The Most Inspiring Story About Mindset & Perseverance You'll Ever Hear EP 1359

Nick Lavery, born and raised in Massachusetts, is an active-duty member of The United States Army Special Forces. Commonly known as the Green Berets, the Special Forces perform critical missions including direct action, counterinsurgency, foreign internal defense, special reconnaissance, and unconventional warfare. In 2013, on Nick's second combat rotation to Afghanistan, he and his Detachment fell victim to an insider attack ultimately resulting in the loss of his leg. Following a year of surgeries and initial recovery including the use of a prosthetic at Walter Reed National Medical Military Center, he returned to his unit. Refusing a military medical retirement, Nick set his sights on returning to operational status. In 2015, at the conclusion of a challenging, comprehensive assessment designed to evaluate Nick's abilities to operate, he returned to his Detachment and was subsequently deployed once again to Afghanistan conducting full spectrum combat operations. Nick is considered the first Special Forces operator to return to combat as an above-the-knee amputee. Nick is currently serving as a Special Forces Warrant Officer and Assistant Detachment Commander and is widely recognized as an experienced subject matter expert in special operations, intelligence fusion, and mission planning and execution across all operational continuums. He is also the first amputee in military history to complete the Special Forces Warrant Officer Technical and Tactical Certification course, the Special Operations Combatives Program Instructor course, and the Combat Diver Qualification course. Nick's awards include the Silver Star, three Purple Hearts, two Bronze Stars, Bronze Star with “V” for valor, Defense Meritorious Service Medal, two Meritorious Service Medals, Joint Service Commendation Medal, Joint Service Achievement Medal, two Army Commendation Medals, Army Achievement Medal, the OSS Society Peter Ortiz Award, the Bruce Price Leadership Award, and the Special Operations Command Excalibur Award. Nick is a warrior, leader, athlete, student, author and most importantly a husband and father of two young boys. Check out Nick’s book, Objective Secure: The Battle-Tested Guide to Goal Achievement, here! In this episode you will learn:The steps it takes to become a great leader. Why gratitude is your greatest tool to overcoming adversity. The significance of having a meaningful mission for your life. Methods you can implement to achieve any goal. For more, go to lewishowes.com/1359 Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Nick Lavery?

  Human beings are not creatures of logic, we're creatures of emotion, as Dale Carnegie puts it. You are not going to be emotionless. Like, you're not a robot, you're not a machine, you're a human being. A warrior is one that can recognize.

• 0:15Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:39Lewis Howes?

  Why would you want to go back into combat after losing your leg?

• 0:44Nick Lavery?

  That's a great question, man. It's layered. I'll say, kind of on the cusp of that is, I'm stubborn, I'm competitive. As much as I enjoy winning, I really hate losing. More so, and there's a difference, as you know.

• 1:01Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 1:02Nick Lavery?

  So, the idea of my future being dictated by anyone or anything other than me was something that just didn't sit well with me, laying in the hospital, you know. Taking it a little bit deeper is

• 1:17Nick Lavery?

  passion and purpose. Two terms that get thrown around a lot, different interpretations perhaps from individual. I'll say that I have recognized the passion I have, not for

• 1:32Nick Lavery?

  being a Green Beret, but for earning my Green Beret every single day. Like, a love of the game, a passion of the game. And then, a deep sense of purpose. You know, like, what is your why? Like, answering that question. What is your soul pulling you towards? A deep connection with this lifestyle, and having realized that I was put on this earth to be a warrior, and to pledge allegiance to a society in which I'll protect at all costs.

• 2:04Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 2:05Nick Lavery?

  So, I know that that's who I am. So, it really didn't give me an alternative option.

• 2:11Lewis Howes?

  Sure. And how many, how long does it take usually to become, to enter in the Green Beret? And to be in that community? And how many members are there, active Green Beret?

• 2:22Nick Lavery?

  The process can take usually somewhere between 12 and 18 months of training to be able to do that. For the Special Forces aspect of that in particular. That really doesn't include basic training, airborne school, some of these other qualifications you have to have. Prior to, yes sir.

• 2:42Lewis Howes?

  So it might take a couple of years first, and then 12 to 18 months after all the basic training and the certification?

• 2:47Nick Lavery?

  Right. Once you go into selection, Special Forces Assessment and Selection, which is now about a 20-day process to determine if an individual has the physical and psychological and character traits that could make a good Green Beret. From that point moving forward, it's about 12 to 18 months.

• 3:06Lewis Howes?

  And how many current members are there?

• 3:09Nick Lavery?

  Current members? Oh man, I'd have to...

• 3:11Lewis Howes?

  What's the range?

• 3:12Nick Lavery?

  Yeah, I'd say that...

• 3:13Lewis Howes?

  Thousands, is it tens of thousands, is it hundreds?

• 3:16Nick Lavery?

  No, no, no. We're probably talking somewhere around 8,000.

• 3:20Lewis Howes?

  8,000?

• 3:21Nick Lavery?

  Yeah, 7 to 8.

• 3:22Lewis Howes?

  7, 8,000?

• 3:23Nick Lavery?

  Don't quote me on that. It's an extraordinarily small number compared to the overall...

• 3:29Lewis Howes?

  How many are in total active military? What's like the...

• 3:33Nick Lavery?

  In the entire Department of Defense military? Around 2 million?

• 3:37Lewis Howes?

  2 million, so 7,000 roughly out of 2 million.

• 3:40Nick Lavery?

  Somewhere around there, yeah.

• 3:41Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 3:42Nick Lavery?

  Yeah, we make up, it's like point, like 0.7%.

• 3:46Lewis Howes?

  Wow, inspiring. And what does it take to sustain it and stay in that, you know, community? Do you have to hit certain benchmarks every year to be a part of it? Or can people drop off?

• 3:58Nick Lavery?

  Yeah, I mean, it is possible for individuals to come into Special Forces as a Green Beret and then leave or go somewhere else for a reason. It's extraordinarily rare for that to happen. And then our career progression model is based off of our, you know, our performance, our annual evaluations. Really just like any other soldier.

• 4:18Lewis Howes?

  Wow. And what is it, what is required of Green Beret? What is, what is put upon you that's different than everyone else in the military?

• 4:27Nick Lavery?

  Yeah, it's a good question, man. So the Army Special Forces, we specialize in unconventional warfare. That's our primary mission. And there's a lot that goes into what that means. It's a sexy term. There's a lot that goes into that. To break it down in more simple terms, we are teachers, we're complex problem solvers, we're advisors, and we're force multipliers. That term means that you can take a 12-man SF ODA, which stands for Special Forces Operational Detachment Alpha. You can take a Special Forces ODA, put them anywhere in the world, under any circumstances, and we will create a much larger fighting force. Hence the term force multiplier.

• 5:11Nick Lavery?

  So, we all have to have a certain working knowledge and level of expertise in foreign language, geopolitics, regional dynamics, culture, right? So it goes beyond the cool guy stuff, the jumping out of planes and kicking down doors and shooting bad guys in the face, which we all enjoy doing. It's, you have to have a high degree of maturity, intelligence, trustworthiness, because we're a self-sufficient element that is designed to get dropped off somewhere and thrive on their own. Not just unilaterally, meaning just us doing things ourselves, but with other human beings. You don't really send a Green Beret or an SF team somewhere to do something by themselves.

• 5:53Nick Lavery?

  We have other aspects of the military and special operations that are designed to conduct missions themselves. You send us someplace because you need a larger fighting force, but you don't want to risk putting in additional Americans.

• 6:08Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. So you would go and join another group to support making it bigger? You wouldn't go alone and just take over and do a mission by yourselves, is that right?

• 6:17Nick Lavery?

  That would be extraordinarily rare for us to do something by ourselves. And the degree in which we have to find, train, advise, lead our partnered force can change from area to area and dynamic to dynamic. There are situations where we have to literally find these humans from the very beginning. There are other scenarios where that's already been, that's already been done before, and we come in and we just take ownership of this group of people that's already been established and vetted and trained to a degree, and then we take them and run with them to conduct our missions.

• 6:51Lewis Howes?

  What would you say are your top three skills as an individual in the military? That you've developed, trained, and mastered personally, individually?

• 7:03Nick Lavery?

  For myself, top three skills. Communication comes to mind really fast, both verbally and written. If, if you're unsuccessful or unable to do that, it's going to be really difficult to accomplish anything, especially as a Green Beret. We live in the relationship business. We live in the relationship and the rapport business. So if you're unable to communicate with another human being, that's mission failure. So communication is certainly there. Complex problem solving, um, I would say most Green Berets are somewhat natural or have at least a bit of talent in that. Being able to look at a problem and then kind of rapidly assess current situation, desired end state, what resources do I have available?

• 7:47Nick Lavery?

  Uh, but learning the methodologies and philosophies and tools that they teach us to be able to do that faster and at a higher rate is something that I would put on that list as well. And then I'll, I'll close it off by saying what's probably most important, that's leadership. And whether you're talking internal or if we're conducting an evaluation of a potential militia group that we want to work alongside of, one of if not the first things we look at is what does their leadership dynamic look like? Cause that will make or destroy any organization. So it wasn't until I was in the military, almost embarrassingly, kind of a far along my military career, that I realized that leadership is very much a skill.

• 8:32Nick Lavery?

  Whereas my preconceived notion was that it was a, a talent, it was a gift.

• 8:37Lewis Howes?

  Like you either had it or you didn't, you were born with it.

• 8:39Nick Lavery?

  Exactly. Some of you were born with it or you weren't. You're either born charismatic, social, outgoing, but it's very much a skill, just like shooting free throws. To get good at that, you have to do it a whole bunch.

• 8:52Lewis Howes?

  What does it take to be a great leader? And, uh, who is a leader that taught you? Either by example or by communicating those, those, those skills that you need to acquire?

• 9:03Nick Lavery?

  Yeah, I think to be, to be able to train on it first requires knowledge. Which can be, you know, received via reading or interacting with another solid leader. In fact, even interacting with a horrible leader, you oftentimes learn more.

• 9:19Lewis Howes?

  What not to do.

• 9:20Nick Lavery?

  What not to do. Those are phenomenal lessons. Uh, but then being very deliberate about how you employ that day to day. It's not just gonna happen on its own. You're not just gonna automatically start shooting free throws. You have to walk to the free throw line, think about what you're doing and actually do it. So just being very specific about going into your day, knowing I'm gonna exercise and practice on these aspects of leadership throughout my day, week, month, etc.

• 9:46Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:47Nick Lavery?

  The first resource I stumbled upon when I recognized that leadership was a skill and one that I needed work in was Jaco Willink, someone we were just talking about offline. Um, I found him, I read a lot of his stuff, and then I began consuming, uh, John Maxwell as well.

• 10:05Lewis Howes?

  He's great.

• 10:06Nick Lavery?

  Right? So kinda looking at those models, those would be my, kinda my one-two punch where, you know, Jaco's very blunt and direct and at the tactical level, and it's very simple, which I love. He doesn't overcomplicate things. John's work tends to get a little bit more conceptual at times and at a larger scale where it's a full-blown philosophy as well. So I've leveraged, uh, the lessons by those two guys who I consider mentors, and I keep just visual cues of some of their stuff around me throughout the day, just as a reminder.

• 10:38Lewis Howes?

  What are the, the, the three key attributes you see of the best leaders in the military? What do they do? How do they show up differently than average leaders?

• 10:48Nick Lavery?

  I'll steal Jaco's, uh, word, which is ownership, um, or accountability is absolutely essential. Um, you know, everything that, that goes well is because the team made it go well. Everything that goes wrong is because you failed as a leader.

• 11:06Lewis Howes?

  Mmm.

• 11:06Nick Lavery?

  And just owning that. I think is essential. Providing consistent value. I think is a real simple way in to describe. How to go about being a leader and I really like those three particular words. Cause you're saying provide, meaning you're giving yourself to someone or a group of people. You are really of service to those that you lead. Right? You work for them. You are providing consistent. Which means if you just do it for a day, it's not gonna matter. You have to live this. Do live this. Provide consistent and then value. If I'm either making you as an individual better day to day. Uh, making myself better day to day, making the organization better day to day and providing value.

• 11:50Nick Lavery?

  To those that I serve in the organization in which we represent. So provide consistent value. Um, and then lastly, I'll say, man is. I said value, I'll just say values. And having a solid degree of self-awareness on our own values for one. And then knowing that others are likely going to be different. And. One of the most critical. Components to successfully influencing someone else is knowing their values. And. That may not be the same for you, but it's about them. What do they see to be important? And that typically happens through dialogue and asking a lot of questions.

• 12:34Nick Lavery?

  Rather than coming in and saying, I'm a leader, which means I need to tell you what to do. It's like. That sounds more like a boss to me. Leadership means you, you, you get a sense of those in which you are attempting to influence. Therefore lead. To be able to know their strengths, weaknesses, values. And how you can provide them that to guide everyone in the same direction.

