don’t know, your maximum human potential, let’s just say.

Because you can try to optimize your performance all day long, but if you’re focusing that performance on the wrong things, then you’re gonna be leaving energy on the table, and you’re gonna eventually fail. Yeah. And I think it’s the point of meaning. It gives your life meaning, right?

And like you were running into before. Yeah. You could have gone the CPA [00:22:00] route and you couldn’t have made a bunch of money, but money is hollow. Money is very, it seems so cool when you don’t have it. And then you have some money and you’re like, ah, this isn’t that cool. And then maybe you think, Oh, but if I had double the money, it’s going to be so much cooler.

Then you have double the money. And you’re like, it’s not that cool. Yeah. None of it’s cool. Unless you’re very. That money’s following you in the pursuit of something you’re super passionate about that’s completely aligned with your purpose and you’re principled about it. So it’s not like you’re not hurting anyone in the pursuit of the money.

You know what I mean? Totally. You’re helping. Yeah, totally. All right. So now one of the principles you also talk about in the book is doing today what others won’t. And you break that down into a few imperatives. You talk about that a little bit because I think it’s especially relevant even if it’s just, even if it’s just for getting into shape is, it’s irrelevant to a lot, it’s relevant to a lot more in life, but even if it’s just getting into shape.

Sure. It’s one of my favorite quotes. We do today what others want so you can do tomorrow what others can’t. I believe it’s the smokejumpers. Yeah, I highlighted it in my Kindle. Yeah, such a cool quote. And so we use [00:23:00] that all the time because what it speaks to is that you’re making through that process, you make the uncommon common, right?

Or you make the exceptional common and doable. And it’s still exceptional to other people, but to you, it’s common. You know what I’m saying? Does that make sense? Yeah. And what that means is you just do, you do an uncommon level of work. And that uncommon level of work in the context of fitness is, you work harder and smarter.

But how do you do that? It means that instead of just working out you have a very specific training regimen that has the right tools and it’s functional and it’s ratchet, it’s ratcheted up in intensity and it’s methodical and it’s comprehensive, which is really what I try to do with the SEALFit training program is okay, what do we need?

Foundationally to live a very long and powerful life physically, while we need strength and we need stamina and we need to be durable people and we need to have endurance and mental toughness and we need the ability to work super high intensity for short amount of time, short periods of time when there’s a crisis.

So I call that [00:24:00] work capacity. So I build the training around those six principles. And it’s incredibly rewarding. It’s very challenging. If you start doing it on day one, you’re going to be doing more work than you did yesterday. And then tomorrow you’re going to be doing more work and more, effective movements and maybe get through more of the workout than you did today.

And then, so every day you’re doing a little bit more and a little bit working a little bit harder and learning some new skills. And you’re doing essentially every day what other people are shying from because most people are either not doing anything or they’re going to the gym and stepping on the treadmill or, going to the Pilates studio.

And again, none of that is bad, right? I’m not putting that down. I’m just saying, you leave stuff on the table if you don’t push yourself hard. I’ll give you an example. I was in a strong yoga is extraordinarily challenging. And when I found I was like, Oh, this is like my new martial art.

And after a few years of doing it, I was like, I felt weak. Because it was such a narrow range of movements and there were certain things that I could do that were extraordinary. But [00:25:00] then, I couldn’t come and lift up a barbell or do snatches or cleans and jerks or muscle ups and handstand push ups and, all the stuff that I do now.

I just couldn’t do. And so here’s, eight years later, when, after starting CrossFit and then ScaleFit program, I am far stronger. And far more functionally fit than I was, I’m 51 now than I was in my early forties, even in my early thirties. Actually, I’ll make that bold statement. And I still do, and I still do yoga five times a week.

I don’t do the full hour and a half long ashtanga practice, but I do yoga now more for the durability and the recovery aspects and the mental control aspects rather than as my workout. So that’s what I mean. And when you do today where those won’t that you’re essentially Developing the a comfort level with discomfort.

