1058 How to Attract Success, Destroy Laziness & Achieve Optimal Performance w/Former Navy SEAL Officer Rich Diviney

“Knowledge on its own is not power, you have to apply it.”Today's guest is Rich Diviney, who has more than 20 years of experience as a Navy SEAL Officer, has completed more than 13 overseas deployments, achieved multiple leadership positions and since retirement in early 2017, has worked as a speaker, facilitator, and consultant and is now the author of his new book: The Attributes: 25 Hidden Drivers of Optimal PerformanceLewis and Rich sat down to take a deep dive into the mindset of a Navy SEAL, and all the techniques, lessons, and wisdom that comes from being a leader and a driver of success. For more go to: www.lewishowes.com/1058Read Rich's new book: https://theattributes.com/buy/ Check out Greatness Coaching: www.lewishowes.com/mycoachMel Robbins: The “Secret” Mindset Habit to Building Confidence and Overcoming Scarcity: https://link.chtbl.com/970-podDr. Joe Dispenza on Healing the Body and Transforming the Mind: https://link.chtbl.com/826-podMaster Your Mind and Defy the Odds with David Goggins: https://link.chtbl.com/715-pod Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

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

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 1,058 with former Navy SEAL Officer Rich Diviney. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a 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.

• 0:31Lewis Howes?

  Margaret Thatcher once said, "Don't follow the crowd, let the crowd follow you." And John Quincy Adams said, "If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader." I'm so excited because my guest today is Rich Diviney, who has more than 20 years of experience as a Navy SEAL officer at the highest level. He completed more than 13 overseas deployments, achieved multiple leadership positions, and since retirement in early 2017, has worked as a speaker, facilitator, and consultant, and is now the author of his new book, "The Attributes: 25 Hidden Drivers of Optimal Performance."

• 1:14Lewis Howes?

  And I love diving deep into the mindset of a Navy SEAL and all the techniques, lessons, and wisdom that comes from being a leader and a driver of success. And in this episode, we discuss how to train yourself to have more motivation and not be lazy, the difference between self-discipline and discipline, how to train your mind to be more calm during stress and chaos, the five main behaviors of a good leader, the difference between task switching and multitasking, and this part will be huge for so many of you, whether it's better to make a bad decision or no decision at all, how to build up your self-confidence, the steps we can take to overcome the fear of rejection.

• 1:57Lewis Howes?

  This was cool. We talk about the law of attraction and why it works for Navy SEALs, and so much more. And before we dive in, I wanted to let you know that we just launched my greatness coaching program. This is your high performance system for 2021 and beyond. It includes coaching, accountability, community, and my new greatness playbook, where you'll reflect, plan, and create short-term and long-term visions for your life. But whether you join greatness coaching or not, creating a high-performance system will be the biggest thing you do to set yourself up for success in 2021. If you're already a successful entrepreneur, then make sure to go to lewishouse.com/mycoach to check out and see if this is the right program for you.

• 2:42Lewis Howes?

  It won't be for everyone, but make sure to check it out at lewishouse.com/mycoach if you're interested in taking your life and business to the next level. And also, at any time during this episode, if you're enjoying it, make sure to share this with a friend who you think would be inspired by this and wants to learn from more of this information. Just send them the link lewishouse.com/1058 or copy and paste it wherever you're listening to it and share it on social media, text it to a friend, and let people know about this message. And also, if you want to spread the message of greatness, click the subscribe button over on Apple Podcasts right now and leave us a rating and review as that will help us impact and change more lives together. Okay, in just a moment, the one and only Rich Davini.

• 3:29Lewis Howes?

  I want to talk about, first off, the difference between peak performance and optimal performance, because your whole thing is about optimal performance, and that peak performance is not sustainable.

• 3:41Rich Diviney?

  Right.

• 3:42Lewis Howes?

  But in kind of leadership world or personal growth world, a lot of people say, let's get to peak performance.

• 3:48Rich Diviney?

  Yeah.

• 3:49Lewis Howes?

  So why more optimal performance we should be leaning on? What is it? And why do you feel like it's better than peak performance?

• 3:56Rich Diviney?

  Yeah, you know, peak performance is, well, in a word, awesome. I mean, it's very seductive, you know, it's flow states, it's, you're at your best, you're doing, you know, things that you never thought you could do. And ultimately, it's a, it's a very honorable and great goal. The reason why it doesn't interest me as much stems from the, from the fact that people generally think of and would come up to me and say, "Well, you Navy SEALs are the top peak performers." I mean, the ultimate peak performers. And I said, "Actually, no, we're not." Peak? Is an apex. And an apex is from which you can only come down, right? And peak has to be prepared for, scheduled, conditioned, right? Planned for.

• 4:40Rich Diviney?

  The professional football player, for example, you know, spends his entire week preparing to peak for three hours on Sunday, right? And that's exactly what that football player should do, except Navy SEALs don't have that option, right? You know, and spec ops people don't have that option, military people don't have that option. I don't think anybody in life has that option, unless you're planning a specific event.

• 5:01Lewis Howes?

  For a moment.

• 5:02Rich Diviney?

  For a moment. You can peak, you can plan for a peak in a moment, but everyday life is really about optimal. Optimal is how can I do the very best in the moment with what I've got? All right? Sometimes that looks like peak, sometimes it looks like flow states. Sometimes it's just like, hey, I'm just taking step by step. I have my head down and I'm trudging through and it sucks. And it's muddy and it's dirty and it's hard, right? This is, you know, what kind of keyed me into it was, you know, in SEAL training, you do something called surf torture. So they take you out in the cold waters of Southern California and they march you into the surf zone, you lay down, the waves just crash over you for what seems like hours.

• 5:35Lewis Howes?

  It's freezing.

• 5:35Rich Diviney?

