877 Navy Seal Mindset for Living Your Best Life with Chadd Wright

FIND YOUR STEADY STATE. We all hear it. The voice in our heads that tells us to quit or that we’re not good enough. The goal isn’t to eliminate the voice. Our job is to make sure we never give that voice any power. We must silence the doubt and maximize our belief. Whether it’s physical training or business, when things are challenging learn to break things down into digestible pieces. Accept the discomfort and let it go. Keep your mind on your dreams no matter what. Do whatever you need to do to motivate, inspire, and strengthen your mind daily. Once you do, you will be complete and anything is possible. In today’s episode of The School of Greatness, I talk about building a healthy mindset and the need for body, mind, and soul alignment with retired Navy SEAL veteran, competitive Ultrarunner, and business owner: Chadd Wright. Chadd Wright had a successful career in the SEAL teams serving as a Team Leader on multiple deployments as a SEAL instructor and Master Training Specialist. Retiring in 2019, he is now a part-time defense contractor, business owner, entrepreneur, competitive Ultrarunner, and husband. Chadd teaches us how to persevere through times and challenges. He has a fantastic story that will inspire anyone. So get ready to learn about focus, goals, and the power of the mind on Episode 877. Some Questions I Ask: What does “3 of 7” mean? (06:30) Tell us about your journey to becoming a Navy SEAL. (15:00) Why did you sacrifice your life for your dream of being a Navy SEAL? (24:25) How did it feel when the doctor-approved your Navy SEAL training after the heart procedure? (28:45) How do you manage your mind during tough times? (37:40) What was your main job as a Navy SEAL? (55:00) How do you deal with self-doubt? (58:10) In This Episode You Will Learn: Chadd’s interesting story to becoming a Navy SEAL (07:00) How Chadd stayed true to his goal despite being told no (11:00) Why you should never let go of your goal. (21:20) The importance of breaking down challenges into small pieces. (34:20) Words we should and should not say to ourselves during tough times. (45:50) How to maximize your resources or tools to accomplish your mission. (01:01:26) The power of connecting and nourishing your body, soul, and spirit. (01:16:40) If you enjoyed this episode, check out the video, show notes and more at ww.lewishowes.com/877 and follow at instagram.com/877 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?

  This is episode number 877 with retired Navy SEAL Chad Wright.

• 0:07Lewis 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.

• 0:33Lewis Howes?

  Bruce Lee said, "Do not pray for an easy life. Pray for the strength to endure a difficult one." Welcome to this episode. I'm so glad you're here. We have an inspirational guest. His name is Chad Wright. And I know you've gone through many adversities in your life, and you might be going through an extreme challenge right now, trying to figure out decisions in your life, where to head moving forward in your relationships. You might be struggling with some type of physical ailment right now, or lack of physical health. You might be dealing with insecurities, doubt, fear, uncertainty of your financial future.

• 1:16Lewis Howes?

  You might be wondering, "What is my purpose in life right now? Why am I here? What's the next step I'm supposed to take?" And if you're wondering any of these things, or if you're just looking to get to the next level of where you're at currently, then this episode is for you. It's all about nourishing your body, soul, and spirit to live a complete life, and becoming a warrior in the face of adversity. Chad is a retired Navy SEAL turned ultra marathon runner and entrepreneur, and an inspirational speaker. I had the opportunity to connect with him.

• 1:54Lewis Howes?

  At Jesse Itzler's event 29029, which is a 35-hour endurance hike up a mountain, and he blew me away. Was so inspired by his mindset and his ability to endure extreme adversity and pain. And he served as a team leader on multiple deployments as a Navy SEAL, an instructor and master training specialist. And after 12 years as a SEAL, Chad retired and went on to start the project, Three of Seven Project, with his brother Blake. And the Three of Seven Project is a merging of Chad and Blake's passions and paths to provide a resource that gives people the knowledge and ability

• 2:35Lewis Howes?

  to complete themselves through the nourishment of body, soul, and spirit. They also have a podcast, the Three of Seven Podcast, where they interview the most complete human beings and collaborate, share, and provide practical applications for experiencing life more abundantly. And in this interview, we talk about Chad's extreme commitment to becoming a SEAL, and how he tried out every single week for four months just to qualify for the physical assessment. Every week for four months. His extremely rare heart condition and consequential surgery for it that gave him the motivational boost to train even harder. He had to have surgery to become a Navy SEAL. That's how

• 3:17Lewis Howes?

  dedicated and committed he was to achieving his dream. The power of the spoken word and how Chad became conscious of how he speaks to himself and those around him. This is one of the most important parts of the interview you're going to hear that could drastically change where you're at in your life right now. Chad's routine for investing in his body, mind, and spirit before everything else. It's amazing the amount of dedication he has towards his body and mind. And he's going to break down his exact training regime throughout this interview. How adversity can be the greatest teacher in life and how we should be looking for challenges

• 3:59Lewis Howes?

  in our life, not asking for an easy life. I'm super pumped. I think you're gonna love this one. The mindset of a Navy SEAL has always fascinated me and Chad has got a beautiful experience and a beautiful way of being since retiring as a SEAL. I think you're really gonna love this. Make sure to share it with one friend today who you think might be going through some type of challenge or looking to get to the next level in their life. Just send them the link lewishouse.com/877 or copy and paste the podcast link you're listening to on Apple Podcast or Spotify as I really believe people are gonna get a ton of value out of this. And now without further ado, let's dive into this interview with the one and only Chad Wright.

• 4:46Lewis Howes?

  Chad Wright is in the house. Welcome to the School of Greatness Podcast. Excited you're here, man. We met, was it three weeks ago?

• 4:54Chadd Wright?

  I think, yeah.

• 4:54Lewis Howes?

  What was the mountain? What was the date?

• 4:56Chadd Wright?

  Dude, I don't know. It's back there somewhere.

• 4:58Lewis Howes?

  We met at an event that Jesse is our host called 29029. It's climbing a mountain 17 times in Vermont, the equivalent of Mount Everest. Challenging. You smoked through it pretty quickly on a lot of the hills. I was keeping a slow pace, but we got to have an amazing conversation on the last hill, which I was excited about. And we talked, I made you stop much longer to share your story. And we said, let's do a, let's do a longer interview and talk about this. First thing I want to ask about is what is three of seven? You've got it on your hat, you've got it on your shirt. What is it? What does it mean?

• 5:34Chadd Wright?

  Okay, yeah. So I guess to start with, kind of how it was born and I'll tell you kind of the meaning that goes along with it. So my brother and I, we run ultra marathons together and obviously with my time in the SEAL teams, it's been a lot of physical, mental challenges and we really enjoy that. So we, we asked ourselves, like, what are we trying to do with these crazy hard things that we always go out and do? Essentially, we were trying to complete ourselves from like a body, soul, and spirit aspect. So that's what three of seven is all about. So the three in three of seven is representative of the three aspects of us as humans, our

• 6:19Chadd Wright?

  body, soul, and spirit. And the seven is the universal number for completion. So, "Complete Yourself" is essentially the tagline for three of seven. So what we're doing-

• 6:29Lewis Howes?

  Do you ever complete?

• 6:30Chadd Wright?

  No, so it's a journey. It's a journey, for sure. But, you know, I think, I feel like we're all on that journey to kind of find that complete and wholesome existence in life. So, yeah, we have a little podcast. We're having a lot of fun with that. We have guests on, anybody from ultra runners to, we had Jesse Isler on the other day, even just your normal, everyday people that have, went through some type of severe adversity in their lives, whether it's in their control or out of their control. And we talk through them about what they learned from those adverse situations, and moving forward, what do they do on a day-to-day basis to master, nourish, and maintain their body, soul, and spirit?

• 7:15Lewis Howes?

  Cool.

• 7:16Chadd Wright?

  So-

• 7:17Lewis Howes?

  Now, you're a Navy SEAL for how many years?

• 7:19Chadd Wright?

  Twelve years.

• 7:20Lewis Howes?

  Twelve years. And the story of how you became a Navy SEAL is pretty crazy. Can you share how you didn't get accepted, and then the process you had to go through in order to become, the chance of going to be a Navy SEAL? Can you tell us that story?

• 7:35Chadd Wright?

  Yeah, brother, yeah. So, yeah, my story's a little bit different. It took me a while to just get on the start line of SEAL training. Background on me, I was born and raised in North Georgia, never played sports, was, never ran, never swam in a swimming pool-

• 7:49Lewis Howes?

  Never ran?

• 7:50Chadd Wright?

  No, never ran, I mean, you know, other than, you know, just running through the woods for fun, you know, nothing for fitness.

• 7:57Lewis Howes?

  No swimming?

• 7:58Chadd Wright?

  Never swam in a swimming pool till I went and took the physical standards test to get a SEAL contract.

• 8:04Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 8:05Chadd Wright?

  So, that's kind of where I was coming from, but- I had this goal, all of a sudden, that I wanted to be a Navy SEAL. And that was kind of born through, when I graduated high school, I was working in the construction industry. And I just kind of had this revelation one day, man, that if I didn't go, like, step outside of that and do something that I considered special or different, that kind of, that was going to be my lot in life. I was never going to have any more than what that little construction job in my hometown could offer. And that's fine for a lot of people.

• 8:47Chadd Wright?

  Like, I know a bunch of dudes that are still working at that exact same place to this day, and they're totally happy with their lives. But for me, I just wasn't happy with the place that I was in. So I was browsing the internet, saw this flyer, hardest military training in the free world, Navy SEALs. And for some reason, it clicked, and that's what I decided I wanted to go do.

• 9:12Lewis Howes?

  So you were researching, you saw this as like, the hardest thing to do.

• 9:15Chadd Wright?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 9:16Lewis Howes?

  Elite of the elite.

• 9:17Chadd Wright?

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:17Lewis Howes?

  And it hits you in your core. You're 18 years old.

• 9:20Chadd Wright?

  Yeah.

• 9:21Lewis Howes?

  19 at the time. It hits you in your heart. You're like, okay, this is my mission. This is my dream, my goal.

• 9:27Chadd Wright?

  That's it, man. Yeah, so that became my, that became kind of my

• 9:31Lewis Howes?

  Obsessed over it.

• 9:32Chadd Wright?

  Overall thing, dude. Yeah, I went and took the PST to get a SEAL contract. I failed that multiple, multiple times.

• 9:40Lewis Howes?

  PST stand for?

• 9:41Chadd Wright?

  It's a physical standards testing. It's a, it's a run, swim, push-up, pull-up kind of test. So I failed it multiple times. Finally got to where I learned how to swim, learned how to run a mile and a half, all that good stuff, and

• 9:57Lewis Howes?

  How many times can you take it?

• 9:58Chadd Wright?

  You, you can take it as many times as you want. Yeah, so I took it once a week, and it probably took me, I'd go and take it once a week. It probably took me Four months to finally pass it.

• 10:10Lewis Howes?

  So.

• 10:11Chadd Wright?