You make pain you develop a relationship with pain. So you realize that pain is something that you can manage, and you can actually get intimate with it, and you can learn to control it. So Yeah. Can you tell that? That’s an interesting point. It’s something that’s [00:26:00] I’ve thought about that just in terms of not even necessarily physical pain.

I don’t working out as such a, you just, for me, it’s, I’ve been doing it for a while and yeah, my workouts are tough, but it’s, I can’t really, I guess maybe I’ve come to that point where the discomfort is just normal but even relates to, to, to just life, to doing the things, the amount of work and what it takes to succeed.

Is there’s that is a different type of discomfort, that you have to just learn to just deal with and not run away from. Yeah, exactly. That has to do with the ability to be in control of your mind. And that’s why mental toughness is such an important part or mental control is such an important part of physical training.

And they go hand in hand where the mind leads, the body follows where the body leads, the mind chases. And if you are experiencing, workout related pain, the resistance to moving the load or to running that long distance, then, I’m not saying to go into denial about it, I’m saying to acknowledge the pain, to recognize the benefits that it’s bringing you, to recognize that when you bump up against the thresholds of that pain you can ride there for a while and, you’ll [00:27:00] know, your body will tell you whether you can Push through, and then it’s up to your mind to decide to push through to a new level, a new threshold.

Yeah. And when you reach that new threshold, then you have a new reality around that, that, that pain as it relates to that particular exercise type. So that then the next time you do it, you can get back there quicker and push through to even a higher level of threshold. And in this way you essentially learn that you’re capable of 20 times more than you thought you are because there’s, and there’s two ways to find that.

One is the incremental. Daily pressed higher and higher levels of performance by pushing through pain barriers one in knocking them down one at a time The other is through what I call a crucible experience Which is why I designed the one of our programs called Kukoro camp which is modeled after the Navy SEAL Hell Week and that’s that crucible takes you there in a rocket ship, right?

Yes, it’s so intense and so acute and it’s so There’s so many failure points, but you still [00:28:00] don’t quit. If you don’t quit and you just keep driving forward, you realize that your body then gets to the other side of all pain. And it almost becomes like a mystical experience where pain subsides. You’re fatigued, you’re sleep deprived, you’re cold.

You’re completely physically exhausted, but then all of a sudden you get to this place where you like magically like a phoenix start rising up and just dominating and conquering and you’re getting stronger and your body starts adapting and getting stronger and I actually was growing muscle mass by Thursday of hell week, when I went through SEAL training, that’s really uncanny.

People would never have expected that. And I didn’t expect it, but it taught me that the body is, has far more power than you. We like to think it has and obviously driven by the mind. If the mind is, is the executive agent of the body, is focused and clear and can make good decisions and believes in your potential, then your body will step up, take notice.

And so instead of breaking down and leaving you crushed in a 50 hour nonstop training. It [00:29:00] can build you up and make you stronger. It’s really cool. And so that, those are the two ways that we develop mental toughness and resiliency is the daily embracing the suck and doing something different that other people won’t do every day and then really challenging yourself beyond measure.

Periodically, like once or twice a year in a barnstorm event, which is going to, that you’re scared, it makes you scared. Yeah. I can imagine it’s whenever you, like I said, you see just documentaries of hell week and if you’re recreating anything like that, I’m sure it’s a pretty much a brutal shock to the people going into it.

Yeah, it is. But people train for it for over a year or sometimes two more and a lot of people, you the enroll button for several years before they even have the courage to push it. You know what I mean? Yeah, I bet. Yeah. I think there’s, just bringing it down to even just everyday type stuff of where if someone’s feeling a bit tired Oh, it’s the end of the day.

Do they really want to go do that workout or, or if it’s work related, work those [00:30:00] extra for the late night working and whatever. And that you get the mental resistance of the reasons why you can’t do it and whatever. And and that kind of speaks to the relationship you have, your ability to control your mind and keep focused on what I call the courage wealth, right?

And we all experience that resistance. I do too. I I have a a practice that’s very. I call it integrated, integrated training. So I do the seal fit training operator wads two to three times a week. I also do an additional strength regimen that isn’t, doesn’t have the intensity level to get my nervous system to break two times a week.