• 12:57Lewis Howes?

  I like that. That's powerful. Let's talk about the story of, of, you know, what happened to you with your leg.

• 13:03Nick Lavery?

  Let's do it.

• 13:03Lewis Howes?

  When was it? What was happening? What can you share about it? And when did you know you were going to lose your leg?

• 13:12Nick Lavery?

  So this was in March of 2013. We were on the back end of a six-month deployment in Afghanistan. So we were set to leave in a couple of weeks. And this was actually the third time I was wounded in combat on that one deployment. You mentioned three Purple Hearts. Those were all earned on the same deployment.

• 13:29Lewis Howes?

  So you got hurt twice before?

• 13:30Nick Lavery?

  Twice before.

• 13:31Lewis Howes?

  In that deployment and you stayed and kept fighting?

• 13:34Nick Lavery?

  Yeah.

• 13:34Lewis Howes?

  Holy cow.

• 13:35Nick Lavery?

  Yeah. First time I took some shrapnel, some grenade shrapnel to the back of my shoulder.

• 13:39Lewis Howes?

  Just, well, you just dusted off? It just?

• 13:43Nick Lavery?

  Yeah, I mean, it blew about a lemon-sized hole.

• 13:45Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 13:46Nick Lavery?

  Required some treatment.

• 13:48Lewis Howes?

  What does that feel like when you get a grenade shrapnel in your back?

• 13:52Nick Lavery?

  Like someone hit you with a sledgehammer.

• 13:54Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 13:55Nick Lavery?

  It's not like a penetrating feeling. It's more of just impact.

• 13:58Lewis Howes?

  Just boom.

• 14:00Nick Lavery?

  Yeah, just boom. Hear the boom, feel the impact, look back, and there's a massive hole in the back of my shoulder.

• 14:07Lewis Howes?

  Come on.

• 14:08Nick Lavery?

  Yeah.

• 14:10Lewis Howes?

  Holy cow. Now, are you wearing like, you know, protection or it just goes right through it?

• 14:16Nick Lavery?

  No, it just, it went around it, yeah.

• 14:18Lewis Howes?

  So it hit the shoulder, not like the backpack?

• 14:20Nick Lavery?

  Right. So what were, what were armor plates that covers our front and our back? Sometimes if we're doing what we're supposed to do, we wear side plates.

• 14:27Lewis Howes?

  But it's heavy and it's kind of uncomfortable, right? So you're like, eh, let's take off the side.

• 14:31Nick Lavery?

  Not advised. A lot of us do it.

• 14:32Lewis Howes?

  Holy cow.

• 14:33Nick Lavery?

  But the shoulders tend to stay pretty much exposed.

• 14:36Lewis Howes?

  So you took some, you probably took some of the back, but it blocked it?

• 14:40Nick Lavery?

  Possibly.

• 14:40Lewis Howes?

  Maybe, but then it hit here?

• 14:42Nick Lavery?

  Yeah.

• 14:42Lewis Howes?

  And you saw just a big?

• 14:44Nick Lavery?

  Yeah, one massive hole and then some smaller ones as well. There's actually still some shrapnel that they left in my shoulder.

• 14:49Lewis Howes?

  Come on.

• 14:50Nick Lavery?

  Because they just, it was less intrusive to go in and take it out. So I'll set off metal detectors.

• 14:55Lewis Howes?

  My gosh. So the hole, what, how do they, do they sew it back on or the skin's gone or what?

• 15:01Nick Lavery?

  No, it's a good question because in order to treat something like that, you can't sew it shut because it will leave an open cavity, which is prone for infection.

• 15:08Lewis Howes?

  Ah, gotcha.

• 15:09Nick Lavery?

  So they pack it with this antiseptic gauze about three or four times a day.

• 15:13Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 15:14Nick Lavery?

  So it gradually closes from the inside out.

• 15:17Lewis Howes?

  It kind of grows back and flattens or whatever, right?

• 15:19Nick Lavery?

  Yeah.

• 15:20Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 15:20Nick Lavery?

  Yeah, so I did get medically evacuated to one of the Lajja bases after that happened. Hours after I was actually wounded. We got the situation under control. We ended up back at our camp. My medic took a look at it and he's like, yeah, let's get you in front of a doctor just to be safe. I got sent out. Um, but after about a week, I was, I was back with the team.

• 15:41Lewis Howes?

  It heals up.

• 15:42Nick Lavery?

  Heals up.

• 15:43Lewis Howes?

  Enough.

• 15:43Nick Lavery?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, I was, it was still healing when I was back to conduct the missions. I'd, I'd bleed through my gauze.

• 15:49Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure.

• 15:49Nick Lavery?

  But it was, it really wasn't that big of a deal.

• 15:52Lewis Howes?

  Okay, so that was the first time. The second time?

• 15:53Nick Lavery?

  First time, second time was about a month later. Um, I took an AK-47 around to the face.

• 15:59Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh, dude, that's intense.

• 16:01Nick Lavery?

  Which, yeah, it, it sounds a lot worse than it really was, man. I got really lucky. It just grazed.

• 16:06Lewis Howes?

  Okay, just a little, did it hit the ear or did it just?

• 16:08Nick Lavery?

  No, it just grazed right here.

• 16:10Lewis Howes?

  I see the line there, yeah.

• 16:11Nick Lavery?

  Yeah, and.

• 16:12Lewis Howes?

  So it didn't hit the ear?

• 16:13Nick Lavery?

  It did not.

• 16:14Lewis Howes?

  It just kinda like went above it or something, or?

• 16:16Nick Lavery?

  Yeah.

• 16:17Lewis Howes?

  Holy cow, cause I could've taken the ear off.

• 16:19Nick Lavery?

  Could've taken the ear off, could've taken my cheek off.

• 16:21Lewis Howes?

  So it was right here, I see the scar.

• 16:23Nick Lavery?

  Yeah.

• 16:24Lewis Howes?

  I mean, a half an inch over, it goes through your head.

• 16:26Nick Lavery?

  Yeah, and I'm probably dead.

• 16:28Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 16:28Nick Lavery?

  So real lucky. Um, and the timeline was relatively the same. I mean, it did clip an artery, so I did lose quite a bit of blood, but this was in the event where six of my friends were badly wounded in a IED that had decimated their vehicle. So, I went out, eventually got treatment. There happened to be a plastic surgeon who was a army reservist who was deployed, who was there who treated me, which is why it looks as.

• 16:55Lewis Howes?

  You look great.

• 16:56Nick Lavery?

  Good as it does, right?

• 16:57Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 16:57Nick Lavery?

  Um, I was, again, I was out, out of the fight maybe four or five days, and then I was back.

• 17:01Lewis Howes?

  My gosh.

• 17:02Nick Lavery?

  With the guys.

• 17:03Lewis Howes?

  So this is back to back within a month.

• 17:05Nick Lavery?

  Yeah, months, six weeks.

• 17:07Lewis Howes?

  Two injuries.

• 17:08Nick Lavery?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 17:10Lewis Howes?

  Okay, and then, and then when did the leg happen?

• 17:14Nick Lavery?

  And then a few months later, again, tail end of the trip, was, uh, was when the third time I was wounded happened, and we were about to go on a mission, and, uh, we had a bunch of different units, Afghan units, we were working with that particular day.

• 17:28Lewis Howes?

  Local units?

• 17:30Nick Lavery?

  Yeah, Afghan National Army, we had Afghan National Police. Our dedicated partner force, like we talked about, was an Afghan Special Operations Commando Unit that lived with us. But depending on the mission, sometimes we would go with much a bigger package. We would bring in some of these conventional forces. And this day was one of those, and, uh, one of the Afghan National Police Officers, as we were finishing our mission brief, all just kind of outside in a big group. He jumped up on the back of a Ford Ranger that had a truck-mounted, belt-fed machine gun, and he opened fire into us.

• 18:07Lewis Howes?

  Wait, who was this?

• 18:09Nick Lavery?

  This was an Afghan National Police Officer that we were working with. So he turned on us.

• 18:13Lewis Howes?

  Why?

• 18:15Nick Lavery?

  It's a fair question, man, and this is an important part of really the process, but the Taliban at the time had discovered a really successful tactic. And they would walk into the home of an individual who had access to us and say, here's the deal. We're either going to brutalize your entire family

• 18:34Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 18:35Nick Lavery?

  And then slaughter them in front of you and then kill you. Or you go do this for us.

• 18:40Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 18:41Nick Lavery?

  You're dead either way. But if you do this, not only will we spare your family, but we'll make sure they're taken care of for the rest of their lives. And what makes this tactic successful is they actually followed through on that. So those family members are actually taken care of.

• 18:55Lewis Howes?

  They'll hear about this from other family members taken care of.

• 18:58Nick Lavery?

  Exactly. So it builds up the credibility of this tactic.

• 19:02Lewis Howes?

  So you die right now or you go do this and you die.

• 19:06Nick Lavery?

  And they kill you, but your family will be okay.

• 19:08Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh. But you've been, you've been building rapport with this person for, you know, a year or months, right?

• 19:15Nick Lavery?

  Yeah, I actually taught him how to use the machine gun.

• 19:18Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 19:19Nick Lavery?

  That he shot us with.

• 19:21Lewis Howes?

  Holy cow.

• 19:22Nick Lavery?

  Which is added to the frustration of it.

• 19:28Lewis Howes?

  So how many, I mean, how many people did he injure that day?

• 19:31Nick Lavery?

  Twelve Americans, three of which were killed.

• 19:33Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 19:34Nick Lavery?

  And then another eight or so Afghans.

• 19:38Lewis Howes?

  That he killed also.

• 19:39Nick Lavery?

  Yep.

• 19:39Lewis Howes?

  Holy cow.

• 19:40Nick Lavery?

  So it's considered the most catastrophic insider attack that we've, that we know of since nine 11. If not prior to that.

• 19:50Lewis Howes?

  That one event?

• 19:51Nick Lavery?

  Yeah.

• 19:52Lewis Howes?

  Holy cow.

• 19:55Lewis Howes?

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• 20:39Lewis Howes?

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• 21:16Lewis Howes?

  So how many bullets did you take?

• 21:19Nick Lavery?

  It'd be around four or five to my right leg. I took one to my lower left leg.

• 21:27Nick Lavery?

  My scrotum was lacerated by either a round or from some debris. But most of the damage was to my right leg and that was really obvious. And once I realized that my femoral artery had been cut, which I could tell that the amount of volume of blood that I was losing.

• 21:43Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 21:43Nick Lavery?

  Just pumping out a river.

• 21:45Lewis Howes?

  Oh.

• 21:46Nick Lavery?

  I knew I had maybe eight or so minutes.

• 21:48Lewis Howes?

  To live.

• 21:49Nick Lavery?

  To live unless I got that pinched off completely, which is really tough to do without doing it internally. Like tourniquets, especially on a really meaty thigh. It's really tough to get enough pressure on that externally to truly pinch off that bleed. Although I did put a tourniquet on myself and then I put a second tourniquet on myself. And then one of my teammates got to me and I remember trying to fight him off of me to go work on someone else. Because I knew I was dying.

• 22:23Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 22:24Nick Lavery?

  I knew I was dying. There was no question in my mind, like this is where it's gonna end. You're doing a poor job of triage right now because there are others that are down that have a higher probability of survivability. And you're wasting moments on me. So I'm trying to get my boy Jason off of me and he's ignoring me and he puts on a third tourniquet. He gets some IV access for some blood or for meds or whatever may have to happen. And then, you know, we said our goodbye for the last time. And he went off to, he had a lot of work to do. So I'm laying there, I got three tourniquets on my leg and my femur is completely shattered. So I pick, I grab my leg and I pick it up and I can still see blood seeping out.

• 23:09Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 23:10Nick Lavery?

  And my leg looks like hammed meat at this point. It looked like a shock had gotten a hold of it. Exposed bone and tissue. It's just a mess. And I'm still leaking and I'm like, alright man, time is getting really low. Have I done everything I can do? And the answer was I hadn't. So I grabbed some gauze out of my kit. Ball it up into what we call a power ball, which really just gives gauze a little bit of density. I loosen up one of the tourniquets and I just ram this up into my thigh. And I'm kind of reaching up towards my pelvis, towards my hip.

• 23:43Lewis Howes?

  In the bone area, in the...

• 23:45Nick Lavery?

  Inside the leg, right? So I'm in one of the wounds.

• 23:49Lewis Howes?

  Oh my god. But is, is the shock so intense that the adrenaline's taking over that you're not feeling the pain?

• 23:55Nick Lavery?

  Here's where I felt the pain, yeah.

• 23:56Lewis Howes?

  Now you're like, oh, it's in the nerve.

• 23:58Nick Lavery?