  It's freezing. You get a lot of guys quitting during that evolution. And they do it at night, you know, and I remember, you know, that I remember being in the surf zone and there was nothing peak about my performance in the surf zone, right? I was just, I was doing the very best I could, which was not to quit, which was what the other guys around me were doing too. And some did and some didn't, you know, but this happens. I mean, the person fighting cancer, there's nothing peak about going through chemotherapy. The person striving for that goal and nugging it out, there's nothing peak about it. It's not peak all the time. Even, you know, you're talking about training for a marathon or these long distance runs, you know, you're not going to be peak the whole, you know.

• 6:07Lewis Howes?

  You're sprinting your fastest every moment.

• 6:09Rich Diviney?

  Yeah, every moment, right? There's going to be points at which you're ebbing and flowing. And so optimal is about the ebb and flow. And that's life and that's really understanding oneself and one's performance so that you achieve optimal versus peak.

• 6:20Lewis Howes?

  How do we train ourselves to find motivation and not be lazy? Because I feel like there's a lot of laziness out there or there's moments of motivation, but then it falls back into a laziness structured schedule. How do we train our minds and our body to be motivated towards a goal and not stay lazy?

• 6:42Rich Diviney?

  Yeah, well, at first, it's know thyself because we're all different. And so one of the attributes I talk about in the book is discipline. And what I had to do with discipline was actively separate discipline from self-discipline.

• 6:55Lewis Howes?

  What's the difference?

• 6:56Rich Diviney?

  Okay, well, the difference is that self-discipline is internally focused. Okay, self-discipline is about managing oneself. And it has very little to do with external requirements, right? So you or I can decide to get in shape, for example, and we can change our diet. We can work out every day. The external environment doesn't have a lot of say in that, you know, in us achieving that accomplishment. So self-discipline is about managing the internal. Discipline, the way I talk about in the book, is about achieving that long-term goal. These are those long-term goals that are going to take a while to achieve. And the external world has a say. So getting that promotion, writing that book, becoming the famous singer, becoming a Navy SEAL, right? The external world has, starting a podcast, right? The external world has a say in whether or not you do that.

• 7:41Rich Diviney?

  And the discipline that is required to move through those wickets takes adaptability, it takes flexibility, it takes the ability to not get seduced by the highs, the successes, and not get crushed by the failures and continue to move towards that goal. And what I found was, because I'm a very un-self-disciplined person. I don't have a lot, right? And so I had to separate this because I've been able to achieve a lot of goals in my life. I say, well, what's the difference? Well, the difference is if you are overly, so those with very high self-discipline, sometimes, this is not exclusive, but sometimes have trouble achieving long-term goals because the achievement of long-term goals often takes an ability and by necessity, to march into the unknown, into uncertainty,

• 8:25Rich Diviney?

  which is going to throw you off routine and throw you out of certainty. The self-disciplined person, the very self-disciplined, likes routine, likes certainty, right? That's how, it's structure. I mean, that's what it is. And so moving towards a goal like that takes oftentimes being able to adapt out of structure, you know, and say, well, I can't do that. Like, I'd have to just go in, I have to go in unknowing, right? Now, the best, the most successful people are those who have both self-discipline and discipline, right? In terms of staying motivated or goal, the way I would do it by knowing myself is I would, understanding I'm not a very self-disciplined person, I would simply try to chunk a goal into smaller pieces, right? So. If I want to, if I want to lose weight, you know, then I can say, well, that's why cheat days are actually good for me.

• 9:10Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 9:11Rich Diviney?

  Because I can, I can say, I'm gonna take this piece of it and move. So I, I chunk my reward system in a different way. But I think, I think the way, the way one stays motivated towards a goal is highly subjective, but it would, in my, kind of through my thought process and my experience, involve a, an active, or one to actively map out a reward system that helps someone move through that.

• 9:37Lewis Howes?

  Sort of creating a reward system first for the, for the goal in order to help you stay motivated.

• 9:43Rich Diviney?

  Depending on, yeah, depending on your, depending on your, how you show up.

• 9:46Lewis Howes?

  Not to say like, okay, I'm gonna, my goal is to achieve this thing, it's gonna take me three years to accomplish it.

• 9:51Rich Diviney?

  Right.

• 9:52Lewis Howes?

  And that's the only reward I'm gonna get in those three years. But how can I reward myself every day for an action I take, every month for a milestone, every year for getting closer? So focusing on the reward system first.

• 10:04Rich Diviney?

  Yeah, and this is, this is, this is neurobiological because dopamine, the neurotransmitter, is, you get, you get hits of dopamine when you, as a reward, when you achieve things. There's many ways you get dopamine, but one of the ways is when you achieve things. So if you're able to effectively create a reward system that means something to you, it can't be, it can't be kind of inert, right? So, so if I want to run, if I don't run a marathon, and I haven't, and I can barely run to the, to my mailbox, right? You know, then maybe, you know, buying some running shoes and putting them on one morning is enough of a reward system to get a dopamine hit. As someone who runs, you know, somewhat frequently, and I, you probably identify with this, just putting on our shoes one morning is probably not gonna give us that dopamine hit. We gotta, we gotta extend that, we gotta extend that task a little bit so that...

• 10:48Lewis Howes?

  If you've already accomplished a lot of something, you have to push beyond it a little bit.

• 10:51Rich Diviney?

  You have to push beyond it to get that, that reward system. So it becomes subjective.

• 10:54Lewis Howes?

  What would you say, 20 years as a Navy SEAL at different levels, and you were deployed how many different times? Are you allowed to talk about that?

• 11:03Rich Diviney?

  Well, you know, I mean, 13 and some change, yeah, so...

• 11:07Lewis Howes?

  Deployments between, what, six months and over a year?

• 11:10Rich Diviney?

  Yeah, I never did year long, but anywhere between, you know, three months to six months usually.

