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

Are you ready to break through your limiting beliefs and achieve the goals you've always dreamed of? In this episode, former Navy SEALs reveal their powerful strategies to help you conquer obstacles and unleash your full potential. David Goggins, a best-selling author and former SEAL, teaches you how to reframe your mindset to attain your biggest goals. Jocko Willink provides invaluable insights into becoming a better leader who can support others and defeat self-doubt. Meanwhile, Jason Redman guides you through a process to overcome any challenge, no matter what you've been through. Have you heard? David Goggins will be speaking at Summit 2024! Buy your tickets TODAY! In this episode you will learnHow to shift your mindset to unlock your full potential. The principles of leadership that empower yourself and others. Strategies to conquer obstacles and thrive in any situation. Techniques to eliminate limiting beliefs and negative self-talk. The importance of resilience in overcoming challenges. For more information go to www.lewishowes.com/1616For more Greatness text PODCAST to +1 (614) 350-3960Full episodes featured in today’s mashup:David Goggins - https://link.chtbl.com/715-podJocko Willink - https://link.chtbl.com/871-podJason Redman - https://link.chtbl.com/1175-pod 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.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to this special masterclass. We've brought some of the top experts in the world to help you unlock the power of your life through this specific theme today. It's gonna be powerful, so let's go ahead and dive in.

• 0:14David Goggins?

  It wasn't until I got real sick, and I talked about in the last chapter of that book, I got real sick. And I was about thirty-eight years old. I'm forty-three now. And my life got real quiet. I went from running two hundred and five miles in thirty-nine hours to I couldn't get out of bed. The doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong with me, but once again, it was the best thing that ever happened to me.

• 0:38Lewis Howes?

  What's that?

• 0:39David Goggins?

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

• 0:52Lewis Howes?

  Now, you didn't have that.

• 0:53David Goggins?

  I didn't have anything.

• 0:54Lewis Howes?

  I used to have to sit alone.

• 0:55David Goggins?

  Alone.

• 0:55Lewis Howes?

  And not train.

• 0:57David Goggins?

  And that's what changed me. And that's when I realized I hadn't thought, hadn't taken time to think about what I'd done in my life.

• 1:06Lewis Howes?

  You hadn't reflected yet.

• 1:07David Goggins?

  I hadn't reflected. I'd done all these things, but there was no finish line. I still believe that, but you must have time to reflect.

• 1:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:14David Goggins?

  I was just going. I wouldn't even, I'd finish a race of life, and I wouldn't even receive my medal. I'd go on.

• 1:20Lewis Howes?

  You're like, on to the next.

• 1:21David Goggins?

  I'd get in the car and I'd go.

• 1:23Lewis Howes?

  You wouldn't even take the medal?

• 1:24David Goggins?

  Gone. Don't care about it.

• 1:25Lewis Howes?

  Like, I'm not gonna waste an hour sitting around for this ceremony?

• 1:27David Goggins?

  Most people sit around, and that's what they like. They, they need the ceremony if I accomplish something.

• 1:33Lewis Howes?

  Validation.

• 1:33David Goggins?

  I haven't done anything. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go.

• 1:36Lewis Howes?

  I'm just getting started.

• 1:37David Goggins?

  I'm just getting started. That's right. When I started figuring out life, that I was leaving so much in the tank. I call it my forty percent rule.

• 1:44Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:44David Goggins?

  I was leaving so much in the tank. Once I realized, my God, man, I was this dumb, fat kid being bullied, and now I'm a hundred and eighty-pound person who lost a hundred and six pounds in less than three months. Learned to read, learned to do this, learned to do that. I was like, I need more. I was fueling my mind with everything. And I never took time to say, my God, you came from this and you're here. So those insecurities.

• 2:09David Goggins?

  And this is how I explain it the best way. SEAL training became pretty hard and a lot of guys weren't getting through it. So they designed a SEAL pep prep program.

• 2:20Lewis Howes?

  Like a boot camp for the boot camp.

• 2:21David Goggins?

  That's right.

• 2:22Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 2:22David Goggins?

  And it was two months, in my last two years before I retired in the military, they sent me there to train these kids.

• 2:28Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 2:29David Goggins?

  To get ready for BUDs.

• 2:30Lewis Howes?

  Eighteen, nineteen, twenty year olds, yeah.

• 2:30David Goggins?

  Yeah, young kids. So when they get to Navy SEAL training, man, they were physical studs.

• 2:37David Goggins?

  They were running, swimming, I mean, they were, they were hybrids.

• 2:40Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 2:41David Goggins?

  But they get to BUDs and the same amount of people would quit.

• 2:45Lewis Howes?

  Why is that?

• 2:47David Goggins?

  This is why, we were training bigger, stronger, faster quitters.

• 2:51Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 2:52David Goggins?

  It's not about.

• 2:53Lewis Howes?

  Not the mind.

• 2:54David Goggins?

  That's right. We weren't diving into the sewer. Everybody's got a story. We don't share it on social media. We share our nice life on social media. We have, we all have a dungeon. I'm just willing to talk about mine.

• 3:08Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 3:09David Goggins?

  Most of us aren't willing to talk about it. I'm gonna talk about my dungeon. I wasn't getting into the dungeon of these guys' minds. I wasn't building that so-called mental toughness. Mental toughness isn't something that you sample. It's something that you live in every day. So when something hard would happen to these kids, like in Hell Week, it would draw on something that made them very insecure. And they look for comfort. Whenever hardness comes, and you don't know what it is, it may be different for you than it is for me, but you go back to your insecurities. And then when you go back to insecurities, you then look for comfort within those insecurities. And we all look for that cookie that your mom used to give you.

• 3:53Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 3:54David Goggins?

  When you were sad.

• 3:55Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 3:55David Goggins?

  When you were sick. We look for our wife or our husband, we look for comfort.

• 4:01David Goggins?

  It's in those moments. You must retrain your mind.

• 4:05Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 4:05David Goggins?

  To think differently in. I wasn't training them to do that.

• 4:11Lewis Howes?

  Why weren't you training them?

• 4:12David Goggins?

  I wasn't training myself to that, because at that time, I was doing what I was told.

• 4:16Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 4:17David Goggins?

  These guys needed to meet a standard.

• 4:19Lewis Howes?

  Physical standard.

• 4:19David Goggins?

  A physical standard. The physical standard is not what they need to meet. It's a mental standard you must meet in life. So going back to when I was sick, I was hitting the physical standards.

• 4:35David Goggins?

  I wasn't meeting the mental standard. The mental standard is you must know how far you've come.

• 4:41Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 4:42David Goggins?

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

• 5:09David Goggins?

  I didn't care if I died or lived. Because I was for the first time in my life, happy. And at peace, because I reflected back on where I started.

• 5:18Lewis Howes?

  You said, wow, I have come a long way.

• 5:19David Goggins?

  That's right, and no one saved me. It wasn't like someone came down here and guided me through life. When you figure this out on your own, the amount of pride and dignity and self-respect you have. That's why I walk around the streets with a backpack and just like, I don't need anything else.

• 5:39Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 5:39David Goggins?

  You figure it out by going inside yourself, by callusing over the victim's mentality. You're always a victim, even if you have everything in life, until you realize what you've achieved. You have to first realize what you've achieved, and my mom has accomplished so much in her life since my father. But she hasn't done that one step.

• 6:01Lewis Howes?