  This was the first time, because I'm scraping past shattered femur and now I'm on the verge of going unconscious. Because the pain is like surging through my face. And I'm just saying, man, you know, stay awake, focus, you can find it. So I'm trying to find the femoral artery. Which, we do these types of things in training. I've never done it on myself. And I realized that when you're losing that much blood... Your blood shunts inwards from your extremities to try to protect your organs for as long as possible. So I'm dealing with these kind of meatnuts.

• 24:31Lewis Howes?

  Oh, yeah.

• 24:32Nick Lavery?

  No dexterity, numb.

• 24:33Lewis Howes?

  It's like the blood's rushing down this way.

• 24:36Nick Lavery?

  Right.

• 24:36Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's not.

• 24:38Nick Lavery?

  I can't really feel much, um, but I think I feel a pulse. I just kind of go for it. I ram down as hard as I can. I feed the rest of the gauze in on top of it. I resecure the tourniquet on top of that. And then I blacked out. And I just happened to get extraordinarily lucky because I nailed the femoral artery. And I know this because I was on the ground for 90 minutes before I could get on a helicopter.

• 25:04Lewis Howes?

  Another 90 minutes. So if you wanted to put it in there, there's no way you survive.

• 25:08Nick Lavery?

  No way. No, no, no. No shot. And the reason why it took 90 minutes is because when this guy cracked off that gun on us, that was the initiation of a complex ambush.

• 25:18Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 25:18Nick Lavery?

  So enemy fighters were all around our position. They began firing rockets and machine gun.

• 25:23Lewis Howes?

  How did you not get like blown, you know, even more? Did someone kill, uh, the person that turned against you quickly or?

• 25:31Nick Lavery?

  Yeah. One of my teammates took him out in probably eight or nine seconds.

• 25:36Lewis Howes?

  But he had done the damage from the machine guns.

• 25:39Nick Lavery?

  Yeah.

• 25:39Lewis Howes?

  And so you're on the ground doing this. He's dead.

• 25:42Nick Lavery?

  He's dead.

• 25:42Lewis Howes?

  He's gone. So you're not getting shot at at least. You can kind of like, you're not also having to blow, you know, defend yourself.

• 25:49Nick Lavery?

  No, I mean, we were being engaged from outside of our perimeter.

• 25:53Lewis Howes?

  But not in there.

• 25:54Nick Lavery?

  But I wasn't receiving effective, accurate fires.

• 25:57Lewis Howes?

  Yes, yes.

• 25:58Nick Lavery?

  So while I was working on myself.

• 25:59Lewis Howes?

  You can hear stuff in the distance, but it's not shooting next to you.

• 26:02Nick Lavery?

  Correct. So the rest of the guys were dealing with the fight outside of our compound.

• 26:09Nick Lavery?

  Which is why it took 90 minutes for the medevac bird to be able to land because they're not going to risk the bird.

• 26:13Lewis Howes?

  No.

• 26:14Nick Lavery?

  Which they can't. So eventually my guys got that situation under control. Medevac bird comes down. I'm on the first lift, me and two of my teammates. I'm in desperate need of blood. We get medevac'd out and they really, they had two options. One was to send us to Bagram, which is where we had one of our biggest military bases in Afghanistan. Has a full-scale hospital, which looks just like a hospital you'd see in the States. Every resource you could think of. But it was a faster flight. So they flew us to an outstation that had what we refer to as a forward surgical team, or an FST, which is kind of a hodgepodge of different medical personnel that work in a more austere environment.

• 26:54Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 26:55Nick Lavery?

  Plenty of capability, just it's not a hospital, but it was a faster flight.

• 26:58Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 26:59Nick Lavery?

  So they went with speed versus level of care, which makes a lot of sense. They pulled the three of us off that bird, right into the clinic, and hooked us up on blood transfusions, me and my teammate, because we both were desperate for it. Well, within a couple of minutes, I begin to completely crash. And they are assuming it's because of how much trauma my body had been through for now approaching almost two hours. They're like, okay, we need to get this dude to Bagram, like immediately.

• 27:29Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 27:30Nick Lavery?

  So they throw me back on a helicopter.

• 27:31Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 27:32Nick Lavery?

  And I'm now flying to Bagram, which is like a nine-minute flight. And it's while I'm on the flight that they go to change out the blood of my teammate and they realize that they're giving him O positive, which is my blood type. They had given me his blood type.

• 27:48Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 27:49Nick Lavery?

  Which is AB negative, which is extremely specific. So that was the result of me...

• 27:58Lewis Howes?

  Going to shock or shutting down?

• 27:59Nick Lavery?

  Everything shut down, yeah. So liver, kidneys, my lungs, everything was dying because I was being pumped full of an incompatible blood type. My teammate was fine because O positive is a universal donor. You can give blood to anybody. So he's okay, but they realize what happened. They check what they gave me and they're like, oh no. They call Bagram Hospital, I'm still airborne, and they say, hey man, we just pumped Nick full of like eight units of incompatible blood type. There's no way he survives the flight to you guys. So just be prepared to receive his body when he gets there. And... You know, a lot of ways they were right because I totally coded the flight, the med,

• 28:42Nick Lavery?

  the med crew on that flight were getting real creative with ways to try to keep me alive. Panels, direct shots of adrenaline.

• 28:51Lewis Howes?

  Give another minute, give another minute, what can we do to keep the heartbeat going, keep him alive, right?

• 28:57Nick Lavery?

  Yeah.

• 28:58Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 28:59Nick Lavery?

  Yeah, so I get to the bar room.

• 29:00Lewis Howes?

  I guess at that point, it's like you gotta do whatever it takes, you know, to keep someone alive.

• 29:03Nick Lavery?

  Yeah.

• 29:04Lewis Howes?

  Whatever's available, whatever tool you've got.

• 29:06Nick Lavery?

  Yeah, man, and they got some pretty amazing capabilities on what they could do, and they're willing to take enormous risks that...

• 29:12Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, they have to, right?

• 29:14Nick Lavery?

  Right, because why not?

• 29:15Lewis Howes?

  Otherwise, you got two minutes left, or five minutes left, maybe.

• 29:17Nick Lavery?

  Sure.

• 29:18Lewis Howes?

  Wow, so you get to the hospital.

• 29:20Nick Lavery?

  Get to the bar room, pull me off, I'm totally flatlined, that was when they took my foot off immediately, really just try to minimize how much damage my body was trying to recover from.

• 29:30Lewis Howes?

  Are you asleep at this point, are you awake?

• 29:32Nick Lavery?

  No, I'm out.

• 29:33Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 29:34Nick Lavery?

  Yeah, I have no recollection of this.

• 29:35Lewis Howes?

  But there's a pulse.

• 29:36Nick Lavery?

  There was a bit of a pulse.

• 29:38Lewis Howes?

  They can see you breathing, or what?

• 29:40Nick Lavery?

  No.

• 29:41Lewis Howes?

  You're not breathing?

• 29:42Nick Lavery?

  Nope.

• 29:43Lewis Howes?

  No, very little pulse.

• 29:44Nick Lavery?

  Very little pulse.

• 29:45Lewis Howes?

  But they know you're alive.

• 29:46Nick Lavery?

  They pretty much assume I'm dead.

• 29:48Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 29:49Nick Lavery?

  But they're still working on me, so it's more panels, a blood transfusion, dialysis, I'm intubated, so a machine is breathing for me.

• 30:00Lewis Howes?

  Hold on.

• 30:01Nick Lavery?

  I get enough of a pulse back where I'm like barely, it's like boop, you know, boop, but I'm like barely there, and so machines were pretty much keeping me alive for, ended up being like two and a half, three days.

• 30:14Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh, man, so you're unconscious for three days?

• 30:17Nick Lavery?

  Oh yeah.

• 30:18Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 30:19Nick Lavery?

  And then, and then I, you know, I kinda came back after that.

• 30:23Lewis Howes?

  Three days on machines, how do they even know to take you off the battlefield after 90 minutes, how'd they know you were still alive?

• 30:30Nick Lavery?

  They don't really...

• 30:34Nick Lavery?

  Decipher that. I mean, at the point of injury, I still had a pulse.

• 30:38Lewis Howes?

  Got it.

• 30:39Nick Lavery?

  When my teammates loaded me on the bird, I was still alive.

• 30:42Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 30:42Nick Lavery?

  I actually have memories of being loaded on that initial helicopter.

• 30:46Lewis Howes?

  You're kind of in and out of consciousness.

• 30:47Nick Lavery?

  Yep.

• 30:49Lewis Howes?

  Wow, man, this is incredible.

• 30:50Nick Lavery?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 30:52Lewis Howes?

  So you're unconscious for three days, they're doing everything they can, they amputate the ankle first. And then when does the rest of, you know, three days later, you wake up, did they take the rest of the leg by then? What happens?

• 31:05Nick Lavery?

  Yeah, so it took five days or so total to stabilize me enough to survive a plane to Germany. So I'm in Afghanistan, five days, I'm getting worked on, they fly me to Germany, they amputated my leg up to the knee in Germany, I was there just one day. And then I arrived at Walter Reed in Bethesda, Maryland, which is like the premier military hospital. And I get sent, I'm in the intensive care unit, I'm still in really rough shape, my family's there.

• 31:31Lewis Howes?

  You're in and out of consciousness, you're.

• 31:32Nick Lavery?

  In and out of consciousness.

• 31:33Lewis Howes?

  But you're drugged up like crazy.

• 31:34Nick Lavery?

  Crazy, ketamine, Dilaudid, morphine, I'm on all the drugs, so it's a wild ride I'm on. But my first legitimate thought that I had, or my first memory I have, is the chief of orthopedics coming into the intensive care unit and he said, hey, man, my name's Dr. So-and-so, and here's your current situation. Your leg has gone up to your knee. My staff wants to take you into the operating room right now and amputate your leg at the hip. Because your leg is riddled with infection. And any one of these bacterias could kill you.

• 32:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 32:14Nick Lavery?

  So they want to play it safe, which is really the right move to make. But I think I can save more of your leg. It's just going to be a street fight. And I need you in this fight with me.

• 32:25Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh, what'd you do?

• 32:27Nick Lavery?

  And I looked up at him, and I just met this guy, right, he's telling me that this bacteria could kill me and all this stuff, and I don't think I processed most of what he said, but I do remember him saying something about getting into a street fight, and I was like,

• 32:39Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man.

• 32:39Nick Lavery?

  Yeah, let's go do that.

• 32:42Lewis Howes?

  Let's go.

• 32:43Nick Lavery?

  All right, let's go do that.

• 32:44Lewis Howes?

  Get me in the fight. Wow.

• 32:45Nick Lavery?

  So that began my process of being in surgery three, sometimes four days a week. And they would just go in and amputate more, cut out, you know, dead tissue, dead bone. And I lived that for about thirty five for soul surgeries.

• 33:00Lewis Howes?

  Gosh, man. That seems exhausting.

• 33:03Nick Lavery?

  Yeah.

• 33:04Lewis Howes?

  You're just on drugs nonstop to just manage the pain.

• 33:07Nick Lavery?

  Yeah, quite a bit. But it was in those moments, man, in the intensive care unit,

• 33:14Nick Lavery?

  that I determined that I was gonna go back to a special forces team.

• 33:19Lewis Howes?

  Crazy, man.

• 33:20Nick Lavery?

  I can, I can still remember the moment seeing my family there with the masks and the hairnets and all the, you know, level five trauma suits and me in the intensive care unit. I can still see that and having made the decision then that I'm going back to my lifestyle. It was from the very, very beginning.

• 33:43Lewis Howes?

  Even though you didn't know if you're gonna live or, or die?

• 33:45Nick Lavery?

  No. Yeah.

• 33:47Lewis Howes?

  You made that decision. Well, maybe, maybe you're on too many drugs when you're making that decision.

• 33:52Nick Lavery?

  Maybe.

• 33:52Lewis Howes?

  What was the, what was the, what do you was, what do you think was the thing that got you through

• 33:59Lewis Howes?

  really a year of kind of surgeries and recovery and, and you're still recovering in some ways, you know, from the trauma emotionally, physically, all these different things. But what allowed you to get through that mentally? That period of time to be determined enough to get back into service at full capacity?

• 34:17Nick Lavery?

  Yeah. Um, I think what enabled that was a very clearly defined and continuously refined vision of where I was going. And again, having, knowing that this is what I was put on this earth to do, didn't allow me an alternative option.

• 34:43Nick Lavery?

  So, and I say this delicately because I, you know, I really never went down this dark path of negativity and depression and struggle mentally. Certainly countless times of frustration and anger and disappointment and all that, but I stayed generally positive and target fixated. I think because I had that sense of, of mission. I knew what my mission was. And I say that, not that it's something I'm really proud of because I don't think it's something to be ashamed of if that happens. I know some absolute warriors that have struggled at times with that.

• 35:24Nick Lavery?

  I just made a decision in the extraordinary early parts of this journey that this is what I was gonna do and it gave me something to grasp onto during the countless moments of doubt and second guessing myself and when all of the off-ramp justifications start sounding really convincing, it was like, no, no, no, no, stop.