  So I'm coming from nothing dude.

• 10:13Lewis Howes?

  Is this like a standard test with the government or the, you know, the Navy like in your local town? Or is this just you want to stopwatch testing yourself?

• 10:21Chadd Wright?

  No, the Navy has contracted mentors, SEAL mentors that administer the test. And they have one in every, you know, they have multiple in each state.

• 10:30Lewis Howes?

  And you were in Georgia, so you were driving to the nearest town and you'd do it there or whatever?

• 10:33Chadd Wright?

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So finally pass that, get a SEAL contract. Yeah.

• 10:38Lewis Howes?

  Every week, but you saw growth, you saw that you were getting better.

• 10:41Chadd Wright?

  Oh yeah, for sure, man. Yeah. And it was really the skills. I, I didn't have, I didn't have the, the skills to, that I needed to pass. I mean, I didn't know how to do a combat swimmer side stroke, like I could dog paddle when I first started, you know?

• 10:55Lewis Howes?

  So were you teaching yourself in between the testing every week? Like?

• 10:58Chadd Wright?

  Yeah.

• 10:59Lewis Howes?

  You were swimming every day, you're running, you're teaching yourself.

• 11:01Chadd Wright?

  That's right. That's right. So yeah, that, that progressed slowly, but it, over time, I finally got it down pat. So I went into the Navy and with my SEAL contract finally. So the SEAL contract basically means you get a shot at SEAL training.

• 11:18Lewis Howes?

  You can go to training camp?

• 11:20Chadd Wright?

  Yup.

• 11:21Lewis Howes?

  Got it.

• 11:21Chadd Wright?

  That means you, they guarantee you a spot on the start line at BUDs. It's called Basic Underwater Demolition SEAL Training. And, but you have to go to Navy boot camp first. So I went to Navy boot camp. I made it all the way through boot camp. And it was our last day of boot camp. And we had this big final training exercise and we got that done. And, and all my other classmates were going off to graduation, the ceremony. And, you know, they were going to move on with their dreams and aspirations to go to SEAL training.

• 12:01Chadd Wright?

  And my drill instructor pulls me aside after this final training exercise. And he says, hey Chad, um, you gotta go to medical, man. They, they found something on your physical that they need to talk to you about. So while everybody else is going off to graduation, I'm walking over to medical and I walk into the, you know, the medical officer and he says, Chad, you have a pericardial cyst on your heart and it's asymptomatic, but we're afraid that when you go down to depth diving, that it will burst the cyst on your heart. So he said, we can't let you

• 12:46Chadd Wright?

  be a SEAL, man.

• 12:47Lewis Howes?

  Oh, wow.

• 12:48Chadd Wright?

  So in that last moment, as I was about to move forward with everything that I had invested my, myself into, it was all taken from me and...

• 13:02Lewis Howes?

  Did you try to say, it's okay, I'll sign a waiver, like, I'll do whatever it takes? Or were you accepting of it right away, like, oh?

• 13:12Chadd Wright?

  He didn't give me a choice. There was no choice in the matter. There's nothing you can do.

• 13:16Lewis Howes?

  Black and white, this is a no, you're out.

• 13:18Chadd Wright?

  That's it. That's it. Now, I did try to say, you know, okay, well, I'm, I'm in the Navy now, like, can't you guys take, can't you guys perform a surgery to take this thing off my heart?

• 13:29Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 13:29Chadd Wright?

  And, um, and of course, he said, no, this is asymptomatic. It's a very rare condition. We're not willing to risk the surgery just so you can go to SEAL training. And, and if, if they perform the surgery, there was no guarantee that they, that it would be successful and I would be able to move forward anyways.

• 13:50Lewis Howes?

  I hope you're enjoying this interview with Chad. It's blowing me away and it's about to get even better. But I want to take a moment to talk about our sponsor today, ZipRecruiter. Now ZipRecruiter is a powerful place to help you hire for your business because hiring can be a slow process. Trust me, I've done this many times and it takes a lot of energy sometimes away from actually building your business if you don't do it the right way. And Cafe Alturas COO Dylan Miskowitz needed to hire a director of coffee for his organic coffee company, but he was having trouble finding... Finding qualified applicants. Who else can understand that process? So he switched to ZipRecruiter.

• 14:34Lewis Howes?

  And ZipRecruiter doesn't depend on candidates finding you. It finds them for you. Its technology identifies people with the right experience and invites them to apply to your job. So you get qualified candidates fast. So Dylan posted his job on ZipRecruiter and said he was impressed by how quickly he had great candidates apply. He also used ZipRecruiter's candidate rating feature to filter his applicants. So he could focus on the most relevant ones. And that's how Dylan found his new director of copy in just a few days. And with the results like that, it's no wonder four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. So see why ZipRecruiter is effective for businesses of all sizes.

• 15:17Lewis Howes?

  Try ZipRecruiter for free at this address. ZipRecruiter.com/greatness. Again, go try it for free. That's ZipRecruiter.com/greatness. Z I P R E C R U I T E R dot com slash greatness. ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire. And now let's get back in this episode with Chad Wright.

• 15:46Lewis Howes?

  So you could still be in the Navy.

• 15:48Chadd Wright?

  Exactly.

• 15:49Lewis Howes?

  And work on some other job, just not going underwater.

• 15:52Chadd Wright?

  Exactly. Yep, yep. So that's what they basically did. They tried to send me out to the fleet. But that wasn't where I had set my goal, man. So I was able to pull some strings and get out of the Navy on an administrative discharge.

• 16:06Lewis Howes?

  And. He said, well, I don't want to go work anymore for you then if I can't do what I want to do.

• 16:10Chadd Wright?

  Yeah, I mean, but the thing is, Louis, it's weird, dude, because when he told me, like, I can remember when that dive medical officer told me basically, no, you cannot be a SEAL. You will never be able to be a SEAL. Like, for some reason, I don't know if it was because I was young and naive, but I never let go of that goal. I had, even after he gave me a definitive answer, I still had in my mind, I'm gonna find a way over, under, around, I'm going to do something to fix this so I can move forward with my dreams.

• 16:49Chadd Wright?

  So maybe that's, you know, why I had so much confidence to get out of the Navy, you know, completely out. I cut all ties with the Navy. Show back up to my hometown and of course, everybody looks at me and it's a small town. So everybody knew where I was going and what my aspirations were. And they look at me and of course, they all say, well, what are you doing back here, bro? You obviously quit, right? Cause that's what everybody does is quit. Very few people make it through. So yeah, that was something I had to deal with when I got home. That was pretty tough.

• 17:26Lewis Howes?

  How long was that time for?

• 17:28Chadd Wright?

  So when I got home, I started immediately trying to find a surgeon that would take this thing off my heart.

• 17:38Lewis Howes?

  Right away. You were like, who can help me?

• 17:41Chadd Wright?

  Totally, man. Yep. Right, right off the bat. And I went to like three or four different heart surgeons there in Atlanta and nobody would touch it. They said the same thing that the dive medical officer in the Navy told me. Finally, I found a surgeon that would take this thing off my heart. His name was Dr. Cooper and he was a Army surgeon. He had served time on the battlefield, active duty. So he understood what I wanted to go do and that I wanted to serve my country. He understood my, my dream, you know, more so than somebody that hadn't served their country could. So Dr. Cooper was willing to accept the risk of performing this surgery on my behalf.

• 18:24Lewis Howes?

  Did he do it pro bono? Did you have to pay him a premium? What was it? Insurance cover this?

• 18:29Chadd Wright?

  That's, it's an interesting thing. We were not sure. So I didn't have health insurance at the time. We were not sure how we were gonna pay for it. You know, obviously I had, my family was supportive of me and we were just, as a group, we decided we're just gonna go have this surgery done. We'll get the bill and we'll pay payments on it for the rest of our lives if we need to, you know? So went in, Dr. Cooper.

• 18:54Chadd Wright?

  Perform the surgery. I only remember one moment of doubt. It was the morning of the surgery. We were driving to the hospital. And I was about to like, lay there and let him cut my chest open.

• 19:07Lewis Howes?

  Cause you have to do open.

• 19:09Chadd Wright?

  Well, he went, he actually, they actually detached my pectoral muscle, peeled it up and then broke my ribs and went into my rib cage.

• 19:16Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh, man. So they didn't open the middle of your chest?

• 19:19Chadd Wright?

  No, they didn't split my sternum.

• 19:21Lewis Howes?

  That's crazy. So he cuts you here.

• 19:25Chadd Wright?

  Detached my pec.

• 19:26Lewis Howes?

  Pulls the muscle up and then breaks rib or just like bends it?

• 19:31Chadd Wright?

  They actually had to break the ribs to get in. I guess to create a cavity big enough to act. The cyst was seven centimeters. So it was a pretty large, I mean compared to your heart, that's a fairly large cyst, you know?

• 19:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. How do they, how does the bones heal back?

• 19:47Chadd Wright?

  Dude, I have no, I have no clue, dude. And I was so young back then, dude, I didn't ask questions about like, how are you going to do this surgery? How long is it gonna take me to recover? Yeah, like it didn't matter. I was just, I was so thankful I had someone that was willing to perform the surgery. I didn't ask those questions, you know?

• 20:05Lewis Howes?

  Wow. Okay. So you were, you had a moment of doubt going to the hospital. What was that fear?

• 20:10Chadd Wright?

  Yeah. So the fear was, I, I think it was just the reality set in. The reality of the risk I was about to take to gamble upon my dreams, basically.

• 20:21Lewis Howes?

  And the risk being, I might die.

• 20:23Chadd Wright?

  I might die. That's right. So I look over at my dad, it's like five in the morning, we're riding to the hospital and I say, Dad, do you really think I should do this, man? And he just looked back at me, stone cold and he said, um, Chad, if you want to be a SEAL, you don't have any choice. And I was like, Roger that, man. And we rolled, laid out on the operating table.

• 20:51Lewis Howes?

  Poor Roger that.

• 20:51Chadd Wright?

  That's it, man. Surgery was successful. Woke up. First thing I remember coming out of anesthesia, my grandmother was standing beside my hospital bed and I grabbed her hand and I said, I got my dreams back. And so like, from that point forward, bro, nothing was going to stop me.

• 21:11Lewis Howes?

  Nothing.

• 21:12Chadd Wright?

  I took that, that adversity and I used it as a tool.

• 21:18Chadd Wright?

  From that point forward, I was so invested at that point. That furnace of adversity had stripped me down and purified me down to the core, dude, of why did I want to do this? You know, it was just 100% from that point forward.

• 21:39Lewis Howes?

  Why did you want to do it? Did you ask yourself and recheck in? Like, is this really worth opening my chest and doing this and potentially dying?

• 21:48Chadd Wright?

  The best way I can answer that, Louis, and that's a good question, man, because I guess a lot of people would expect me to say, because I wanted to serve my country, or I wanted to go to war, or this. But at that time in my life, it wasn't that. The only way I can answer that question about why did I want to do it is because that is what my goal was. That was what my goal was, and when I was told no, it made me want it 100-fold.