• 11:15Lewis Howes?

  And this is Iraq and Afghanistan?

• 11:16Rich Diviney?

  For the most part, yeah.

• 11:18Lewis Howes?

  And other places maybe you're not allowed to talk about? What would you say of that 20-year experience was the most challenging experience for you? Was it something within a mission? Was it learning how to develop as a leader? Was it having a relationship with your wife during that time? What was the most challenging point for you?

• 11:36Rich Diviney?

  Yeah, the most challenging thing ironically wasn't the job. Because you, because we were all so prepared for the job. And we were around, we were around just the best people in the world. So, so the trust and the camaraderie was, to this day, you know, I look back on it very fondly, right?

• 11:51Lewis Howes?

  Wow, so not the day-to-day job?

• 11:53Rich Diviney?

  No.

• 11:54Lewis Howes?

  You mean even just like the, the missions you went out on?

• 11:57Rich Diviney?

  Yeah, that wasn't, that wasn't challenging. I think, I think if I were to, if I were to say, you know, the first foremost was probably having to leave the family. When you have to say goodbye to your family for a stint, you know, whether it's three months or six months, or some, some folks are deploying for a year, right? That is a rough deal that not many people can, can capture. Not many people with families can capture that. When you have to say goodbye to your kids and your wife for that, you know, okay, well, see you in however. And then, and then to add on to that, understanding their stress, or at least my kids were a little bit smaller, but understanding my wife's stress, knowing that I was going someplace and she, it was dangerous.

• 12:34Lewis Howes?

  Checking contact.

• 12:35Rich Diviney?

  Luckily with today's technology, contact was fairly easy. But we found was, you know, again ironically, we found that, that daily contact was never a good idea. Because what happens is you establish a routine.

• 12:47Lewis Howes?

  You get comfortable, you're...

• 12:48Rich Diviney?

  You get comfortable, so, so something happens. I'm, I'm working, I'm overseas or something, I'm, I have a mission that goes along or whatever, and I don't get to call her that day, well, suddenly she's worried, you know? And it also makes time actually seem slower.

• 13:00Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 13:00Rich Diviney?

  Yeah, so we, we decided we were only going to talk usually once a week. My son, who had a real trouble, and he was young, I mean, he was, you know, he was born in 05. So he was, he was, by the time he was two, he was, he was having trouble with me deploying. And, and every time I went, it was rough on him. And we actually, for him, we actually almost had to, well, we literally had to just decide not to, I was not, I was not going to talk to him on the phone. It was too hard for him. He had to basically kind of forget me.

• 13:27Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh, so he had to compartmentalize as a child?

• 13:31Rich Diviney?

  Yeah, we had to help him compartmentalize.

• 13:33Lewis Howes?

  Survive?

• 13:33Rich Diviney?

  Yeah.

• 13:34Lewis Howes?

  And not go depressed or be stressed? Because that's one of the attributes you talk about is compartmentalization.

• 13:40Rich Diviney?

  Yeah.

• 13:40Lewis Howes?

  How do you do that? If you're an emotional human being that's, you have these deep connections to your family and friends? How do you just? Detach in a sense.

• 13:50Rich Diviney?

  Yeah.

• 13:51Lewis Howes?

  And become more machine-like for a period of time. And then allow yourself to feel deeply in other moments.

• 13:58Rich Diviney?

  Well, it never goes away. I think the attributes, the way I talk about compartmentalization and the attribute is more is more kind of surrounded by the way our brain functions and processes information versus I'm going to block something out so I don't have to think about it. However, I think most team guys, SEALs, Spec Ops guys have a very high ability to compartmentalize away from things. You know, block out things that are painful. I know that about me. And I know that about my buddies because you have to, because war sucks, you know? And at the end of the day, the mission has to be accomplished, you know? So if something gnarly happens on a mission, you can't sit there.

• 14:40Rich Diviney?

  These movies that show these extended scenes of people, you know, mourning when their buddy goes down or whatever, like, oh my God. It doesn't happen. You don't have that time. You know, you have to, you have to win the gunfight, right? Because if you don't, then all of you won't make it home, right? So you have to, and I think, I think the training allows you to do that. The training is so intense and so kind of, so effective that it requires you to compartmentalize. You know, training teaches you to compartmentalize. You become, you become very, very good at it. Now, that can be a detriment in a relationship. So I think those of us who were able to recognize that actively try not to do that with our families.

• 15:21Rich Diviney?

  And so it becomes much more of a precision tool versus a frenetic thing. It just, it happens without us, without us having control over it.

• 15:28Lewis Howes?

  What was the moment that was the scariest for you when you were deployed? Where you thought like, I may not make it?

• 15:38Lewis Howes?

  Or our team may not make it, or this is a really bad, I guess you're training for bad situations all the time. But was there ever a moment where you were like, I don't know if we're gonna get out of this?

• 15:48Rich Diviney?

  No, I was, I was fortunate not to have that moment. I say that, I say that with immense gratitude because I know there's a lot of friends of mine who didn't have that. That can't say that they had those moments where they, you know, they said that. But, but no, I was fortunate enough to be always in a position, and my team was always in a position, that we had prepared, planned, and executed in a way that was highly effective so that when things went wrong, because things always go sideways, we had complete, you know, or near complete control, or we understood the pathways we needed to go throughout of. But, but I say that also, you know, this is, this comes back to compartmentalization. You know, one of the things that you have to be able to do when, when it goes sideways

• 16:31Rich Diviney?

