Crush Your LIMITING BELIEFS: 3 Secrets Navy SEALs Use to UNLOCK Their FULL POTENTIAL

Lewis Howes
Welcome to this special masterclass. We've brought some of the top experts in the world to help you unlock the power of your life through this specific theme today. It's going to be powerful, so let's go ahead and dive in. Remember the thai cave rescue? What about the mission depicted in Black Hawk down?

Or the epic rescue shown in Captain Phillips? You've probably heard of all of these, but did you know that the US Air Force special warfare played a pivotal role in all of them? These airmen are the most highly trained warriors on the planet. Other forces, like the Seals and army Rangers, call on them to provide skills no one else can. Not many people make the cut.

If you think you can, visit airforce.com to learn more.

I don't know about you, but when. Around 03:00 p.m., hits, I find myself craving the right refreshment to get me through that mid afternoon slump. New pure leaf zero sugar sweet iced tea is full flavored sweet tea. But without the sugar in the calories. It might take several bottles for you to believe that a delicious sweet tea can really have zero sugar and zero calories.

But you know what they say, life is full of surprises. Or in this case, full of flavor. New pure leaf zero sugar sweet iced tea. Try it to believe it. For 20% off your next twelve pack, head to Amazon and use promo code 20 pure leaf.

That's promo code 20 p u r e l e a F for 20% off.

We've all been there. You have a question about your credit card. You call the number for help and can't get a hold of anyone. If you only had a discover card with twenty four seven us based live customer service from Discover, everyone has the option to talk to a real person anytime, day or night. Yep, you heard that right.

A real person. Get the customer service you deserve. With discover limitations apply. See termscover.com creditcard. It wasn't until I got real sick and I talked about in the last chapter of that book, I got real sick and I was about 38 years old.

David Goggins
I'm 43 now and my life got real quiet. I went from running 205 miles in 39 hours to couldn't get out of bed. The doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. But once again, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. Why is that?

In that moment where my whole life changed, I went from a guy who worked out every day, trained every day, to a guy who couldn't get out of bed. My life was taken from me. The one thing that kept me going was my training. Now, you didn't have that. I didn't have anything now.

Lewis Howes
You just had to sit alone, alone and not train. And that's what changed me. And that's when I realized I hadn't thought, hadn't taken time to think about what I'd done in my life. You hadn't reflected yet. I hadn't reflected.

David Goggins
I've done all these things, but there was no finish line. I still believe that, but you must have time to reflect. I was just going, I wouldn't even. I finished a race of life, and I wouldn't even receive my medal. I go on, you're like, on to the next.

I get in the car, and I. Go, you won't even take the medal. Gone. Don't care about it. Like, I'm not gonna waste an hour sitting around for this ceremony.

Most people sit around, and that's what they like. They. They need the ceremony. If I accomplish some validation, I haven't done anything. Let's go, let's go, let's go.

Lewis Howes
I'm just getting started. I'm just getting started. Right when I started figuring out life, that I was leaving so much in the tank, I caught my 40% rule. Yeah, I was leaving so much in the tank. Once I realized, my God, man, I was this dumb, fat kid being bullied, and now I'm 180 pound person, lost 106 pounds in less than three months.

David Goggins
Learn to read. Learn to do this, learn to do that. I was like, I need more. I was fueling my mind with everything, and I never took time to say, my God, you came from this, and you're here. So those insecurities, and this is how I explain it the best way.

Seal training became pretty hard, and a lot of guys weren't getting through it. So they designed a seal pep prep program. Like a boot camp for the bootcamp. That's right. And it was two months in my last two years before I retired from the military.

They sent me there to train these. Kids to get ready for 18, 1920 year olds. Yeah, young kids. So when they get to Navy SeAL training, man, they were physical studs. They were running, swimming.

I mean, they were hybrids. Wow. But they get to buds, and the same amount of people would quit. Why is that? This is why we were training bigger, stronger, faster quitters.

Lewis Howes
Hmm. It's not about. Not the mind. That's right. We weren't diving into the sewer.

David Goggins
Everybody's got a story. We don't share it on social media. We share our nice life on social media. We have we all have a dungeon. I'm just willing to talk about mine.

Most of us aren't willing to talk about it. I want to talk about my dungeon. I wasn't getting into the dungeon of these guys minds. I wasn't building that so called mental toughness. Mental toughness isn't something that you sample is something that you live in every day.

So when something hard would happen to these kids, like in hell week, it would draw on something that made them very insecure. And they look for comfort whenever hardness comes and you don't know what it is. It may be different for you than this for me, but you go back to your insecurities. And then when you go back to your insecurities, you then look for comfort within those insecurities. And we all look for that cookie that your mom used to give you when you were sad, when you were sick.

We look for our wife or our husband. We look for comfort. It's in those moments you must retrain your mind to think differently. I wasn't training them to do that. Why would you train?

I wasn't training myself because at that time I was doing what I was told. These guys need to meet a standard. Physical standard. A physical standard. The physical standard is not what they need to meet.

It's a mental standard you must meet in life. So going back to when I was sick, I was hitting the physical standards. I wasn't meeting the mental standard. The mental standard is you must know how far you've come. Wow.

I wasn't. I had come 8000 miles from where I started. But if you never know that, you're still in the seven dollar a month place. When I was sick, I was able to slow it down and reflect back on my entire life and in that bed. And I thought I was dying because that story is long.

That that sick portion of my life is long. I didn't care if I died or lived because I was, for the first time in my life, happy and at peace because I reflected back on where it started. You said, wow, I have come a long way. That's right. And no one saved me.

It wasn't like someone came down here and guided me through life. When you figure this out on your own, the amount of pride and dignity and self respect you have. That's why I walk around the streets with a backpack and just like, I don't need anything else. Yeah, you figure it out by going inside yourself, by callusing over the victim's mentality. You're always a victim, even if you have everything in life, until you realize what you've achieved, you have to first realize what you've achieved.

And my mom has accomplished so much in her life since my father, but she hasn't done that one step, really. She doesn't acknowledge it and reflect. She continues to go back to the. Dungeon of her past life and live in that space. Live in that space versus living the space that she's in now.

And reflecting back on, my God, this is what I've done with my life. So have you talked to her about this? We talk about it all the time. And you have to be willing to go there. You have to be willing to really go to not.

Not surface. I don't. I don't live on the surface of anything. Yeah. Surface is what got me Roza.

It got me from 175 pounds to 300 pounds, telling everybody I'm good. I don't. I don't give. I'm good. No, they're hollow words.

A lot of us speak in hollow words. I used to speak in hollow words. I don't do anymore. Everything that comes out of my mouth has substance, is real, and we all have these feelings in our bodies, in our minds, in our souls. I act on mine.

A lot of us who are afraid of something, we allow our minds to choose the path of least resistance. So we go a different route. I'm afraid of something that's telling me, you must do this thing, you must do that. You have to go that way. And most of us don't understand that mentality.