• 22:19Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 22:20Chadd Wright?

  You know what I mean?

• 22:21Lewis Howes?

  Wow. Do you think if you wouldn't have had that surgery, you would have completed being a Navy SEAL? You would have went through the testing and made it through?

• 22:29Chadd Wright?

  Yeah.

• 22:30Lewis Howes?

  You think you would have made it still?

• 22:31Chadd Wright?

  So, I mean, there's no way I can answer that 100% with 100% certainty. My honest opinion is no, I wouldn't have made it through training, honestly.

• 22:40Lewis Howes?

  Why do you think you wouldn't have if you didn't have that adversity?

• 22:43Chadd Wright?

  For one, I don't think that I was prepared mentally or physically prior to that adversity. So like I said, that moment of adversity with the heart condition and all that, not only did it purify my intentions and my will and all that, but also I had to recover after that surgery, so...

• 23:07Lewis Howes?

  How long was that?

• 23:08Chadd Wright?

  I was back in the Navy, standing in front of the same dive medical officer that had disqualified me less than a year after the surgery.

• 23:16Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 23:16Chadd Wright?

  So I had that block after the surgery to really hunker down and train.

• 23:23Chadd Wright?

  With the right mindset, so I had the right mindset then for that training block. So that training block was so much more effective than any of the training that I had done prior to that adversity.

• 23:35Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 23:36Chadd Wright?

  You know what I mean?

• 23:36Lewis Howes?

  Because it took you probably three to six months to heal to a point where you could start running and start moving effectively, I'm assuming.

• 23:43Chadd Wright?

  Yeah.

• 23:44Lewis Howes?

  And then you have maybe a six, four to six month runway to train hard.

• 23:47Chadd Wright?

  That's it.

• 23:48Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, and train your mind the whole time.

• 23:50Chadd Wright?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 23:51Lewis Howes?

  So you stand in front of the guy who said, "No, it's not possible." What was that like?

• 23:57Chadd Wright?

  It was pretty wild, man. I remember walking in his office and...

• 24:00Lewis Howes?

  He remember you?

• 24:01Chadd Wright?

  Yeah, oh yeah, he totally did. I mean, it was, this is such a rare condition and this, all this is written in medical journals. This is public information that you can, if you research Navy SEAL pericardial cyst, you can read the medical journals on this. So it was so rare, they had never seen it in a SEAL candidate before, so he remembered me definitely, you know? But yeah, I remember walking in his office and, and of course, he still had to give me the go-ahead. I didn't walk in there all cocky like, "Screw you, dude," you know, but, but I went in there and I remember he looked at me, dude, and he, he said, "What are you doing back here?" And I had the paperwork from my civilian surgeon that performed the

• 24:42Chadd Wright?

  surgery, and I just said, "Hey, man, will you take a look at this?" Set it down in front of him and he went over the documents right there and pretty much gave me the go-ahead, said, "Hey..."

• 24:55Lewis Howes?

  He said, "I did the surgery, here's all the documents."

• 24:57Chadd Wright?

  That's it.

• 24:58Lewis Howes?

  "Here's the medical release, here's the whatever," right?

• 25:01Chadd Wright?

  That's it, brother, yeah.

• 25:02Lewis Howes?

  He said, "All right, good to go."

• 25:04Chadd Wright?

  Yeah, and, and yeah, and he said, "You got it now." And I think he respected, I think he understood better than anyone else what I had done.

• 25:14Lewis Howes?

  The amount of commitment that you had to...

• 25:17Chadd Wright?

  Exactly.

• 25:17Lewis Howes?

  That you were all in. This isn't, he was like, "Okay, that's not a..." You know, I don't know, stitch up some, some wound you have surgery. This is life threatening surgery.

• 25:29Chadd Wright?

  That's it.

• 25:29Lewis Howes?

  You did just for this one thing.

• 25:32Chadd Wright?

  That's it, brother. And I think he understood that better than anybody else could have. You know what I mean?

• 25:36Lewis Howes?

  And how old are you at this time, 19?

• 25:38Chadd Wright?

  I would have been 19.

• 25:40Lewis Howes?

  Wow. So that he gives you the clear. What did that feel like when he just said, you know, signed off or whatever he said that you can go into now? Bud's training, but you were not even a SEAL. It didn't even say you're a SEAL yet. You still passed the six month test.

• 25:55Chadd Wright?

  That's it, yeah.

• 25:56Lewis Howes?

  So how was that feeling when he said you're, you're good to go?

• 26:00Chadd Wright?

  That's crazy, Lewis. Nobody's ever asked me that question, but I can remember it, you know, bringing it up in my mind now that you asked me that.

• 26:07Lewis Howes?

  Screaming inside? Did you hug him? Were you crying? Were you calling someone?

• 26:11Chadd Wright?

  Well, it was definitely, no, no hugging or nothing. I mean, it was a professional relationship. I was a seaman and he was an officer. But, but yeah, it was just, just that. I, I mean, like, like I've never experienced before, either before that or even now after that in my life, just this, this welling up of like passion and drive within me. When he signed the dotted line and I knew, I was like, I got, I got this.

• 26:40Lewis Howes?

  And you're watching him sign.

• 26:41Chadd Wright?

  That's it.

• 26:41Lewis Howes?

  You're thinking to yourself like, it'd just be so emotionally overwhelming, probably.

• 26:45Chadd Wright?

  It is, dude.

• 26:46Lewis Howes?

  For a year, everything you sacrificed.

• 26:48Chadd Wright?

  Yep. Yep, it was, it was amazing. It was an amazing moment and I, I thank you for asking that question because I never reflect on that moment. Never reflected on that moment in the last 13 years of my life.

• 27:00Lewis Howes?

  Wow, that's cool.

• 27:01Chadd Wright?

  It's cool to go back and think about it.

• 27:02Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, man, that's powerful. Who was the first person you called? Or what was the first thing you did after you left that room?

• 27:08Chadd Wright?

  It, it would have been my mother. My mother's always been my biggest supporter, man.

• 27:13Lewis Howes?

  And what did you say and what did she say?

• 27:15Chadd Wright?

  Oh my gosh, I, I can't, I can't remember the exact words of that conversation. But I'm sure she was crying because she was as invested as I was into this. You know what I mean?

• 27:26Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 27:26Chadd Wright?

  So.

• 27:27Lewis Howes?

  So you go off into. Bud's Training it's called, right?

• 27:30Chadd Wright?

  Mm-hmm.

• 27:31Lewis Howes?

  And this is the six-month intensive where you see on, you know, Discovery Channel of all the seals in the ocean, holding up the rafts together, just getting crashed on waves, just no sleep, all that type of stuff, right?

• 27:45Chadd Wright?

  That's it, bro.

• 27:46Lewis Howes?

  That's what it's called, freezing cold water, 50-degree water, whatever it is. And this goes on for... Tell us the process of what this training is like in, you know, a couple of minutes, like from the first couple of months to the last couple of months. Because you told me that the last couple of months, it's not as tough physically, it's more mentally then, right?

• 28:06Chadd Wright?

  Yeah, yeah. A lot of people know about Bud's now, but I'll just give you a quick rundown on it. This first phase is the selection phase. It's about six or eight weeks long, and that's where Hell Week is. Hell Week's the block where you're up for, I think it's like five days and six nights with no sleep, and you're just getting hammered the whole time. So that's where we lose a lot of guys is in first phase. When you move on to second phase, that's combat diving. We do lose quite a few guys in one evolution there called pool competency. And it's basically where you get just beat all to pieces underwater.

• 28:43Lewis Howes?

  They just try to drown you essentially?

• 28:44Chadd Wright?

  Yeah, basically, yeah. So, yeah, we lose a lot of guys there. But other than that, in second phase, after you get past pool comp in second phase, you're gonna be there, you know, for the duration of the training. And then third phase is land warfare. It's, you know, learning patrol formations and, you know, your land warfare stuff, shooting, the whole nine yards.

• 29:07Lewis Howes?

  Uh-huh. You had told me, I don't know if this is, you're allowed to say this or not, so we can edit it still, but you told me that there was a day where the most people quit. I don't know if you remember saying this, what you told me?

• 29:18Chadd Wright?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 29:19Lewis Howes?

  When they played a movie, you said the most people, I quit on this one day. Can I get that to share?

• 29:24Chadd Wright?

  Yeah, man, yeah. I mean, I've never shared that publicly before. I don't guess it's any secret, but, yeah. The one day that I remember the most guys quitting was they set the class down in front of a big projector screen and played a video of Al Qaeda operatives sawing the head off of an American. And, you know, basically told all the class, guys in the class that...

• 29:49Chadd Wright?

  Hey, this is who you're going to war against. Like, this is no game. We're not here to do push-ups. You're not gonna be running with a boat on your head for the rest of your career. It's not about going out to the bar with a trident on your chest or any of that. This is about, these are the people you're going to fight and destroy. So it was very graphic and we had to watch it multiple times with instructor staff around us, basically yelling in our faces. And so, you know, a good portion of the class got afraid. And then you had a small group that it made them angry.

• 30:32Chadd Wright?

  And then I think there was probably some in between that didn't really know how to feel about it. Had to go sleep on it, you know what I mean? So I remember after them showing that, we went straight from there to eat lunch. Yeah, imagine that, dude. Crazy. And we're standing in the chow line and like, guys just start falling out of the formation, just like by the tens and dozens and yeah, and they're just all going to ring the bell. And they already went through Hell Week? This was prior to Hell Week. Yeah, this was prior to Hell Week. So they didn't even go through any physically demanding stuff at this point? No, man. With no sleep, they just were psychologically out. That's it.

• 31:17Chadd Wright?

  And that's the whole point, that's the whole thing with this, with this training, or really anything in life, Lewis. It could be running an ultra marathon, it could be starting a business, it could, could be SEAL training. So, other than that day, and that day was all mental, the biggest reason that people quit any of those things we just, I just talked about, is because they look at the whole, they're looking at the big picture, man. So like, with SEAL training, there's no single evolution that's that difficult. Yeah. Really, I mean, it's four mile runs and two mile swims, and it's nothing that you couldn't get up from this table and go do.

• 32:01Chadd Wright?

  Right now, but the guys that quit, they couldn't break it down like into digestible pieces.

• 32:10Lewis Howes?

  One hour at a time, one moment at a time, one day at a time.

• 32:14Chadd Wright?

  Yep.

• 32:14Lewis Howes?

  One step at a time, one breath at a time.

• 32:18Chadd Wright?

  Yeah.

• 32:18Lewis Howes?

  It seems so overwhelming. You're like, if I can't do this right now, if I'm struggling in this moment, how am I going to take on all of this, right? Six months, four months, three months. And so we become overwhelmed and in fear as opposed to just one step at a time.

• 32:31Chadd Wright?

  I said, bro, I remember an evolution during Hell Week.