• 35:47Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 35:47Nick Lavery?

  This is what's going to happen. Get your head back in the game and like figure out this next problem.

• 35:54Lewis Howes?

  So you had to enroll yourself and other people who were saying, hey, listen, it's okay if you need to like, you know, retire, it's okay if you need to, you know, should really think about the next chapter of your life, like thinking about your family, you know, all these different things.

• 36:08Nick Lavery?

  Yeah.

• 36:09Lewis Howes?

  You had to coach them essentially in saying, that's not an option. This is what we're focused on.

• 36:14Nick Lavery?

  Yeah.

• 36:14Lewis Howes?

  Is that right?

• 36:15Nick Lavery?

  I was surrounded by that.

• 36:18Nick Lavery?

  And you know-

• 36:19Lewis Howes?

  Because they were trying to take care of you. They were trying to, they were trying to do their best.

• 36:22Nick Lavery?

  It comes from a place of love, man. It's not like, I don't believe in you, it's-

• 36:25Lewis Howes?

  Right, you can't be, you're not gonna be able to walk for a while, you know, like let's, yeah, they're thinking about that.

• 36:29Nick Lavery?

  Let's be practical, I'm looking out for what's best for you, right? I was able to coach those that I was able to, or at least get into a place where they understood my mentality. But there were many that I was unsuccessful at convincing or communicating. I was unsuccessful at effectively communicating to them what my intentions were. And, you know, a lot of times the, the road of ambition is a lonely one and you just have to accept that. And if you're willing to do it anyway.

• 37:06Nick Lavery?

  Sometimes that's the road you're on, man.

• 37:08Lewis Howes?

  Holy cow.

• 37:08Nick Lavery?

  Yeah.

• 37:09Lewis Howes?

  How do you think you kept your emotional strength so high? Under extreme pain, loss, physical loss, you know, psychological and emotional loss with fallen brothers and teammates? How did you keep your emotions, your heart at a level of some sense of peace? And not get into a depressed state or a downward spiral like so many people do?

• 37:39Nick Lavery?

  Sure.

• 37:40Lewis Howes?

  Which is probably normal for people.

• 37:42Nick Lavery?

  Absolutely.

• 37:42Lewis Howes?

  When they've lost their brothers, their teammates, their family, lost a leg, you know, potential loss of identity of being a soldier again. How did you keep your heart and your emotions in a state of calm, peace and certainty? With all this trauma?

• 37:59Nick Lavery?

  Yeah. One aspect of that was being made aware of how the attack happened. The information that I explained earlier. Once my teammates got back, they came to visit me. They told me what they had learned about the incident. Because I was holding on to a lot of anger from that.

• 38:18Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 38:19Nick Lavery?

  Particularly because it was someone that I had been working with. And at that point, I had been in, you know, a whole lot of different engagements and gunfights and the explosions and to be killed by someone or that wounded by someone that I was working with.

• 38:34Lewis Howes?

  You trusted?

• 38:35Nick Lavery?

  Trusted to a degree.

• 38:37Lewis Howes?

  Collaborated with.

• 38:38Nick Lavery?

  That's a better way to put it.

• 38:39Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 38:41Nick Lavery?

  Was frustrating to me.

• 38:42Lewis Howes?

  I can imagine.

• 38:43Nick Lavery?

  You know?

• 38:43Lewis Howes?

  Betrayal, the hurt, all that stuff.

• 38:45Nick Lavery?

  Yeah, betrayal, that's some powerful stuff, right? So, once I was made aware of his reasoning, I was able to let go of quite a bit.

• 38:54Lewis Howes?

  And have some understanding or some type of compassion?

• 38:58Nick Lavery?

  Complete.

• 39:00Lewis Howes?

  It's hard to have compassion for someone who's doing this to you, but when you know why.

• 39:03Nick Lavery?

  Yeah, man.

• 39:04Lewis Howes?

  He cared about his family and he knew he was gonna die.

• 39:07Nick Lavery?

  Right. Because although I didn't have, you know, the wife and kids I have now, I could empathize with that. And saying if I'm put in that position between truly a rock and a hard place, and I have no practical way to fight this, right? Like nine guys with guns and I'm a dirt farmer in my home. I'm doing the exact same thing. So I was able to like let that go.

• 39:31Nick Lavery?

  And then, you know, get to business and you ask, you know, how? And I'll just, I'll sum it up into one word, because it's the only one I can, I can think of to explain it, and it's faith. You know, which certainly has a, a strong, you know, religious and biblical feel to it. However, a def- a definition of faith being a firm belief in something for which there is no proof. And I just felt it in my heart and my soul as I was laying in the hospital bed. And as I began doing early phase physical therapy. And once I originally got my, you know, my first prosthetic, I just had this belief that this is possible.

• 40:15Nick Lavery?

  It's never been done before, but that doesn't make it impossible. I just have to figure out how to go about doing it. And, you know, I mentioned Green Berets are somewhat natural problem solvers. And then we become highly trained problem solvers. This became the greatest problem that I needed to solve. And I just leveraged everything I had learned as, you know, certainly an athlete in college, but more so as a Green Beret, working on a team and being tasked to do these things. I leveraged those lessons and I leveraged the people that I had the chance to work with to begin solving that.

• 40:51Lewis Howes?

  Do you think, have you seen anyone else in the military? Get out of a tough situation? I mean, a situation similar to like yours where they lost an arm or they, something happened physically to them or they, you know, some of their teammates were lost. Have you seen anyone get through it in a positive, semi-healthy way? If that's possible, without faith? Like, have you seen people rise up against extreme adversity? Whether it be physical trauma, emotional trauma, psychological trauma with something other than faith?

• 41:32Nick Lavery?

  I'm not sure I've seen it.

• 41:36Nick Lavery?

  Do I think everyone who had, who I know that has done that would recognize that faith? Or at least verbalize it that way? Probably not. But I do think that it is a fundamental requirement. Depending on the degree of goal that they're trying to work towards.

• 41:56Lewis Howes?

  To overcome the adversity.

• 41:57Nick Lavery?

  I mean, when it comes to achievement, the struggle is, the size of the struggle is commensurate with the size of the goal. When it comes to achievement, the size of the struggle is commensurate with the size of the goal. So, if you are trying to overcome the greatest challenge in your particular life, whether or not it's been done before ever is irrelevant, but this is your biggest set of adversity, your greatest challenge ever. The struggle is going to then be the highest that you have ever dealt with before. So,

• 42:31Nick Lavery?

  and the likelihood of success is also probably the lowest it's ever been before. So, to say that you can accomplish something like that without faith seems to be unlikely. At some point, you are going to believe in what it is you're trying to do, whether or not anyone else does or not, but you believe in it. There's no proof that you're gonna make it happen. There's no proof that it's possible, but you feel it and you you buy into that to such a degree that you're willing to do it anyway.

• 43:01Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah. I'm curious about this. It seems like there's a lot of pain and adversity people are facing in the world, whether it be pandemic or no pandemic, right? Um, it seems like a lot of people

• 43:16Lewis Howes?

  take on the weight of their pain or their struggle, the adversity in such a big way that it holds them back and they get stuck. When I hear your story, or someone like your story,

• 43:29Lewis Howes?

  you know, it makes the painful situations of normal civilians' lives not that big, in my mind, right? If I'm comparing them.

• 43:39Nick Lavery?

  Sure.

• 43:39Lewis Howes?

  You know, someone was mean to me at work and I'm feeling depressed is a different type of adversity than what you faced, right?

• 43:45Nick Lavery?

  Sure.

• 43:46Lewis Howes?

  And sometimes people get so stuck in these, these day-to-day struggles or pains, not to say it's not challenging for them in their season of life, but why do you think so many people suffer in their stuckness of job, career, life, purpose? And how can they start taking full ownership as opposed to making excuses? Or blaming everything around them as opposed to being responsible for their life? How can someone learn this?

• 44:15Nick Lavery?

  Yeah.

• 44:15Lewis Howes?

  When I hear this story of you, I'm just like. What's, what's anyone's excuse?

• 44:20Nick Lavery?

  Sure.

• 44:21Lewis Howes?

  On how to overcome adversity?

• 44:22Nick Lavery?

  Yeah. I'll start off because you mentioned this, perspective is a, is a powerful tool. You mentioned comparison and whatnot. Powerful tool when it's wielded or when it's weaponized appropriately. And you know, I was in the hospital at Walter Reed for a year, lost my leg. Could have easily felt really sorry for myself. When I was alongside people that had, you know, they were missing all their limbs. Or even worse, service members that had such severe traumatic brain injury that they did not recognize their wife and kids.

• 44:56Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man.

• 44:57Nick Lavery?

  When I'm next to that individual, this is a paper cut to me. So like that power of perspective, because I was able to weaponize the gratitude in that scenario. That's the key. Cause a lot of times I think when it comes to comparison or perspective, it can drive people even deeper into a hole because they're saying, hey, man, like this person did this thing under these extreme circumstances and I'm having difficulty getting up in the morning. Like what's wrong with me? And it ends up being a driving factor that makes it worse. Where, no, no, stop for a second. Be grateful for what you have, see it that way. Open up your heart and your soul a little bit, say, wow, I'm really fortunate.

• 45:40Nick Lavery?

  I got a lot of great things going right now and use that as a tool. Those that are stuck, you know? If there is not a mission that's been identified, in my opinion, it becomes extraordinarily difficult to get past the adversity, but even oftentimes just to get moving. Like what is it that you want to do? It sounds like a very simple question, but there's layers of difficulty built within this. Like have you begun an internal dialogue with yourself yet at all? Have you looked in the mirror at any point in your life and said, what do you want to do?

• 46:24Nick Lavery?

  Who do you want to become? And I think oftentimes, and that's how it started for me, just very simple. And letting the universe or God or your soul, or call it whatever you want, communicate back to you on what do you want to do? Who do you want to become? In order to make that exercise of any kind of value, one is expectation, knowing that it's likely not gonna, the answer's not gonna come blasting through the glass and punch you in the face, more often than not. It takes repetition, you have to actually work at it. Two is, if there's not a degree of self-honesty, then it's really not gonna matter. And in today's world, you can make the argument that that has never been more difficult, ever,

• 47:07Nick Lavery?

  in the world of immediate satisfaction and social media, and where people are projecting an image, because that's become the norm. It's easy for us to begin to believe our own facade. And so that internal dialogue, that level of self-awareness is important, but if you're lying to yourself, then it's not gonna matter.

• 47:32Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 47:32Nick Lavery?

  So, there's a lot there to begin playing around with. But I do think that, once that mission has been identified, and oftentimes I'm asked, like, well, I'm having that conversation, I really am, I'm journaling, I'm being honest, I'm doing all these things, but I still don't know what my purpose is. I'm still, my soul is not being lit towards something. You know, a technique that is often used is to hone in on your talents, and kind of leverage the likelihood of success. Because if you hone in on our talents, which are the things we do best with the least amount of effort, and then you lay a skill on top of that,

• 48:16Nick Lavery?

  odds are, you're gonna be in a really great place to do some really great things. I just prefer to use the course of action prior to that as COO1, because it doesn't place any limitations on ourselves.

• 48:31Lewis Howes?

  Right. I think it's beautiful, this is everything that I've been... Preaching, but communicating to my audience about from my lessons in sports. You know, if I didn't have a goal, I wasn't willing to. I would quit, I would quit football if I didn't have like some type of mission or goal that I was excited about. That was meaningful to me, that had like a reason why I wanted to do it. Because, you know, three days were so painful and it was hot and there's, you know, I could go chase girls instead or do something easier. So I needed something bigger than myself, a mission bigger than me that I was excited about to go through all the pain. Right? Of all the different sports injuries and just like sacrificing. Whatever, early mornings, all these different things, cutting out bad food, whatever it was, that was the easy way out.

• 49:17Lewis Howes?

  And same thing when I transitioned to business and just life and relationships, it was like. Things would, I would suffer and struggle more when I didn't have a meaningful mission. You can take on different things in life, but if it doesn't bring some type of fulfillment or meaning. It's gonna feel harder and you're gonna suffer more. It's gonna be hard no matter what. Sure. Right? There's going to, you have to do things every single day to be successful. You have to show up, you have to experience some type of pain and overcome it in order to build your emotional, mental or physical strength. Yeah, absolutely. Consistently. Yeah. So you might as well enjoy it or find fun in that process with a meaningful mission that you're tied to. Or, or seeing in the distance and trying to draw in closer.

• 50:00Lewis Howes?