We go left, and we wonder why we haven't fulfilled something in our lives. It's because we continue to take the journey that is mapped out. And how I look at it is I talk in life like a lot of us in life want to take the four lane highway that has road maps and all this other stuff on it, man. Tells you where to go. Gas stations.

The next 10 miles up, you're going to see a McDonald's. A crackle barrel. Yeah, it's the easy route. Very few us want to go to the right side. That cracker barrels, that Midwest life.

That's right. That's right. It's all about it, man. Indiana cracker barrel everywhere. Dude.

Lewis Howes
That's amazing. Bringing back memories. This is powerful because I've been telling people this. I've been living that way unknowingly my whole life of, like, whatever the thing is I'm afraid of. When I was in high school, I started doing those things.

I was just like, I'm sick and tired of feeling afraid. So I need to do the things that scare me the most. You know, I've talked about this a lot on the podcast. Tiffany's heard me share these stories, but I was afraid to talk to girls when I was a teenager. I was afraid of dancing.

I was afraid of, like, singing and playing music in front of people. I was afraid of all these different things. And so I said, I'm going to do this. I'm going to give myself a challenge every single day until the fear goes away. And I feel like that's what more of us should be doing.

I'm hearing that that's what you. How you live your life. That's all it is, man. And it helps me feel so much more confident when you overcome that fear of saying, this doesn't have control over me anymore. It's like, you can be at so much more peace.

David Goggins
It's 100% in your life most of. Like, for instance, I never thought in my wildest dreams I could be a Navy Seal. It's until you opened your mind. Open mindedness creates that we all shut down our mind. Like, for instance, when I broke the pull up record, everybody around me who heard the pull up record was 4020 pull ups.

That's the first thing they did. Oh, my God. 4024 hours, or. Yes, it's 4020 pull ups in 24 hours, period. Yeah.

The first thing I did versus closing my mind, like, oh, my God, that's crazy. I went and got a penny and. Said, how many is that? Every minute, exactly. Every hour, every second.

Instead of taking life and making it out to be this grandiose thing, start breaking it down. Start breaking it down. And most of us, we live in a box, and we don't want to go outside that box at all, ever. Outside that box is all these possibilities of life. What we do is we shackle our mind.

We are a prisoner in our own mind that this is all I can do, this is all I'm good at. And we take away the possibilities of, you could be this, you could be that, you could be all these things. And I never thought at 300 pounds, I could be naked. Seal. Wow.

So if my mind was shackled me and you would never meet, there'd be no book, right? There'd be no book, right? There'd be nothing. So what people understand is that they live for themselves. Not knowing that you have the power within yourself to change millions of lives by facing life by facing yourself.

And through that, I would die never knowing that I had the power to change millions of lives. And what haunts me the most. People ask me, what haunts you the most. What haunts me the most is that if I would have died at 300 pounds, let's say I was 75 years old, I got to heaven, and God has a chart like that on everybody's life. God knows all.

Let's say that. I don't care what you believe in. Doesn't matter. I'm not judging anybody. Let's say my thing is God.

You get to heaven, I'm 300 pounds. I sit down, I was a cockroach terminator my whole life. And we're sitting down just like this. You're God and I'm David. And he gives me that chart and he says, look at this.

Now look at this chart. And on the chart, it has all these different things, but my name's on it. But these things aren't me. I was going to change the world. I was going to.

I was going to set records. I was going to be a Navy Seal. I was going to be all these things in the military that I accomplished. You can get the VFW award. You could be honored here.

Honored there. I'm like, God, I was. This isn't me. Like it says David Goggins. I was an ecolab guy.

I sprayed for cockroaches. And I'm 300 pounds. Instead of here, I'm 185. It says here I got a bachelor's and a master's. It says all these things and God goes, no, that's who you were supposed to be.

Lewis Howes
Wow. My biggest fear in life is if there is a final resting place in this world and there's a final judgment, and you talk to something much bigger than you. I don't want to sit down and have a conversation with someone with something that says, you're in heaven. This is what you should have been on earth. And are you really in heaven now?

David Goggins
Are you thinking about how much I left on a table for fear, for not willing to go over the wall and over the next wall? And over the next wall. So in my mind, I believe that and God knows all, at least I believe that. I want God to be up there right now, as we're speaking, writing stuff down, saying, my God, he exceeded even my expectations. That's how I live my life.

I now know that there is no cap on the human mind. There's no cap. We cap it ourselves. Wow. Is our cap on the human body?

That's right. Is there one?

I don't believe so. Because one thing I found out was I didn't for several years, I gave myself a way out. When you were 300 pounds or. No, I was 300 pounds. When I was all up till I was 24 years old, I would climb a mountain, I fall back down.

I start climbing, I fall back down. For the first 24 years of my life, I went to my first hell week, my second hell week, and then my third hell week came in seal training, and the CEO, Captain Bowen, looked at me. I'm on crutches, I'm all jacked up. He says, hey, this is your last time you're going to go through buds. This is it.

I had several stress fractures. I had double pneumonia. I was jacked up. And he gave me a few months to heal, and he said, this is your last time going through. I shouldn't even let you go back through.

Lewis Howes
Wow. I started Navy SeAL training with stress fractures. Stress fractures, not shin splints. That's hard to fix. Stretch fractures.

David Goggins
Starting the hardest training, arguably the hardest training in the world with stress fractures. And this is when I started to not put a cap on the body if the mind is there. Every morning I wake up at 330 in the morning, 04:00 in the morning, go to my dive cage, go in there before anybody saw me. I get duct tape, and I would tape from my forefoot all the way up to the mid of my calf, and I would put two black socks on. And so I ran, not using the pivot.

Lewis Howes
Oh, my gosh. And I ran my hip flexors. So for the first 45 minutes to an hour, I was in absolute excruciating pain. But what motivated me through that whole process was the fact that this kid came from that I'm in the hardest training in the world, in the worst shape of my entire life. What if I can graduate amongst these studs?

Wow. All these guys around me are studs. They're stallions. They're gladiators in my class, they're all healthy, most of them. They're not broken like this.

David Goggins
They may have some, you know, everybody's sick going through that training, but if I can graduate, it would change everything for me. If I can start the hardest training in the world broken and graduate. So my mind fed off of that. You are now from the weakest man. You are now the hardest man to ever live.

If you can do this, if you can do this. Life is one big mind game, and you're playing it with yourself. Is it true? I don't care. It got me through the hardest training, starting out broken, where most people quit.

I had just started. Wow. And when you take that mindset. And you learn to flip that around. That's what made me powerful.

And my body followed. And three months later, my stretch fractures. Were healed by running on them, calcifying. It, just like I never had them. Since 43 years old.

Lewis Howes
Wow. I ran 7000 miles in 2007, haven't had a stress fracture since. And I'm not saying to do that. I'm just saying that when the mind and the body connect and you didn't, and you don't give yourself a way out, the only way out for me at that time was death. Wow.

David Goggins
I'm going to be a Navy SeaL. Or I'm going to die, or I'm. Going to die trying. Yeah, period. And my body said, roger that, we're going to get you through this.