• 32:34Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 32:34Chadd Wright?

  All it was, was a one mile repeat. The instructors just got everybody together and said, all you gotta do is run one mile over and over again until we tell you to stop. There's no time standards, there's no...

• 32:48Lewis Howes?

  You could walk.

• 32:49Chadd Wright?

  You could walk. I mean, you, you had to look like you were running, but you could walk. So I'm out here like, heck yeah, dude. All I gotta do is run one mile at my own pace on a sunny beach on Coronado Island. Like, this is amazing. Nobody's bothering me.

• 33:06Lewis Howes?

  It's like vacation.

• 33:07Chadd Wright?

  Yeah, yeah, man. But that was the single evolution during Hell Week where we lost the most guys. And it was because of what we just talked about. They could not, certain people just can't, could not focus on that mile, dude. All they could think about was all the miles in front of them, which they didn't know if this was the last one or not. So they, they looked at it as a big picture and they just couldn't handle it. And, and, and really it was the easiest evolution that we did in all of Hell Week.

• 33:40Lewis Howes?

  Do you remember how many miles you actually ran?

• 33:42Chadd Wright?

  Dude, I have no clue. And, and what the instructors do, they, they just keep it going until enough people quit.

• 33:48Lewis Howes?

  And then they're like, okay.

• 33:48Chadd Wright?

  And then they call it. Yeah.

• 33:50Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 33:50Chadd Wright?

  Yeah.

• 33:51Lewis Howes?

  And just, they're like, okay, we're gonna do then 10 miles, 15, 20 miles, whatever, until many people quit.

• 33:56Chadd Wright?

  That's right. Yeah.

• 33:58Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 33:59Chadd Wright?

  Yeah, so that's the biggest thing dude about and I take that now into like ultra running and and even three of seven, you know, the business model for three of seven and all that we have going on with that. It's just like, you know, conquer what's like right in front of you. And if you can, if you can stay in that mindset, you know, on an ultra race, when I, when I'm 95 miles deep into a race and I've got to climb a 2,000 foot mountain, how you think I'll do it, bro?

• 34:26Lewis Howes?

  One step at a time.

• 34:27Chadd Wright?

  I mean, I pick a tree 20 yards ahead of me and I get to that tree and then I pick another tree. And then eventually I'm at the summit, you know?

• 34:37Lewis Howes?

  How do you manage your mind and the thoughts of, man, I've got five more miles or however many more miles to go, how many more hours to go, days to go? And this is fricking hard. How do you manage the mind that wants to tell you to stop? When it seems like there's so much ahead of you, but you're just going 10 feet at a time? How do you, how do you do that? When you're tired, when you're hurting, when you're exhausted? Or you just don't get tired?

• 35:04Chadd Wright?

  No, no. That's a mantra we use, right? And we can talk about that later, but, um, but for me, bro, it's like, if you will push yourself hard enough, you, you reach this place, I call it the steady state. And it's where it's not going to hurt any worse.

• 35:28Chadd Wright?

  And it's not going to get any harder. It's the steady state, man.

• 35:32Lewis Howes?

  It's gonna stay hard.

• 35:33Chadd Wright?

  It's gonna just stay just like that. That's exactly right. And it's, it's almost like a, for me, it's almost like a primal feeling. Like everything else is stripped away and all I have to deal with is this pain, physical pain that I'm feeling.

• 35:51Chadd Wright?

  It's a beaut- it's a, for me, it's a beautiful thing, man. So, I don't-

• 35:56Lewis Howes?

  To feel the pain?

• 35:56Chadd Wright?

  Well, well, to reach that steady state, to where everything's just boiled down and it's just so simple, dude.

• 36:02Lewis Howes?

  You're not stressing about who's calling you, what's happening at home, friends, war.

• 36:08Chadd Wright?

  Yeah.

• 36:08Lewis Howes?

  You're not stressed about that stuff, you're focused on one thing.

• 36:10Chadd Wright?

  Yeah, and one way that I manage that, I like getting to that point in the first place. But, but some way that I, I guess you could say that I manage that pain is I stop fighting against it.

• 36:23Lewis Howes?

  Ooh.

• 36:24Chadd Wright?

  I literally just tell my, I literally just tell myself, "I accept this."

• 36:29Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 36:30Chadd Wright?

  And, and I almost just like, in my mind's eye, I see it passing through me.

• 36:36Lewis Howes?

  The pain.

• 36:37Chadd Wright?

  The pain. And you can use this with all different types of things that are uncomfortable, like cold.

• 36:42Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:43Chadd Wright?

  If you stop, will stop fighting against it, it, it diminishes its power. But as long, as long as you're fighting against the pain, or you're using your energy to fight against the cold, it's gonna continue to gain traction and power over your mind.

• 37:00Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 37:01Chadd Wright?

  So it's just forcing yourself to let go and stop fighting against that discomfort and just rock and roll, man.

• 37:08Lewis Howes?

  So, for the everyday human being who is, does a five mile run, or maybe there's someone going extreme into an ice tub for two minutes, and they feel pain after a few miles, or that first minute in the ice tub, how would you process that mentally, or in your mind's eye, when you're entering the ice, when you're going to that five mile run, when it starts to hurt, you get the cramps, you get the heartaches, sweating? What would you do in that moment? Obviously, for you, that's like fifty to a hundred miles, but for the everyday human, how would you approach that mentally? Like a process we could understand. I understand of like surrendering and letting it go through you, but what is it? What's a strategy we could implement, you think?

• 37:52Chadd Wright?

  Well, I mean, I think the strategy to implement that particular thing about not fighting against it, I think is that you could speak it out loud. I talk to myself all the time and that's something I'm so adamant about is the spoken word. So, you know, if you...

• 38:09Lewis Howes?

  So it's starting to feel painful. I'm on my third mile. I feel like one of them slowed down. What would I say to myself?

• 38:14Chadd Wright?

  You can counterpunch that with, with any number of statements or mantras, whatever works best for you, you know what I mean? Of course, I have some that I use on my own, but that's for me, that, that would be the number one tool to kind of, to kind of manage that pain.

• 38:33Lewis Howes?

  A spoken mantra out loud.

• 38:35Chadd Wright?

  Yeah, the spoken word.

• 38:36Lewis Howes?

  Not an internal mantra or a whisper, but actually saying it, you think?

• 38:40Chadd Wright?

  Yeah, totally, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it has to be said out loud.

• 38:45Lewis Howes?

  Okay. What's the, the killer of getting through hard challenges in your mind? What's the thing that kills most individuals? Once it starts to get hard and they stop?

• 38:59Chadd Wright?

  Negativity, man. Yeah.

• 39:03Lewis Howes?

  The thought process, the words.

• 39:05Chadd Wright?

  It's, it's not necessarily the negative thought because we can't control our thoughts, obviously, all the time. We're gonna have thoughts in our head that pop up that we don't want to be there. But it's, it's, it's when you give those thoughts power through the things that you say. So I give you an example. One of my best friends going through SEAL training. He came to me one morning and he said, he said, he had been thinking, I could tell he had been in a bad place mentally, but he was doing fine, progressing through training. But he came to me one morning and he said out loud for the first time, "I don't think I'm good enough to make it through this training anymore," which was a lie.

• 39:47Chadd Wright?

  He was completely physically capable of doing every single thing that we had to do that day and every other day. But when he came and said that, it gave those thoughts that he had, that, um, what do you call it? Like, lack of confidence, or, you know, those, those thoughts that he was having, that he wasn't good enough. They didn't, they didn't have enough traction to stop him until he came and told me that out loud.

• 40:16Lewis Howes?

  Spoke it into existence.

• 40:17Chadd Wright?

  He spoke it out loud, yeah.

• 40:19Lewis Howes?

  You might be thinking, ah, am I good enough to do this? Can I make it through? Maybe I'm not as strong as these guys, these guys are more talented. But once you start saying it to someone else out loud, that's when your body starts to believe it even stronger. And it gets harder and harder to go back into a confident place, I'm assuming.

• 40:37Chadd Wright?

  That's it, brother. Yeah, so like, when he told me that, it was just like, seconds later, he was going to ring the bell.

• 40:43Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 40:43Chadd Wright?

  Yeah. And there was nothing that I could do to stop him.

• 40:46Lewis Howes?

  It's like he finally believed it 100% and he was out.

• 40:50Chadd Wright?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 40:51Lewis Howes?

  Just don't say it, and you're half the, half the way there, right? If you're like, just don't say it, you're, you have a chance.

• 40:57Chadd Wright?

  That's it, brother. That's it. And, and so your tongue, your tongue is the thing, I compare it to a rudder. A rudder is the main control surface that steers a ship, steers the direction of a ship. Your tongue is your rudder. It's going to steer the direction of your life and the outcomes of your situations. 98% of the time.

• 41:21Lewis Howes?

  So...

• 41:24Lewis Howes?

  What you say is pretty important.

• 41:27Chadd Wright?

  It's paramount to me, bro. I mean, that's like, I, I take this to such an extreme that... I don't curse. I'm a Christian, but I don't, not cursing is not a Christian thing. It's because none of those words in and of themselves have a positive meaning.

• 41:47Chadd Wright?

  So why am I gonna use them? So for me, it is paramount, dude. The things that we say, yes.

• 41:55Lewis Howes?

  Did you ever come to a place where you started saying negative things to yourself during Bud's training or as a SEAL? Where you had to catch yourself? Or have you always been clear with your words to yourself?

• 42:07Chadd Wright?

  I have not always been clear with my words to myself. I became more conscious about the power of my words throughout life and doing really, really hard stuff to where, you know, I've put myself in enough situations with other people around me to see the power of the spoken word actually work, not only in my own situations, but in the men around me or women around me in racing, you know?

• 42:41Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 42:42Chadd Wright?

  So every time I see it work, I'm like, holy smokes, this is powerful, this is powerful. Well, then finally, I started going on some podcasts and telling people that it works. And then I now get hundreds of messages a month of people saying, oh my gosh, this works.

• 42:59Lewis Howes?

  What are the words we should never say to ourselves? And what should we say to ourselves every day?

• 43:07Chadd Wright?

  You know, I think that's really, I think that's really individualized, man. I mean, as far as the words that you should never say to yourself, it's gonna be dependent on the situation you're in, you know what I mean? And then the things that you're saying to yourself, you know, a big one for me is I will not die in the chair. That's a huge mantra, you know, that I use. I won't die in the chair. And that has a whole meaning and story behind it.

• 43:32Lewis Howes?

  What's the brief meaning?

• 43:34Chadd Wright?

  That was born out of that last man standing race that I did a few months. Well, no, it was back in May. Where I was running, you know, we had to run 4.16 miles every hour on the hour. Each one of those hours, I would dedicate to a fallen brother in the SEAL teams. And

• 43:53Lewis Howes?

  Their actual names?

• 43:55Chadd Wright?