I’ll do some sort of run or weighted rock, try to do that once a week. I do yoga. The minimum of three times a week. I also do Tai Chi three times a week. And I’ve got a self defense based on Sansu Kung Fu that we do here at our training center in Encinitas. I do that, I try to do that twice a week sometimes.

I only make it once. But the Sansu is in the evening. It’s at 5. 30pm. I used to train when I was younger all the [00:31:00] time in the evening. Especially, the martial arts. But For the last 10 years, or actually I’ve been married now for 20, since my son, he’s 15, just turned 15, but since it became really important for me to be home with him and be home at night with for the family, I’ve gotten out of the habit of training in the evening.

And and I also work out really hard in the morning, right? So I trained from 7 until 10 every day, every morning. And then I’m able to really focus on those tasks and projects that are highly critical, that are going to move the dial forward on my business or personal goals. And then so starting, I just started this Sansu training.

I shifted it from morning to evening because I was just running out of time in the morning. I meet that resistance at four. 5 o’clock or 5. 20. I’m like, Oh God, I really want to go home and see my family and everything and, and then eat some food, I’m exhausted, but, part of this whole idea that we’re talking about is I want to do today where those won’t.

So I [00:32:00] understand that once I get, once I Commit to stepping foot inside that the studio, which is right here in my training center. So it’s pretty easy for me once I, but this is no different than committing to getting in your car and just start driving toward the dojo or the yoga studio.

Once you commit to taking that action, then, everything else starts lining up. So you get control of your mind and say, okay, yeah, I’m committed to doing this. I’m doing this. Okay, that’s the hard part. But how hard is it to say, I’m doing it versus I’m not doing it? It’s not that hard when you really think about it.

It’s just a series of words. Yeah. But once you say the words and then you’re committed to them, then you start moving that direction. Then your mind, and this is a skill too, your mind goes to work to condition yourself positively for that experience. Okay, this is going to be great. I’m looking forward to this.

Not always going to feel good. I’m going to start sweating again. I’m going to learn some new skills. I always feel like a million bucks when I’m done. And then once you start going, like I found whether it’s a, whether it’s a work thing that’s just going to be boring drudgery and you’re like, Oh, whatever, you just got to do it.

Or it’s going to be a workout when you’re exhausted, which can feel like you start thinking about it and [00:33:00] it’s going to, you think it’s going to be drudgery, right? You start going and not, that’s my experience. And then you just get into it and then you put all your, you just focus on it and all of a sudden now it’s interesting.

Okay. It’s not interesting and the energy starts flowing and your, yeah your mind collapses now to the present moment of the training. And that kind of speaks to a whole nother part of mental management is that Mike, most people spend their time. Mentally in the future or the past and they don’t allow themselves to be in the present and in the present, Pain really dissipates, pain has a linear construct to it I’m not saying there isn’t pain in the present, the pain that you experience has already happened.

Yeah so in the present, you find, you ride a razor’s edge where that you’re in a much more intimate relationship with that pain and you can tell, if it’s leading you to injury or if it’s just something you need to embrace and brace the suck and move on. Yeah. I guess there’s the difference.

We’re talking about working out. There’s a difference between discomfort and pain. You know what I mean? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And I use the term pain, to mean discomfort, but, truly if you are. My, my yoga teacher used to call it integrating pain [00:34:00] and disintegrating pain. So integrating pain is pain that’s leading to a stronger you.

Disintegrating pain is pain that’s like disintegrating part of your body. So you want to learn the difference between those two. Yeah. Yeah. That’s a good way of putting it. I think it’s also worth saying that keeping your word to yourself is an important part of these, at least I think so of when you say you’re going to do something, doing it so you can come to.

Almost trust yourself and not because I know people that have gotten to a point where they’ve tried and failed at so many different things where when they try to take on anything new, even if it’s a hobby or it’s something that hasn’t doesn’t have that much of a purpose or anything behind it, they don’t when they say, Hey, Even to themselves.