  Really? She doesn't acknowledge it and reflect back?

• 6:04David Goggins?

  She continues to go back to the dungeon of her past life.

• 6:09Lewis Howes?

  And live in that space.

• 6:10David Goggins?

  And live in that space versus living the space that she's in now and reflecting back on, my God, this is what I've done with my life. So.

• 6:19Lewis Howes?

  Have you talked to her about this?

• 6:20David Goggins?

  We talk about it all the time, and you have to be willing to go there. You have to be willing to really go there, not, not surface. I don't, I don't live on the surface of anything.

• 6:31Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 6:31David Goggins?

  Surface is what got me where I was at. It got me from a hundred and seventy-five pounds to three hundred pounds. Tell everybody I'm good. I don't, I don't get, I'm good. No, they're, they're hollow words. A lot of us speak in hollow words. I used to speak in hollow words. I don't do anymore. Everything that comes out of my mouth has substance, is real. And we all have these feelings in our bodies, in our minds, in our souls. I act on mine. A lot of us who are afraid of something. We allow our minds to choose the path of least resistance, so we go a different route. And I'm afraid of something is telling me you must

• 7:09Lewis Howes?

  Do this thing.

• 7:10David Goggins?

  You must do that.

• 7:11Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 7:11David Goggins?

  You have to go that way. And most of us don't understand that mentality. We go left and we wonder why we haven't fulfilled something in our lives. It's because we continue to take the journey that is mapped out. And how I look at it is I, I, I talk in life like a lot of us in life want to take the four lane highway. That has road maps and all this other stuff on it, man. Tells you where to go, gas stations. The next ten miles up, you're gonna see a McDonald's or Cracker Barrel.

• 7:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 7:43David Goggins?

  It's the easy route. Very few of us want to go to the right side.

• 7:47Lewis Howes?

  That Cracker Barrel is that Midwest life.

• 7:49David Goggins?

  That's right, that's right.

• 7:50Lewis Howes?

  I'm Ohio.

• 7:51David Goggins?

  It's all about it, man. Indiana, Cracker Barrel everywhere.

• 7:55Lewis Howes?

  Dude, that's amazing. Bringing back memories.

• 7:59Lewis Howes?

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

• 8:09David Goggins?

  Right.

• 8:09Lewis Howes?

  And it was just like, I'm sick and tired of feeling afraid.

• 8:12David Goggins?

  Right.

• 8:12Lewis Howes?

  So I need to do the things that scare me the most.

• 8:15David Goggins?

  That's right.

• 8:15Lewis Howes?

  You know, I've talked about this a lot on the podcast. Tiffany's heard me share these stories, but I was afraid to talk to girls when I was a teenager. I was afraid of uh, dancing. I was afraid of like singing and playing music in front of people. I was afraid of all these different things. And so I said, I want to do this. I'm going to give myself a challenge every single day until the fear goes away.

• 8:33David Goggins?

  That's right.

• 8:34Lewis Howes?

  And I feel like that's what more of us should be doing. I'm hearing that that's what you, how you live your life.

• 8:38David Goggins?

  That's all it is, man.

• 8:39Lewis Howes?

  And it helps me feel so much more confident. When you overcome that fear

• 8:42David Goggins?

  Yep.

• 8:42Lewis Howes?

  of saying this doesn't have control over me anymore.

• 8:45David Goggins?

  That's right.

• 8:45Lewis Howes?

  It's like you can get such more peace.

• 8:47David Goggins?

  It's a hundred percent.

• 8:48Lewis Howes?

  In your life.

• 8:49David Goggins?

  Most of like, like for instance, I never thought in my wildest dreams I could be a Navy SEAL. It's until you opened your mind, open mindedness creates that. We all shut down our mind. Like for instance, when I broke the pull-up record. Everybody around me who heard the pull-up record was four thousand and twenty pull-ups. That's the first thing they did. Oh my God.

• 9:10Lewis Howes?

  Four thousand in twenty-four hours or was this?

• 9:12David Goggins?

  It's four thousand twenty pull-ups in twenty-four hour period.

• 9:14Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 9:15David Goggins?

  The first thing I did versus closing my mind to like, oh my God, that's crazy.

• 9:20David Goggins?

  I went and got a penny.

• 9:21Lewis Howes?

  How many is that every minute?

• 9:23David Goggins?

  Exactly.

• 9:23Lewis Howes?

  Every hour, every second.

• 9:24David Goggins?

  Instead of taking life and making it out to be this grandiose thing, start breaking it down. Start breaking it down. And most of us, we live in a box. And we don't want to go outside that box at all, ever. Outside that box is all these possibilities of life. What we do is we shackle our mind. We are a prisoner in our own mind that this is all I can do. This is all I'm good at. And we, we, we take away the possibility, you could be this, you could be that.

• 9:58Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 9:58David Goggins?

  You could be all these things. And I never thought at 300 pounds I could be Navy SEAL.

• 10:02Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 10:03David Goggins?

  So if my mind was shackled, me and you would never meet. There'd be no book.

• 10:08Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 10:09David Goggins?

  There'd be no book.

• 10:10Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 10:11David Goggins?

  There'd be nothing. So what people understand is that they live for themselves, not knowing that you have the power within yourself to change millions of lives.

• 10:22Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 10:23David Goggins?

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

• 10:48David Goggins?

  I don't care what you believe in, doesn't matter. I'm not judging anybody. But let's say my thing is God. You get to heaven, I'm 300 pounds, I sit down, I was a cockroach, terminated my whole life. And we're sitting down just like this, you're God and I'm David. And he gives me that chart. And he says, look at this. Now, look at this chart and all the chart it has all these different things, but my name's on it. But these things aren't me. I was gonna change the world. I was gonna, I was gonna set records. I was gonna be a Navy SEAL. I was gonna be all these things in the military that I accomplished. You're gonna get the VFW award. You're gonna be honored here, honored there. I'm like, God, I was, this isn't me. Like it says, David Goggins.

• 11:30David Goggins?

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

• 11:46Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 11:48David Goggins?

  My biggest fear in life is if there is a final resting place in this world and there's a final judgment. And you talk to something much bigger than you. I don't want to sit down and have a conversation with someone with something that says, you're in heaven. This is what you should have been on earth. And are you really in heaven now? Are you thinking about how much I left on the table for fear? For not willing to go over the wall and over the next wall and over the next wall. So in my mind, I believe that and God knows all, at least I believe that.

• 12:27David Goggins?

  I want God to be up there right now as we're speaking, writing stuff down and saying, my God, he exceeded even my expectations.

• 12:37David Goggins?

  That's how I live my life. I now know that there is no cap on the human mind. There's no cap. We cap it ourselves.

• 12:47Lewis Howes?

  Wow, is there a cap on the human body?

• 12:49David Goggins?

  That's right.

• 12:50Lewis Howes?

  Is there one?

• 12:53David Goggins?

  I.

• 12:56David Goggins?

  I don't believe so.

• 12:59David Goggins?

  Because one thing I found out was I didn't, for several years, I gave myself a way out.

• 13:06Lewis Howes?

  When you were three hundred pounds?

• 13:07David Goggins?