  Yeah, I had a wristcoat that I was wearing and I would have their index card with their face, name, their family's names, their data sacrifice. And so

• 44:04Lewis Howes?

  Holy cow, that probably gave you a lot more power and strength.

• 44:07Chadd Wright?

  It did, man. But it, but it gave me a lot more pressure too, dude. Because each one of these laps was, was for this guy and, and, and some of those guys were guys that I had spent a lot of time with, you know what I mean? So, the way that race worked, there was no definitive finish line. You just kept running until only one runner was left standing. So, I could not promise my brothers that I would win. I couldn't promise them victory because I didn't know if my body would break or, you know, I was, I didn't know. I didn't know where the race was gonna end, so. But I could promise them that if I died, and, and death, meaning death within a situation,

• 44:52Chadd Wright?

  not physical death, but death in this scenario would be of my race. If that time came, I would die out on the race course battling for every step that I took.

• 45:05Lewis Howes?

  Not on the chair.

• 45:06Chadd Wright?

  I won't die in the chair. That's exactly right.

• 45:08Lewis Howes?

  Sitting around waiting.

• 45:09Chadd Wright?

  Yep. So, at the end of each one of these laps, there was a chair. So, if I came in off the lap in 55 minutes, I could sit down for five minutes. And it was hard. A lot of people died in the chair that day, dude.

• 45:22Lewis Howes?

  I'm done. I'm done.

• 45:24Chadd Wright?

  Cause it was hard to rise back up, man. For sure, so.

• 45:27Lewis Howes?

  Did you win the race?

• 45:28Chadd Wright?

  No, I was the, I think I was the third man standing. I ran 116.5 miles. And my last lap, dude, was actually for, my last lap was for a good friend of mine named Blake Marston. And we lost Blake in a skydiving accident not long ago. And dude, I remember looking down at

• 45:52Chadd Wright?

  I went out on that lap and so it was muddy. I had tied my shoes too tight and so my shoelaces were sawing through that large tendon in the front of my ankles.

• 46:02Lewis Howes?

  It's painful.

• 46:02Chadd Wright?

  Yeah, so it got to the point that I could no longer flex my toes toward my shin anymore. So every step was like I was dragging my feet like lead weights. So I went out on that lap and I pretty much, I was broken dude.

• 46:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, your whole body.

• 46:19Chadd Wright?

  But I wasn't gonna die in a chair dude.

• 46:21Lewis Howes?

  You were on the lap though.

• 46:22Chadd Wright?

  I was out on the lap dude.

• 46:23Lewis Howes?

  You fell on the lap or you didn't make it back in time?

• 46:25Chadd Wright?

  Yeah, I got out there dude and I remember looking down at Blake. I started crying.

• 46:29Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 46:30Chadd Wright?

  Because I knew, I knew at a certain point that I could not make it back in time.

• 46:35Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 46:36Chadd Wright?

  And I thought, you know, how's, what does Blake think of me right now, you know? And, and then I just had this sense of peace come over me dude and I could see his, I could see his face in my mind's eye laughing at my poor physical state. Because we always find, I mean, team guys do, we always find humor in adversity. I mean, no matter how miserable that got, we would be joking and laughing at each other. So I saw him laughing at me, you know, and then I found a stick on the ground and hobbled my way back to the finish line.

• 47:09Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, so you made it through, it wasn't in the time allotted, it was after the time.

• 47:13Chadd Wright?

  It was after the time, that's right.

• 47:15Lewis Howes?

  116 miles, wow.

• 47:16Chadd Wright?

  Yeah, but you know, you can apply, I apply that now, that don't die in the chair to all aspects of my life, man, whether it's business or personal relationships or marriages or you name it dude.

• 47:28Lewis Howes?

  So you have a mantra and you'll say this mantra out loud or internally every day when you feel it gets tough?

• 47:34Chadd Wright?

  Yeah, yeah, it's used as a counter punch dude to those negative thoughts.

• 47:39Lewis Howes?

  You know what's funny, like mantras are talked about a lot in kind of the spiritual meditation communities, but you're this hardcore Navy SEAL guy who's saying, "The power of the spoken word, the power of a mantra, a positive mantra is what gets you through adversity."

• 47:57Chadd Wright?

  That's it, brother.

• 47:59Lewis Howes?

  And that's the secret.

• 48:00Chadd Wright?

  That's your rudder, man.

• 48:01Lewis Howes?

  So it's not, there's not to be some woo-wooey spirituality, meditation-only type of thought process. This is tactical, real-life strategies that get you through war, actual war.

• 48:14Chadd Wright?

  That's it, brother.

• 48:15Lewis Howes?

  The war in your mind, the war for the day, physical war, wherever you are deployed, that's what this does. When you were out in, you deployed how many times?

• 48:26Chadd Wright?

  I did four different deployments, but they were all over. I never had one deployment that was like one location the whole time.

• 48:34Lewis Howes?

  Okay, so you're going out in different, four different times, 12 years.

• 48:37Chadd Wright?

  Yeah.

• 48:38Lewis Howes?

  What was one of the scariest times that you're allowed to talk about, or moments or situations where you had, back to that moment of doubt when you were driving to the surgery table? Did you have lots of those moments over 12 years of doubt, or insecurity, or uncertainty? Or did you have this positive mindset every time you went into a scary situation?

• 49:02Chadd Wright?

  I've never really had doubts per se, like I had that morning of the surgery, where, you know, everything hinged on that one decision. I know one crazy thing, I guess doubt that I had, I think I shared with you on the mountain, was one of the first times that I went out with my platoon. You know, I was out on a blocking position, so I wasn't part of the main assault force, but...

• 49:31Lewis Howes?

  Which, for people that don't know what's that mean?

• 49:33Chadd Wright?

  That's basically, you're in charge of keeping anybody from the outside coming into the actual target complex. So you've got your assault force that handles the actual direct action, and then you've got blocking positions on four corners around that complex. But they can be pushed out, you know, quite a ways to where you don't have direct contact.

• 49:57Lewis Howes?

  Not even walkie talkie?

• 49:59Chadd Wright?

  Well, I mean, you can have comms, but you don't, you know, you don't necessarily, you're alone. Yeah.

• 50:03Lewis Howes?

  You don't have a buddy next to you?

• 50:05Chadd Wright?

  Well, it depend, and it all depends. It's all mission dependent, man. You know, it could be, it could be two brand new guys out on a blocking position. It could be whoever you need there. So it's mission dependent. But yeah, I was out, way out here on this blocking position as a brand new frogman and uh...

• 50:23Lewis Howes?

  Frogman means?

• 50:24Chadd Wright?

  Navy SEAL.

• 50:25Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 50:26Chadd Wright?

  Yeah.

• 50:26Lewis Howes?

  So people don't know the language, it's all good.

• 50:28Chadd Wright?

  And so the assault forces is taking care of the main target complex and we get a, I get a secondary contact out here on my corner, my blocking position. And I remember like thinking in my head, like, oh my gosh, like, I hesitated, like waiting for, is someone gonna tell me what to do? You know, can I shoot, can I shoot back? Waiting for a call or some advice and then I had this epiphany that no one's gonna tell me what to do right now. I have to handle this situation on my own.

• 51:07Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 51:07Chadd Wright?

  And so that was a grand moment for me, like realizing that in life, there are gonna be a lot of situations, whether it's business deals or your own personal life, that you're not gonna have time to sit around and wait for someone to come and tell you what to do, man. You've got to react in that moment with the tools that you have and you've got to make the best decision that you can within that moment. And I learned, I learned that lesson. And that, for some reason, that was just such an awesome lesson for me because now with three of seven, I'm not a businessman, dude. I'm a warrior, bro. I don't know nothing about

• 51:51Chadd Wright?

  business. And there's things that come up all the time that I'm like, you know, what am I supposed to do about this? And yeah, I could sit around and wait for, or pay somebody else to figure it out, but no, I'm, I make the best decision that, that I, that I can come up with and I rock and roll with it, man. It's not always the prettiest, but I always learn from it if it's not the prettiest, you know what I mean? That's the way I live my life now.

• 52:17Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah. And can you tell us what you did, what was your main job or main role? As a Navy SEAL.

• 52:24Chadd Wright?

  My main role within a platoon was a breacher. So it's an explosives expert if we need to get into a door that's locked or say there's a walled compound or something.

• 52:36Lewis Howes?

  You make a bomb.

• 52:36Chadd Wright?

  I make a bomb and.

• 52:37Lewis Howes?

  From scratch or with whatever you have, maybe you have the tools on you or you gotta make a bomb.

• 52:42Chadd Wright?

  Yeah.

• 52:43Lewis Howes?

  Chemically, right?

• 52:44Chadd Wright?

  Yeah.

• 52:44Lewis Howes?

  Put it together.

• 52:45Chadd Wright?

  Yeah.

• 52:46Lewis Howes?

  And then you set the, set the bomb off.

• 52:48Chadd Wright?

  Yeah, we set it off and you know, wherever the primary entry might be and you have to calculate it all out and make sure it's gonna penetrate the barrier that you're trying to get through.

• 52:58Lewis Howes?

  Right, so have enough firepower.

• 53:00Chadd Wright?

  That's it.

• 53:00Lewis Howes?

  To blow it up. Did you ever have a bomb that didn't knock the wall down or that didn't open the whole big?

• 53:05Chadd Wright?

  Dude, I tended to overbuild my bombs, man. That's probably why.

• 53:09Lewis Howes?

  Boom! It's like you blew up the whole thing, not just the wall.

• 53:13Chadd Wright?

  Yeah, no doubt, man. And that's, I guess that's part of the reason why the Navy considers me disabled now. I overbuilt my bombs a lot and yeah, the blast wave, the shock wave as it passes through your skull actually tears away at the fibers within your brain. You know that from playing ball.

• 53:29Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, of course.

• 53:30Chadd Wright?

  Yeah, it's just like a mini concussion.

• 53:32Lewis Howes?

  Every time?

• 53:33Chadd Wright?

  Every time, yeah. For thousands, I mean, no telling how many bombs.

• 53:37Lewis Howes?

  Really? Cause you feel it and you just, you feel it rally your brain a little bit.

• 53:40Chadd Wright?

  Oh, yeah.

• 53:41Lewis Howes?

  It goes through your body, your chest, everything. It's probably like a.

• 53:45Chadd Wright?

  It's a shock wave, yeah. I mean, it, it hits you, you can feel it.

• 53:48Lewis Howes?

  And you didn't have sometimes 100 yards to go behind and a nice big wall to block it. You're looking for a barrel, a rock, a little hill, something within 40 yards.

• 53:59Chadd Wright?

  You might be, well dude, you might be in this house. I mean, you might be in a house. I mean, you're talking about you've got probably, you've got 10 doors in here, dude. And if, you know, if I needed to get into any of these doors, I'd be breaching right here in, in an enclosed space, so.

• 54:14Lewis Howes?

  Why, why, why use a bomb on a door and suppose like a, you know, ramming through it, kicking the door down? Is it just like, it's so?