  So I love that you talk about mission because I think a lot of people don't have that. And I love that you talk about talents and skills. One of the things I did when I got out of sports and was trying to figure out who I was and my, my identity in life. Now that sports was over. Was I started to address a lot of my insecurities and fears. And I said, how can I maximize my talents, but also my fears and insecurities make me feel really. They, I lack confidence because I know these are in the background. It was hard for me to do public speaking. I knew this was just a challenge for me. So I went all on, all in on public speaking every single week for a year. I knew I had this desire to, to learn salsa dancing, but I was terrified to get on the dance floor. Cause I didn't want to be made fun of.

• 50:45Lewis Howes?

  So I went all in and practiced every week for a couple of years as well. I just said, what are the things that I can build as talents and skills? That I'm not good at as well, that will make me more bulletproof emotionally and mentally.

• 50:57Nick Lavery?

  Yes.

• 50:57Lewis Howes?

  You know, that like I can whip out these tools at any moment and feel more confident and see where it leads me towards my mission. So these are some of the things that I'm so glad you're talking about this because I've been preaching this stuff. And what would you say the main talents or skills then that you've developed since that time, since losing your leg? And you speak another language too, or did you have to learn another language?

• 51:23Nick Lavery?

  Yeah, I speak a few fluent languages now, yeah.

• 51:26Lewis Howes?

  Pretty fluent or like?

• 51:27Nick Lavery?

  No, we'll say we have a working knowledge.

• 51:29Lewis Howes?

  Right, right, right, right.

• 51:30Nick Lavery?

  Yeah, if I know I'm going someplace where I may have to use that, I gotta pull out the materials and dust off the cobwebs. It's an awesome question, you know, kind of looking at the positive sides of any scenario because they're there. I don't care how horrible it was, I believe that it's only a matter of time and with enough reflection that there's positivity to extract from that. This being, you know, one of those, certainly not towards the top, but one of them. One I would say is my level and commitment to efficiency. And the example I'll use, or really the way in which this has been reinforced is, you

• 52:11Nick Lavery?

  know, when you have an amputee or when you use a prosthetic with a traditional socket system. So imagine this is my actual leg, my leg fits inside this bucket and that's how it stays attached to my body. That's how most of those of us that have prosthetics, that's how it stays attached to us. Sweat becomes the ultimate enemy because it gets slippery, it slips around, it's not working, it starts to chafe, the leg isn't functioning normal. So I eventually began to visualize, the second I put my prosthetic on my body, a clock began to tick. And it was only a matter of time before I had to take it off, wipe it down. Depending on what I was doing, maybe let it breathe for 10 minutes or 20 or an hour. Cause you sweat a lot. Cause I sweat a lot.

• 52:56Nick Lavery?

  Me too, a big guy, you're sweating all the time. Walk out in the snow and you sweat probably, right? All the time. Me too, yeah. Right? Especially, fun fact, when you lose this many sweat pores, your other ones work in overdrive. Oh my gosh. To cool you off, yeah. Learned that in hospital. I was going through like multiple t-shirts a day. So, you know, I am more capable when I'm on two feet. Certainly I can be mobile, I can be in a wheelchair, I can be on crutches, but I'm not as capable as I am when I'm on two legs. Yeah, you're more efficient when you're on two legs. Absolutely. I'm more productive when I'm on two legs. So that clock begins to tick. So I knew I needed to maximize every single moment that I was on two legs. Wow.

• 53:39Nick Lavery?

  And it got a little OCD, which my wife eventually kinda got cool with because it got to the point where if I, for example, were leaving my house for the day and I grabbed my stuff and I took, you know, eight steps and I realized I had forgotten something. Well, that's 16 steps that I'm not getting back. Eight to go back to my thing, eight to get back to where I was. And it started to drive me more and more crazy. So I began... Every step needs to matter. Every step, every minute, every second needs to matter. And this is, I get, I understand this is the extreme and some of your viewers may be like, this is insanity, but you know, again, I had set my sights on something so ambitious that I needed to maximize every single moment.

• 54:22Nick Lavery?

  And therefore, I began just modifying, creating or modifying these different systems to minimize the likelihood of me missing those 16 steps again. So it's like, okay, I forgot my, you know, wallet. So now it's wallet, phone, like at the end of every day, like this is where everything goes so that... Everything you need to leave the next day is in one place. Everything is streamlined. Yes. So just day to day, I began just kinda instinctually creating these different systems throughout my day to maximize my level of efficiency, just so I could do more things better on two feet. And for longer.

• 55:03Nick Lavery?

  So that's just kind of a process in which I likely would not have learned if I had not gone through this. And it's one that I've, you know, I've maintained really to this day.

• 55:14Lewis Howes?

  For the last nine years now, right? Or however long it's been, yeah.

• 55:17Nick Lavery?

  Right. So it's almost instinctual where I'm just, I'm constantly looking at ways to improve to make up a second or two or. Or not.

• 55:25Lewis Howes?

  But with the extreme circumstances, you need to take extreme, you know, changes to maximize your life or to uh, master your life, right? Otherwise you could fall two hours behind every day because, oh, I forgot this and not upgrading your systems with a level and the degree of your new reality, right? Like you need to upgrade your level of thinking, your skill sets, the, the systems inside of you, your processes to be even more efficient than before, even with, you know, the changing of the prosthetic or what you might have to do, right?

• 55:58Nick Lavery?

  And this is, I mean, this is more tactical, on the ground stuff. Right? Like physically, you know, moving things around through my day. This is tactical, tangible tools. This, I'll, I'll, I'll use a second, a second point. It's more conceptual, but I really want to emphasize this. You talk about what were the upsides? What were the positive aspects that you've learned or been able to leverage from, from losing your leg? And it's knowing, realizing and knowing that although I was a hard worker and I was productive on two legs and I've got plenty of, you know, accomplishments and stuff that I'm certainly proud of. That took a lot of really hard work.

• 56:40Nick Lavery?

  There was an entire another level of work ethic and productivity that was sitting inside me the entire time that I did not know existed until this happened. And I set my sights on something extraordinarily unlikely, but I committed myself to.

• 56:59Nick Lavery?

  Because I knew I needed to be able to work at an extraordinarily higher level, like the highest possible level. And it's not as if when I was in the hospital, you know, some scientist walked into my room and rammed a metal spike in the back of my head and uploaded work ethic.

• 57:17Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 57:17Nick Lavery?

  Like Neo in The Matrix. Like it was literally there the whole time.

• 57:20Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 57:21Nick Lavery?

  I, I think that oftentimes it takes a traumatic event or hitting rock bottom for people to realize that there's so much more inside them that is literally sitting there waiting to be leveraged.

• 57:33Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 57:34Nick Lavery?

  And that's becomes the, the kind of the catalyst for them to start to see that. And then it becomes contagious. It's like, oh my gosh, look what I just did. What else can I do? What else can I do? And that snowball effect happens. But having retrospectively kind of analyzed that, yes, sure, this was the catalyst and I've seen what I was able to do. How did I really do that? And it was through the modification primarily anyway of two relationships. My relationship with fear and my relationship with pain.

• 58:05Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 58:06Nick Lavery?

  And those are relationships like any other relationships we have, right? It's a two-way street. You talk to that entity and it talks back. You can only influence so much. But by modifying my relationship with those two things really is what facilitated my ability to do more, push harder, create more and accomplish more.

• 58:29Lewis Howes?

  How do you modify your relationship with fear and pain?

• 58:33Nick Lavery?

  I think at least for me, man, it began with a, a recognition of what they're there to do. And you know, the human brain does a lot of amazing things for us. But its primary responsibility is our survival.

• 58:44Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 58:45Nick Lavery?

  Is to keep us alive. And the brain has a security system within it. And within that are two different alerts. One of which we know is fear, one we know is pain. Fear is the alert of pending danger or a potential threat. Like something bad could happen. You're now scared. I need you to be scared of that to stay away from it. Pain being the, the alert of damage or impairment, right? Because the brain wants us to survive. Knowing that our brain is there because it wants the comfort zone. Like homeostasis, like the medical term. It wants things nice and predictable and sustainable and forecastable.

• 59:27Nick Lavery?

  And let's just keep things all nice and calm here when it comes to even a heartbeat. Our red blood cell count, like it doesn't want change. Recognizing that and then knowing that if we set our sights on something

• 59:44Nick Lavery?

  righteous, something of ambition, something that is unlikely, unprecedented. There are going to be times when we have to ignore our brain and listen to our heart and our soul. And one of the greater challenges of life really is knowing when to take that risk. And asking yourself in that moment, in real time, like right now. Are you willing to take the risk of doing this particular thing? Knowing the potential hazards, but then also knowing the potential effects. Like, are you willing to do it?

• 1:00:23Lewis Howes?

  I'm curious about, in your mind, I don't want to assume anything, but has

• 1:00:28Lewis Howes?

  has anything become harder since you lost your leg? And has anything become easier or better since then as well? I don't want to make assumptions either way, that things have gotten harder or easier and better, but if there is, is there something on both sides that's been harder and easier and better?

• 1:00:48Nick Lavery?

  Yeah, certainly. I mean, there are countless specific tasks were really hard to relearn and are still harder today. Even after having learned them and doing them now for almost a decade. I mean, walking is harder now than it was prior.

• 1:01:10Nick Lavery?

  I think generally speaking, the hard comes from a willingness to accept that you don't know how to do something right now. And that's okay. And not letting my pride and ego get in the way of that. Slicing off a massive serving of humility. Be willing to take that risk of embarrassment. You know, and when it comes to fear, sure, we're fear of physical damage. But I would argue fear mostly comes through the lens of emotional damage. Fear of failure, fear of embarrassment, you know.

• 1:01:45Lewis Howes?

  Being judged by other people.

• 1:01:47Nick Lavery?

  Judgment, I think most of that. So again, a modification that relationship. Am I willing to do this? But most, I think it's probably accurate to say, most tasks. Certainly anything that involves me being on two legs are more difficult today than before.

• 1:02:07Lewis Howes?

  What's easier or better?

• 1:02:11Nick Lavery?

  Man, I'll start off in the clouds, man. Because if I could go back in time, right, like Doc Brown shows up in the DeLorean and he's like, let's go back and we'll save your leg. You know, the butterfly effect is, you know, a concept.

• 1:02:27Lewis Howes?

  You weren't there and you were in another room or something during that time, yeah.

• 1:02:31Nick Lavery?

  But I look at the life I have now, man, and you know, particularly my family and my boys and my wife. And it's just amazing. I would not undo a single thing. Because there's just a chance that I don't end up where I am here right now. Like talking to you with my family at home. I lived such a fulfilling and loved life that I would, I wouldn't change a thing about this. That's like up in the clouds, but it's important, you know, note, I think. I'll go into the tactical realm. So I'm big into jiu-jitsu and I started as a two-legged guy and competed. And jiu-jitsu was a huge part of my recovery, which began in the hospital.

• 1:03:14Nick Lavery?

  Certainly physically, range of motion, flexibility, humility.

• 1:03:18Lewis Howes?

  Also your spirit too, camaraderie, competition, all that stuff.

• 1:03:22Nick Lavery?

  Yeah, huge aspect of my recovery and just really overall life. But you know, jiu-jitsu is a weight class sport. And although, you know, I walk around now today at around 220 pounds.

• 1:03:37Lewis Howes?

  Big, strong guy, man.

• 1:03:38Nick Lavery?

  I'm missing about 45 pounds of leg.

• 1:03:41Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. So you would be a 265 weight class, but you're

• 1:03:44Nick Lavery?

  Right.

• 1:03:44Lewis Howes?

  against guys, you know, my size.

• 1:03:46Nick Lavery?

  Absolutely.

• 1:03:47Lewis Howes?

  And you're friggin' just bare hugging them.

• 1:03:49Nick Lavery?

  Yeah. So, you know, I learned that, that there was like a huge advantage in that realm, which is, you know, I wouldn't say it's silly because you can conceptualize that to say like, no, there's, there's always upsides to it.

• 1:04:01Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure.

• 1:04:02Nick Lavery?

  I was able to leverage, you know, my upper body strength and whatnot when I would compete as an APT. And if you looked at me versus some of my competitors from the waist up, you'd be like, there's no way these guys are in the same weight class.

• 1:04:14Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:04:14Nick Lavery?

  It's impossible.

• 1:04:15Lewis Howes?

  Well, you look like a beast next to them. Yeah.

• 1:04:17Nick Lavery?

  Right. So certainly, just an example, man, um, of things that I would say are easier, but certainly things that I can leverage to my advantage.

• 1:04:26Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah. That's cool, man. Anything else that's easier or better? Now with this, is do you have a different, you know, mental capacity, emotional capacity? Do you appreciate things more?

• 1:04:39Nick Lavery?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:40Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh. Is your heart open now because you have different type of humility? I mean, I'm just, I have no idea, but I'm throwing it out there.

• 1:04:47Nick Lavery?

  Yeah. Um, my, my degree of confidence is actually probably higher now than it was.

• 1:04:54Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:04:54Nick Lavery?

  as a two-legged guy.

• 1:04:55Lewis Howes?