  No, three hundred pounds when I was, all the way up to I was twenty four years old. I would climb a mountain, I'd fall back down. I'd start climbing, I'd fall back down for the first twenty four years of my life. I went to my first hell week, my second hell week, and then my third hell week came in SEAL training. And the CO, Captain Bowen, looked at me, I'm on crutches, I'm all jacked up. He says, hey, this is your last time you're gonna go through butts. This is it. I had several stress fractures. I had double pneumonia, I was jacked up and he gave me a few months to heal. And he said, this is your last time going through, I shouldn't even let you go back through.

• 13:45Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 13:46David Goggins?

  I started Navy SEAL training with stress fractures. Stress fractures, not shin splints.

• 13:52Lewis Howes?

  That's hard to finish.

• 13:53David Goggins?

  Stress fractures, starting the hardest training, arguably the hardest training in the world with stress fractures. And this is when I started to not put a cap on the body. If the mind is there. Every morning, I would wake up at three thirty morning, four o'clock in the morning, go to my dive cage. Go in there before anybody saw me. I'd get duct tape. And I would tape from my forefoot all the way up to the middle of my calf. And I would put two black socks on. And so I ran not using the pivot.

• 14:23Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 14:24David Goggins?

  And I ran my hip flexors. So for the first forty-five minutes to an hour, I was in absolute excruciating pain. But what motivated me through that whole process? Was the fact that this kid came from that. I'm in the hardest training in the world, in the worst shape of my entire life.

• 14:48David Goggins?

  What if I can graduate amongst these studs?

• 14:50Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 14:51David Goggins?

  All these guys around me are studs. They're stallions, they're gladiators in my class, they're all healthy, most of them. They're not broken like this. They may have some, you know, everybody's sick going through that training. But if I could graduate, it would change everything for me. If I can start the hardest training in the world, broken, and graduate. So my mind fed off of that. You are now, from the weakest man, you are now the hardest man to ever live. If you can do this. If you can do this. Life is one big mind game. And you're playing it with yourself. Is it true? I don't care.

• 15:33David Goggins?

  It got me through the hardest training, starting out broken. Where most people quit, I had just started.

• 15:41Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 15:42David Goggins?

  And when you take that mindset and you learn to flip that around.

• 15:47David Goggins?

  That's what made me powerful. And my body followed. And three months later, my stress fractures were healed by running on them.

• 15:58Lewis Howes?

  Calcifying it, just like.

• 16:00David Goggins?

  I never had him since, I'm forty-three years old.

• 16:03Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 16:04David Goggins?

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

• 16:20Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 16:22David Goggins?

  I'm gonna be a Navy SEAL.

• 16:24Lewis Howes?

  Or I'm gonna die.

• 16:25David Goggins?

  Or I'm gonna die trying.

• 16:26Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 16:27David Goggins?

  Period. And my body said, Roger that. We're gonna get you through this.

• 16:34Lewis Howes?

  So when the mind gives it no way out.

• 16:36David Goggins?

  No way out.

• 16:36Lewis Howes?

  Your body says, okay.

• 16:38David Goggins?

  Okay.

• 16:38Lewis Howes?

  I believe you now.

• 16:39David Goggins?

  I have to heal.

• 16:40Lewis Howes?

  I'm gonna figure this out with you.

• 16:42David Goggins?

  Yes.

• 16:42Lewis Howes?

  Do this, it's gonna be the, the worst part of your life, but we're gonna, you're gonna survive.

• 16:47David Goggins?

  We're gonna survive.

• 16:48Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 16:48David Goggins?

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

• 17:10Lewis Howes?

  Physically injure yourself.

• 17:11David Goggins?

  Yes, not saying that.

• 17:12Lewis Howes?

  And then be out for six months.

• 17:14David Goggins?

  That's right.

• 17:14Lewis Howes?

  That's no good.

• 17:14David Goggins?

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

• 17:17Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 17:18David Goggins?

  I was in a spot that life forced me. I had a choice. I had a choice to be this guy or the guy that's in front of you. I had choices, I chose this path.

• 17:28Lewis Howes?

  And you're still choosing it.

• 17:29David Goggins?

  I'm still choosing.

• 17:30Lewis Howes?

  You can go back to that guy any moment.

• 17:32David Goggins?

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

• 17:46Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 17:47David Goggins?

  I found a whole nother way. A whole nother way of, no matter how far you get in life. You have to be able to go back to scratch in your mind at a moment's notice. You can never get so far beyond scratch. What that means is when you accomplish something in life, if you want to go back to scratch and go back to that $7 a month place where I once lived and visit that place for a long period of time. If you were here when you went back to scratch, you would now be here. Scratch is what makes you better. Scratch, friction, obstacles create growth. There's no friction when you're this far up in the game anymore.

• 18:31David Goggins?

  You think there is, that's right. When you achieve so much, the friction is minor. Because why? I'm sore, I'm gonna get a massage today. I'm hungry, I'm gonna eat today. The refrigerator is always full. So your comforts are now, so your discomfort is now very miniscule to your discomfort back here in the $7 a month place. So you have to go back to the total discomfort to then raise your level of where you're at now. I'm not saying stay there and stay there. Visit. Visit it.

• 19:09Jocko Willink?

  Probably the first dichotomy in leadership that I had to say to myself, you know what, there's another side to this. Is I used to tell the young SEAL officers that you have to be aggressive. You've got to be default aggressive, that's how you've got to be. Because when something's going on, you've got to be aggressive to make that, get that problem solved. And if you're not being aggressive, then you're hesitating, well then you can get killed. Okay, so there you go. And that's what I used to tell guys.

• 19:33Lewis Howes?

  That's extreme, that's an extreme.

• 19:35Jocko Willink?

  Yes, that's the problem with it. And so the question is, can you be too aggressive?

• 19:39Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 19:40Jocko Willink?

  Absolutely. You can, hey, there's a machine gun nest over there, let's attack it. So you charge up the hill and everyone dies. You've been too aggressive. So what you have to do is you have to be balanced. And that's probably, so even as I had these kind of mantras, like default aggressive, can you do too much of that? Yes, you can. So you end up with this, what do you end up, can you be too passive?

• 20:02Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 20:02Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah, absolutely. Well now we're not making any progress, now we're getting crushed by the enemy because we didn't maneuver. Okay, so that's bad. So where do you want to be? You want to be balanced. Even the idea of extreme ownership. Can you take too much ownership? Yes. Yes, you can. Really? Yes, you can. But I thought you said you need to take ownership of everything. Two different things. Listen to this. If you're working for me and I say, okay, here's the mission that I want you to accomplish tonight. Here's the people I want you to take. Here's the weapons I want you to bring. Here's the vehicles I want you to bring. Here's the route I want you to use to get to the target. Here's the method I want you to use to secure the target. Here's the route I want you to do to get back. So that's the plan. Now you take ownership and go execute.

• 20:46Jocko Willink?

  Now, can you really take ownership of that plan? If someone else gave you the whole thing? I mean, I gave you the whole thing, right? Is that your plan? No. No, it's your plan. It's my plan. So when you go in the field and now you come up against an obstacle and you're executing my plan, what's your attitude? Well, it's not my plan. Yeah. And you're at an obstacle now and you're like, hey, Jaco didn't think of this. Right, right. So his plan's hard. So now you just back away and you come back and you say, hey, we failed the mission because you didn't think of this. You didn't think of this option, yeah, yeah. Right. So that's me taking too much ownership. So what I need to do is I say, hey, here's the plan or here's the mission. How do you want to do it? And now if you're a good leader, you'll go get with your people and you'll say, oh, hey, guys, here's the plan or here's the mission that we have to accomplish. How do you guys want to do it?