Lewis Howes
So when the mind gives it no way out, no way out, your body says, okay, okay, I believe you. Now I have to heal. I'm gonna figure this out with you. We're gonna do this. It's gonna be the worst part of your life, but you're gonna survive.

David Goggins
We're gonna survive. Wow. And as you hear in that hundred mile race I did, I started figuring out more and more and more and more about, at the other end of suffering is a life that no one, and I'm not talking about, go out there and kill yourself. Don't take these words and flip them and say, oh, my God. No, it could just be uncomfortable.

I caught suffering. Physically injure yourself? Yes. Not saying that. And then be out for six months.

That's right. That's no good. That's no good. I'm not saying. I'm not saying do what I did.

Lewis Howes
Yeah. I was in a spot. That life forced me. I had a choice. I had a choice to be this guy or the guy that's in front of you.

David Goggins
I had choices. I chose this path. And you're still choosing it. I'm still choosing it. You go back to that guy any moment.

Because I found out. I found out something with those stress fractures. I found out something through facing all these things. I found out a whole nother world, which is why I walk around with all my stuff in a black backpack. Wow.

I found it a whole nother way, a whole other way of no matter how far you get in life, you have to be able to go back to scratch in your mind at a moment's notice. You can never get so far beyond scratch. What that means is when you accomplish something in life, if you want to go back to scratch and go back to that seven dollar a month place, where I once lived and visit that place for a long period of time. If you were here when you went back to scratch, you would now be here. Scratch is what makes you better scratch.

Friction. Obstacles create growth. There's no friction. When you're this far up in the game anymore. You think there is.

That's right. When you cheat so much, the friction is minor because why? I'm sore. I'm gonna get a massage today. I'm hungry.

David Goggins
I'm gonna eat today. The refrigerator is always full, so your comforts are now. So your discomfort is now very minuscule to your discomfort back here in the seven dollar month place. So you have to go back to the total discomfort to then raise your level of where you're at now. I'm not saying stay there and stay there.

Lewis Howes
Visit it.

Jocko Willink
Probably the first dichotomy in leadership that I had to say to myself, you know what? There's another side to this, is I used to tell the young seal officers that you have to be aggressive. You got to be default aggressive. That's how you got to be. Because when something's going on, you got to be aggressive to make that get that problem solved.

And if you're not being aggressive, then you're hesitating. Well, then you can get killed. Okay? So there you go. And that's what I used to tell guys.

David Goggins
And as. That's extreme. That's an extreme. Yes. That's the problem with it.

Jocko Willink
And so the question is, can you be too aggressive? Yes, absolutely, you can. Hey, there's a machine gun nest over there. Let's attack it. So you charge up the hill, and everyone dies.

You've been too aggressive. So what you have to do is you have to be balanced. And that's probably so even as I had these kind of mantras, like default aggressive. Can you do too much of that? Yes, you can.

So you end up with this. What do you end up? Can you be too passive? Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

Well, now we're not making any progress. Now we're getting crushed by the enemy. Cause we didn't maneuver. Okay, so that's bad. So where do you want to be?

You want to be balanced? Even the idea of extreme ownership. Can you take too much ownership? Yes. Yes, you can.

Really? Yes, you can. But I thought you said you need to take ownership of everything. Two different things. Listen to this.

Jocko Willink
If you're working for me and I say, okay, here's the mission that I want you to accomplish tonight. Here's the people I want you to take. Here's the weapons I want you to bring. Here's the vehicles I want you to bring. Here's the route I want you to use to get to the target.

Here's the method I want you to use to secure the target. Here's the route I want you to do to get back. So that's the plan. Now you take ownership and go. Execute.

Now, can you really take ownership of. That plan if someone else gave you the whole thing? I mean, I gave you the whole thing, right? Is that your plan? No, no.

It's your plan. Yeah, it's my plan. So, when you go in the field and now you come up against an obstacle and you're executing my plan, what's your attitude? Well, it's not my plan. It's.

And you're at an obstacle now, and you're like, hey, Jocko didn't think of this, right? Right. So his point. So now you just back away, and you come back and you say, hey, we failed the mission because you didn't. Think of this option?

Lewis Howes
Yeah. Right. So that's me taking too much ownership. So what I need to do is I say, hey, here's the plan. Or, here's the mission.

Jocko Willink
How do you want to do it? And now, if you're a good leader, you'll go get with your people, and you'll say, oh, hey, guys, here's the plan. Or, here's the mission that we have to accomplish. How do you guys want to do it? Now, you all come up with a good plan, and you come back to me, and you say, here's the plan.

And I say, that looks pretty good. Go. Execute. And now, when you hit an obstacle in the field, what's your attitude? I need to adapt and adjust.

Lewis Howes
What's your plan? You'll make it. Came up with this? Yes. So, can you take too much ownership?

Jocko Willink
The answer is, yes, you can. So, with just about every. You can name a trait, right? You can name a trait from a leadership perspective that you think is a positive trait, and you'll immediately see that if you go too far with it, it'll become bad. It'll become bad.

So you have to be balanced. So, even as I came up with the dichotomy of leadership, I had to be humble enough to say to myself, you know what? Being aggressive is really, really good most of the time. But if you're too aggressive, that's not good. Yeah.

So, like you said earlier, you're constantly questioning everything, and to me, what that is, that's. That's humility. That's. You being humble enough to say, you know what, I really don't understand this that well. And there's some things in my life that I don't get, whereas as opposed to you walking around saying, I already got this figured out, I already know what I'm doing, I already know where I'm going, I already know what God is.

Specifically, I already know what's going to happen to me when I die, all those things. But instead you're questioning everything, which in my mind is a positive thing. Yeah, that's good to know. Is there anything that is missing in your life? Do you feel like something's missing?

One of my favorite parts about my job is that I get the opportunity to travel a lot. And in fact, I'm recording this right now while I'm in Mexico. And actually I was thinking about something that I wanted to share because I get a lot of questions from so many people about different side hustle ideas. So here's one for those of you out there that are on the go a lot like I am, or traveling a lot. When you're staying in your Airbnb on your trips, have you ever thought about how you could be making extra money by hosting through Airbnb while your home is vacant?

If you're interested in an extra stream of income, Airbnb hosting is an easy place to start. And it's like giving your home some company while you're away. Your home might be worth more than you think. Out how much@airbnb.com? Host welcome to Nadia Yada island.

This season on Nadia Yada island, when. We were new, they spoiled me. They even gave me a phone. But then it's like I didn't exist. Don't take yada yada from your wireless carrier.

Now with Metro, get that new customer feeling again and again. Introducing Metro Flex free 5g phones. When you join, same deals as new customers. When you stay only at Metro by T Mobile, just bring your number and id and sign up for an eligible plan. After twelve months, trade in and get our best deals on select devices.

Lewis Howes
When you get a new car or. A new home, your first reaction might be to say things like, oh yeah, or I can't believe it or booyah. But what you really want to say is the one thing that can get you the help you need, like a good neighbor. State Farm is there. State Farm is there.