I’m going to do this. It’s very hollow. It almost doesn’t mean anything because, their experience has taught them that they’re probably going to give up and that’s in the back of their head. You know what I mean? And you’re right. They’ve already given up before they try. They’re just going through some motions, but yeah, it’s the habit of.

Staying in the course is something that you develop by staying the [00:35:00] course. Yeah Commitment the way out is the way through I don’t know. Yeah now here’s a little this is something that I’ve talked about a lot but I just got back from a Coaching session. I’m part of with this guy named Dan Sullivan strategic coach So I’ll give him credit for these words or this exact sequence of This concept of confidence, which is really cool.

So the idea is that, if you want to start something and you actually commit to it. That doesn’t immediately lead to confidence. In fact, it doesn’t. The first experience you have from that is fear of resistance, fear of failure. And so you need to then activate your courage muscle, right?

So both commitment and courage are things that have to be practiced. They are values, but values are nothing unless you practice them and they become part of your character. So you, the commitment to something, that’s why warriors and leaders and what I teach is you don’t commit to something unless you’re really sure it’s the right thing.

Because too many people take on commitments that they really are lukewarm. They don’t really aren’t, hair on fire. Excited [00:36:00] or passionate about. And so you’re right. After a few days, weeks, they just fall off, and they go no big deal. But for a warrior, commitment is everything.

You’re committed to your, to protecting your teammate with his life. That’s the ultimate form of commitment. And when you live with that, then you choose your commitments very carefully. And then when you decide to commit, let’s say you’re finally at a point where you say, okay, I’ve got to get off.

My ass to start doing something different with my workout regimen because I’m 35 or 40 years old and I just feel like my body’s going to decline and just going to the gym and, hanging out in the treadmill and pushing some weights around and the Cybex machine isn’t doing it anymore and I say hallelujah.

Okay, so you commit to going across the gym. Basically that commitment is. is a 100 percent commitment. I don’t, it can be time bound. So I think that’s a good idea. Take that and say, okay, I’m going to commit to this for six months. And then if you want to be smart, pre commit and go pay for your membership for six months.

And totally. And that’s the smart business. People get people to do that. Commit to six months, pay for six months and then commit to doing at least three sessions a week. That’s easy. Now I’m like, [00:37:00] okay, three, three, one hour training sessions a week. How could, anybody can do that.

Yeah. And all you got to do is show up like we talked about earlier in the environment, the coach, the WOD, your peers, they take the energy just, infuses you with. The boundless enthusiasm. Boom. You just crush it. You feel great. That becomes a self reinforcing cycle of success. And six months later you’ve completely transformed your body and your concept of what it means to be fit and functional fitness.

All your health measures have fallen in the line. That’s it’s amazing, right? And so you’ve gone from the commit part was the first step and then the courage to, to show up. Every day with a great attitude was the second and you develop that courage, but that still doesn’t lead to total confidence, right?

The total confidence at the end of six months isn’t there in the beginning. So you have to then the third step is develop competence or the capacities to do the work. And so that’s where, you start out with an on ramp program. You learn how to do the Olympic lifts, slowly.

You’re an infant at them. You know that you got to do them slow because otherwise you get hurt. You don’t want to get sidetracked with an injury [00:38:00] early on. Yeah. Because that can debilitate you. And so that kind of highlights the importance of if you’re gonna, if you’re going to do CrossFit, you better make sure you have a good coach and for sure, somebody that is going to work you into it on a good gradient because otherwise, yeah, you’re going to get hurt.

You try, you start trying to throw around heavy weights, doing Olympic lifts. It’s not a standby. You will get hurt. Exactly. And all the criticism around CrossFit are about that particular issue. People go jump into it either without a coach and get injured or they have a coach who literally has done no more than two days.

Exactly. And they get their, they let their ego get in the way and boom, they get injured. So those are all good critiques. So we try very carefully to bring people slowly along the list, to go much slower than they want to go actually. Yeah. To develop that foundation. So that’s it. And so you develop, you start out with a commitment to get in great shape, to do something, to change your life.

And then that leads to, you, you feel fear about it. You feel uncertainty. And so you need to then have the courage. And the belief to totally always connect back to that. Why am I doing this? Oh yeah, I’m [00:39:00] doing this to transform my life because I want to be as, I want to be stronger at 60 than I am at 40.