• 21:29Jocko Willink?

  Now you all come up with a good plan and you come back to me and you say, here's the plan. And I say, that looks pretty good. Go execute. And now when you hit an obstacle in the field, what's your attitude? I need to adapt and adjust. It's your plan. You'll make it win. Came up with this. Yes. So can you take too much ownership? The answer is yes, you can. So with just about every, you can name a trait, right? You can name a trait

• 21:52Jocko Willink?

  from a leadership perspective that you think is a positive trait. And you'll immediately see that if you go too far with it, it'll become bad. It'll become bad. So you have to be balanced. So even as I came up with the dichotomy of leadership, I had to be humble enough to say to myself, you know what? Being aggressive is really, really good most of the time. But if you're too aggressive, that's not good. Yeah. So like you said earlier, you're constantly questioning everything. And to me, what that is, that's humility. That's you being humble enough to say, you know what? I really don't understand this that well. And there's some things in my life that I don't get. Whereas opposed to you walking around saying, I already got this figured out. I already know what I'm doing. I already know where I'm going. I already know what God is specifically.

• 22:36Jocko Willink?

  I already know what's going to happen to me when I die. All those things. But instead you're questioning everything, which in my mind is a positive thing.

• 22:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, that's good to know. Is there anything that is missing in your life? Do you feel like something's missing?

• 22:53Jocko Willink?

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

• 23:11Lewis Howes?

  Living the dream, man.

• 23:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, living the dream.

• 23:13Lewis Howes?

  So you never feel like there's something missing for you right now? If there is, you're working towards it, you're working on the next book, you're building the business.

• 23:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, there's a difference between something missing and am I satisfied? Right? Because I'm not satisfied. I mean, I always want to go, like, I never, I never get done with the end of the day and go, "Cool, mission accomplished."

• 23:31Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah. So you're not satisfied, but you feel like nothing's missing?

• 23:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, I'd say that's a fair statement.

• 23:40Lewis Howes?

  What brings you the most joy in your life and makes you smile the most?

• 23:44Jocko Willink?

  Oh, I mean, my kids, my kids are cool. You know, my, my wife and kids, yeah, my, my wife and kids are cool and funny and, and we have a good time and lots of inside jokes and all that.

• 23:55Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 23:56Jocko Willink?

  You know, and I, and I train jujitsu and that, that's very fun. And surf, that's fun.

• 24:03Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 24:03Jocko Willink?

  Play guitar, that's fun.

• 24:04Lewis Howes?

  How old are your kids again?

• 24:05Jocko Willink?

  Eight, 20, 18, 16, and 10.

• 24:10Lewis Howes?

  And what's the biggest lesson you learned about being, about yourself being a father to them?

• 24:16Jocko Willink?

  Your kids are not going to be who you want them to be.

• 24:19Lewis Howes?

  You can't train them to be.

• 24:21Jocko Willink?

  They're going to be who they are. And you can give them some course corrections a little bit, but they're going to be who they, who they are. And the more you try and force them into what you want them to be, the harder they're going to push back and rebel.

• 24:38Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 24:39Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 24:40Lewis Howes?

  Did you learn that the hard way or did you get?

• 24:42Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 24:42Lewis Howes?

  So you tried to train them in a certain way or?

• 24:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, somewhat. And it's pretty obvious, like, from my perspective, I was, I was having a similar conversation with a bunch of executives. And, and they were, we were talking, we, you know, we went down the road because we're having dinner now, so we're done talking about work. But now everyone wants to ask me about, you know, parenting and everything else and. And I said at the table, I'm like, hey, who here ended up doing exactly what their parents wanted them to do? And there's like one guy out of 10, right? Cause most people, you know, your parents are wanting you to do this thing and you do something else. I mean, I joined the Navy when I was 18 years old. Like that's, that probably wasn't even on the checklist of top 20 things that my parents wanted me to do. Not even in the same ballpark, right? They didn't want you to go to war. Yeah, they didn't want that. So here you go. Yeah. See ya.

• 25:28Jocko Willink?

  That's, so the more you try and kind of pigeonhole your kids into being something that you want them to be, the worse off it's gonna be. It's the same thing with leadership. It's the same thing with leadership. If I'm, if I'm trying to force my plan down my team's throat, the more resistance I'm gonna get from it. Whereas if I plant the seed and I allow that plan to grow with them, the better it's gonna be received. Like when people ask me, how do you get people to buy in? Well, you, you allow them to come up with, come up with a plan yourself. What if, what if in your mind, you're like, you really know that plan's not that good? It depends on how bad it is. How bad is it? Or what's at stake? If you're, if you're working for me and you're going to meet with a client

• 26:12Jocko Willink?

  and you have a bad pitch that you're gonna give them. And the client is some tiny client that I think is a low probability of us working with, and the contract doesn't really matter. I'd be like, hey, hey, give it a shot. Here's a couple. I might give you a couple of adjustments and, and give you some coaching on it. And then you go and you do your thing and you come back and you're like, oh no, we didn't land it. And I say, well, what do you think? Let's debrief. And now we talk about it. I said, you know, you said this and you said that. Here's some other ways to go about it. I might even actually have you do it to me. So then I could sit there and take some notes and say, hey, here's some other things that might've worked. Now, if you were going to meet with a big client that really was gonna have value to our company, I'm gonna, I'm gonna either, yeah, I'm gonna step in and be like, okay, let's think about that. What's their reaction gonna be?

• 26:57Jocko Willink?

  And, and by the way, that's when I'm not gonna say, no, don't do it that way. I'm gonna say, give me that, tell me that again. And let me hear, let me give you some objections that you might hear from them. And all of a sudden, I'll let you come up with the solutions. Even though I'm sitting there going, yeah, what he needs to say is this. No, I'll let you come up with the solutions. So then you're kind of going in there like you got this dialed. And then you're gonna feel like you won, which you did. That's great. Which is great. Gives you more ownership, more respect in yourself, confidence, belief.

• 27:22Lewis Howes?

  How important is feedback for leaders? Getting feedback from peers, coaches, or employees, team members?

• 27:30Jocko Willink?

  Feedback is how you get better. No feedback, no improvement. And if you're not humble, you're not looking for feedback and you're not listening to it. So if you think you know everything, you're not listening, you're not asking for it, and even when it gets told to you, you don't listen to it. So, feedback is built upon being humble.

• 27:48Lewis Howes?

  What would you say is in your way to getting to the next level? What feedback do you think you need to hear or receive from your team or people in order to reach the next goals that you have?

• 27:59Jocko Willink?

  I mean, the weird thing about me is, even though you might think, look at me and think, oh, who's gonna tell this guy anything, right? The reality is, if anyone of my friends, my team, anyone that works for me up and down the chain of command, if they think I'm wrong, everyone will say, hey, I don't know if that's a good plan. So, even when I was a task unit commander, so I'm in charge, and I'm the head seal for this 40 SEALs, I'm the main guy. Anyone in that chain of command, those guys would all come to me and say, hey, I don't know if this is a good way to do it. And you know what I'd say? Why not? What do you think? What are you thinking? How do you think we should do it? My mind is open. If my plan is bad, please tell me. They would know that.

• 28:40Jocko Willink?

  So, my friends, my family, they'll tell me when I'm doing something wrong all day long.

• 28:47Lewis Howes?