With the coverage you need for your car, your home, and even boats, motorcycles, rvs and other things that matter to you. With a State farm agent, you know someone is there to help you choose the coverage you need. There's so many coverage options, it feels good knowing you can find what fits for you. And when you need ways to get help, state farm gives you options there too. In person or on the phone with your local agent, or on statefarm.com, where their award winning app, state farm, lets you do things your way.

So when you need help protecting the things that matter most, remember to say like a good neighbor, state farm is there.

Jocko Willink
No, I feel like I'm living a pretty good life right now. I mean, I'm totally blessed. I mean, I got a great family, I got great kids, I got a great company, I got working with great people. Yeah, no, healthy, healthy. You know, I get to work out, train.

I'm feeling good in the dream, man. Yeah, living the dream. So you never feel like there's something missing for you right now? If there is, you're working towards it, you're working on the next book, you're building the business. Yeah, well, there's a difference between something missing and am I satisfied?

Yeah, right. Cuz I'm not satisfied. I mean, I always want to go like, I never, I, I never get done with the end of the day and go, cool, mission accomplished. Like, it's like, gotta be close. Yeah.

Lewis Howes
Yeah. So you're not satisfied, but you feel like nothing's missing. Yeah. Yeah. I'd say that's a fair statement.

What brings you the most joy in your life and makes you smile the most? Oh, I mean, my kids. My kids are cool. They're funny, you know, my wife and kids, my wife and kids are cool and funny and we have a good time and lots of inside jokes and all that, you know. And I, and I trained jiu jitsu and that, that's very fun.

Jocko Willink
And surf. That's fun. Yeah. Play guitar. That's fun.

Lewis Howes
How old are your kids again? Age 20 1816 and ten. And what's the biggest lesson you learned about being about yourself? Being a father to them. Your kids are not going to be who you want them to be.

You can't train them to be. They're going to be who they are. And you can give them some course corrections a little bit, but they're going to be who they, who they are. And the more you try and force them into what you want them to be, the harder they're going to push back and rebel. Wow.

Jocko Willink
Yep. Did you learn that the hard way. Or did you get. So you tried to train them into a certain way or. Yeah, somewhat.

And it's pretty obvious, like from my perspective, I was having a similar conversation with a bunch of executives, and we went down the road because we're having dinner now, so we're done talking about work, but now everyone wants to ask me about parenting and everything else. And I said at the table, I'm like, hey, who here ended up doing exactly what their parents wanted them to do? And there's, like, one guy out of ten, right? Because most people, your parents are wanting you to do this thing, and you do something else. I mean, I joined the Navy when I was 18 years old.

Like, that's what probably wasn't even on the checklist of top 20 things that my parents wanted me to do. Not even in the same ballpark. Right. They didn't want you to go war. Yeah, they didn't want that.

So here you go. Yeah. See ya. That's. So the more you try and kind of pigeonhole your kids into being something that you want them to be, the worse off it's gonna be.

It's the same thing with leadership. It's the same thing with leadership. If I'm. If I'm trying to force my plan down my team's throat, the more resistance I'm going to get from it. Whereas if I plant the seed and I allow that plan to grow with them, the better it's going to be received.

Like, when people ask me, how do you get people to buy in? Well, you. You allow them to come up with. Come up with a plan yourself. What if?

Lewis Howes
What if in your mind, you're like, you really know that plan is not that good? It depends on how bad it is. How bad is it? Or what's at stake? If you're.

Jocko Willink
If you're working for me and you're going to meet with a client and you have a bad pitch that you're going to give them, and the client is some tiny client that I think is a low probability of us working with, and the contract doesn't really matter. I'd be like, hey, hey, give it a shot. Here's a couple. I might give you a couple adjustments and give you some coaching on it, and then you go and you do your thing, and you come back and you're like, oh, no, we didn't land it. And I say, well, what do you think?

Let's debrief. And now we talk about it and say, you know, you said this and you said that, here's some other ways to go about it. I might even actually have you do it to me. So then I could sit there and take some notes and say, hey, here's some other things that might have worked. Now, if you were going to meet with a big client that really was going to have value to our company, I'm going to either step in.

Yeah, I'm going to step in and be like, okay, let's think about that. What's their reaction going to be? And by the way, that's when I'm not going to say, no, don't do it that way. I'm going to say, give me that. Tell me that again and let me give you some objections that you might hear from them.

And all of a sudden I'll let you come up with a solution. Even though I'm sitting there going, yeah, what he needs to say is this, no, I'll let you come up with a solution. So then you're kind of going in there like you got this dialed and then you're gonna feel like you won, which you did. That's great. Which is great.

Lewis Howes
It gives you more ownership, more respect in yourself, competence, belief. How important is feedback for leaders? Getting feedback from peers, coaches or employees, team members? Feedback is how you get better. No feedback, no improvement.

Jocko Willink
So if, and if you're not humble, you're not looking for feedback and you're not listening to it. So if you think you know everything, you're not listening. You're definitely not asking for it. Even when it gets told to you, you don't, you don't listen to it. Yeah.

So feedback is, is built upon being humble. What would you say is in your way to getting to the next level? What feedback do you think you need to hear or receive from your team or people in order to reach the next goals that you have? I mean, the weird thing about me is, even though you might think, look at me and think, oh, who's gonna tell this guy anything, right? The reality is, if anyone of my friends, my team, anyone that works for me up and down the chain of command, if they think I'm wrong, everyone will say, hey, I don't know if that's a good plan.

So even, you know, when I was a task unit commander in, so I'm in charge and I'm the head seal for this, 40 seals, I'm the main guy. Anyone in that chain of command, those guys would all come to me and say, hey, I don't know if this is a good way to do it. And you know what I'd say, why not? What do you think? What are you thinking?

How do you think we should do it? My mind is open. If my plan is bad, please tell me they would know that. So my friends, my family, they'll tell me when I'm doing something wrong all day long. They're not intimidated or scared of you?

No. That's good. No. So how does a leader cultivate that with his family, friends, team in order to welcome the feedback of the information? Yeah.

What you do is when somebody gives you feedback, you listen to it. This is like, you know, just the other day, we have a. We have a leadership event that we do two or three times a year. But the thing that I was telling this group of people was, as a leader, you should be listening 98% of the time and talking 2% of the time. So every time you come to me and you say, hey, jaco, I don't like this plan.

I don't say, shut up and do it my way, I say, how would you want to do it? Tell me what you don't like about it, and then tell me how you want to do it. So therefore, the next time you have an objection, you're like, you know, the door's open. You know that I'm going to be open minded and listen to you, and that's how you build it. Every time you shut someone down from listen, from.

From speaking their mind, you actually are creating a negative environment where you're not going to get the feedback. And if there's no feedback, as we just said, you're not going to improve. What are two things that any leader could do to improve their leadership skills right off the bat? Two things you can think of, and what are two things that wannabe leaders do that hold them back from being great leaders? So what are two things they could add?