Yeah. And when you want to, I want to go play, whatever sport with my grandchildren, I want to live to be a hundred and be healthy and enjoy every day of it and all that. Totally. And to me, what you just said there. That should be part of everyone’s why, especially if you have a family.

You may have some other whys, but that one right there, that’s one that drives me. It’s I want to be, when I’m a hundred, I want to be there for my kids and my grandkids and someday maybe my great grandkids. And I don’t want to be, be sitting there as that kind of strange old guy drinking the, drinking the martini.

Talking to the wall. Talkin to the wall, exactly, drooling on himself, that they fear going to see. I want to be, I want to, I have a vision of them like, jumping on me, and like they do now, and just wanting to play, and still being able to roll around with them, and do cool things, and so that, that’s your why, and so that, that gives you the courage to okay, I’m gonna go, I’m gonna commit to those three days, I’m gonna take the crawl, walk, run approach to learning, I know that in a month I’ll [00:40:00] feel better. And in another month, I’ll have even more skills and competence. In another month, I’ll be even more, have more skills and competence.

And then ultimately, I will feel confident about. This to where I can then even step it up further and that cycle, is just an amazingly Self reinforcing, positivity loop. Yeah, definitely and then it’ll spill over another as your life too So then absolutely when you start contemplating, you know Some other you could be going after the girl or the guy or could be going after the job or whatever you start to think About it differently and that when that if you do commit to it You can see it through to the end just like you did with that other thing, correct All right.

So talking about mental toughness, that’s you obviously you’ve been, you’ve talked a bit about it, but I want to address it directly, obviously. So being a big part of being an effective person, whether you’re talking about like a special forces operator or just like a worker or entrepreneur or whatever, is this point of mental toughness?

Obviously a few people ever need to become. As, or at least need to test their mental toughness or train it as, as much as [00:41:00] a Navy Seal does. But what did, what have you learned along the way in this regard that has helped you not only just stay alive on the battlefield as a warrior, but now off, as a business manager?

Sure. Just making your way through life. Okay. I’ve learned a couple things. One is that mental toughness is a skill and that resiliency is part of mental toughness. Like mental toughness is more than. the mind, right? It also includes being physically tough, being emotionally tough being spiritually tough, right?

And so that’s one is that it crosses boundaries, right? The body mind system is intimately, intricately, interrelated, And so if we just ignore those other aspects, that could be the critical point of critical failure, right? That’ll lead to a cascading failure. And so that what I noticed through my own training and then through training of thousands of Spec Ops candidates is that you can train mental toughness and resiliency.

Back when I went through SEAL training, I trained through that martial arts program with [00:42:00] Nakamura. Inadvertently to me, I didn’t realize that I was training my mental toughness and resiliency. He did, but he, he’s Japanese and speak great English, he just looked at his character development and he developed our character through just wampingly hard workouts and then sitting in silence and then.

Taking us on these retreats where we went to Zen Mountain Monastery and we did integrated training, but we didn’t know it like we were training Physically doing scary things we were training emotionally by getting held accountable by the team and by having to Expose yourself in front of other people by performing, you know These advanced katas and fighting, you know in front of the class and all that kind of stuff that develops emotional control and awareness And then the spiritual development, from sitting on the meditation bench for 45 minutes and really, contemplating questions that he would pose us in his little lectures afterwards.

It’s really cool. So it went well beyond the physical training. And so that’s. That was one of my biggest ahas when I started training steel candidates is I can’t just train the physical. I wanna train mentally emotional and spiritual, just like [00:43:00] I got trained back when I was in the twenties, and what allowed me to sail through buds and become the honor man of my class.

And so that became my mantra, that mental toughness can be trained if we train in an integrated manner. Physical, mentally emotional, IAL and spiritual. Those are my five mountains. I call them the five mountains. And and so through that, you develop greater awareness, more mental control, more mental focus.