  They're not intimidated or scared of you?

• 28:49Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 28:49Lewis Howes?

  That's good.

• 28:50Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 28:51Lewis Howes?

  So how does a leader cultivate that with his family, friends, team, in order to welcome the feedback of the information?

• 28:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, what you do is, when somebody gives you feedback, you listen to it. This is like, you know, just the other day, we have a leadership event that we do two or three times a year, but the thing that I was telling this group of people was, as a leader, you should be listening 98% of the time and talking 2% of the time. So, every time you come to me and you say, hey, Jaco... I don't like this plan. I don't say shut up and do it my way. I say, I say, how would you want to do it? Tell me what you don't like about it and then tell me how you want to do it. So therefore, the next time you have an objection, you're like, you know, the door is open. You know that I'm gonna be open minded and listen to you and that's how you build it.

• 29:40Jocko Willink?

  Every time you shut someone down from listening, from, from speaking their mind, you actually are creating a negative environment where you're not gonna get the feedback. And if there's no feedback, as we just said, you're not gonna improve.

• 29:51Lewis Howes?

  What are two things that any leader could do to improve their leadership skills? Right off the bat, two things you can think of. And what are two things that wannabe leaders do that hold them back from being great leaders? So what are the two things they could add?

• 30:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, two things that you have, number one is listen, which, which we just talked about, so that's fresh on my mind. And you'd be surprised about how many leaders are thinking that because they're in a leadership position, they should be talking all the time. Wrong answer. Wrong answer. I'll sit through a meeting with a client or with one of my companies and I'll listen for 38 minutes. And at the end of those 38 minutes, I'll have already thought through every discussion that's been had. You know, you want to argue with him and he's arguing with her. And guess what? I get to sit there and assess those arguments and see which one is the most important. Meanwhile, you're expending all your ammunition, she's expending all her ammunition, he's giving up everything he's got, I'm learning all their thought patterns, I'm learning the, the pros and cons of each one of their arguments, and I do that for 38 minutes.

• 30:53Jocko Willink?

  And in the 39th minute, I say, hey, here's what I think we should do. And guess what? Because I've done an accurate assessment and listened, I'm actually gonna be able to make the best decision. It wasn't because I was smarter. It wasn't because I had better tactical understanding. It's because I actually shut my mouth, listened to everyone spill their guts, learned everything that they knew and did a good detached

• 31:20Jocko Willink?

  assessment of, of what the right thing to do was. So, listen, and the other one is the word that I just used, which is detach, which is not getting emotional. Not getting into the weeds about stuff that doesn't matter. If you can take a step back and look around, you're gonna see infinitely more than you can. When you're in the weeds staring the firefight in the face, looking down the sights of your weapon, shooting. If you're doing that, you can't see anything else. Just think about that metaphor right there. If I'm looking down the sights of my weapon and I'm shooting, my world is this big. The minute that I stop shooting, point my weapon at high port, take a step back and actually look around,

• 32:03Jocko Willink?

  I can see infinitely more. So, apply that to a meeting. It's just a meeting that we just talked about. A 38-minute meeting, all this chaos is happening. Sure, I'm the boss, I could jump in there and start arguing and give him my opinion. But what am I really doing then? What I'm really doing then is I'm in the weeds. And I'm not able to assess what is actually happening. So there you apply it there to your personal life. If you and I are arguing, you're my friend and you did something and now we're starting to escalate an argument and I'm starting to get emotional, am I able to listen to you anymore? Am I able to logically figure out what's going on? If I'm talking to my wife and she did something that made me mad and now I'm starting to raise my voice, is that, is that whole situation going in the right direction? No.

• 32:46Jocko Willink?

  No, it's not. It's not. So what I need to do is take a step back, detach, calm down, listen to what she's saying and then try and assemble a logical thing to say back without, without saying, "You need to calm down" or "You're too emotional." No, no, no, no, no. Because if you come to me and you're mad about something, you come to me, whether it's, whether it's my wife or whether you're a business partner, you come to me and you say, "The dang, the supply department didn't give me the stuff I needed." If I say, "Hey, calm down," right? If that's my reaction, then you realize that I'm against you.

• 33:29Jocko Willink?

  Right? I don't get it. And so now it's me and the supply department against you. No one understands. No one understands. So I do a little technique.

• 33:39Lewis Howes?

  What is that?

• 33:40Jocko Willink?

  I call it reflect and diminish. So I'm gonna reflect your emotions back to you, but I'm gonna diminish them a little bit so that we're not escalating the situation.

• 33:49Lewis Howes?

  How would you do this with your wife?

• 33:50Jocko Willink?

  So if you, well, if you come to me and you go, "The supply department's been late. They're two weeks late on this stuff." I don't say, "Calm down." I say, "Oh, you gotta be kidding me. Two weeks?" And you go, "Yeah, can you believe it? Ah, that's horrible. We gotta put a solution, we gotta get that figured out." In the meantime, what do we need to do right now to get the problem solved? Right? So we already, now we're on the same team so we can work together to find a solution.

• 34:13Lewis Howes?

  We bonded on the pain.

• 34:14Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 34:14Lewis Howes?

  You felt the pain.

• 34:15Jocko Willink?

  Yes. We're on the same team. Okay, my wife, what's gonna make my wife mad? "The ice machine's not working." Right? "The ice machine's not working."

• 34:25Lewis Howes?

  It's your fault.

• 34:26Jocko Willink?

  Whether it's my fault, we don't know. "The ice machine's not working." By the way, this is a real story. This is happening today. "The ice machine's not working." And she didn't get mad about it, but, "The ice machine's not working." If I go, "Hey, you have a refrigerator and a house and..."

• 34:42Lewis Howes?

  Go on the beach.

• 34:43Jocko Willink?

  Just calm down, right? How's that gonna go? It's not gonna go good. Now she's gonna get mad. Now it's me against her. You know, so instead, "The ice machine's not working. Ah, man, that thing is junk. Have you called the repair guy? You know what I mean? And then all of a sudden, we're on the same team. And she's like, "Well, no, I haven't, but I'm about to." Okay, cool. As opposed to, "The ice machine's not working. Well, okay, do you want me to have ice shipped in from Alaska there, princess?"

• 35:13Lewis Howes?

  What would you say were the strategies of the SEALs in accomplishing your goals at the highest level? What are some of the things that you guys did, strategy-wise? To make that happen?

• 35:25Jason Redman?

  Structure and discipline. So muscle memory would be the biggest one, which is now many of the things that I teach in both Overcome and in my Point Man for Life program. And it was something that I was missing. I felt like I was missing when I left the military. And I think a lot of military members feel the same way. The SEAL teams are incredibly effective at what we do for a lot of reasons. One of the reasons is selection. So, and that selection is...

• 35:54Jason Redman?

  There's a lot of things you have to do to qualify just to get to SEAL training. A lot of people don't realize how smart SEALs have to be. So there's a level of intelligence, there's a level of physical ability, there's a level of obviously resiliency that has to come into this. And then we put everybody through this meat grinder called SEAL training that eliminates anybody that doesn't have that ability. And then once we get, you know, once you get to the SEAL team, it's how we train and build teams and it's forged through tremendous adversity. Because our training, even once you get to a team, is designed to be very hard. I mean, some people would say almost sadistic in the way we would train. We would look for, what is the absolute worst-case scenario we can think of?

• 36:37Jason Redman?