Yeah. Towards two things. Number one is listen, which we just talked about, so that's fresh on my mind. And you'd be surprised about how many leaders are thinking that because they're in a leadership position, they should be talking all the time. Wrong answer.

Wrong answer. I'll sit through a meeting with a client or with one of my companies, and I'll listen for 38 minutes. And at the end of those 38 minutes, I'll have already thought through every discussion that's been had. You want to argue with him, and he's arguing with her. And guess what?

I get to sit there and assess those arguments and see which one is the most important. Meanwhile, you're expending all your ammunition. She's expending all her ammunition. He's giving up everything he's got. I'm learning all their thought patterns.

I'm learning the pros and cons of each one of their arguments, and I do that for 38 minutes, and in the 39th minute, I say, hey, here's what I think we should do. And guess what. Because I've done an accurate assessment and listened, I'm actually going to be able to make the best decision. It wasn't because I was smarter. It wasn't because I had better tactical understanding.

It's because I actually shut my mouth, listened to everyone spill their guts, learned everything that they knew, and did a good, detached assessment of what the right thing to do was. So listen. And the other one is the word that I just used, which is detach, which is not getting emotional, not getting into the weeds about stuff that doesn't matter. If you can take a step back and look around, you're going to see infinitely more than you can when you're in the weeds, staring the firefight in the face, looking down the sights of your weapon, shooting. If you're doing that, you can't see anything else.

Just think about that metaphor right there. If I'm looking down the sights of my weapon and I'm shooting, my world is this big. The minute that I stop shooting, point my weapon at Highport, take a step back, and actually look around, I can see infinitely more. So apply that to a meet. This is the meeting that we just talked about, a 38 minutes meeting.

All this chaos is happening. Sure, I'm a boss. I could jump in there and start arguing and giving my opinion. But what am I really doing then? What I'm really doing then is I'm in the weeds, and I'm not able to assess what is actually happening.

So there. You apply it there to your personal life. If you and I are arguing, you're my friend, and you did something, and now we're starting to escalate an argument, and I'm starting to get emotional. Am I able to listen to you anymore? Am I able to logically figure out what's going on?

If I'm talking to my wife and she did something that made me mad, and now I'm starting to raise my voice, is that whole situation going in the right direction? No. No, it's not. It's not. So what I need to do is take a step back, detach, calm down, listen to what she's saying, and then try and assemble a logical thing to say back without.

Without saying, you need to calm down or you're too emotional. No, no, no. Because if you come to me and you're mad, about something, you come to me, whether it's. Whether it's my wife or whether you're a business partner, you come to me and you say, the dang. The supply department didn't give me the stuff I needed.

If I say, hey, calm down, right? If that's my reaction, then you realize that I'm against you. Right? I don't get it. And so now it's me and the supply department against you.

Lewis Howes
No one understands. No one understands. So I do a little technique. What is that? Yeah.

Jocko Willink
I call. I call it reflect and diminish. So I'm gonna reflect your emotions back to you, but I'm gonna diminish them a little bit so that we're not escalating the situation. How would you do this with your wife? So if you.

Well, if you come to me and you go, the supply department's been late for. They're two weeks late on this stuff. I don't say, calm down. I say. I say, oh, you gotta be kidding me.

Two weeks? And you go, yeah. Can you believe it? Ah, that's horrible. We gotta put a solution.

We gotta get that figured out. In the meantime, what do we need to do right now to get the problem solved? Right? So we already. Now we're on the same team, so we can work together to find.

Lewis Howes
We bonded on the pain. Yes. You felt the pain. Yes. We're on the same team.

Jocko Willink
Okay. My wife. What's gonna make my wife mad? The ice machine's not working, right? The ice machine is not working.

Lewis Howes
It's your fault. Whether it's my fault, but we don't know. The ice machine is not working. By the way, this is a real story. This is happening today.

Jocko Willink
The ice machine is not working. She didn't get mad about it, but the ice machine's not working. If I go, hey, chill out, you have a refrigerator and a house. And she just calmed down. Right?

How's that gonna go? It's not gonna go good. Now she's gonna get mad. Now it's me against her, you know? So instead the ice machine's not working.

Ah, man, that thing is junk. Have you called the repair guy? You know what I mean? And then all of a sudden, we're on the same team, and she's like, well, no, I haven't, but I'm about to. Okay, cool.

As opposed to the ice machine's not working well, okay. Do you want me to have ice shipped in from Alaska there? Princess.

Lewis Howes
What would you say were the strategies of the seals in accomplishing your goals at the highest level. What are some of the things that you guys did strategy wise? Like, that happens? Structure and discipline. So muscle memory would be the biggest one, which is now many of the things that I teach in both overcome and in my poor man for life program.

And it was something that I was missing. I felt like I was missing when I left the military. And I think a lot of military members feel the same way. The SEAL teams are incredibly effective at what we do for a lot of reasons. One of the reasons is selection, and that selection is there's a lot of things you have to do to qualify just to get the SeaL training.

A lot of people don't realize how smart seals have to be, be. So there's a level of intelligence, there's a level of physical ability, there's a level of, obviously, resiliency that has to come into this. And then we put everybody through this meat grinder called seal training that eliminates anybody that doesn't have that ability. And then once we get, you know, once you get to the SEAL team, it's how we train and build teams, and it's forged through tremendous adversity, because our training, even once you get to a team, is designed to be very hard. I mean, some people would say almost sadistic in the way we would train.

We would look for what is the absolute worst case scenario we can think of, and then how do we amplify that just a little more to make. It even more, to make it even. Worse, and then train from that, and then train from that. And it was grueling and painful. And sometimes we got guys killed in training.

I mean, you try to reduce the level of risk, but we also recognize that in order to be ready for combat, we have to train at the highest level. So, and in order to do that, it was a lot of repetition, and crawl, walk, run was the mentality. And it was not these big goals of, hey, I'm going to take down this entire town, like, you know, right off the bat, because that's really complicated. That starts to get into all kinds of very complicated things. It was, how do I take down a single room and we walk as we flow through it?

And then that became, well, how do I take two rooms? How do I take three rooms? How do I take a house? How do I take a compound of three houses? How do I take a village?

So it was a crawl, walk, run mentality all the time, and then structure and discipline. And the way we trained, everything was built up that way from shooting. Oftentimes, I was a marksmanship instructor, and I've trained some other people to shoot, and they're always. They're a little funny, because the very first thing to do when I train anybody to shoot is you shoot at the, you know, at the three yard line, a little black dot, and we're shooting at the three yard line, and they're like, hey, man, this is stupid. I'm like, no, you're not.

You're learning in the repetition that you need to effectively pull your weapon out and get a positive sight picture, trigger squeeze, release that round, second sight picture, and follow through so that we can do that over and over and over again until, you know, at whatever point, you know, you're shooting from 5100 yards or more. Yeah. So all of that comes together to create small victories and repetition, structure, and discipline that all come together to be successful. How does someone create that for themselves when they're not in the military? So that's.