  Wow. Wow. Why? How?

• 1:04:57Nick Lavery?

  Yeah. Great question. Um, you know, I think you could summarize confidence in, into two words, like training and preparedness. And when you feel, when you've, when you've put in the reps and you've got the resources in place to deal with the what ifs, I think drastically increase the level of confidence. And, um, my training was, you know, I attacked that on a whole nother scale. And as I was working my way back to the team and then continuing to deploy into combat and doing all these different things, my level of training was quite, was quite insane at times and I needed to.

• 1:05:38Lewis Howes?

  Physical training or like?

• 1:05:39Nick Lavery?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:05:40Lewis Howes?

  Workout training to get back?

• 1:05:41Nick Lavery?

  Yeah. I mean, it was, it was belligerent. You know, my, my, my lifestyle and structure was, was nuts. And then my level of preparedness also had to increase as well. I would break these things. I would need tools. I would need stuff to have available. I learned all these through really difficult lessons. Um, so training and readiness or training and preparedness. Um, were essential for me to do what I needed to do. But most significantly is as I began to fail repeatedly. Uh, in front of those in which I wanted to impress, like my teammates and my commanders. I eventually got to a place where I was okay with failing in front of people. Like when I first got back to my unit.

• 1:06:26Nick Lavery?

  I was only in the hospital for a year. I got back to my unit. I was still really raw. I would not be seen without my prosthetic on my body. No one would see me without a leg.

• 1:06:36Lewis Howes?

  Why?

• 1:06:36Nick Lavery?

  Because in my mind, that would be seen as a, as weakness. I would be seen as a liability. I would be seen as, and there's no way this guy can stay in this community. So I struggled with that for a while and there was a time eventually when my teammates came over and I was hobbling around. I clearly needed to take my leg off and like let it chill for a minute. And he came over and he's like, dude, why don't you just take your leg off and like, like sit down for a second? And, uh, he knew why without me having to say it. He's like, listen, dude. Everyone here knows you only have one leg.

• 1:07:09Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:10Nick Lavery?

  Like if you take your prosthetic off, it's not going to change anything. I'm like, okay. And that was like step one and I just did that and I looked around and

• 1:07:19Lewis Howes?

  No one cared.

• 1:07:20Nick Lavery?

  No one cared.

• 1:07:20Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Getting comfortable with the uncomfortable.

• 1:07:23Nick Lavery?

  Absolutely.

• 1:07:23Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. The fear of embarrassment or the worry, what are people going to think?

• 1:07:27Nick Lavery?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:27Lewis Howes?

  No one cared.

• 1:07:28Nick Lavery?

  No one cared.

• 1:07:28Lewis Howes?

  They just want you healthy, happy. They want you feel ready to go.

• 1:07:32Nick Lavery?

  That's it. And then from there, it just kind of began to snowball where I would, you know, I'd push myself hard and I would trip and fall or my leg would come detached or I was fail on this deadlift. Or I'd be out trying to learn how to run and I'd fall down and I began to just care less about the opinions of others.

• 1:07:49Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. If you fell down, you didn't matter anymore.

• 1:07:51Nick Lavery?

  Didn't matter. Like my teammates, my family, my loved ones, they love me regardless. Um, so I just began to build up, you know, a greater sense of, of confidence because I was callousing my mind to a degree where like, no, I can do this. I can be vulnerable. I can mess things up. And it's not only is it okay, but it actually inspires people around me. And makes them want to dig a little bit deeper.

• 1:08:20Lewis Howes?

  What is the thoughts and the feelings around and the conversation around vulnerability in the military, especially the special forces?

• 1:08:31Lewis Howes?

  Is it okay to be vulnerable? Is it only okay at certain times? Is it respected at a high level and appreciated? Or did you feel like you weren't able to be vulnerable for a long time for some reason?

• 1:08:45Nick Lavery?

  Yeah, it's uncommon in the special operations world. It's part equally of what makes us the most successful military asset the world's ever known and sets us up for absolute failure. Is our willingness to just keep going no matter what opens up a threat.

• 1:09:14Lewis Howes?

  Extremes of each side, right?

• 1:09:16Nick Lavery?

  Yeah, right, opens up a threat. And the idea of being vulnerable and, you know, raising your hand and saying like, I'm struggling with something is rare. I say that it's getting better over time. It's getting better over time. I think we're still, we still have a lot more work to do because there is still this stigma associated with that, the stigma of weakness and being mission incapable. Like you need to be this robot cyborg that doesn't fear pain, doesn't fear or feel fear, like go, right? And we've seen the negative effects that that has had, particularly over the last 20 years and even actually beyond that.

• 1:09:59Lewis Howes?

  When people retire and move on and they don't know how to process or they're, or they're not processing in the military also, right?

• 1:10:08Nick Lavery?

  Yeah. So it's, we have an abundant of resources at our disposal. The challenge, however, is getting that individual to recognize that.

• 1:10:19Nick Lavery?

  That not only is it not a weakness, it's actually a sign of courageousness. Because for us, the easier route is to suck it up and keep going. That's what we prefer. We'd rather just add more weight on my shoulders, I got it, and I'm gonna keep going no matter what.

• 1:10:37Lewis Howes?

  It's more painful to be vulnerable.

• 1:10:39Nick Lavery?

  It's more difficult to be vulnerable.

• 1:10:41Lewis Howes?

  It's more challenging than it is to just put more weight on my back.

• 1:10:43Nick Lavery?

  Right, like that's the hard route to take. Therefore, it does deserve an enormous amount of respect. You're taking the hard right over the easy wrong. So it's not something that...

• 1:10:55Lewis Howes?

  Is it looked down upon if someone's being vulnerable or sensitive about a matter or emotional? Or is it respected and acknowledged and supported?

• 1:11:06Nick Lavery?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:06Lewis Howes?

  Or is it kind of like, okay, be over there, I gotta be in my own lane?

• 1:11:09Nick Lavery?

  Now, you're seeing a distinct and deliberate shift and trend, even just over the last 15 years that I've been towards the latter of what you just said. Towards it's okay to say I need to take a knee. It's okay to say I'm struggling with something. Not only do we accept that, but we're here to support that and enable that. It's not gonna mean the end of your career. We have resources in place. It's our job is to get you better and get you back into the game. But it's different. That wasn't always the case. That was not always the case.

• 1:11:43Lewis Howes?

  What do you think makes the ultimate warrior moving forward? Is it this stoic machine? Or is it someone who can process their emotions in appropriate times, obviously? Process, navigate their emotions and be flexible in their range of vulnerability and strengths? Moving forward, what will make the ultimate warrior moving forward?

• 1:12:09Nick Lavery?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:09Lewis Howes?

  In the military and in life?

• 1:12:13Nick Lavery?

  I'm not sure if there's, if there would be even much of a difference.

• 1:12:18Nick Lavery?

  A war, the ultimate warrior is, I think, one that recognizes that human beings are not creatures of logic, we're creatures of emotion, as Dale Carnegie puts it. You are not going to be emotionless. Like, you're not a robot, you're not a machine, you're a human being. And emotions are literally attached to every decision that we make throughout every single day. There's an emotion there. But it's fear, anger, joy, sadness, like, those are fueling what you do day to day. Moment to moment.

• 1:12:51Nick Lavery?

  A warrior is one that can recognize the emotion and then has learned the skill to control it or influence it.

• 1:13:04Nick Lavery?

  To not let the emotion overtake the actual actions of the, of the, of the human. It's not this no fear mentality, like, fear exists. There's no such thing of, there's no such thing as courage without fear. So, it's not an emotionless cyborg. It's, I think, someone who has deliberate control of the response to the emotions.

• 1:13:32Lewis Howes?

  What have you learned about your heart and love since this experience nine years ago?

• 1:13:43Lewis Howes?

  Did you look at, you know, family, relationships differently? Did you start to love and appreciate yourself more? What did you, how did you navigate a lot of this, you know, emotionally around love?

• 1:13:55Nick Lavery?

  Yeah, I can't, you just, you're saying the word love, I can't think of anything other than my wife.

• 1:14:05Nick Lavery?

  Because she was, she was in Afghanistan when I was wounded. She had a front row seat to this.

• 1:14:12Lewis Howes?

  You were married then?

• 1:14:13Nick Lavery?

  No, we were not. So, we had just begun kinda, we were friends for years and just had begun taking a relationship to something new. While we were in two separate locations in Afghanistan. Like, we became our, each, each other's support mechanism. You know?

• 1:14:32Nick Lavery?

  So she had a front row seat to that, and...

• 1:14:37Nick Lavery?

  I get met with, I'm in the hospital, she finishes up her deployment, you know, she's coming to visit me in the hospital. She was there when I was at my absolute lowest point, my most vulnerable, my weakest point. And this was during what would normally be the courting phase of a relationship.

• 1:14:55Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. You're trying to woo her.

• 1:14:56Nick Lavery?

  Right. You're trying to present your best self and all the fancy dinners and the clothes and the stuff, right?

• 1:15:01Lewis Howes?

  You got tubes down, you had hardly a heartbeat.

• 1:15:03Nick Lavery?

  Yeah. You know, I've lost 90 pounds, I'm emaciated, I can't do anything on my own. Not, I mean, literally, this was the beginning of our like real relationship.

• 1:15:12Lewis Howes?

  Holy cow.

• 1:15:13Nick Lavery?

  And, um, you know, not only was she supportive of that, she was an asset. She became my number one asset. So, um, I think back on that and it's like, I don't know if I, how I would have done what I did had I not had that. And to take it a step further, you know, when I left the hospital, I moved in with her. And I was home maybe two weeks and I sat her down and I said, hey babe, um, I know that this is like real. I can see the white picket fence and the family and like, this is real. But I have to do this. And I

• 1:15:57Nick Lavery?

  don't have, I don't have another option. I have to do this. I have to see if I can't make it back to this lifestyle. One of two things is gonna happen. I'm gonna make it or I'm gonna die trying. There's actually no plan B. I'm actually burning the boats. Those are not just words. This is what I have to do.

• 1:16:13Lewis Howes?

  And if you don't do it, you're gonna be miserable.

• 1:16:15Nick Lavery?

  Right. There's no, I can't even conceptualize another option right now.

• 1:16:18Lewis Howes?

  You need to know you went for it a hundred percent all in. And for whatever reason, if it's not working out, okay, you'll find, something else will happen. But at least you don't have to live with that.

• 1:16:27Nick Lavery?

  Ever. There will be no regret, right? Leaving it all in the field. And this is what that looks like. And I put this day to day schedule, which is in my book. Um, it's minute to minute. And it's like boom, boom, boom, boom. And, you know, there will be no dinners, there will be no us going to weddings. If someone dies, there will be no funeral.

• 1:16:47Lewis Howes?

  Really? Why?

• 1:16:48Nick Lavery?

  Like, this is my life. It's eat, sleep, train. Dialed in to the minute. Because I just believe if I'm gonna have a shot at doing this, this is what it's gonna take.

• 1:16:59Lewis Howes?

  It's gonna require every moment of you.

• 1:17:01Nick Lavery?

  Everything. It's gonna require me being completely and totally unbalanced.

• 1:17:05Lewis Howes?

  Obsessed.

• 1:17:06Nick Lavery?

  Obsessed. Obsessed and unbalanced, like all in on this one thing.

• 1:17:10Lewis Howes?

  For this season of life. Doesn't mean forever.

• 1:17:12Nick Lavery?

  No, no, no. Just for now. Right? Like, you know, the size of the struggles commensurate with the size of the goal. This is the largest goal I have ever possibly set my sights on. I will live the ultimate level of struggle. Because that's what I think it's gonna take. And I was really expecting her, man, to say, "Hey dude, what you just described is a little crazy to me, and I don't think that this is gonna work." I was expecting that. And I would have understood that. But she, uh... She was like, "Okay. I understand, and... Like, let's do this."

• 1:17:46Lewis Howes?

  Holy cow.

• 1:17:47Nick Lavery?

  So...

• 1:17:47Lewis Howes?

  This is what, 2014 now, or when is this, 20...

• 1:17:50Nick Lavery?

  This is 2014.

• 1:17:52Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:17:53Nick Lavery?

  Yeah. And, uh... You know, I was willing to sacrifice what I knew was the love of my life. Who... Family, kids. I could see it. I knew that that's where things were going, man. And I was willing to sacrifice that.

• 1:18:13Lewis Howes?

  For mission.

• 1:18:14Nick Lavery?

  For the mission.

• 1:18:15Lewis Howes?

  It's so interesting you say this. Is there anything else you wanted to add there before I interrupt you?

• 1:18:21Nick Lavery?

  Just when you think of love, I think of that. And I think about not only the sacrifices that she made in the support, but her being along my side as a teammate. That's love, man.

• 1:18:30Lewis Howes?