  And then how do we amplify that just a little more?

• 36:40Lewis Howes?

  To make it even more worse.

• 36:41Jason Redman?

  To make it even worse.

• 36:42Lewis Howes?

  And then train from that.

• 36:44Jason Redman?

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

• 37:30Jason Redman?

  How do I take a compound of three houses? How do I take a village? So it was a crawl, walk, run mentality all the time. And then structure and discipline and the way we trained, everything was built up that way from, from shooting. You know, oftentimes, I was a marksmanship instructor and I've trained some other people to shoot and they're always... They're a little funny because the very first thing to do when I train anybody to shoot is you shoot at the, you know, at the three yard line. A little black dot and we're shooting at the three yard line. And they're like, hey, man, this is stupid. I'm like, no, you're not. You're learning and the repetition that you need to effectively pull your weapon out and, and get a positive sight picture, trigger squeeze, release that round, second sight picture,

• 38:15Jason Redman?

  and follow through so that we can do that over and over and over again until, you know, at that whatever point, you know, you're shooting from 50, 100 yards or more. Yeah. So all of that comes together to create small victories and repetition, structure and discipline that all come together to be successful. How does someone create that for themselves when they're not in the military? So that's Or not on the sports team. When I left, so what I began to realize, so Overcome, when I wrote The Trident, which was my first book, it was just the story. It's a story, it's my story of a young punk kid

• 38:57Jason Redman?

  who did well enough to become an officer or a leader and then totally failed because of ego and arrogance, got a second chance and then redeemed himself and then got wounded and kind of realized there was another level of leadership. And when people would read that, people would say, how'd you do that? And I couldn't definitively answer that question. So Overcome became, I mean, it took, Overcome came out in,

• 39:25Jason Redman?

  I think, five years after I wrote The Trident because it took that long to kind of think about what enabled that. And a lot of that had to do with when I got out of the military, I missed that structure and discipline. I missed, you know, a lot of people don't understand that, that the military is sometimes a really simple existence, especially when you're deployed. Like when you're in the combat zone, it's a very simple existence. You

• 39:51Jason Redman?

  You eat, you sleep, you work out, and then you train and conduct missions.

• 39:56Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 39:56Jason Redman?

  And you worry about the guys around you. And the real world's really complicated. There's all these distractions. There's no one that gives you the guidance. No one hands you a mission and says, hey, man, this is what you're doing today.

• 40:07Lewis Howes?

  You gotta figure out your own mission.

• 40:08Jason Redman?

  Exactly. And as I got out, I realized that I had to figure out my own mission. And all these things were not there. So I started with, okay, so how was I successful coming out of these injuries? Because that's what everybody wanted to see. How were you so positive? How did you write that sign on the door? How'd you, you know, less than a year and a half after your injuries, launch a nonprofit? How did you, you know, later create your own speaking company and all these things? And I realized that I was super balanced as a leader when I was wounded.

• 40:44Lewis Howes?

  When you were wounded?

• 40:45Jason Redman?

  When I was wounded. I wasn't prior to being wounded.

• 40:49Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 40:49Jason Redman?

  Not when I had the leadership failure. And at other points in crisis in my life, I realized I wasn't as.

• 40:55Lewis Howes?

  Balanced. I think I saw one of your videos recently talking about like the key to successful leadership is balance.

• 41:01Jason Redman?

  It is. I believe it. But balance is a misnomer too, because it's not like, well, I put 20% in this bucket, in this bucket, in this bucket. I teach five, I teach something called the Pentagon of Peak Performance. So five key areas that a leader should be balanced in. The foundational level is physical leadership. And it's something that I've come to find that all of us, as we get older, have a tendency to let slide. We do the opposite of probably what we should be doing.

• 41:31Lewis Howes?

  Going harder and.

• 41:32Jason Redman?

  Yeah, because as we get older, we're breaking down. And we need, we need to take care of ourselves better than we do when we're younger, where your body's so much more resilient. And that's why I tell people, as a leader, you need a lot of energy. You need to be able to think clearly. You need, you know, sound mind in everything that you're doing. So that foundational level of physical leadership is critical to what you're doing. And that consists of sleep, nutrition, and fitness. So those three components. And.

• 42:06Jason Redman?

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

• 42:45Jason Redman?

  and I was super arrogant, I really thought I knew everything. And I didn't challenge my beliefs, I didn't question my own capabilities, you know, do as I say, not as I do. I didn't do things to get out of my comfort zone.

• 43:01Jason Redman?

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

• 43:42Jason Redman?

  It's doing your due diligence to find out what is, what's really true, and how does it play into who I am and what I'm trying to do. It's getting outside of your comfort zone. It's finding the individuals who are where you want to be, and identifying them as mentors, so you can be better, so that you're not surrounding yourself with individuals who are pulling you away from where you want to go. Right. Number three, and this is the biggest one and my weakest point, and that's something I've found about the Pentagon. Most people have one area, they're, they're super strong, naturally, and then they have an area where they're super weak. And my weakest area was emotional leadership.

• 44:23Jason Redman?

  And emotional leadership is our ability to maintain, as a leader, it's critical to be even keeled. We're not too hot, we're not too cold, we're not too excited, we're not too angry. Because people can count on you with that consistency. They know as a leader, I can come to you and tell you bad news. And you're gonna take it well, and I can come to you and tell you amazing news and, you know, you're not gonna burn it down drinking and be an idiot. You know, you gotta ride that balance. And I really struggle with that, cuz I was an emotional roller coaster when I was younger. And I came to realize that that really damaged my credibility as a leader.

• 45:04Jason Redman?

  And it's also choosing that positivity in the face of negativity. Nobody wants that leader that is a just an emotional train wreck, you know, or a negative Nelly. They want that leader who they can count on, that's positive, that's gonna push you forward. They also don't want that leader that's something I call a leadership wrecking ball. A leader who, they're all about the result, but they leave a path of destruction behind them. They'll crush you in their path to get things done. And that, in my opinion, is weak emotional leadership also. I mean, as a leader, we gotta think about the others.

• 45:41Lewis Howes?

  The health of others, yes.

• 45:43Jason Redman?

  And then, the last point, well, the last part of emotional leadership is

• 45:50Jason Redman?

  managing our mouths, because

• 45:52Lewis Howes?

  Our mouth?

• 45:53Jason Redman?

  Our mouth.

• 45:53Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 45:54Jason Redman?

  Yeah, because so many people

• 45:55Lewis Howes?

  So true.

• 45:58Jason Redman?

  So many people, and I was guilty of this, and I'm not, I'm not impervious to this. Like I said, this is my weakest area. But I'm really aware of myself now, because when we let that zinger fly, 90% of the time, it doesn't do anything to further what we're trying to accomplish as a leader. All it does is massages our ego, you know? Well, I was angry in the moment, so I wanted to say this. I see this in relationships all the time. Husband and wife that let these zingers fly, it does nothing to further that situation in a positive way.

• 46:33Lewis Howes?

  No.

• 46:34Jason Redman?

  That's part of being a leader also.

• 46:35Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 46:36Jason Redman?

  That people are gonna disagree with you. So what? You know, if you have conviction in who you are, it's just going to happen, I mean, in this world.

• 46:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, another Navy SEAL that I had on, Chad Wright said,

• 46:48Lewis Howes?