• 54:21Chadd Wright?

  It's fun using bombs, dude.

• 54:24Lewis Howes?

  I'm just guessing.

• 54:24Chadd Wright?

  Why would I kick a door when I could blow it down, man?

• 54:27Lewis Howes?

  Save your brain.

• 54:28Chadd Wright?

  Well, yeah, we weren't thinking about that back then though.

• 54:31Lewis Howes?

  So that was just protocol.

• 54:32Chadd Wright?

  That awareness, that awareness is building about brain injury. They're, they're implementing a lot of new, really good stuff.

• 54:41Lewis Howes?

  That's good, yeah.

• 54:42Chadd Wright?

  For guys. I'm so thankful that that's happening. But even just five or six years ago. That nobody thought, I mean, we calculated a minimum safe distance for every bomb, but no, you couldn't always get that, you know what I mean?

• 54:57Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah. Okay, so thousands of bombs. I mean, how long does it take you to make a bomb? If you're like, we gotta get through this door, how long does it take you?

• 55:09Chadd Wright?

  Well, you would have some on you pre-rigged most of the time as a breacher.

• 55:12Lewis Howes?

  Ready to go, so you're just mounting, wiring, boom.

• 55:15Chadd Wright?

  Yep.

• 55:16Lewis Howes?

  One minute, two minute, whatever.

• 55:17Chadd Wright?

  Yeah, you'd build them back at the shop, you know, and then you'd have them with you.

• 55:20Lewis Howes?

  Okay, cool. What is a Navy SEAL's guide to eliminating self-doubt? What are the things that you saw other guys do really well, or that you did to learn how to overcome being insecure, lacking the confidence of something, and just overall doubting yourself? That everyday human beings could apply on a daily basis?

• 55:47Chadd Wright?

  Bro, I think that we all need to come to the realization that we're all made of the same stuff, man.

• 55:54Chadd Wright?

  Freaking dirt. That's all. We are all made of the same stuff. So Louis, you are an awesome dude. You have accomplished so much, man. But you know why you have done? You have used your tools properly. You don't have anything that I don't, and I hope you don't mind me using us as a direct example. You don't have anything that I don't have from a physical, I have a strong, healthy body and a strong, healthy mind. We're made of the exact same stuff. You have utilized your tools, your time, the people around you,

• 56:37Chadd Wright?

  your speech, your relationships, all these universal tools that we all have access to. We all have access to time, we all have access to people around us.

• 56:47Lewis Howes?

  Resources at some level.

• 56:49Chadd Wright?

  Yeah, those are, and you can't, you can't...

• 56:54Chadd Wright?

  Use the argument that, oh, well, say, take time, for example. Say, time is a tool that helps you accomplish your mission. Well, yeah, you may have more time than me. But take, take and look at it in, in the natural world, as say, we both had a hammer. The hammer represents time. We need to drive a nail through this table right here.

• 57:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 57:18Chadd Wright?

  Your hammer's bigger than mine, so obviously, you're gonna drive the nail faster than me. But I have a hammer too, even though it's smaller. I can still drive that nail flush with this table right here. So it's not an excuse to say, well, Louis has so much more resources than I have. It doesn't matter, dude. We're made of the same stuff.

• 57:39Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, you can still get the job done.

• 57:40Chadd Wright?

  We can still get the job done. So for me, that, that's, you know, that's essential is, is to stop looking at each other like somebody, you know, and look at me, for example, bro. I'm some old country dude from North Georgia. How could I have ever dreamed to go and serve at the tip of the spear with the best men America has to offer?

• 58:08Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 58:08Chadd Wright?

  In the, you know, United States Fighting Forces.

• 58:10Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 58:11Chadd Wright?

  How could I have ever dreamed of going to do that? It makes no logical sense. But even back in those days, I had the same viewpoint. We're all made of the same stuff, bro.

• 58:25Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, so that's step one, is realizing that we're all made of the same stuff.

• 58:29Chadd Wright?

  For me, for me, it is, yeah.

• 58:30Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 58:30Chadd Wright?

  Yeah, and then, and then from that point forward, it's recognizing what are the tools that you need? You call them resources, I call them tools.

• 58:40Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 58:40Chadd Wright?

  What are the resources or tools that you need to accomplish your mission? And then it's learning to utilize those tools or resources in the most effective and efficient way.

• 58:51Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, yeah.

• 58:52Chadd Wright?

  And then at that point, I mean, that's...

• 58:56Chadd Wright?

  That's how you, that's how you get greatness, right?

• 58:58Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 58:59Chadd Wright?

  It's not because, if we both died right now, well, we would turn into both turn into piles of dirt, right?

• 59:04Lewis Howes?

  That's true, man. How do we, uh, what can we do on a daily basis besides having that understanding of the tools and time to, again, overcome that doubt that we have? Overcome the insecurity or the fear or the judgment we put on ourselves in order to have more belief in ourselves to accomplish our mission? Is it you should have a set of routines and habits that you honor your word to every day? And you're, you are your word to yourself, what you say or to do? Is it doing hard things every day that builds more belief? Is it the words you use as well? Like, what's the, what's the ingredients?

• 59:45Chadd Wright?

  That's an excellent combination, Lewis.

• 59:47Lewis Howes?

  I like those.

• 59:48Chadd Wright?

  It sounds like you answered that question, right?

• 59:51Lewis Howes?

  But is there anything else that you?

• 59:52Chadd Wright?

  I can, I'm very hesitant to give advice. I never give advice. I can tell you what I do.

• 59:59Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:00Chadd Wright?

  Based around those things that you just said, I have a routine. I get up every morning at about six in the morning. The first part of my day, I dedicate to my God. So I give him the first fruits of my day. I honor him in that way because I feel like he expects that of me.

• 1:00:19Lewis Howes?

  Like through prayer?

• 1:00:20Chadd Wright?

  Through prayer or reading, or reading, for me, it's the Bible.

• 1:00:23Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:23Chadd Wright?

  So that's what I do. It could be for five minutes, it could be for 45 minutes. But that's how I start my day every single day. If I don't do that, I'm screwed up, dude.

• 1:00:32Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:00:32Chadd Wright?

  Yeah, so, you know, I do that. Then I spend four hours a day training. It may sound crazy, but I train for four hours a day. And that right there, that's where all my perspective comes from. That's where my outlook on life comes from. During that four hour block, I am honing my body and my soul, my mind, will and emotions. That's where the battle is, is in the soul. What do you want to do? What do you think you want to do? How do you feel about something? Those are the things that we have, need to get a hold of, right? But when you're out doing something hard,

• 1:01:13Chadd Wright?

  self-inflicted adversity, it hones that soul portion of us down at the same time that it's training our body. So the two are very intertwined.

• 1:01:23Lewis Howes?

  Giving you energy, keeping you healthy, keeping you lean, sharp. It provides that for the body.

• 1:01:29Chadd Wright?

  It provides that for the body.

• 1:01:30Lewis Howes?

  And the soul and the mind.

• 1:01:32Chadd Wright?

  The soul being the mind, will, and emotions. It makes you force your mind, your will. What do you want to do? And your emotions, how do you feel about this activity and this pain?

• 1:01:43Lewis Howes?

  Because you don't want to do it.

• 1:01:44Chadd Wright?

  Exactly. But, but you, when you go out and do it, you're honing that portion of you as a human. And then, moving forward from there.

• 1:01:54Lewis Howes?

  So that's every day, seven days a week? Is it five days a week, training four hours a day? Is it's?

• 1:01:59Chadd Wright?

  Yeah, I train. I set that block. Now, now, the intensity may vary.

• 1:02:05Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 1:02:05Chadd Wright?

  I may, it may just be a four-hour hike in the woods. You know what I mean?

• 1:02:09Lewis Howes?

  It's not a ultra marathon every day?

• 1:02:11Chadd Wright?

  No, no, totally. I may, I mean, I may only cover 10 miles in that, in that four, in that four hours. I may cover 30 miles.

• 1:02:19Lewis Howes?

  It's always a run? Is it something else? A swim?

• 1:02:21Chadd Wright?

  It could be a combination. It could be weight training. I do, I do weight train, you know, strength training twice a week at least.

• 1:02:28Lewis Howes?

  Why four hours? Why not one, three, five? Is there a number with four?

• 1:02:33Chadd Wright?

  Because there's no, there's no number.

• 1:02:36Lewis Howes?

  No reason with four?

• 1:02:37Chadd Wright?

  I feel like that's what I need personally, to perform on the level that I want to perform and to maintain the perspective that I have on life.

• 1:02:47Lewis Howes?

  Powerful. Okay. So after that?

• 1:02:49Chadd Wright?

  After that is my work time. So from noon to the rest of the day. Up until five, six, sometimes seven o'clock, that's my, that's my work time. And so I take all that perspective and all that energy and all that good stuff that I get out there on that run or that weightlifting or whatever, and then I transfer that over into my work time.

• 1:03:13Lewis Howes?

  Wow, that's probably powerful. You've got so much clarity.

• 1:03:16Chadd Wright?

  I see it, brother.

• 1:03:16Lewis Howes?

  And you get all your best ideas from those four hours. You probably let go of all the pain or frustration or anger or whatever you've got in your head that's festering from the day before. If you have anything, that clears out.

• 1:03:28Chadd Wright?

  I see it, brother.

• 1:03:29Lewis Howes?

  Purge that stuff. You get back to a peaceful place.

• 1:03:32Chadd Wright?

  Yep, so I took care of my spirit.

• 1:03:34Lewis Howes?

  Yep.

• 1:03:35Chadd Wright?

  In that first 30 minutes, take care of my body, soul. And that next four hours, the rest of the day, man, I can hammer some stuff out. I can put down some, so that's the one thing, you know, that's my biggest fear.

• 1:03:47Lewis Howes?

  What?

• 1:03:47Chadd Wright?

  As things grow. My biggest fear is, is that this telephone and, and this phone, text messages and, and social media, my biggest fear is that that stuff would, is, is one day going to maybe tarnish the clarity of my perspective.

• 1:04:08Lewis Howes?

  Mmm, no.

• 1:04:09Chadd Wright?

  It's gonna take away from that, that four hour block of time. Because if I don't put the time in to myself, all that Instagram, all that stuff, none of that matters because if I don't put that four hours into myself, the stuff that I put out on the back half of the day is not gonna be as pure as it should be.

• 1:04:30Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:04:31Chadd Wright?

  So my biggest fear is losing that purity, man.

• 1:04:35Lewis Howes?

  Mm.

• 1:04:35Chadd Wright?

  And, and, and I shouldn't say I fear it, I'm very conscious of it, man.

• 1:04:40Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm. So you finish around five, six, seven, and then what's the evening look like?

• 1:04:46Chadd Wright?

  That's my wife's time, man.

• 1:04:48Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:48Chadd Wright?

  See, I love her more than anything else in the world.

• 1:04:51Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. How, how long have you been together?

• 1:04:53Chadd Wright?