  I wanna break this down for a minute because I'm in a relationship with an incredible woman. Her name's Martha, who... I had a conversation with... Now, this is not at the extreme. I'm not in the military, all these things, but... She came to me after a few months before we became committed. And she said, "What's your..." You know, she asked the priorities question. That every woman asks a guy. "What are your priorities in life?" You know, "What is it? What's your top priorities?" And I go, "I'm gonna tell you something, but I don't think you're gonna wanna, you know, date me after you hear my priorities." You know, it's probably kinda what you thought.

• 1:19:02Nick Lavery?

  I love where this is going. It is.

• 1:19:04Lewis Howes?

  And I was like, because every time I've told this to women in the past... They get upset, they were hurt, they were saddened, and I didn't have the courage to, you know, let them sit in their frustration and sadness. So I would, I would shift who I was to try to make someone happy. Anyway, so I said, listen, you're not gonna like what I'm gonna say, and you're probably gonna walk away. Are you sure you want the truth about my priorities? And she said, yes, please, tell me the truth. I go, okay, well, you're not my number one priority. And no woman wants to hear that. No. It doesn't mean you're not gonna feel like a top priority. It's not, doesn't mean I'm not going to pour into you a lot of my love and energy and effort.

• 1:19:46Lewis Howes?

  It's not that you're not gonna experience this, but you have to understand that you're not my number one or my number two priority. No woman, no woman typically wants to hear they're not number one or number two. Now, you gotta understand context with everything. So I said, listen, I need my health to be the number one priority. Mental, physical, emotional, spiritual health. I need to be able to take care of my health so I have energy, focus, and expansiveness to take care of the rest of my life. So if I'm in a relationship and a partner does not want me to be fully healthy, and know I need to take the time and energy to focus on my own personal development and growth, physically, mentally, spiritually, psychologically, all these things,

• 1:20:29Lewis Howes?

  because they need me for them more than they respect my health, then it's just not gonna work. And I want your health to be number one too. Wow. Over me. Because if you're not taking your health, then someone's gonna have to take care of you. Wow. That's number one. Put your Ashken mash on first, right? She said, okay. And I go, you're not number two. Because I feel called by my Creator on a mission right now. You know, I don't know how long this is gonna be. It might be the rest of my life, it might be 10 years, a season of life, until I don't feel called on this mission. I need my mission to be a top priority for me. That means I'm gonna be traveling, I'm gonna be speaking, I'm gonna be working late hours, and maybe doing things to serve humanity, right?

• 1:21:13Lewis Howes?

  It's part of the mission that I'm on. And if I'm not attacking my mission with full energy,

• 1:21:21Lewis Howes?

  I'm not gonna be fulfilled. And I'm gonna feel like I'm discounting my creator. But what I'm supposed to be doing, what I feel I'm supposed to be doing in life. This meaningful mission. And then number three will be our relationship and you. Now, she was excited when she heard this.

• 1:21:36Nick Lavery?

  Wow.

• 1:21:37Lewis Howes?

  She was like, because she'd always want to find a man who had a mission and a purpose. And they made her her purpose.

• 1:21:43Nick Lavery?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:44Lewis Howes?

  And she would always be like, oh, but what's the thing that you're supposed to do in life? She's like, well, I just want to be with you. You know, I want to make you happy and me. It was good, but wasn't great, right? So when she heard this from me, she was excited. Now, listen, I spend all my free time, pretty much all my free time with her. We do incredible things together. It's not like she's not a top priority.

• 1:22:02Nick Lavery?

  Sure.

• 1:22:03Lewis Howes?

  So it's creating context around this.

• 1:22:05Nick Lavery?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:06Lewis Howes?

  But I'm not gonna sacrifice who I am, my health, or my mission. Every day for one person. Because then I'd be discounting myself and my creator for what I'm supposed to do.

• 1:22:17Nick Lavery?

  Wow.

• 1:22:18Lewis Howes?

  And so she really respects that. She pushes me to go after my mission, which feels great because I want to pour more into her. Right, so I don't, you know, so when you said this, that like, hey, every moment I'm gonna be obsessing about this thing for a period of time. And you may not be okay with that, and I understand, but that's, you know, it'll be sad to see you go, but I'm not gonna discount what I'm supposed to do right now in my life. I think it's really courageous of you doing that. Because a lot of people would be afraid of that.

• 1:22:48Nick Lavery?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:48Lewis Howes?

  A lot of people would be like, well, you're gonna, we can't go to a freaking funeral. We can't go to a wedding. We can't do the, this is who you're gonna be for the next decade? I don't know.

• 1:22:56Nick Lavery?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:57Lewis Howes?

  And so the fact that she was all in on you putting your health first, really.

• 1:23:03Nick Lavery?

  Yep.

• 1:23:03Lewis Howes?

  Your rehab, your health, and then your mission, number two.

• 1:23:07Nick Lavery?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:08Lewis Howes?

  It sounds like similar to what your priorities were.

• 1:23:10Nick Lavery?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:11Lewis Howes?

  Right?

• 1:23:11Nick Lavery?

  I just, and I just learned something just now, so I appreciate that. That's a phenomenal breakdown.

• 1:23:17Lewis Howes?

  Because you put number one, your health, you're like, I'm gonna be obsessed about rehab and training and a maniac.

• 1:23:21Nick Lavery?

  Yep.

• 1:23:22Lewis Howes?

  What I eat, how I train, what I'm doing.

• 1:23:24Nick Lavery?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:24Lewis Howes?

  And then you were like, every minute is dialed in on my notebook for the next five years of how to tackle this mission of getting back to this place.

• 1:23:31Nick Lavery?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:32Lewis Howes?

  And then the free time after that will be with you and building a family and all those things. If that's what you're open to, then let's do it.

• 1:23:39Nick Lavery?

  Yeah. I didn't conceptualize it that way back then, but you are, you are a hundred percent accurate.

• 1:23:47Lewis Howes?

  Right. So that's when you said that I was like, this is what I've been kind of understanding with the last couple of years.

• 1:23:53Nick Lavery?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:53Lewis Howes?

  That I've been doing and I've been communicating with her. And it's worked out beautifully, you know, because someone was in an acceptance of those priorities. Again, it's not like I'm working out eight hours a day and then going on my mission eight hours a day and I have no time for her.

• 1:24:09Nick Lavery?

  Right.

• 1:24:09Lewis Howes?

  It's creating moments with, it's, you know, going on trips and we have fun, right? We go on trips and go to weddings.

• 1:24:15Nick Lavery?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:16Lewis Howes?

  But, um, but communicating this is what I'm gonna need.

• 1:24:20Nick Lavery?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:21Lewis Howes?

  And, you know, if she was like, well, you can't train that hard. And you gotta spend three hours a day with me doing this, then maybe it wouldn't have worked, right?

• 1:24:33Nick Lavery?

  Yeah, probably not.

• 1:24:34Lewis Howes?

  Been tough.

• 1:24:34Nick Lavery?

  Yeah, probably not.

• 1:24:35Lewis Howes?

  Cause you'd always been feeling like I'm not doing what I'm supposed to do right now.

• 1:24:38Nick Lavery?

  Right.

• 1:24:39Lewis Howes?

  Right? And you'd have felt like resentful if you weren't taking it on a hundred percent.

• 1:24:43Nick Lavery?

  Yeah, powerful word.

• 1:24:45Lewis Howes?

  Right?

• 1:24:46Nick Lavery?

  Yeah, powerful word.

• 1:24:47Lewis Howes?

  What's the thing you love about your wife the most?

• 1:24:50Nick Lavery?

  Oh my gosh.

• 1:24:53Nick Lavery?

  Her independence is, comes to mind. It's tough to say what I love about her the most, but I do love the fact that she doesn't need me for anything. I love the fact that she doesn't need me for anything. Um, I mean, we're a, we're a dynamic duo when we're together, but I can go, I can, I know I can leave for, forever. And not only she'll be just fine, but our, our boys will be just fine.

• 1:25:17Lewis Howes?

  That's so interesting you say that because when I met Martha, I was like, I never really felt like I wanted to have kids before I met Martha, my girlfriend, partner.

• 1:25:29Lewis Howes?

  I was always like, yeah, I think I'm supposed to be a dad, but let's say I wasn't choosing based on that, uh, partners in the past, based on that vision.

• 1:25:40Lewis Howes?

  So I take full ownership and responsibility. And I never felt like if something happened to me, that the person would be resourceful enough to like raise my kids, right? If we had kids. So hearing you say that, like, if something happens to me, she's got it down. And they're gonna be just fine. Maybe they'll be sad and there'll be some tragedy, but they'll be able to overcome it.

• 1:26:02Nick Lavery?

  I think, I mean, I'm literally thinking in real time, because you got my wheels spinning like crazy, but it's it's similar to your priorities breakdown.

• 1:26:09Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:26:10Nick Lavery?

  It's similar to that.

• 1:26:11Lewis Howes?

  It's true, man.

• 1:26:12Nick Lavery?

  Where, you know, if I were to ask her that same question right now, my guess is that she would probably verbalize it similar to that. And it's because she has her health, her well-being as priority one, followed up by her mission in life or her mission for now is deeply rooted in why she's so independent and resourceful and capable. Because it's not, Nick, you're my husband, you're my number one thing in life. Well, if that were the case, and I'm removed even just temporarily, there's a huge void.

• 1:26:48Lewis Howes?

  Screwed.

• 1:26:49Nick Lavery?

  There, right?

• 1:26:50Lewis Howes?

  You're struggling then, yeah.

• 1:26:51Nick Lavery?

  Right, so I think that

• 1:26:53Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:26:54Nick Lavery?

  I'm gonna, her and I are gonna have the same exact conversation. I'll be interested to see what she says, man.

• 1:26:58Lewis Howes?

  That's cool.

• 1:26:59Nick Lavery?

  Yeah. And thank you for reframing my priorities a little bit. The priorities conversation is a great one to have, regardless of what they are, and mine will likely change thanks to you a little bit. You know, priorities and focus are something that can kind of work hand in hand. And just because something is priority three, or four, or 10, doesn't really matter, because you choose the moments to focus on those priorities. And it doesn't mean that if I'm focusing on priority five right now, it doesn't mean that number one is unimportant to me. It just means in this moment right now, this requires my attention. I need to do this.

• 1:27:41Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, and priority one doesn't take eight hours a day for me, right? It's like, I really need an hour, hour and a half of physical activity that I like to create for myself, to get myself physically fit, competitive, things like that. I do different coaching or therapeutic coachings, you know, once every couple of weeks for a couple of hours where I've got a coach and I'm working through and processing stuff. And then I'm doing, you know, my own meditation, which is 20, 30 minutes a day. We do it together sometimes, stuff like that. So it's like, okay, a couple hours a day is priority number one.

• 1:28:16Nick Lavery?

  Right.

• 1:28:17Lewis Howes?

  So it's not like it takes all the time. Priority number two is mission. It's like, okay, when I show up and do my job, my mission here at my business and my company, and structuring my day around doing that. That doesn't mean I have to work all day and night. But that's gotta be a priority and you can't pull me away from that.

• 1:28:36Nick Lavery?

  Right.

• 1:28:36Lewis Howes?

  You can't say, I don't like you doing this work.

• 1:28:38Nick Lavery?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:38Lewis Howes?

  And you gotta accept the mission that I'm on.

• 1:28:40Nick Lavery?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:40Lewis Howes?

  And at least be neutral, if not excited for me.

• 1:28:44Nick Lavery?

  Yeah, so I mean, priority three could actually, you could invest more time and energy in that, even though it's a lower priority.

• 1:28:51Lewis Howes?

  Hundred percent.

• 1:28:52Nick Lavery?

  Right.

• 1:28:52Lewis Howes?

  And it's not that it's lower, I think it's, again, it is a, how do you call it? I wanted to say it's a lower priority, it's still a high priority.

• 1:29:01Nick Lavery?

  Right.

• 1:29:02Lewis Howes?

  It's just not the number one.

• 1:29:03Nick Lavery?

  Something's gotta be number one, something's gotta be number 10, man.

• 1:29:05Lewis Howes?

  It's true, it's true.

• 1:29:06Nick Lavery?

  You know?

• 1:29:07Lewis Howes?

  The language, you know, you gotta be, you gotta be careful around language with women. It's like, you're lower, you know, it's like, no, she's still a massive priority.

• 1:29:16Nick Lavery?

  Of course.

• 1:29:16Lewis Howes?

  And the relationship of flourishing and growing is a top priority. But, you know, and it's a lesser time for one, so being aware of that, so.

• 1:29:26Nick Lavery?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:27Lewis Howes?

  It's all in the context of how it's communicated.

• 1:29:29Nick Lavery?

  Of course.

• 1:29:30Lewis Howes?

  You feel like, you're my 10th priority, people are like, well, screw you.

• 1:29:33Nick Lavery?