Lewis Howes
Or not on the sports team. When I left, so what I began to realize so overcome when I wrote the trident, which was my first book, it was just the story. It's a story. It's my story of a young punk kid who did well enough to become an officer or a leader and then totally failed because of ego and arrogance, got a second chance and then redeemed himself and then got wounded and kind of realized there was another level of leadership. And when people would read that, people would say, how'd you do that?

And I couldn't definitively answer that question. So overcome became. I mean, it took. Overcome came out in, I think, five years after I wrote the trident, because it took that long to kind of think about what enabled that. And a lot of that had to do with when I got out of the military.

I missed that structure and discipline. I missed. You know, a lot of people don't understand that the military is sometimes a really simple existence, especially when you're deployed, like, when you're in the combat zone. It's a very simple existence. You.

You eat, sleep, sleep. You work out, and then you train and conduct missions, and you worry about the guys around you. And the real world's really complicated. There's all these distractions. There's no one that gives you the guidance.

No one hands you a mission and says, hey, man, this is what you're doing today. You got to figure out your own mission. Exactly. And as I got out, I realized that I had to figure out my own mission, and all these things were not there. So I started with, okay, so how was I successful coming out of these injuries.

Cause that's what everybody wanted to see. How were you so positive? How'd you write that sign on the door? How'd you, you know, less than a year and a half after your injuries, launch a nonprofit. How did you later create your own speaking company and all these things?

And I realized that I was super balanced as a leader when I was wounded. When you were wounded? When I was wounded, I wasn't prior to being wounded, really, not when I had the leadership failure. And at other points in crisis in my life, I realized I wasn't as balanced. I think I saw one of your videos recently talking about, like, the key to successful leadership is balance.

It is. I believe it. But balance is a misnomer, too, because it's not like, well, I put 20% in this bucket. In this bucket, in this bucket. I teach something called the Pentagon and peak performance.

So five key areas that a leader should be balanced in. The foundational level is physical leadership. And it's something that I've come to find that all of us, as we get older, have a tendency to let slide. We do the opposite of probably what. We should be doing harder.

Lewis Howes
Yeah. Because as we get older, we're breaking down. We need to take care of ourselves better than we do when we're younger. Where your body's so much more resilient. And that's why I tell people, as a leader, you need a lot of energy.

You need to be able to think clearly. You need sound mind and everything that you're doing. So that foundational level of physical leadership is critical to what you're doing. And that consists of sleep, nutrition, and fitness. So those three components.

Range Rover sport leads by example. Picture this. Assertive on road performance meets commanding all terrain capability. That's the third generation Range Rover Sport, which is the most desirable, advanced, and dynamically capable yet. This vehicle redefines sporting luxury, offering an instinctive drive with engaging on road dynamics and effortless composure.

Now available in sleek new stealth pack carpathian gray exterior, wrapped in satin protective film with black accents and black brake calipers. Inside the Range Rover Sport, advanced cabin technologies like active noise cancellation and cabin air purification offer new levels of comfort and refinement. And let's not forget about the award winning Pivi Pro infotainment system. Enjoy a dynamic drive in total comfort with optional 22 way adjustable, heated and ventilated electric memory front seats with massage function. Wow.

That's like a spa day. While on the go. Design your Range Rover sport at Land roverusa.com dot. Some people like to deep clean every Saturday morning. I prefer to spend a few minutes every day keeping things fresh.

With Lysol's a brand new day. All purpose cleaner cleans and kills 99.9% of viruses and bacteria on hard, non porous surfaces around your home with a fragrance that feels like a tropical getaway for your senses.

Don't just clean, Lysol clean.

And my physical leadership saved my life when I was wounded. Now, for most people, hopefully, you're never at that level, but in some ways, right now, you look at today, but for the most part, you know, it is individuals who are not healthy that are having the greatest problems and those with a stronger immune system seem to be doing better. And it's like that with other diseases, right? So once again, physical leadership, to have the energy and the ability, we manage stress better. So that's the foundational level.

Number two was mental leadership. And when I became a junior officer and I was super arrogant, I really thought I knew everything. And I didn't challenge my beliefs, I didn't question my own capabilities. Do as I say, not as I do. I didn't do things to get out of my comfort zone.

Those are the things that make up mental constantly educating ourselves, constantly challenging our beliefs. We're in a day and age where it's dangerous, in my opinion, because social media feeds you the information that you like to see. And so many people don't go seek out, they don't challenge that belief system of what they're being fed. So it only furthers their belief and things that may or may not be true. But because you keep clicking on that line of thought, you're being fed all that information, the news is no different.

The media people watch what they like to see, and it's very biased in this day and age. So mental leadership is constantly challenging your beliefs. It's doing your due diligence to find out what's really true and how does it play into who I am and what I'm trying to do. It's getting outside of your comfort zone. It's finding the individuals who are where you want to be and identifying them as mentors so you can be better, so that you're not surrounding yourself with individuals who are pulling you away from where you want to go.

Number three, and this is the biggest one and my weakest point, and that's something I found about the Pentagon. Most people have one area that they're super strong, naturally, and then they have an area where they're super weak. And my weakest area was emotional leadership. And emotional leadership is our ability to maintain as a leader, it's critical to be even keeled. We're not too hot, we're not too cold, we're not too excited, we're not too angry, because people can count on you with that consistency.

They know as a leader, I can come to you and tell you bad news and you're going to take it well, and I can come to tell you amazing news, and you're not going to burn it down drinking and be an idiot. You got to ride that balance.

And I really struggle with that because I was an emotional rollercoaster when I was younger, and I came to realize that that really damaged my credibility as a leader. And it's also choosing that positivity in the face of negativity. Nobody wants that leader that is just an emotional train wreck or a negative nelly. They want that leader who they can count on that's positive. That's going to push you forward.

They also don't want that leader. That's something I call a leadership wrecking ball, a leader who. They're all about the result, but they leave a path of destruction behind them. They'll crush you in their path to get things done. And that, in my opinion, is weak emotional leadership.

Also, as a leader, we got to think about the others, the health of others. Yes.

Well, the last part of emotional leadership is managing our mouths. Because our mouth. Our mouth, yes. Yeah. Because so many people.

Lewis Howes
So true. So many people. And I was guilty of this, and I'm not impervious to this. Like I said, this is my weakest area. But I'm really aware of myself now, because when we let that zinger fly, 90% of the time, it doesn't do anything to further what we're trying to accomplish as a leader.

All it does is massages our ego, you know? Well, I was angry in the moment, so I wanted to say this. I see this in relationships all the time, husband and wife. That let these zingers fly does nothing to further that situation in a positive way. No.

That's part of being a leader also, right. That people are going to disagree with you. So what, you know, if you have conviction in who you are, it's just going to happen. I mean, in this world. Yeah.

Lewis Howes
Another Navy SEAL that I had on, Chad Wright, said, your tongue is like a rudder in a boat. It's like whatever you speak, like, it's going to start guiding you in that direction or influencing you in certain directions in your life. So make sure you really use your words correctly based on where you want to go. Kind of back to the no negativity. If you're negative, it's going to affect you and take you down a negative path in your life.