  Your tongue is like a rudder in a boat. It's like whatever you speak, like it's gonna start guiding you in that direction or, you know, influencing you in certain directions in your life. So make sure you really use your words correctly and based on where you wanna go. Kind of back to the no negativity. If you're negative, it's gonna affect you and take you down a negative path in your life. Feeling that way emotionally, you know, you're gonna attract negative people. So, you know, you made that decision in that moment to speak differently. Use words differently, which I think was powerful.

• 47:19Jason Redman?

  Yeah.

• 47:19Lewis Howes?

  Okay, so that was three. Number four?

• 47:21Jason Redman?

  Social leadership.

• 47:22Lewis Howes?

  Social leadership.

• 47:24Jason Redman?

  How do we build the rings of influence around us? So, and I break that down into four rings of influence. Uh, the outermost ring is our work relationships. The innermost ring is a lot of times our work acquaintances slash friends. Uh, the, the third ring is our close friends. And then that bullseye is our immediate family. And in Western culture, there's a tendency to put a whole lot of time and effort into the two outermost rings, our work relationships and our work friends and acquaintances. And we have a tendency to take for granted our close friends and our family.

• 47:58Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 47:58Jason Redman?

  And we think they'll always be there for us. But when a major crisis comes, when you're on the X, that may or may not be true because that's when everything is being pressure tested. And if you haven't put the time and effort into your immediate family, then um, oftentimes it will break. And, and, and Jimmy Hatch, a friend of mine, described it like this. We all ride on trains in this life. I rode on the SEAL train. Um, you rode on the football train. And we never know, all of us hope that someday we'll get to wherever we wanna get off. For some of us, it's the end of the tracks. For others, there's a specific stop they wanna get off on. But sometimes there's a catastrophic event that occurs in our life and we get thrown off the train.

• 48:42Jason Redman?

  And those outermost rings don't get off with you because they're still on the train. And it's not that they don't like you or anything like that. They're just still riding the football train or the SEAL train and you're no longer on it. But who gets off with you is your close friends and family. And so often I have watched individuals that get into a major crisis and you also know so many successful people that have been super successful but got to the end of their career or even the end of their lives and said, why didn't I put more time into my family?

• 49:10Lewis Howes?

  That's true.

• 49:11Jason Redman?

  So, uh, social leadership is making sure that we are, we are investing in those relationships to be ready. The, the key question I ask everybody is will you be ready?

• 49:21Lewis Howes?

  For what?

• 49:23Jason Redman?

  It doesn't matter. Will you be ready for that moment when it comes because we don't know what that moment is?

• 49:27Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 49:28Jason Redman?

  So that balance enables us to be ready for almost anything. Having a mindset of the next ambush is out on the horizon. If I maintain balance, if I have a leadership mindset of being ready for it, I'll be ready for it no matter what it is.

• 49:41Lewis Howes?

  No matter what it is.

• 49:42Jason Redman?

  It doesn't mean it's gonna hurt less, but at least I'll be ready for it to drive forward, but it takes those things. That's why I was so successful when I got wounded. I was balanced in those areas. The last one is spiritual leadership.

• 49:54Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 49:55Jason Redman?

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

• 50:40Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 50:41Jason Redman?

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

• 50:52Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 50:53Jason Redman?

  You know, cause I'm still here.

• 50:55Lewis Howes?

  That's right, man. No bad days.

• 50:59Lewis Howes?

  What do you think is the skills that we should learn to master more to help us reach at the top of our field, our industry, or to set us up to be prepared when that ambush comes? So we stay ready, we don't have to get ready?

• 51:15Jason Redman?

  So, in my opinion, it comes back to four key things, which I call the point man principles.

• 51:22Lewis Howes?

  Point man principles.

• 51:23Jason Redman?

  Last year, I wrote a planner called the point man planner. And it came about because I got really sick. And while I was really sick, they were trying to figure out what was wrong with me, I had a parasite and a blood disorder that attacked my central nervous system, and I was super messed up. I thought I was dying, to be honest. And at one point, I was like, man, I wish I had a point man, like when I was in the SEAL teams, to lead me out of some of these bad situations. And it made me think, well, why? What made them so effective? And when we were talking about what makes the SEALs effective, like it became really clear to me that a really good point man, a lot of SEALs live their life in this

• 52:05Jason Redman?

  way. And there's four principles. And I think this is how anybody out there can be effective and bring their game to the highest level. Number one, relentless belief in your mission. And there's a lot of people who don't know what their mission is. They've never written it down, they've never defined it. And if you write down your mission, it's got to be built on the foundation of your values. And there's a lot of people that don't know what their values are. They'll tell you cliche things. They'll say, you know, faith, family, finance, fitness. But when you hear those things, you're like, dude, you haven't been in church in two years. You haven't been in the gym. I haven't seen you in the gym this year. You know, we just throw these things out there. And understanding, because whether you know what your values are or not, know what your values are or not, they

• 52:50Jason Redman?

  are driving you, and they're driving your decision making.

• 52:52Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 52:53Jason Redman?

  So if one of your values maybe is...

• 52:58Jason Redman?

  Fame or recognition, that's okay. You should be aware of it. Doesn't mean it's a negative thing unless you're stabbing somebody else in the back to get it. But knowing that is important because now you can build your mission in this life upon it. And because my mission now, now that I'm out of the SEAL teams, it's about setting that example as a leader. I want people to regard me as a point man for my own life. Someone that they want to learn from, someone that is a leader, that sets the example, that communicates well. So that has become my new mission. Number two is a clearly defined destination and a set course. So in the military, we always knew exactly where we were going.

• 53:43Jason Redman?

  And in life, people often don't. In life, people say, well, I want to be rich or I want to be in better shape. Well, those are not clearly defined things. It's kind of like saying, I want to go west.

• 53:56Lewis Howes?

  If I needed to go someplace.

• 53:58Jason Redman?

  You know? So a clearly defined destination. In the military, we use something called the universal transverser, transversercator system. It's a grid system that covers the entire earth and it breaks it down into a-

• 54:10Lewis Howes?

  It's the exact point.

• 54:11Jason Redman?

  Exactly, a one meter square, almost the size of this table. Yep.

• 54:15Lewis Howes?

  It's crazy, in the whole world.

• 54:16Jason Redman?

  Well, all the way, the north and south poles become an issue.

• 54:20Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, sure.

• 54:21Jason Redman?

  But yeah, all the way, almost to the north and south poles.

• 54:23Lewis Howes?

  Yes, where most of the people live, yes.

• 54:26Jason Redman?

  Exactly, exactly. So when we identify a target, it's broken down usually all the way to that 10-digit grid, meaning a one by one meter square.

• 54:37Lewis Howes?

  That's crazy.

• 54:37Jason Redman?

  So a very clearly defined destination. And that enables us to not have any deviation, you know, and we're not going west. We know exactly where we're going. And then the second part of it is a clearly defined course. And that course is a bearing on how we get there or how we follow our compass to get there. Most people may have one, but they don't have the other. And you can't get to where you're going without having both.

• 55:03Lewis Howes?

  They may have the destination, but not know the how to get there.

• 55:07Jason Redman?

  That's right. Because the course becomes the how to. It becomes our waypoints. Like I give the example of when I wanted to be a SEAL as a kid, I knew- That was my destination. That was a very clearly defined destination. And the course was all the things that I had to do. So I had to enlist in the Navy. I had to get accepted. I had to get a SEAL contract. I had to physically pass the SEAL screening test. I had to academically pass the ASVAB score with a high enough score to get picked up for SEALs. I had to get a SEAL rating. I had to graduate from my A school. I had to get the SEAL training. I had to make it through SEAL training. I had to make it through Hell Week.