You learn to win the event in your mind. You take you learn to take really achievable short term goals and just nail them and develop momentum, positive momentum around that. And you learn to be super positive, because you understand that negativity destroys performance. So you maintain a real positive mindset and mental and also emotional state.

And you learn through that positivity. You also learn to be an incredibly good teammate and you realize, we, and I teach that you can’t do it alone, no Rambos make it through buds. You have to set your ego aside and become a good teammate. You have to develop humility and on that, in that team setting, you have to be able to ask for help.

You have to be able to give [00:44:00] help, especially if you’re cold, tired, wet, and you want to lick your own wounds. That’s the Perfect time to take your eyes off yourself and to turn them on someone else and start serving them. And then that has an energetic blowback that’s like 10x of giving you all this energy, so you can’t be negative in an act of service. So I boiled those down, these principles. Oh, and breathing, that’s critical. So you get control of your body through the breath, which allows you to control your mind. So then win in your mind and then you can win on the field. I boiled these down into what I call the big four skills of an individual mind and that is, first of all is breath control.

I train people to control their breathing and there’s a real art to that and science to it. And then through that they develop more mental control, so I train people then to work with that mental control to develop, a greater awareness of their thoughts to understand where their cognitive mind is leading them astray through improper thinking or judging.

I give them mental models or mental tools to make better decisions. And I teach them a process to really [00:45:00] shift their mind into and keep it in a positive environment. Momentum kind of oriented fashion by, helping them understand how to use the future and in the past more effectively, but then to stay focused on the present action, a present action, which is going to get them to victory, but in a very deliberate way, a very deliberate step.

And so those, if I could just summarize those four, it’s breath control, it’s what I call positivity, it’s being able to visualize the win, the victory. In a positive manner and to maintain that, vision in your mind while you’re working toward it so that it has an energetic effect on your body.

And also to set micro goals, to know which goals to go after and then to go after the shortest possible variant of that so that you can just knock it down and then choose the next one and knock it down, choose the next one and knock it down. So in that way, halfway toward the target, you’ve already accomplished every single goal that you’ve put in front of yourself.

And your confidence has gone through the roof. You develop that, that cycle of commitment, [00:46:00] courage, competence, and confidence to such a level that you can’t fail. In fact, one of our sayings in the seals is failure is not an option. It’s because we follow this process where you literally, you fail your way to success until you just can’t fail anymore.

It’s like you’re saying, like a brace, the suck, like that’s, I like that concept. Cause that’s anything that’s learning. I’m learning to play golf and golf is a tough sport. You suck at the beginning. There’s no, it’s not take basketball. You can probably learn to shoot a basket on your first day.

Golf you’re atrociously bad for your first three to six months. So it’s something you just have to, and then I don’t get, yeah, exactly. Yeah, I like that concept. I think there’s also probably something to be said for just the overall kind of mindset where I think of luxury and like soft times make soft people kind of thing and with our modern lifestyle There’s almost like a curse of how convenient and easy it is to you don’t even have to move anymore to stay alive You could just sit you know, I mean like you can just order some pizza.

They get delivered into your mouth and You can [00:47:00] shit in some diapers and throw those away. It’s where I think some people will get Funny ideas about what should and shouldn’t be normal or what they should and shouldn’t have to do or experience or whatever You know what? You’re absolutely right and essentially my belief is the human Being thrives unchallenged and grows through challenge and if you don’t challenge yourself, then you’re not growing and you’re dying You know, you’re essentially backsliding and guess what the world is gonna challenge you anyways, right?

Because that’s just the nature of things So one of the concepts in the book is to you go to the challenge You don’t wait for the challenge to come to you. Yeah that, and by doing that you develop the mental toughness the resiliency And essentially those other challenges, they usually avoid you.

You know what I mean? It’s like there’s a big, there’s a big kind of register in the sky that says, Okay, Mark’s challenged himself and done it in an honorable fashion, so many times that, we’re not going to give him the cancer that was planned for him, he’s avoiding that one.

Let’s cross that one off the list if he gets weak, if he gets weak, right? Yeah, that’s [00:48:00] funny. Yeah all right, so you’re not only a best selling author and you’re also the founder of NavySEALS. com and us tackle what you’re talking about, which train spec op candidates, but you also are the creator of seal fit and you’ve talked about it a bit.