Feeling that way, emotionally, you're going to attract native people. So, you know, you made that decision in that moment to speak differently, use words differently, which I think was powerful. Yeah. Okay, so that was three. Number four, social leadership.

Social leadership. How do we build the rings of influence around us? So when I break that down into four rings of influence, the outermost ring is our work relationships. The innermost ring is, a lot of times our work acquaintances, friends. The third ring is our close friends.

And then that bullseye is our immediate family. And in western culture, there's a tendency to put a whole lot of time and effort into the two outermost rings, our work relationships and our work friends and acquaintances. And we have a tendency to take for granted our close friends and our family, and we think they'll always be there for us. But when a major crisis comes, when you're on the x, that may or may not be true, because that's when everything is being pressure tested. And if you haven't put the time and effort into your immediate family, then oftentimes it will break.

And Jimmy Hatch, a friend of mine, described it like this. We all ride on trains in this life. I rode on the seal train, you rode on the football train. And we never know. All of us hope that someday we'll get to wherever we want to get off.

For some of us, it's the end of the tracks, where others, a specific stop they want to get off on. But sometimes there's a catastrophic event that occurs in our life and we get thrown off the train. And those outermost rings don't get off with you because they're still on the train. And it's not that they don't like you or anything like that. They're just still riding the football train or the seal training.

You're no longer on it. But who gets off with you is your close friends and family. And so often I have watched individuals that get into a major crisis, and you also know so many successful people that have been super successful but got to the end of their career or even the end of their lives and said, why didn't I put more time into my family? That's true. So social leadership is making sure that we are investing in those relationships to be ready.

The key question I ask everybody is, will you be ready? For what? It doesn't matter. Will you be ready for that moment when it comes, because we don't know what that moment is. So that balance enables us to be ready for almost anything.

Having a mindset of the next ambush is out on the horizon. If I maintain balance, if I have a leadership mindset of being ready for it, I'll be ready for it. No matter what it is. No matter what it is. It doesn't mean it's going to hurt less, but at least I'll be ready for it to drive forward.

But it takes those things. That's why I was so successful when I got wounded. I was balanced in those areas. The last one is spiritual leadership. And for me, faith played a part of that.

But for others, I tell them it's our ability to get outside of ourselves and have perspective in this life that what you're going through. We all live in our own personal hell when we're in a crisis. But spiritual leadership enables us to recognize that there are a whole lot of other people out there that are going through much worse than you are. And if you can do things to get outside of yourself and recognize there's a great big world out there, that what you're going through is temporary, even though it's painful, super painful, you will get to the other side and be able to get beyond it. And what I talk about is that if you're alive, man, it's a gift.

Yes, it's a gift. And it may be hard, it may be tough, but it's still a good day. And it's up to you to drive forward and get off that act. So I have a motto, no bad days. Yeah.

You know, because I'm still here. That's right, man. No bad days. What do you think is the skills that we should learn to master more, to help us reach at the top of our field or our industry, or to set us up to be prepared when that ambush comes. So we stay ready.

Lewis Howes
We don't have to get ready. So it comes, in my opinion, it comes back to four key things, which I call the point man principle. Point man principles. Last year, I wrote a planner called the point man planner, and it came about because I got really sick.

And while I was really sick, trying to, they were trying to figure out what was wrong with me. I had a parasite and a blood disorder that attacked my central nervous system. And I was super messed up. I thought I was dying, to be honest. And at one point, I was like, man, I wish I had a point man.

Like, when I was in the Seal teams to lead me out of some of these bad situations, and it made me think, well, why? What made them so effective? And when we were talking about what makes the seals effective, like, it became really clear to me that a really good point, man. A lot of seals live their life in this way, and there's four principles, and I think this is how anybody out there can be effective and bring their game to the highest level. Number one, relentless belief in your mission.

And there's a lot of people who don't know what their mission is. They've never written it down. They've never defined it. And if you write down your mission, it's got to be built on the foundation of your values. And there's a lot of people that don't know what their values are.

They'll tell you cliche things. They'll say, faith, family, finance, fitness. But when you hear those things, you're like, dude, you haven't been in church in two years. Yeah, I'm in a gym. I haven't seen you in a gym this year.

You know, we just throw these things out there and understanding, because whether you know what your values are, not. Know what your values are or not. They are driving you, and they're driving your decision making. Right. So if one of your values maybe is fame or recognition, that's okay.

You should be aware of it. Doesn't mean it's a negative thing, unless, you know, you're stabbing somebody else in the back to do get it. But knowing that is important, because now you can build your mission in this life upon it. And because my mission now, now that I'm out of the SEAL teams, it's about setting that example. As a leader, I want people to regard me as a point man for my own life, someone that they want to learn from, someone, you know, that is a leader, that sets the example, that communicates well.

So that has become my new mission. Number two is a clearly defined destination and a set course. So, in the military, we always knew exactly where we were going. And in life, people often don't. In life, people say, well, I want to be rich, or, I want to be in better shape.

Well, those are not clearly defined things. It's kind of like saying, I want to go west if I needed to go someplace, you know? So, a clearly defined destination. In the military, we use something called the universal transfer transverse mercator system. It's a grid system that covers the entire earth, and it breaks it down.

Lewis Howes
Into a exact point. Exactly. A 1 meter square, almost size table. Yep. And the whole world well, all the way, the north and south poles become an issue.

Yeah, sure, but, yeah, all the way almost to the north and south Poles. Yes. Where most of the people live. Yes, exactly. So when we identify a target, target, it's broken down, usually all the way to that ten digit grid, meaning a one by 1 meter square.

That's crazy. So a very clearly defined destination, and that enables us to not have any deviation. And we're not going west. We know exactly where we're going. And then the second part of it is a clearly defined course, and that course is a bearing on how we get there or how we follow our compass to get there.

Most people may have one, but they don't have the other. And you can't get to where you're going without having both. They may have the destination, but not know the how to get there. That's right. Because the course becomes the how to, it becomes our waypoints.

Like, I give the example of when I wanted to be a seal as a kid. I knew that was my destination. That was a very clearly defined destination, and the course was all the things that I had to do. So I had to enlist in the navy. I had to get accepted.

I had to get a seal contract. I had to physically pass the seal screening test. I had to academically pass the Asvab score with a high enough score to get picked up for seals. I had to get a seal rating. I had to graduate from my a school.

I had to get the seal training. I had to make it through seal training. I had to make it through hell weekend. All these things were waypoints on the course. So if people can break their goals down in this manner, and I break them down in the point man planner quarterly.

And then every day we make sure I do something called the rule of three p's. One physical, one personal, one professional, every day we're moving the needle just a little bit towards those goals. That's how we stay on course. Right, number four, or, I'm sorry, number three of the point man principle is risk assessment and situational awareness. So many people walk through life totally blind when we talk about, will you be ready?