  is to not focus on that thought you just brought up, right? The focus is not, oh my God, I don't think I'm going to get out of this. Focus is, how do I get out of this? But, so the mental agility attributes, which are situation awareness, compartmentalization, task switching, and then learnability, right? So that's how information's coming in, how we're processing it and prioritizing, how we're switching between the necessary tasks, and then how we're learning from our, from our, from our decisions, right? So I talk about the parachute malfunction in, in the context of that. But ultimately comes, to even be able to do that in the first place, it requires a four-brain dominance in the sense that you're not letting your autonomic system take over into a fight-flight response, and you're able to think through stress, challenge, and

• 17:13Rich Diviney?

  uncertainty in the sense of say, okay, what, what can I control right now? And this is where trust in your teammates comes in, because now I have a team. I mean, I can say this with, with, with great pride and gratitude, that I can remember literally walking in areas, you know, when we're overseas and thinking, man, this is a, it's a bad area. Sketchy. This is sketchy, and having complete and utter faith, right? Because I just, I was around, because I was with my teammates, right? I was around people who just, I trusted. I knew that if something went, went wrong, we'd, we'd be able to handle it, you know? And so I think that's, that's a necessity when you do this type of, type of stuff.

• 17:51Lewis Howes?

  When you're going out on a mission, what's the process like of preparing for that mission? Are you planning more for all the things that could go wrong and how to get out of that situation? Or is it planning for here's exactly how we would like it to go right?

• 18:05Rich Diviney?

  Yeah.

• 18:05Lewis Howes?

  But let's also have a exit plan or a plan for when things go wrong? What do you?

• 18:11Rich Diviney?

  It's the latter. It's you plan the mission as you'd like it to go. And then you, inside of that planning, you put together, you build contingencies within each factor.

• 18:22Lewis Howes?

  So when this doesn't go as planned, what are the three ways to get out?

• 18:26Rich Diviney?

  Yeah, so you know, just like, I mean, just like any athlete would understand. So a quarterback coming out of a snap would say, well, I have two or three or four plays I can fall back on, depending on how this line shapes up, right? You have the same thing, you know, this is where experience matters. You do it over and over again. It's okay, well, during, as we're coming in on insertion, you know, there's a few things that could go wrong. So if this, then that, if this, then that. And you kind of do that throughout a phase, throughout the phase planning. But then there's what we call the 80/20 rule. And that is you get to 80% of certainty, and then you recognize that 20% is just out of your control. And that's where confidence comes. You say, hey, if something happens outside that 20%, we will figure it out.

• 19:08Lewis Howes?

  Figure it out.

• 19:09Rich Diviney?

  Because we're not going to figure out everything. And it's, you know, Murphy's Law will dictate that something happens that we haven't thought of. So you prepare yourself to deal with uncertainty.

• 19:19Lewis Howes?

  How do you train your mind to deal with chaos in the moment? So that you don't freak out and freeze up, but you actually turn on a level of focus and attention towards achieving that goal?

• 19:32Rich Diviney?

  Yeah, so I think we're predisposed, each one of us, to what I've called, Huberman and I both have called this is the autonomic set point. You know, at what point do we start flipping into an autonomic response? Into fight-flight, where our system starts, you know, taking over and our four brains starts coming offline? If we were, if you and I use boiling point as the average, most of us might be average. There are those who start really freaking out at like 190. You know, so 212 is the average. At 190 degrees, they're starting to freak out.

• 20:06Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 20:07Rich Diviney?

  There are people who it takes till like 230.

• 20:09Lewis Howes?

  To boil.

• 20:10Rich Diviney?

  To boil, right? I think that the guys who make it through that training are predisposed to have a higher set point, first of all. In other words, we tend to... When bad things start to happen, we tend to slow down and start thinking through it versus get all hyped up. It's funny, it's funny, you know, I live in a neighborhood and in my neighborhood, there's four other Navy SEALs in the neighborhood. There's, you know, one across the street, one down the road.

• 20:34Lewis Howes?

  Must be nice.

• 20:35Rich Diviney?

  Well, it is nice, you know, A, because they're great dudes and it's great, they're great neighbors, but I remember my wife once saying, and she said, hey, I'm so glad these guys are here in the neighborhood. I was like, why? She said, because if something went wrong, I know I could go to them and they'd act like you act. And I said, well, tell me. I said, because, because if something happens, they would immediately calm down and they'd start working the problem, right? And so, so I think there's, I think we show up predisposed. Training to it is difficult, you know, and I, I think, so, so here we're actually working on some stuff, some stuff to help train, have to help teach people to do that, but it comes down to understanding your own neurology and it comes down to understanding that, you know, here's how you have to think through situations under stress and then it's going to be about putting yourself into deliberate stress to practice that.

• 21:19Rich Diviney?

  You can't practice this type of thinking if you're not in stress.

• 21:23Lewis Howes?

  You need to put yourself in that.

• 21:24Rich Diviney?

  You need to put yourself in that.

• 21:25Lewis Howes?

  What are some things civilians could do to practice stressful moments on a daily basis where it doesn't hurt them, but it's actually preparing them? I talk about every day, I think you should be experiencing some type of pain, something that's uncomfortable.

• 21:37Rich Diviney?

  Right.

• 21:38Lewis Howes?

  Seeking discomfort.

• 21:39Rich Diviney?

  Yes.

• 21:40Lewis Howes?

  Whether it be through a 10-minute workout, whether it be through a longer run, it doesn't matter what it is, an uncomfortable conversation.

• 21:45Rich Diviney?

  Yes.

• 21:46Lewis Howes?

  We should be doing this every day in a, in a structured environment.

• 21:50Rich Diviney?

  Yeah.

• 21:51Lewis Howes?

  That allows us to grow.

• 21:52Rich Diviney?

  Yes.

• 21:53Lewis Howes?

  What do you think are some ways we could do this that's not putting us in harm's way or physically hurting ourselves?

• 21:57Rich Diviney?