Is there anything else that you think we should know that the readers and the listeners should know about seal fit, how it works and is it like, for instance the super hardcore stuff, is that for anybody that wants to come try it or how does it work? How does the whole thing work?

Just like the seals, you just gotta start somewhere if you’re not already an elite athlete. If you’re already an elite athlete and you’re looking for a challenge, like if you’re the kind of person that would just go and run a Spartan race or a go ruck challenge, then the Kokoro camp, which is our 50 hour non stop Training is extraordinary and it’s not a camp.

We’re trying to attract people like we do have people quit You know, maybe 20 percent of every class but sure, you have to be fit The standards are on our website, but it’s really about developing the concept of teamwork a greater sense of what your potential is [00:49:00] and You know a an ability to tap into a reservoir of strength that you didn’t know you have so we think we have A saying that you meet yourself For the first time at that program.

It’s extraordinary, but a lot of people, and admittedly that they self assess Improperly sometimes but a lot of people just say I’m not ready for that. And where do you start? You know Over the past couple of years, I’ve developed the other end of the spectrum. Because so many people are like, I just can’t do that.

Yeah, it needs an on ramp of course. So yeah, so I wrote an on ramp program in my books and then 8 Weeks to Seal Fit and then the on ramp program in real life starts with either doing the program yourself and then coming to, we have a three day academy at Seal Fit called the Fundamentals Academies.

And it’s really, 75% Skills and 25% hard, hard work. So it’s really, I mean we had a 67-year-old guy go through it last weekend and he had an extraordinary time. Now he was pretty fit. But I’ve also had, 67-year-old woman with no cartilage in her knee go through it.[00:50:00] 

So it’s not meant to be like just for elite athletes. Now it’s scalable. So the elite athletes who go through this academy get their money’s worth, let’s put it that way. They’re super challenged. But that three day Academy is to learn the whole physical. And training model, and we train long days and sometimes into the night.

And it’s just a really cool program. It’s over a weekend. And the second one, like the next intermediate step is the 20X, which is a 12 hour event. It’s like a Kokoro light. And it’s 12 hours of non stop training. It’s super cool. Again, nobody should quit. I’ve only had one person quit. Ever.

He just didn’t know what he was getting himself into. But again, it’s not meant to be like the go ruck selection where, only one person is going to survive this. It’s really about teaching you through the team, through the experiences, through the training, and through the, the content and lectures.

And I always try to provide some level of the mental toughness training content in the class setting at all of these events, either myself or one of my coaches, so that, you understand the tools that I’m trying to get [00:51:00] across, and then we work with those tools, we drill them with you all day long, under load, under pressure, so that you can take those big four skills that I alluded to earlier, you take them home with you and start using them, and you should read some of our testimonials are extraordinary people breaking through and doing crazily cool things or major changes in their life because of those, just those four simple tools, they start to put into place in their life, so that’s it.

You start there and then you walk the talking or walk the path. And then There is a five day academy and also a three week academy, actually it’s 21 days for SOF candidates SOF candidates, Spec Ops candidates. And then we’re starting to create the What’s After Kokoro.

So we have a mentor program, we’re certifying people to be sealfoot mentors. And then we got a program. called turning steel, which is like the team experience, the tactical team experience where you do self defense and and shooting as a team and then, working as a team to, to, go through a kill house and then putting a whole mission together and executing a mission, and they’re very [00:52:00] small, 12 to 14 person classes.

Let me do those around the country. Just that’s a new program. We started last year. It’s really cool. That’s very cool. Yeah. But a bunch of cool stuff. I want to look into it. Yeah. And yeah. Hope to see you out here. Yeah. It sounds like it’d be a lot of fun. All of it. And I’m assuming still fit.

com is where people can find information on that. Absolutely. Still fit. com. Okay. Awesome. All one word. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Of course there’s Google, but Hey, we might as well give the URL. Is there anything else you’d like to say to listeners, sure, one of the things that I would say is that even though I just said that, anyone can do SEALFIT, what I’ve experienced is that there’s still a lot of resistance, people are like, wow, sounds good, but it’s just not for me, or women I’m not really, inspired by the military style training.