  Brooke and I have been together for seven years now.

• 1:04:56Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm. So you got married while you're in the Navy?

• 1:04:59Chadd Wright?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:00Lewis Howes?

  And was that challenging for her to be with someone who's off in war every day?

• 1:05:08Chadd Wright?

  Oh, it's, I wish you could ask her that question. I mean, I feel like it was more challenging for her than it was for me. And as a SEAL, you're gone, on average, I'd say 300 days out of the year. I mean, you're not at war that whole time. It's training, but you know, it's a mix of both. And yeah, it's extremely difficult, man. Yeah, for sure. And she, you know, she suffered from it, you know, and but luckily, we're still together. And again, because of the adversity we went through in our marriage, it's the same thing, brother. The adversity we went through in our marriage, my wife had a very

• 1:05:53Chadd Wright?

  dangerous disease called addiction. She got wrapped up in that for a while and we had to go through the process. I shouldn't say wrapped up. She was, you know,

• 1:06:04Lewis Howes?

  In it.

• 1:06:04Chadd Wright?

  In it.

• 1:06:05Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:06Chadd Wright?

  And it was bad, dude. That's a whole nother story, man. But we had to go through that adversity together. And now we have the best freaking marriage on earth.

• 1:06:15Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:06:16Chadd Wright?

  You know, so.

• 1:06:17Lewis Howes?

  What's the greatest lesson she's taught you while you were an active Navy SEAL and since your retirement?

• 1:06:24Chadd Wright?

  Humility. Humility for 100%. She's, she keeps me grounded, man. Because as a team guy, man, you're hanging out with active duty, pipe hitting alpha males all day long. And you need somebody to pull you back down to earth sometimes. And even with ultra running, you know, I'm really competitive there. And I'm not a cocky person, dude, but if I start to get a little lofty with, you know, my speech or something like that, man, she'd snatch me right back down to where I need to be.

• 1:06:56Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:06:57Chadd Wright?

  So.

• 1:06:57Lewis Howes?

  So humility has been the biggest lesson. What's something she, that you've learned about her since you've left the Navy that has surprised you? That's different than when you were together in the Navy?

• 1:07:12Lewis Howes?

  Because you've had more time with her, assuming.

• 1:07:14Chadd Wright?

  I would say, I would say how talented she is. Like, I didn't get to pay enough attention to her talents when I was active duty. And now that I get to spend more time with her and she's getting to pursue some of her passions, it just has blown me away with how talented she is. So she loves photography. She's an awesome cook and, uh, and just her people skills, man. So that's the biggest thing.

• 1:07:45Lewis Howes?

  What's the, uh, do you have any regrets from anything in the 12 years? Or wish you could have gone longer? Because you had, you had to retire essentially because of the, the hearing loss from all the bombs and...

• 1:07:59Chadd Wright?

  Yeah, it was a, yeah, it was a whole combination of stuff.

• 1:08:01Lewis Howes?

  A bunch of things they pretty much said.

• 1:08:03Chadd Wright?

  So I was medically retired.

• 1:08:04Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha, yeah. Would you have stayed in it had you been perfectly healthy 100%?

• 1:08:09Chadd Wright?

  Oh, yeah, man. Yeah, I would have definitely, I mean, I would have stayed in the teams and, and, and as long as they would have let me. I mean, you get to go to work with heroes every single day, bro. Why would you ever want to leave that, you know? Do I have any regrets? Nothing that really stands out, man. I would, I really wouldn't, I really wouldn't change a thing.

• 1:08:29Lewis Howes?

  You wish you would have found a few more walls to get behind or a couple more rocks?

• 1:08:33Chadd Wright?

  No, no, man, because it's all, it's all brought me to where I am now. I'm sitting here talking to Lewis Howes, man. I mean, I, in my opinion, I don't deserve to be here, bro. Um, but the, the whole chain of events have brought me to where I am now, present in this day, man. Yeah, and, yeah. And I'm not trying to put you on a pedestal. I'm just using you as, and as example, because we're sitting right here.

• 1:08:58Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure.

• 1:08:59Chadd Wright?

  Face to face, you know?

• 1:09:00Lewis Howes?

  What were some of the coolest moments that you got to experience where you're actually in the moment thinking, "Man, I'm just a kid from this town in Georgia and now I'm, I don't want to speak out loud for you of what you've told me in the past, but now I'm doing this, and now I'm doing this, and this is crazy." Did you ever have any of those moments or were you just?

• 1:09:19Chadd Wright?

  The coolest moments that I've had in my life...

• 1:09:24Chadd Wright?

  Have been since I retired this past January.

• 1:09:27Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:09:27Chadd Wright?

  They have, totally, man. So much stuff has happened, dude. Just like the vision I told you about, and being able to let go and and move forward into this awesome future.

• 1:09:38Lewis Howes?

  You mean not holding on to the identity of the past?

• 1:09:39Chadd Wright?

  Exactly, man.

• 1:09:40Lewis Howes?

  This is who I was, this is my dream, this is my whole life, now it's over.

• 1:09:44Chadd Wright?

  That's it, brother.

• 1:09:45Lewis Howes?

  Not holding on to like, the glory days.

• 1:09:47Chadd Wright?

  Yeah, so the coolest moments have definitely been in this last eight, 10 months. The coolest moments of my life, dude. Yeah, man, you know, and, and not to take away from what we did in the teams, but that was a job. It, it, it got to the point, and I think all guys get that. It's just, it's no different than, you know, you going to do what you do with your group every day. It was a job, dude. We had a mission, we went and did it. Skydiving, diving, that was all the job, man. But now, it's fun. And it's like, all these exciting things have, have happened and, and just the network, getting to know people like you, like Jesse,

• 1:10:30Chadd Wright?

  Scott Worthington, out in New Zealand, getting to know, create this network of just awesome individuals and it's been amazing, bro.

• 1:10:38Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:10:38Chadd Wright?

  So I would say those are, those are, I know that doesn't directly answer your question, but...

• 1:10:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's all good. What's the thing you're most proud of? That you did? That maybe not a lot of people know about, but it's something that you know you did, that you're like, "Man, I'm, I'm really proud that I did this thing or things as an active duty member." Maybe no one ever saw you do it, but what's something that you know, like, "Wow, I'm proud that I did that thing or did that, I didn't even need to do that, but I did this thing," or "There was a kid that was..." I don't know.

• 1:11:13Chadd Wright?

  You, you, this won't be the answer that you anticipated.

• 1:11:16Lewis Howes?

  It's all good.

• 1:11:17Chadd Wright?

  I am proud, when my wife was battling addiction, that I had the courage to go to my team. And tell them that I needed to take a knee and help my wife get better. I'm proud that I didn't give up on the person that I love the most for the job.

• 1:11:42Chadd Wright?

  Because the job went away and now I still have the person that I love the most. So that's what I'm most proud of.

• 1:11:49Lewis Howes?

  So taking a knee, meaning taking a break from the team or from the Navy or was that?

• 1:11:53Chadd Wright?

  No, it was just, I went to be an instructor for a little while, so I didn't have to travel near as much. I could help my, could help my wife in the, in the battle that she was fighting. As a husband, I could be a husband for once. But that was hard. It was hard to have courage to go, we had just come back off deployment. It was hard to have courage to go to my team because I didn't know what they were gonna do, dude. I mean, were they gonna attack me? Were they gonna look down upon me? But they didn't. They embraced me and gave me the tools that I needed.

• 1:12:24Lewis Howes?

  So they said, so essentially you weren't with the team going out on missions?

• 1:12:29Chadd Wright?

  Yep.

• 1:12:29Lewis Howes?

  You were coming back, you were gonna work at a stable place?

• 1:12:33Chadd Wright?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:34Lewis Howes?

  Near your wife?

• 1:12:35Chadd Wright?

  That's right.

• 1:12:35Lewis Howes?

  And you could stay with, you could stay at home, I guess?

• 1:12:38Chadd Wright?

  Yep, and until, until she had won that battle.

• 1:12:41Lewis Howes?

  How long did that take until you went back out?

• 1:12:44Chadd Wright?

  That was, that was about two years.

• 1:12:47Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:12:47Chadd Wright?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:48Lewis Howes?

  Pretty powerful.

• 1:12:50Chadd Wright?

  So that's, yeah, that's what I'm most proud of, man.

• 1:12:52Lewis Howes?

  That's great. I love that.

• 1:12:53Chadd Wright?

  Never been asked that question before. I hope it's a good answer, man.

• 1:12:58Lewis Howes?

  Great answer, man.

• 1:12:59Chadd Wright?

  Okay.

• 1:13:00Lewis Howes?

  If you could give three lessons to any civilian who might be just going through some challenges in their own mind, whether, whether they're valid challenges or big challenges or small, but someone's just going through a hard time. They're struggling in their relationship, they're struggling with their health. Something is off. Their career, they don't know what their mission or purpose is, they don't know why they're here. If you could give three lessons, or three things that they could start doing on a daily basis, where you think it would start the process of healing, or clarity, or peace,

• 1:13:41Lewis Howes?

  what do you think those three things could be, from where you learned in all your lessons?

• 1:13:46Chadd Wright?

  That is a deep question, bro.

• 1:13:48Lewis Howes?

  And there's a lot of work people need to do on a lot of things, but it's right.

• 1:13:51Chadd Wright?

  That's it, brother, so...

• 1:13:53Lewis Howes?

  So this isn't a fix-all.

• 1:13:54Chadd Wright?

  The best way that I can answer that question, Louis, is when I talk about body, soul, and spirit, we can all use that as humans, as a diagnostic.

• 1:14:09Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:11Chadd Wright?

  So you're talking...

• 1:14:12Lewis Howes?

  What's off?

• 1:14:13Chadd Wright?

  You're talking about people that are struggling with their purpose, that are struggling with, you know, their day-to-day, maybe their relationship, their marriage. I can guarantee you, if you take those three aspects, whether you're Christian, Muslim, atheist, it doesn't matter, you still are composed of a body, soul, and spirit. If you take those three aspects and you break them each down, and you say, "Okay, what am I doing in each one of these lanes to nourish this part of my humanity?" You're going to find the holes.

• 1:14:51Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:53Chadd Wright?

  Maybe you don't know how to nurture your spirit, maybe you don't know how to nurture your soul, or your body. Go find a way, or surround yourself with people that can help you with either three of those aspects.

• 1:15:08Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:09Chadd Wright?

  That would be, I mean, that would be my biggest piece of advice for somebody in that situation. Second would have to be, definitely utilize the spoken word. Keep control of your rudder, man. That's made a tremendous impact on my life, my relationships, every aspect of my life. And then, third, I would say...

• 1:15:37Chadd Wright?

  Go out and, and put yourself in some adverse situations. Whether it's, whether it's with ultra running, whether it's with a marathon or a 5K. The distance doesn't matter as far as a race goes. If it's weight training at a gym, put yourself into some adverse situations and, and, and let, and let yourself grow there. Cause that's where we grow, man. Don't be afraid of that stuff, dude. It's, it's, that's how we as humans were meant to be in those situations. I mean, in back, you know, a couple thousand years ago, it was a day to day thing, you know? We don't get that anymore, dude.