  Yeah, I, I can't answer that because it's so subjective. I can give some ideas and you just gave some. I mean, some people are, are very social people, so starting a conversation with a stranger is a piece of cake, right? For me, that would be hard, right? Starting a conversation with a stranger would be hard. So that might be something I do. Giving a presentation, public speaking for people is tough. So, so volunteering to give that presentation is a great way for a lot of people because, you know, you know, they, that, that makes them anxious, you know? So, working out for some is like, for some people, they've developed a system where that, that pain point of working out is something they highly enjoy, right? So, so they're not, so they're not practicing it. You know, so, so it, so someone should, should look at their own makeup and ask themselves what, what fright, well, in fear.

• 22:43Rich Diviney?

  Again, it doesn't have to go all the way to fear. Fear is interesting because it's actually a combination of two things. It's a combination of uncertainty and anxiety. You can have each one of those and not have fear, right? So if you are anxious but not uncertain, that would be, I have to give this presentation on Monday. I hope it's going, I'm nervous about it, right? But there's nothing uncertain about it. It's Monday, it's a 2 o'clock, I know what I'm going to do. I'm just, I'm nervous about it, okay? Uncertainty without anxiety, well, that's every kid on Christmas Eve, okay? I mean, so, but it's when you combine the two that you start to generate fear. Well, the idea is if you have fear, if you have uncertainty plus anxiety and it's starting to manifest into fear, the key is to understanding which of those two factors can you buy down, okay? Buy down? Buy down, which means decrease.

• 23:28Rich Diviney?

  Anxiety can be decreased internally, it's an internal response, right? So things like, some of the tools Hugh Rehm talks about, visual tools, breathing tools. You can begin to, you can begin to shift your physiology out of your sympathetic into your parasympathetic, come off of the autonomic response system, right? So that's, so that's how you could start, you know, kind of buying down anxiety. Uncertainty is largely external, okay? That means something around you, outside of you, you don't understand, there's unknown. The way, the best way to do that and the way we do it in the, in Spec Ops is we control what we can control. So some, some people have referred to it kind of, control your three-foot world, right? But it doesn't have to extend, it's not a, it's not a three-foot thing. It's what in this moment can I control? And then take control of that, right? Because then you are grabbing onto certainty.

• 24:13Rich Diviney?

  You're taking what is uncertain, you're grabbing onto something certain. As soon as you've controlled that, as soon as you've moved through that, then you have to make another decision. What's the next thing? This is basically kind of stepping through, right? Stepping through this challenge, right? So, so you can start to, you can start to practice coming off of fear or moving through fear by kind of understanding both of those, those pieces.

• 24:34Lewis Howes?

  What do you think is the greatest lesson you learned throughout the 20 years for yourself? That has helped you not only during that, but also after being with the SEALs?

• 24:45Rich Diviney?

  I think it's not fearing the unknown. It's the idea that when you go through something like that, you understand that, hey, I could pretty much do whatever I'd like to do. And I know that even though I don't know how I'm gonna do it, I know I can figure it out. If there's enough interest, if there's enough passion, right? I'm not interested in becoming a pro football player. So that's off my list, right? But I was interested in writing a book, and that was a whole new process for me. When I left the Navy, I started public speaking. I did not like public speaking at all, right? I did not like it. But I knew it was an edge that I wanted to conquer. And say, okay, well, let me work through the things to conquer this edge. Kind of like your philosophy. I think it's not only a deep one, but it's profound.

• 25:29Rich Diviney?

  Because if we are consistently deciding what our edges are, moving towards our edge, and then getting there, then we are growing. Because guess what we're doing at that point? We're looking for the next edge. And that's the growth process, is continuing to move to our edges and then finding the next edge.

• 25:46Lewis Howes?

  I mean, you say you don't like public speaking, but don't you have to speak to your teams and guys?

• 25:50Rich Diviney?

  Yeah, but that's not public. That's the guys. So it's not the same. It's different, yeah. It's different. There's a lot more. And when you're in the military, there's no expectation of kind of great articulation or humor or, you know...

• 26:09Lewis Howes?

  What's effective?

• 26:10Rich Diviney?

  Here's the word. And that's what's appreciated, too. There's no one wants you to sit there and pontificate. It's like, hey, guys, this is what's going on. So there's a directness that's appreciated and required. But that's not public speaking.

• 26:25Lewis Howes?

  What do you think was the hardest lesson you had to learn through your 20 years? Something that you were struggling with or challenged with, or you kept repeating until you finally learned the lesson?

• 26:35Rich Diviney?

  Yeah, I think the hardest lessons, the hardest lesson, maybe not one, the hardest lessons were just around leadership. What it takes, what leadership take, what it takes to be a leader. Because again, being a leader and being in charge are often conflated. They're not the same thing, okay?

• 26:49Lewis Howes?

  What's the difference?

• 26:49Rich Diviney?

  Well, anybody could be in charge. As an officer, you know, in the military, I was pretty much in charge of something all the time. It didn't make me a leader. You don't get to call yourself a leader. It's like calling yourself funny or calling yourself handsome, okay? Someone else makes that decision. You can't designate yourself that way. Someone else decides whether or not you are a leader, okay? And that's done through the way you behave in that position. So if you're in charge and you're behaving in a way that causes someone to make a decision, okay, this is the person I would lead. I mean, if we think about the leaders in our lives, the people who we consider leaders in our lives, it's not because they were just in charge of us. In fact, we could probably think of people who we would follow into hell and back, and they have no place in the hierarchy of our lives, right?

• 27:34Rich Diviney?

  They are just someone who just they behave that way in a way that's made us kind of endeared to them. So the attributes I talk about in the book, in terms of leadership attributes, are all attributes that actually cause behaviors that typically cause people to look at others as leaders.

• 27:51Lewis Howes?

  What are the behaviors that most human beings admire the most, that we want to follow that person or be inspired to be led by something that they're sharing or involved in, a community, a movement, whatever it may be? What are the three or four main behaviors that they have and we should be developing if we want to be better leaders?