  So I don't mean anything to you, what you're saying. This is, I just wanna spin off this for a second, man, because I have this conversation a bit, I'm asked about this quite a bit. You know, how do you balance all these things and like work and family and training and your passion project and like all this stuff?

• 1:29:49Lewis Howes?

  And military and all, yeah.

• 1:29:50Nick Lavery?

  Military, right, like, most people, I would argue, live a lifestyle where there's a lot of different things that are important to them. And it's only 24 hours in a day and, you know, so how do you balance all these things? I get that question a ton.

• 1:30:05Nick Lavery?

  And you know, my first recommendation is take an honest calibration of how you're spending your 24, your time and energy, your bandwidth. There's probably a lot of wasted effort and minutes that can be removed and reinvested elsewhere. It may be difficult because you like, you know, binge watching Netflix for two hours. That's like your thing at the end of the day. Um, but that's probably a place to look. And then once you've kind of worked through that and you've trimmed the fat a little bit, you've become more efficient, productivity's going up, chances are there still may be like, oh, like, am I doing this too much over here, not enough over here? And I just throw out, when most of us that are doing a lot of different things and are

• 1:30:50Nick Lavery?

  really serious about it, we struggle with quantity. Like, there's only 24, you're not getting any more of that. We have the choice to increase the quality. When quantity is low, we can increase quality. And that doesn't mean that it has to be trips to Disney World.

• 1:31:09Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:31:09Nick Lavery?

  Or to, you know, some exotic vacation. Quality time with your spouse or your girlfriend or your kids just means that you're in that moment at that time and you want to be there and you're deliberately present.

• 1:31:21Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, and I think it's recalibrating priorities too. I think, you know, five, 10 years ago, based on where my attention and time went, even if I didn't say this was a priority, based on, I think, where you spend your time and energy, that's what your priority is. So if you say my priority is my health, but six hours a day you're on Netflix, well, based on your time and attention, Netflix is a priority, right?

• 1:31:43Nick Lavery?

  Right.

• 1:31:43Lewis Howes?

  Based on your energy.

• 1:31:44Nick Lavery?

  Right, the data proves otherwise.

• 1:31:46Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. So I used to spend time with lots of people, like, take meetings with everyone and be like, all day, spending times, like, just doing meetings with people that, networking, right? Five, 10 years ago, as I was kind of building my business or brand or whatever.

• 1:32:01Nick Lavery?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:02Lewis Howes?

  And now, specifically after the pandemic, it's kind of like, okay, who are like the core four or five people I want to spend deeper time with and do less of like spreading my energy everywhere, right? It's like just reprioritizing energy, time. Inefficiency.

• 1:32:16Nick Lavery?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:17Lewis Howes?

  And so, you know, we've got to evaluate these things throughout life as well. It seems like, okay, well, should I be on Netflix two hours a day? Maybe not.

• 1:32:24Nick Lavery?

  Maybe not.

• 1:32:25Lewis Howes?

  Maybe there's a day that you do that and you just kind of decompress. But I'm loving this conversation. I want to ask you a couple of final questions.

• 1:32:31Nick Lavery?

  Yes, sir.

• 1:32:32Lewis Howes?

  One is about goal setting. You mentioned goal setting at one point. What is the, I think a lot of people struggle with discovering what goal to set, how big to set it, and how to actually accomplish it? Is there anything you've learned from the military training, Green Beret training, but also your own development from overcoming extreme adversity physically, mentally, and emotionally about goal setting that you could conceptualize for people?

• 1:33:04Nick Lavery?

  Yeah. I'll stop by saying if your mission doesn't scare you at least a little bit, it's probably not the one you want to choose. I think it needs to scare you because if, if it doesn't, are you really striving high enough? Have you set the bar high enough? And if you reach that goal, are you going to feel fulfilled? So a place to start is it should make you maybe at least a little bit nervous. And then, you know, the methodology that I've learned in military and I apply throughout my day to day life now, it's, it's operate, I've operationalized my success. And it's very, it's very deliberate. And it's the same way we go about if we need to take down an enemy location

• 1:33:48Nick Lavery?

  or we're infiltrating into a, you know, country X for the first time ever. It's just essentially a backwards planning system where you determine your desired end state. You determine your current environment, your current situation, and then identify what is in between us now and where we're trying to go. And just simply break that down into a series of objectives, objectives within time and space. And then from there comes doing the research, gaining the knowledge, assembling a team, all the resources to be able to tackle one 25 meter target at a time as you work towards the actual mission.

• 1:34:31Lewis Howes?

  What do you think should happen on the journey towards accomplishing a goal? Say it's a six month or a year goal, right? It's a little bit longer than maybe people would like to wait to accomplish something. But the bigger the goal, usually it takes a little more time.

• 1:34:45Nick Lavery?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:34:46Lewis Howes?

  So call it six months or a year. Where people are used to instant gratification, they gotta wait a little bit longer. And I know for you, you probably said goals are like, this is five years out, this is 10 years out. But call it six months to a year. How should we be appreciating the little micro wins along the way of a year-long journey? Should we be celebrating along the way of the effort? The attention, how we keep showing up day in and day out?

• 1:35:12Lewis Howes?

  Or should there be no celebration and a self-acknowledgement of like the continual journey and the effort?

• 1:35:19Lewis Howes?

  When we accomplish the goal, should we celebrate and acknowledge? Man, I just overcame all these objectives and challenges and adversities. And look where I am now and take those moments? What happens with that and without that?

• 1:35:31Nick Lavery?

  Yeah, I think we call them small victories are important. And I think it's important for us to recognize when we do that. I also think it's important to then quickly shift onto the next ridge that needs to be climbed.

• 1:35:50Nick Lavery?

  Because it's really easy to get stuck there for a really long time and enter into this world of satisfaction and content. Where it's like, oh, look what I did. And then that drifts on for a day or two or a week. And then it's like, okay, yes, we did that, but like, let's go, let's keep the momentum going. Where I don't have to re begin from a static position. Or worse, I start to regress because it takes a lot of time and energy to build up, you know, your body, let's say physically. If you sit there and celebrate the fact that you hit, you know, a PR on the squat for a month. Well, like that all just went away. So absolutely, take like, take those moments in time. And maybe it's just a moment or two. Maybe it's just you look in the mirror and you go, nice work, bro. Okay, now let's move.

• 1:36:34Nick Lavery?

  Or grab your wife, pick her up, throw her in the air, give her a kiss. She asks you what happened, hey, I just closed this one deal, it was a big win for me. She's like, awesome, let's have a nice dinner tonight, great. And then it's like, what do I, what am I doing tomorrow morning? Like, let's, let's leverage the momentum and the wins. But absolutely enjoy the ride because you need to love the process.

• 1:36:57Nick Lavery?

  Just as much, if not more than the prize. And if you're not allowing yourself to love the process and enjoy the process, even if you make it to the prize, it's not gonna be nearly as glorifying and gratifying. Because the route to get there was stagnant, miserable.

• 1:37:18Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:37:18Nick Lavery?

  A chore. That's not, that's not life, man.

• 1:37:22Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, that's beautiful. I love it. Okay. Couple final questions, but before I ask them, I want people to get connected to you. You've got a book called Objective Secure, right? The Battle Tested Guide to Goal Achievement. So if you want to learn more about accomplishing, setting and achieving goals, get this book. It's also got a lot more great stories and tactical approaches towards achievement in life. So I want people to get your book, Objective Secure, The Battle Tested Guide to Goal Achievement. Are you, where can we connect with you online? Is there a good website or social media that you spend time on?

• 1:38:03Nick Lavery?

  Yeah, website is machine nick dot com. And that's got links to the socials and the book and all the things. Mostly on Instagram, it's nick machine dot lavery.

• 1:38:16Lewis Howes?

  Okay, even though we're not supposed to be machines, but that's what you're titled.

• 1:38:21Nick Lavery?

  Yeah, an awesome conversation we'll have another day.

• 1:38:24Lewis Howes?

  Nick machine dot lavery?

• 1:38:26Nick Lavery?

  Lavery.

• 1:38:27Lewis Howes?

  Lavery, yes. So we'll have all that linked up there. Check out you on social media, Instagram for sure, machine nick dot com. Get the book. If you guys want to learn more about this stuff and just hear some incredible stories. I didn't even get into like your whole bio about all the things that you've overcome and it would take me an hour to just read off all the accomplishments that you've done serving this nation. So I really acknowledge you, appreciate for how you've shown up for multiple decades in service. How you've shown up for yourself, for your family, for your wife and your kids. Even with the challenge and the adversity that you've overcome physically and emotionally. How you show up even though you have fallen brothers.

• 1:39:11Lewis Howes?

  And it's a beautiful testament to your spirit and your soul and your heart that you keep showing up to serve. In the way that's best for you right now. So I really acknowledge you for your service.

• 1:39:23Nick Lavery?

  Thank you.

• 1:39:24Lewis Howes?

  For your, in going beyond the military and trying to serve, you know, us civilians as well by giving us these tools and this inspiration and training that you've gained from your experience in the military. So I really appreciate and acknowledge your leadership, your ability to communicate, your ability to process things and share them with others and create meaning from the tragic moments that you've experienced as opposed to be stuck in a depressed state. Cause I think it's really easy for us to go to that state when these types of challenges or when an extreme challenge may happen.

• 1:40:03Nick Lavery?

  True.

• 1:40:03Lewis Howes?

  So I really acknowledge you for you finding meaning and staying true to your mission.

• 1:40:08Nick Lavery?

  Thank you.

• 1:40:08Lewis Howes?

  It's really beautiful, man.

• 1:40:09Nick Lavery?

  I appreciate it.

• 1:40:10Lewis Howes?

  Of course. This is a question I ask everyone at the end called the three truths. So it's hypothetical question. Imagine your last day on earth, many years away. You live as long as you want.

• 1:40:19Nick Lavery?

  Okay.

• 1:40:20Lewis Howes?

  You see your family grow up the way they're supposed to. You serve in other ways in your life, but it's, you know, the last day. For whatever reason, you've got to take all of your work with you. The book, this conversation, anything you've ever shared that's been recorded, it's gotta go somewhere else. It's hypothetical.

• 1:40:39Nick Lavery?

  Okay.

• 1:40:39Lewis Howes?

  So we don't have access to your content or your message. It's all gone to the next place. But you get to write down three things you know to be true from all your experiences in life, personal, military adversities, triumphs, and three lessons you would share with the rest of the world. And that's all we have to remember you by. What would be those three truths for you?

• 1:41:05Nick Lavery?

  Number one would be, this is not a dress rehearsal.

• 1:41:10Nick Lavery?

  You got one shot at this life. It's truly a gift and it could end at any moment. We have, I believe, an obligation to live a life of both happiness and success. So this is not a dress rehearsal would be number one. Number two, I would say, when you invest in others, you're investing in yourself. I think us as humans have most anyway, a natural desire and instinct to serve. And by doing so, we actually build ourselves up. We actually look at service as a somewhat selfish act.

• 1:41:51Nick Lavery?

  Because we end up being just as much, if not more fulfilled and impacted by our service to others. And then lastly, I'll say, you brought up love. I'll say, it sounds negative, but I'll say, love is not enough. Love is an emotion, it's powerful. However, without a deep respect for another individual, without an understanding of yourself, their values, yours, how those align. In my opinion, I don't think it's enough to last.

• 1:42:36Nick Lavery?

  That may sound like a negative way to cap that off, man, but I will stick by it.

• 1:42:42Lewis Howes?

  I love that. I mean, I have a video out there that says, love is not enough. You need values, vision and lifestyle.

• 1:42:48Nick Lavery?

  That's a better way to put it.

• 1:42:49Lewis Howes?

  Right? You need the alignment in a relationship at least of shared values, vision and lifestyle for, you know, along with respect and other things. But if you don't have the same values or they're opposites, if you don't have the same, you know, lifestyle or they're opposites and a shared vision of where you're heading, you're going in two different directions. It's just gonna be a lot more challenging.

• 1:43:09Nick Lavery?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:10Lewis Howes?

  A lot of friction. So I was trying to minimize the friction and create that alignment. So I think it's beautiful, man.

• 1:43:16Nick Lavery?

  I'm gonna add a fourth one.

• 1:43:17Lewis Howes?

  Give it.

• 1:43:19Nick Lavery?

  And I said it at least once already, but when it comes to achievement, the size of the struggle is commensurate with the size of the goal.

• 1:43:27Lewis Howes?

  I love that. Final question, what's your definition of greatness?

• 1:43:31Nick Lavery?

  My definition of greatness?

• 1:43:36Nick Lavery?

  Oh man, that's a good one. I'd say having set our sights on multiple ambitious goals, achieving them with consistency, and doing so while happy. If you do that, I think that you've reached the realm of greatness. My man, Nick. Thanks, brother. Good talking, man. My man. I appreciate it.

• 1:44:04Lewis Howes?

  I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. 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, if 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.