• 1:16:17Lewis Howes?

  So inflict adversity.

• 1:16:19Chadd Wright?

  Self inflicted adversity, man.

• 1:16:21Lewis Howes?

  I say this all the time that, and maybe this is my sports background, but I would, I tell people like, find something that's causes you pain every single day. And for me, it doesn't, it doesn't even be four hours. You know, it's like doing a three mile run this morning was painful because in the last half a mile, I turned the fricking thing up when I didn't, because I was in a comfortable pace at a seven and a half on the treadmill. And I'm like, okay, I can keep this up and have a normal heart rate. So I was like, I need to push it so I'm burning. I don't want to, but I'm going to.

• 1:16:53Chadd Wright?

  I love that, bro.

• 1:16:54Lewis Howes?

  So even if it's an extra five minutes that I don't want to do, to feel a pain and be out of breath and sweating and hurting, I know now that I did something hard. Maybe it's not a hundred miles or what, four hour, it's something hard for me. And I think when people inflict pain in a, not a broke, not break your arm pain, but in a, in a container that is safe, you build a sense of belief and confidence and you start to have more clarity, like you said. And that's why I love that you're doing the four hours a day.

• 1:17:26Chadd Wright?

  Yeah, man. And, and with what you said too, Louis, with, um, with doing it every day, that's, that's so important because you have to continue to earn it. You can't bottle it. You gotta continue to earn it every day, man.

• 1:17:37Lewis Howes?

  That's it, that's it. Do you have any doubts currently in your life? Or do you feel pretty doubtless on a day-to-day basis?

• 1:17:47Chadd Wright?

  I mean, I don't really look at, I don't have any doubts again because I don't look at life as like anymore as, as I see the design in life, if that makes any sense. So it takes out, it takes out the whole doubt portion of it because I see it, I see the design.

• 1:18:08Lewis Howes?

  What does that mean, you see the design?

• 1:18:10Chadd Wright?

  So for me, it's I'm being guided by something bigger than myself. And it just goes back to that moment that I was really able to just let go and recognize the design within my purpose in life, so.

• 1:18:26Lewis Howes?

  Being guided by God?

• 1:18:27Chadd Wright?

  Yeah, by my God. I'm being guided and it's, and I see this through,

• 1:18:34Chadd Wright?

  I see this through actual events that happen in my life, that if I've told you about them, you'd think I was freaking crazy, dude. But I see that design in my life and I, and I tell people that are close to me about the things that happen. Not that I'm special. I don't know why God's put me where I am today. I don't deserve it. But that just removes all the doubt for me personally.

• 1:19:01Lewis Howes?

  That's helpful. You have that spiritual connection of being guided. So you understand the context of life and you trust the process. You trust your path.

• 1:19:11Chadd Wright?

  Such a gift, brother.

• 1:19:12Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, when you start to trust the uncertainty, trust the breakdown, trust the heart, the pain, trust the addiction. And you know it's a part of a bigger design and you can get through it.

• 1:19:23Chadd Wright?

  Totally, brother. You get it, Louis.

• 1:19:25Lewis Howes?

  That brings you peace. Yeah, I get it. Okay, cool. I'm still learning every day, you know. This question's called the three truths. So imagine it's your last day on earth many years from now. And you've achieved everything you want at every stage of your life. You accomplished your first dream of being in the Navy SEAL. Now you're in your next phase of your life. You're gonna take on amazing things and you're gonna conquer mountains. And then there's gonna be multiple decades where you do that in different ways. And you've done everything you can imagine you wanna do. But for whatever reason, you've gotta take all the content and the awards and the accomplishments and the businesses you've built and anything you've created, you've gotta take it with you to the next

• 1:20:10Lewis Howes?

  place when the lights go off. But you get to leave behind three things you know to be true. The lessons you would leave behind to the world. And these are only three things that they would have to remember you by. I have that a question. Let's just play with me on it. If you could have three truths that you would share with the world, what do you think would be those three for you?

• 1:20:30Chadd Wright?

  Three truths. I can just tell you what comes to my mind, first of all, man. Faith, hope, and love are all good things. But the greatest is love. So those are my faith, hope, and love, man.

• 1:20:48Lewis Howes?

  Simplicity, man, I like it.

• 1:20:49Chadd Wright?

  I mean, that's just what came to my mind when you answered that question, bro.

• 1:20:53Lewis Howes?

  Well, Chad, I wanna acknowledge you, Chad, for for how you've shown up consistently. I've only known you for a little bit of time, but the way that you handled yourself to achieve your dream of being a Navy SEAL and serve our country. The way you showed up with your team. The way you showed up to serve without asking questions, without you know, being resistant and just being of service. I wanna acknowledge you for that. I wanna acknowledge you also for your ability to shift your identity quickly and not hold on to the past. Where a lot of athletes I've seen have lived in the glory days of the past for years. And I'm sure people in the military, I can only assume,

• 1:21:37Lewis Howes?

  probably hold on to something from the past as well when they retire.

• 1:21:42Chadd Wright?

  Totally, bro.

• 1:21:42Lewis Howes?

  So I acknowledge you for your ability to transition and serve at a different level. You're serving a lot of people in the ultra endurance races and experiences. You're serving business leaders now. You're serving my audience. You're serving other people now. And I think that's amazing that you're using your life as a channel to give and serve other people with the tools and the gifts that you have.

• 1:22:05Chadd Wright?

  Thank you, Louis.

• 1:22:06Lewis Howes?

  So I acknowledge you for that and for being a great human being, being a great husband and showing up in a powerful way. I really acknowledge and appreciate you for all that, my man. What is the thing that you're most excited about right now and how can we support you? You're on Instagram, which you try to limit your time on your phone, but you're there sharing wisdom. You've got a podcast. Where can we support, follow along, get more of Chad?

• 1:22:32Chadd Wright?

  Yeah, so Instagram's definitely the main, that's the only, like, the only social media platform that I can handle. So I try to be interactive on there as, you know, as much as I possibly can. And that's just at Chad, C-H-A-D, W-R-I-G-H-T, two, seven, eight. Yeah. And then the podcast, it's just Three of Seven Podcast. You guys can listen in anytime. It's on Apple and, you know, the whole nine. It's just look.

• 1:22:59Lewis Howes?

  Three of Seven Podcast?

• 1:23:00Chadd Wright?

  Three of Seven Podcast, and that's spelled out. And then also, probably the best place to really dig into what Three of Seven is and what it has to offer is the website, threeofsevenproject.com.

• 1:23:13Lewis Howes?

  Okay, cool.

• 1:23:14Chadd Wright?

  So everything, as everything unfolds and we add new, new stuff to the project and, you know, new products or whatever it may be, it'll all be there.

• 1:23:23Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:24Chadd Wright?

  So.

• 1:23:25Lewis Howes?

  Threeofsevenproject.com.

• 1:23:26Chadd Wright?

  Dot com, yep.

• 1:23:27Lewis Howes?

  Do you have any questions for me?

• 1:23:28Chadd Wright?

  I don't, brother. I just want to thank you, Louis. I really, I really genuinely appreciate your friendship.

• 1:23:33Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, man.

• 1:23:34Chadd Wright?

  I appreciate the time that we spent on the mountain together.

• 1:23:36Lewis Howes?

  That's powerful.

• 1:23:37Chadd Wright?

  You impacted me in a tremendous way.

• 1:23:39Lewis Howes?

  Oh, thank you.

• 1:23:40Chadd Wright?

  And that's from the bottom of my heart, man.

• 1:23:42Lewis Howes?

  Thanks, brother. Appreciate it. I'm excited to connect more and learn more and hopefully push myself more when I'm around you in physical challenges. Final question I have for you is what's your definition of greatness?

• 1:23:52Chadd Wright?

  It's so relative, right? I love that you asked this question because there's an infinite number of definitions.

• 1:24:00Lewis Howes?

  Your definition.

• 1:24:01Chadd Wright?

  For me, for me, it is...

• 1:24:05Chadd Wright?

  Just simply about happiness and fulfillment, dude. That is greatness. That's like those guys that I told you about that are still working at that, on that construction job where I was when I was 18, and they're happy. I've known men, I've known great men that have wore a pair of overalls every day of their lives and worked in a farm field and never left their hometown. And they are, in my book, they're great men because they're happy, they're whole, they're complete. They've raised a beautiful family and they're fulfilled with their life. So for me, that's the definition of greatness.

• 1:24:42Lewis Howes?

  My man. Thanks, Chad.

• 1:24:43Chadd Wright?

  Love you, brother.

• 1:24:44Lewis Howes?

  Love you, man. Appreciate it.

• 1:24:53Lewis Howes?

  There you have it, my friend. I hope you enjoyed this interview. It blows me away, the discipline, the dedication, the commitment, the command that Chad has built for himself to create freedom in his life. Again, he dedicates hours every day on his health, so he doesn't have to stress about it. He dedicates consistency on his relationship, so he doesn't have problems in it. He puts attention towards the words that he says, so it doesn't affect his mindset throughout the day. Because when we create discipline in our life, we create power and freedom in our dreams. And that's what I want you to take away from this episode. I hope you enjoyed his way of being, his message, his skills, the tools he provides.

• 1:25:37Lewis Howes?

  And if you enjoyed this, please share it with a friend. Chad is just starting to come out of retirement. He's just starting to make a name for himself, and he's going to be blowing up over the next few years. Make sure to spread this message far and wide to your friends. Text it to a WhatsApp group chat that you have, a Facebook group, to some friends you have on text. Post it on social media. Tag me at Lewis Howes. Make sure to tag Chad as well. And you can find the full show notes on how to connect with him at lewishowes.com/877. So inspired by his message, so inspired by his way of being, his ability to communicate clearly and effectively, and have non-negotiables in his life, so that he does have freedom. It doesn't create these...

• 1:26:21Lewis Howes?

  These experiences that hurt him. He seeks the challenge as opposed to waiting for challenge to find him. Either way, we are going to find challenges in our life. It's just our decision, do we want to seek out the challenge? So we have the strength to overcome them as they come? Or do we want to play safe? And let challenges come to us and make it harder for us to overcome them? Again, Bruce Lee said, "Do not pray for an easy life. Pray for the strength to endure a difficult one." And that's what Chad has done. He has created a life of strength so that he can endure all the pain and challenges that might try to come his way. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Again, I hope you enjoyed this episode.

• 1:27:06Lewis Howes?

  Powerful insights from someone who's gone through extreme adversity and extreme challenges in his life on every different level. Bruce Lee said, "Do not pray for an easy life. Pray for the strength to endure a difficult one." I pray that you have the strength to endure all the challenges in your life. I love you so very much. And you know what time it is? It's time to go out there and do something great.