• 55:50Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 55:51Jason Redman?

  All these things were waypoints on the course. So if people can break their goals down in this manner, and I break them down in the Point Man Planner quarterly, and then every day we make sure, I do something called the Rule of Three Ps. One physical, one personal, one professional. Every day, we're moving the needle just a little bit towards those goals. That's how we stay on course.

• 56:14Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 56:16Jason Redman?

  Number four, or I'm sorry, number three of the Point Man Principles is risk assessment and situational awareness. So many people walk through life totally blind. When we talk about will you be ready? They're not ready for the ambushes that are coming, and oftentimes, they never see them coming, even though the signs were there. So one, are we regularly doing risk assessments of where we are in our life? Are we still balanced? Are we still taking care of ourselves? You know, both in the Pentagon of Peak Performance? Are we making sure that our destination is front-site focused? That we're on course? That we're hitting the waypoints we should? So we're consistently doing a risk assessment.

• 57:01Jason Redman?

  We're also looking for the indicators that an ambush is on the horizon.

• 57:04Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 57:05Jason Redman?

  And so many people don't. So then they walk into these ambushes and they're like, oh my God, I never saw that coming.

• 57:12Lewis Howes?

  Okay. And number four, so it's risk assessment and situational awareness, right?

• 57:17Jason Redman?

  Yep.

• 57:17Lewis Howes?

  And the fourth one?

• 57:19Jason Redman?

  Is an overcome mindset to get off the X as quickly as possible.

• 57:22Lewis Howes?

  Overcome mindset.

• 57:23Jason Redman?

  Yeah. So you can't, you can't prevent every ambush. Most, I estimate that most people in this life will go through five, at a minimum, five major life ambushes. And I define a major life ambush as anything that will forever leave physical, mental, emotional, or deep financial scars. And you'll never fully recover from it. You know, or let me rephrase that. You will always carry the pain of that ambush. You will always look back and you will think, God, that was painful. Like, it hurts when we think about it. And I tell people that on the lower end of the scale, it can be the ending of a relationship. It can be the ending of a marriage. Job.

• 58:05Jason Redman?

  Job, personal failure, professional failure, lawsuit, bankruptcy, the failure of a business. It can be life-threatening illness or injury, life-threatening illness or injury to someone you love. It can be sexual trauma to you or someone you love. And then at the higher ends, it starts to get into the loss of a loved one, or one of the highest I've seen is the loss of a child. Oh, yeah, that's tough. So, having a mindset of readiness and knowing that unfortunately those things could happen, and I teach something called the React methodology. So, it's a, it's a system to use when these ambushes come. What's that system?

• 58:47Jason Redman?

  So, React is an acronym for when an ambush comes, the very first thing we have to do is recognize that we are in a crisis. And it goes back to what we were talking about in the beginning. When you're on the X, there's a natural tendency to procrastinate and deny and look at the past or the future. It's hard to recognize, yeah. It's usually the hardest, and depending on the level of ambush. And I want to make sure that people understand, if you lose a child, timeline is relative. I don't expect you to, you know. Yes. It's going to take time to get off the X from losing a child. But also recognizing that you're already thinking, I can't lay here forever. Like, I have to. Some point, get up, yeah.

• 59:31Jason Redman?

  Exactly. So, number one, recognizing you're in a crisis, or recognizing the reality is what I say. Number two is evaluate your assets. So, when we are hit by a life ambush, by any kind of crisis or catastrophic event. It's natural to feel totally overwhelmed in the moment because your world has just come to a grinding halt for whatever it is. It's like you suddenly stepped into a raging storm. You're in the darkness. You're trying to figure out what's happening in this chaos with the wind howling and lightning and thunder and people beating on you. And it's overwhelming. And we tend to think, you know, there's no hope, there's nothing I can do, it's all outside of my control.

• 1:00:14Jason Redman?

  But we have to, in that moment, figure out how we control what we can. And one of the first things we can do is evaluate, what assets do I have to bring to bear to this problem? I was talking about, it's like tools in our toolbox. You know, so what can I either buy, borrow, use that I already have? If it's a, you know, business crisis, it may be an accountant or an attorney, or it may be advisors or a board that, you know, or maybe whoever that's helping you to get out of this crisis, maybe, you know, outsourcing someone that has specialties that helps you deal with whatever problem you're in. If it's a personal crisis, maybe it's a relationship crisis, so it could be a marriage counselor, a priest, or a, you know, whatever it is.

• 1:00:58Jason Redman?

  Having those things, though, makes you suddenly say, okay, this is crisis, but I can deal with it.

• 1:01:04Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 1:01:05Jason Redman?

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

• 1:01:37Lewis Howes?

  Right. Okay.

• 1:01:39Jason Redman?

  And, and I tell people, you gotta slow down, you gotta take a tactical pause. In the military, we called it, let the battlefield develop.

• 1:01:45Lewis Howes?

  And look at all the outcomes.

• 1:01:47Jason Redman?

  Yeah, all the outcomes, and also, maybe there are things that are happening that you haven't seen yet.

• 1:01:52Lewis Howes?

  Behind the scenes, yeah.

• 1:01:53Jason Redman?

  So getting your team together, whoever is helping you, whoever's part of this inventory, this is where we now assess both the short-term and the long-term impact of the decisions that we're gonna make.

• 1:02:05Lewis Howes?

  Okay. And the C?

• 1:02:07Jason Redman?

  Choose and communicate. So you choose the direction you're gonna go and you communicate it to the people around you.

• 1:02:16Jason Redman?

  You're never on the X by yourself.

• 1:02:20Jason Redman?

  The X has its own gravitational pull, any kind of life ambush. So if you are in a, if it's a personal ambush, your family, your kids, your friends get pulled on the X with you. If it's a business ambush, your

• 1:02:32Lewis Howes?

  Your team.

• 1:02:32Jason Redman?

  Your team, believe it or not, even your clients can get pulled on the X with you. So it's, it's important that we choose and then communicate because frequently as a leader, especially when we're in a crisis, sometimes we want to internalize and we don't want to, even though everybody around us can see, you're in a storm, man, you're on the X. But it's important to communicate for, for three different reasons. Number one, when we communicate, we verbalize what we're going to do. And there's a level and then there's that lead yourself level of internal accountability. When we say we're going to do something, now it's like, yes, this is what I'm doing. Number two, it tells others and they're like, oh my God, yes, we have a plan. This sucks, let's go. And that third component of that is hope. It gives people hope.

• 1:03:17Jason Redman?

  It's like a positive direction. Yes, we have a plan. This is where we're going. And then the last one is take action. Execute on that plan. There are so many people who will go through this process and then they're waiting for the perfect moment.

• 1:03:32Jason Redman?

  And the perfect moment's never going to come. The time to act is now, you know, imperfect action is better than waiting for this perfect plan.

• 1:03:39Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 1:03:40Jason Redman?

  And it, and it creates momentum. It gets you off that X. And you may go from one X to the next and that happens sometimes, but use that momentum to keep going.

• 1:03:48Lewis 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.

• 1:04:32Lewis Howes?

  And now it's time to go out there and do something great.