• 28:10Rich Diviney?

  Yeah, well, I talk about five in the book, in terms of the attributes. The first is empathy, okay? And again, I would say this, there's not an exclusivity in terms of what someone will decide, because there are people who will-

• 28:21Lewis Howes?

  Subjective, right?

• 28:22Rich Diviney?

  It's a subjective thing. Again, it's someone's choice as to whether or not they think. So empathy is one. Selflessness is another. And this is not just, you know, so let's just back up here. Empathy, not just, I know how you feel, I feel how you feel, right? I can put myself into your shoes, and that reflects in the way I communicate with you and I care about, it shows that you care about another human being.

• 28:44Lewis Howes?

  What is the best way to show that? I mean, give me an example. As opposed to saying, I know how you feel, how do you-

• 28:51Rich Diviney?

  Feel.

• 28:51Lewis Howes?

  Empathize showing you feel how they feel?

• 28:54Rich Diviney?

  Well, first, deep listening. And so, so we all, so listening to another person, but true, like, deep-

• 29:02Rich Diviney?

  Full-on like listening, like I am hanging on every word listening. Often times we listen to people and we're two things, one of two things is happening. Either we're thinking about what we're gonna say next, right? Or we're thinking about how what that person is saying relates to our lives. And it's not from a malicious standpoint, it's really because we're trying to relate. So we're trying to say, okay, you're talking about football. I'm thinking, okay, wait a second, you know, did I play? I played football in eighth grade, maybe I could talk about that.

• 29:25Lewis Howes?

  Relate, yeah.

• 29:26Rich Diviney?

  But what I'm doing is I'm not listening to you anymore. You know, I'm making what you're saying about me. You know, so, um, so what's, what deep empathetic listening is, I'm, I've, I have like a whiteboard in my mind. Okay, and as I'm listening to you speak, if something pops onto the whiteboard, I erase it. And I move on, I just keep on listening. You know, that is, if you do, if you, if you empathetically listen, like look into someone's eyes, attentive behavior, facing each other, you are going, they are going to feel cared for because you're exchanging. Now there's an exchange going on, there's serotonin being released, uh, there's, uh, there's oxytocin being exchanged, or at least released, um, and all these, uh, kind of these bonding chemicals, right? So, so that type of listening shows someone you care about them. Empathy is a little bit tougher for some.

• 30:08Rich Diviney?

  Some people are just wired, we know, some people are wired to be, my wife is extraordinarily empathetic. I mean, she really feels other people. I mean, I am not, she's, I've had to, I've had to really try to develop empathy. It's something that she's taught me in terms, she hasn't taught me, she hasn't taught me how to do it. Because you can't teach someone attributes, but she's inspired me to kind of develop it myself. Um, and that is, hey, I'm asking myself questions like, okay, given your background, you know, can I really put myself, can I kind of take out all of my predispositions and biases and really put myself in your, in your shoes? Um, sometimes the answer admittedly is no, you can't do it fully, right? And that's, we can admit, we can probably admit that, right? But to even make an attempt, I think is, is a showing of caring.

• 30:49Lewis Howes?

  What's the, what's the attempt then? Is it, you're, you're explaining something to your wife about, uh, I'm out in the field, this happened, this guy got injured, I was terrified, I thought, whatever.

• 31:01Rich Diviney?

  Yeah.

• 31:02Lewis Howes?

  And a wife, or your partner, or friend who's not in that experience is gonna say, "Well, I can't feel how you feel."

• 31:08Rich Diviney?

  Yeah.

• 31:09Lewis Howes?

  But how would they try to feel how you feel if you're sharing something like that? That's unrelatable. Because they're not gonna say, "Well, you know, with me and my girlfriends..."

• 31:19Rich Diviney?

  Right.

• 31:19Lewis Howes?

  "I went through something that was hard," but you're gonna be like, "Well..." You're trying to be relatable, but it's missing the mark, right?

• 31:24Rich Diviney?

  Gosh, you know, I don't know. I mean, I think, I have some ideas. You know, a person who, I think the best person to ask would be like an Oscar-winning actress, or actor. Because those people, the best actors are not faking it. They are actually empathizing.

• 31:40Lewis Howes?

  They go into that place.

• 31:41Rich Diviney?

  They go into that place and they feel it. And so I would be very curious. In fact, you know, next time you have an actor, I'll listen to the podcast. I'll ask that question, because how do they do that? How do they get into the person's shoes? You know, for me, it's about asking some questions and saying, "Okay, what are my... What biases might I be coming in to with that are not allowing me to feel this? And can I maybe imagine myself with conditions and circumstances such that this person might have been or is experiencing?"

• 32:15Lewis Howes?

  Is it better to share back what you're hearing someone saying to show that you're listening? Is it better to say nothing to show empathy? Is it better to say, "Well, here's my thoughts and solutions"? What's the best way to respond to show empathy?

• 32:31Rich Diviney?

  Yeah, certainly not to offer solutions, because that means you've been thinking about solutions while you've been listening, which means you haven't been listening. There's kind of a way you can respond that tells them that you've heard them, but you still, and you still want to hear more. So, I understand, you know, it sounds to me like what you're saying is this, you know? And then, and just let it out there. But the key is, when you're empathetically listening, is to talk... Way less, you know, and really a lot of our acknowledgements can come non-verbally. I mean, we do most of our communicating non-verbally. If I'm, if I'm, if I'm listening to you, I'm nodding and I'm, my eyebrows are moving and I'm really emoting as you're speaking, you know I'm listening to you. You know I'm hearing you without me saying it.

• 33:15Lewis Howes?

  But if you're looking out around, you're not connecting to me.

• 33:18Rich Diviney?