They're not ready for the ambushes that are coming. And oftentimes they never see them coming, even though the signs were there. So one, are we regularly doing risk assessments of where we are in our life? Are we still balanced? Are we still taking care of ourselves?

You know, both in the Pentagon of peak performance, are we making sure that our destination is front sight focus, that we're on course that we're hitting the waypoints we should. So we're consistently doing a risk assessment. We're also looking for the indicators that an ambush is on the horizon and so many people don't. So then they walk into these ambushes and they're like, oh, my God, I never saw that coming. Okay, and number four, so it's risk assessment and situational awareness, right?

David Goggins
Yep. And the fourth one is an overcome mindset to get off the x as quickly as possible. Overcome mindset? Yeah. So you can't.

You can't prevent every ambush. Most, I estimate that most people in this life will go through five, at a minimum. Five major life ambushes. And I define a major life ambush as anything that will forever leave physical, mental, emotional, or deep financial scars and you'll never fully recover from it, you know, or let me rephrase that. You will always carry the pain of that ambush.

You will always look back and you will think, God, that was painful. It hurts when we think about it. And I tell people that on the lower end of the scale, it can be the ending of a relationship. It can be the ending of a marriage, job, personal failure, professional failure, lawsuit, bankruptcy, the failure of a business. It can be life threatening illness or injury.

Life threatening illness or injury to someone you love. It can be sexual trauma to you or someone you love. And then at the higher ends, it starts to get into the loss of a loved one or one of the highest I've seen is the loss of a child. Oh, man. Yeah, that's tough.

So having a mindset of readiness and knowing that, unfortunately, those things could happen. And I teach something called the react methodology. So it's a system to use when these ambushes come. What's that system? So react is an acronym for when an ambush comes, the very first thing we have to do is recognize that we are in a crisis, and it goes back to what we were talking about in the beginning.

When you're on the x, there's a natural tendency to procrastinate and deny and look at the past or the future or. It's hard to recognize. Yeah, it's usually the hardest, and depending on the level of ambush, and I want to make sure that people understand, if you lose a child, timeline is relative. I don't expect you to, you know, it's going to take time to get off the axe from losing a child, but also recognizing that you're already thinking, I can't lay here forever, like I have to at some point. Get up.

Yeah, exactly. So, number one, recognizing you're in a crisis, or recognizing the reality is what I say. Number two is evaluate your assets. So when we are hit by a life ambush, by any kind of crisis or catastrophic event, it's natural to feel totally overwhelmed in the moment, because your world has just come to a grinding halt for whatever it is. It's like you suddenly stepped into a raging storm.

You're in the darkness. You're trying to figure out what's happening in this chaos with the wind howling and lightning and thunder and people beating on you, and it's overwhelming. And we tend to think there's no hope. There's nothing I can do. It's all outside of my control.

But we have to, in that moment, figure out how we control what we can. And one of the first things we can do is evaluate what assets do I have to bring to bear to this problem? I also talk about. It's like tools in our toolbox. So what can I either buy, borrow, use that I already have?

If it's a business crisis, it may be an accountant or an attorney, or it may be advisors or a board, or maybe whoever that's helping you to get out of this crisis. Maybe outsourcing someone that has specialties that deal with whatever problem you're in. If it's a personal crisis, maybe it's a relationship crisis. So it could be a marriage counselor, a priest, or whatever it is. Having those things, though, makes you suddenly say, okay, this is crisis, but I can deal with it.

Number three is assess possible options and outcomes, and what usually tends to happen when we go. The slowest part is a, recognizing, b, starting to gather. Hey, I have tools, or what's in my inventory to deal with this. And then there tends to be this tendency, if you will, to suddenly rush, like, oh, my God, this sucks. I want to get off the x, and I have these tools, so let me use these to get out of here as quickly as possible.

Lewis Howes
Okay. And. And I tell people, you got to slow down. You got to take a tactical pause. In the military, we called it let the battlefield develop.

Hmm. And look at all the outcomes. Yeah. All the outcomes. And also, maybe there are things that are happening that you haven't seen yet behind the scenes.

Yeah. So, getting your team together, whoever is helping you, whoever's part of this inventory, this is where we now assess both the short term and the long term impact of the decisions that we're going to make. Make. Okay. And the c, choose and communicate.

So you choose the direction you're going to go, and you communicate. It to the people around you.

You're never on the x by yourself. The X has its own gravitational pull, any kind of life ambush. So if you are in a, if it's a personal ambush, your family, your kids, your friends get pulled on the x with you, it's a business ambush. Your team, your team, believe it or not, even your clients can get pulled. That's true.

So it's important that we choose and then communicate. Because frequently as a leader, especially when we're in a crisis, sometimes we want to internalize and we don't want to. Even though everybody around us can see, you're in a storm, man, you're on the earth. But it's important to communicate for three different reasons. Number one, when we communicate, we verbalize what we're going to do.

And there's a level, and there's that lead yourself level of internal accountability. When we say we're going to do something now, it's like, yes, this is what I'm doing. Number two, it tells others and they're like, oh my God, yes, we have a plan. This sucks. Let's go.

And that third component of that is hope. It gives people hope. It's like a positive direction. Yes, we have a plan. This is where we're going.

And then the last one is take action. Execute on that plan. There are so many people who will go through this process and then they're waiting for the perfect moment. And the perfect moment's never going to come. The time to act is now.

You know, imperfect action is better than waiting for this perfect plan. Exactly. And it creates momentum. It gets you off that x and you may go from one x to the next, and that happens sometimes, but use that momentum to keep going. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness.

Lewis Howes
Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our greatness plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you.

And it helps us figure out how. We can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you of no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.

David Goggins
If you think Taco Bell is only for late night, you are mistaken. Taco Bell's also for daytime, which is why it's introducing the new cantina chicken menu with new cantina chicken tacos, burrito and quesadilla, and new ingredients like seasoned slow roasted chicken, freshly prepared pico de gallo, shredded purple cabbage and even a new avocado verde salsa packet. It's the taco Bell for when it's not late night. Whoa. Not just late night.

Try the new cantina chicken menu now. The participating us taco Bell locations was. Applied as last contact soap for participation. Wix fares when your space has the long lasting, noticeable scent of Arawic vibrant essential mist, you'll want to invite everyone over from book club to reality tv, watch parties, even the in laws. It smells amazing.

Arwick vibrant essential mist is infused with two times more essential oil versus regular Arwick essential mist for our most authentic, nature inspired fragrance experience. Arwick vibrant essential mist is perfectly portable and effortlessly easy, the way fragrance should be. Now that's a breath of fresh airwick.

Crush Your LIMITING BELIEFS: 3 Secrets Navy SEALs Use to UNLOCK Their FULL POTENTIAL

Primary Topic

Episode Summary

Main Takeaways

Episode Chapters

1: Introduction

2: Goggins' Personal Journey

3: Building Mental Toughness

4: The Role of Reflection

5: Conclusion

Actionable Advice

About This Episode

People

Companies

Books

Guest Name(s):

Content Warnings:

Transcript