Yeah. The academy, two points, one, the academies are really a, Like a professional warrior athlete academy, it doesn’t have a military feel to it. You can see some of the videos on the website. And two is I created a program called Unbeatable Mind, and I also have a book by that title that’s self published, [00:53:00] which really is the entire philosophy of the integrated training and the five, development of all the five mountains.

And in the program, it’s a self study program. In that program, I introduce all the physical training and there’s physical, the eight weeks of seal fit stuff is in there and all the mental training tools, starting with the big four. And it’s a 12 month program. You can get out anytime you want, even the, just the first three months are extraordinary.

And that is called Unbeatable Mind, and unbeatablemind. com is the website. So if anyone’s sitting there going, I don’t know if it still fits Marie, but I’ve got a, there’s been a, about three or four thousand professionals, investment bankers, entrepreneurs, investors, executives athletes, warriors even, who have gone through or are part of Unbeatable Mind, and there’s a community around it.

Of mentally tough and resilient people who are trying to develop together. It’s just really cool. And it’s a big part of where I want to go in the future is to develop more, take this to a bigger, broader community because I think so many people could benefit from. The things that we teach about how [00:54:00] to, just how to think better and how to be more focused and more confident and courageous and to live by a real creed like the seals do where they’re just super clear about what they do and why they do it.

And and then step up to a higher level of awareness and consciousness where they’re sheepdogs and they’re starting to solve the world’s problems instead of being, reacting to them and being victims to them. So it’s my mission is to Influence a million people who influence a billion people and to help change the world because it’s go time I think you know, it’s really falling apart and we’re we it’s not gonna change until every freaking individual who can Steps up and starts to take responsibility.

Yeah, I totally agree. And I think it’s awesome unbeatable mind calm. You said right? Yeah I have that book on my wish list. He’ll check it out next So I see wait a bit. I’ve got that. I’m actually doing another Edition, which I hope to have published by the end of December. Oh, okay. Yeah, I’m doing the same thing.

I’m releasing second editions of two of my books, rushing to get it out for the December, [00:55:00] January. It’s cool to do that. The self, I tell people self publishing, I’ve got two published books, one with St. Martin’s Press. And one with Reader’s Digest. And the self published book, I’ve earned ten times as much money.

There’s no question the marketing of the other two books is exposing people, which is probably why, but the other thing about self publishing is you, it becomes a living document, and you can change it anytime you want. Absolutely, I’ve made multiple updates, just, because I get a lot of good feedback and suggestions and whatever, staying in touch with so many people.

Yeah, it’s funny. I had a couple big publishers wanting to do these books, but it’s just with how, with where things are at now for me, it just didn’t, it didn’t make sense. Even, they, one in particular was offering what is a really good deal. It’s a very unusual deal. But when I really sat down and looked at the numbers and even my agent was like, yeah, that deal just doesn’t make sense.

Yeah. Make sense as good as it is. And as unusual as it is, you’re probably just going to lose money over the course of the next five years. Then why do it then? I’ll just do it myself. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. [00:56:00] All right. Cool. Thanks a lot for taking the time, Mark. This was awesome. I know that my, the listeners are gonna resonate for sure.

This is a lot of stuff. I get asked about all these questions. That’s why I chose. So cool. Yeah, it’s been a lot of fun. Let me know if I can help out again. And it’s really nice to meet you. Yeah, you too. All right. We are. Hey, it’s Mike again. Hope you like the podcast. If you did go ahead and subscribe.

I put out new episodes every week or two where I talk about all kinds of things related to health and fitness and general wellness. Also head over to my website at www dot muscle for life. com where you’ll find not only past episodes of the podcast, but you’ll also find a bunch of different articles that I’ve written.

I release a new one almost every day. I release four to six new articles a week. And you can also find my books and everything else that I’m involved in over at musclefullife. com. Alright, thanks again. Bye.