  Or worse yet, you know, looking at my iPhone when it pings, right?

• 33:20Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man.

• 33:21Rich Diviney?

  You know, that's the, that's the worst.

• 33:23Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, okay, so that's number one.

• 33:25Rich Diviney?

  Yeah.

• 33:25Lewis Howes?

  The, of the five behaviours great leaders have is empathy. Would you say that's the most important or are these all equally important?

• 33:32Rich Diviney?

  I would, I would hesitate to put a level of importance, but I would say that one of the most important is, and I'm not saying this in order, but would be authenticity. Authenticity builds trust. Often, you know, when you are authentic, when you are yourself and you are that way all the time, you know, with, with whomever you're with, that shows others that this person is real and is being real. And this person is the same person at work as he or she is at home, as he or she is with the enlisted people in the military or the officers or the CEO or the, you know, or the line worker, right? I always say it doesn't have, it doesn't mean you have to be nice. You know, I had a, I remember, you know, when you, when you take over a command,

• 34:15Rich Diviney?

  there's a change of command ceremony in the military. And I remember I was attending one of these command, a change of command ceremonies for a CEO that was coming into the command I was at. So he was gonna be my new, he was the, the command's new commanding officer, but my CEO. And we were at the ceremony, I went to introduce myself to him. And, and within about 30 seconds, I mean, he, I have a really kind of firm, kind of rough handshake with a very serious, and he, within about 15 or 30 seconds, he's asking me like really tough questions about some gear that had been sitting on the shelf, right? And I was giving him some rote answers that some guys had told me that I didn't really know. And he was grilling me, I mean, it was like, well, why, you know, having, why haven't you done this? What do you, have you tried it? Have you done it yourself? Why would you believe? It was like rough and I was like, man, this is not fun. And I remember walking away from that conversation and saying, yeah, this is gonna be

• 35:00Rich Diviney?

  a rough two years with this guy. This guy's grumpy, you know, and he seems mean. But what I realized over the next couple of weeks is that he was like that with everybody. You know, it didn't matter if he was an officer, enlisted, didn't matter if he was at the chow hall, didn't matter if he was out in the, you know, PTing, you know, physical training. Wherever he was, he was always asking those tough questions. He was always kind of grumpy. He was always doing that stuff. He was actually a phenomenal leader. He was like that with all of it. I could trust his, I could trust his grumpiness. I could trust his tough questions. I knew exactly what to expect every time I went to this guy, and he was actually a phenomenal leader. He really was. Because I could, I could trust him. I knew he was being authentic, and he was just the same way. And that's important. So I think authenticity is another one of the five.

• 35:41Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Selflessness, you said?

• 35:43Rich Diviney?

  Selflessness. So selflessness is different than just generosity or altruism. Selflessness involves a risk or cost to that, to the person who's being selfless, right? So are you, are you doing something that is at risk or costing you in some way? That's selflessness. That shows someone that you are extending yourself to that person.

• 36:03Lewis Howes?

  What would that look like?

• 36:04Rich Diviney?

  Well, that could be as easy as giving someone some rope, you know, to go take a, take a risk and knowing that they, and them knowing you have their back, you know? It could be, you know, spending time. Time, you know, a good friend of mine likes to say time is the currency of leadership. We all have the same amount, you know? When you give your time, you're giving something that we all have the same amount. There's no one who has more, right, or less. So when you give your time to another human being, you're being selfless with your time. So that's another way you can do it. It's, it's showing that you are, I mean, even...

• 36:38Lewis Howes?

  Showing they matter. Something matters.

• 36:39Rich Diviney?

  Yeah, showing they matter. Even as a teammate, you know, if, if, if your, if your project teammate needs to win points with the boss, you give them credit, you know? A project you work together, you give them more credit, you know? That's, that's selfless, right? I mean, you can, there's different ways you can do it. But, but just doing something that is for another human being and...

• 36:58Lewis Howes?

  That is risking or costing you something?

• 37:00Rich Diviney?

  Yeah, involves some sort of cost, you know? Yeah, or risk, yeah.

• 37:03Lewis Howes?

  Okay. What's the fourth one?

• 37:06Rich Diviney?

  Decisiveness, which is different than making good decisions. Making decisions is obviously a very good thing to be able to do, but it's a skill. You can learn how to make good decisions just by, you know, understanding how to analyze data and predictions and, and probabilities and outcomes and things like that.

• 37:23Lewis Howes?

  Is it better to make a bad decision than no decision at all?

• 37:28Rich Diviney?

  Depends. You know what I mean? Is it better to be decisive person? Well, because sometimes people conflate making no decision with doing nothing. But sometimes the decision is to do nothing, you know? Sometimes the best decision, I give an example in the book of what's called recon by fire. It's an old tactic where, you know, the enemy used to use this in Vietnam. They'd fire, you know, they'd think that a patrol is out there and they'd fire into that area in order to elicit a response because that patrol would think they're being fired on, immediately fire back. Well, as soon as they do that, the enemy knows exactly where they are, right? Right. Recon by fire. We, yeah, spec ops guys, you learn this because you learn, hey, sometimes you're a small unit, right? You don't want to get into a firefight. So just because you hear shots doesn't necessarily mean you pull the trigger. Sometimes the decision is to do nothing.

• 38:13Rich Diviney?

  To be still. To be still. And wait. As. They keep firing every. Yeah, I mean, if the bullets start hitting the tree next to you, you may want to do something, right? But, you know, but. But just if it's a half a mile away. Right, it's to assess, right? So I think, I think it really depends on, on the decision. Decisiveness is really about both the speed and effectiveness of decision. How, how quickly are you able to make a decision and with what effectiveness? And that, that involves the ability to gather a reasonable amount of information about the situation such that you're hitting a percentage. It could be the 80/20, like, hey, I'm getting enough that I'm going to, that we're going to do something, I want to do. And then, and then, and then moving forward. Because we all know that those leaders who take long, protracted amounts of time to

• 38:57Rich Diviney?

  make decisions are like, ah, okay, that. It doesn't, it doesn't imbue a lot of, a lot of trust and faith. But the leader who's, who's responsibly decisive are those who say, okay, yeah, that's, that's great now. The other thing that the decisive leader understands is that decisions, while they are final, they are not permanent. Okay, so, so you make a decision, say, we're going to move out. This is final, we're moving out, we're doing this thing. But as we, as we kind of start to recognize the effects or the, or the outcomes of that, of that movement, we are free to adapt and change if we found that that decision was. Being flexible. Flexible and adaptable. So that's decisiveness. And then the last one is, it has to be, decisiveness has to be buttressed by accountability.

• 39:41Rich Diviney?

  Accountability is also huge because, because if you are. Not able to be accountable for your decisions, then that is not going to view trust.

• 39:50Lewis Howes?

  No one's gonna, no one's gonna trust you if you say, "Ah, it wasn't my fault."

• 39:53Rich Diviney?

  I mean, yeah, I mean, leaders just don't do that. I mean, how many leaders do we know in our lives who we really, if we can honestly ask ourselves and say to ourselves, "Okay, what's it, if I can think of the greatest, if I can think of the one, you know, one of the people in my life who's the greatest leader and ask myself, are they accountable for their actions?" The answer is unequivocally yes. It's not about blame. It's not about, well, it's not about excuses. It's about owning it.

• 40:15Lewis Howes?

  Ownership is key.

• 40:16Rich Diviney?

  Yeah, ownership is key. And I think that's, those are, those are the qualities. So I think those five attributes are attributes that lead to people deciding that you're a leader. You don't have to have all of them. Perfection is not the, not the outcome here. And admittedly, sometimes, even though I consider myself an accountable person, there are cases where I can, you know, again, you can say I was guilty of not being as accountable as I should have, right? So we all slip a little bit, right? But, but I think those are the, those are the key ones.

• 40:44Lewis Howes?

  Do you think people are, there are some people that are, are more born into being leaders, natural leaders? Or is it something that all of us can be trained and learn how to do this?

• 40:55Rich Diviney?

  Yeah, I think, I think it's a little bit both. I mean, I think the attributes, you know, I talk about the attributes in terms of they are inherent to our nature, right? So we are, we're all born with these attributes and, and it's really the levels to which we have each. And we can develop them over time if we are, if we choose to do so. Some people are, are very empathetic, but not very decisive. Some people are highly accountable, but maybe not, you know, selfless. Who knows? So I think, I think there's, there's a, there are people who are probably born and are predisposed with maybe more of these attributes than others. And others who are born and they just develop them along the way. There are leadership skills that one can learn, you know, listening is a leadership skill.

• 41:37Rich Diviney?

  Decision-making is a leadership skill. Delegating is a leadership skill. So these are skills that you can learn. So I think leadership is a mixture of attributes and skills. So I think the answer is both. You can be, you know, you can, you can be born with some advantages on the leadership front. But again, leadership is about someone deciding that. You know, it's not about you saying-

• 41:57Lewis Howes?

  Someone else deciding.

• 41:58Rich Diviney?

  Yeah, it's not about you saying, "I'm a born leader," right? You know, it's, it's not that. It's like, or do you behave in a way, you know, that people, I mean, or do you, do you turn around and are people following you? You know, if the answer is yes, then you're probably a leader, right? If the answer is no, then you're not. There's nothing wrong with that. And there's some, you know, full professions that aren't- They're self-directed, right? You know, the comedian doesn't necessarily need to be a great leader. Right? I mean, that's a self-directed, you know, profession. So it's not necessary. But I think we just have to understand that leadership is something that other people decide, not us. You know, so if we want to be leaders, we need to behave like that and then see what happens.

• 42:32Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. And you can't rush, being a leader, probably. You can't force it, you can't rush it.

• 42:38Rich Diviney?

  No, that's dictatorship.

• 42:39Lewis Howes?

  That's dictatorship, right.

• 42:41Rich Diviney?

  That's being in charge aggressively, right?

• 42:42Lewis Howes?

  You can't say, oh, I'm doing all these attributes, I'm developing these skills, like, people should want to follow me now.

• 42:48Rich Diviney?

  Right. No. It's not, no. I mean, that's like saying you're handsome.

• 42:52Lewis Howes?

  Girls should be attracted to me now.

• 42:55Rich Diviney?

  Girls should be falling over when they look at me. Come on, what's going on? I'm combing my hair, I'm brushing my teeth, you know. I'm working out. Doesn't work that way.

• 43:03Lewis Howes?

  What's the skill that you have yet to develop that you wish you could develop?

• 43:08Rich Diviney?

  It's windsurfing, but with, no, kite surfing. That's the skill I would like to do.

• 43:12Lewis Howes?

  That's a skill. What about attributes?

• 43:14Rich Diviney?

  Attribute, I'm still, I'm always actively working on my empathy. You know, that's something I'm actively working on. I'm actively learning on my, working on my learnability. If I were to rate all of the mental acuity attributes, I'm pretty high on situational awareness, task switching, and compartmentalization. Learnability is still tough for me. It takes me a while to learn things, you know. So I've always trying to develop that one. Humility, I think humility is one that you have to constantly keep in check. And then narcissism is one that we all have to manage. I talk about narcissism as a drive attribute, and it's not, it's not something you want to work on as much as manage.

• 43:52Lewis Howes?

  Is narcissism something that it can be good?

• 43:56Rich Diviney?

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, so I talk about narcissism as a drive attribute because narcissism is, so every human being wants to feel special in some way, wants to stand out, wants to be paid attention to, wants to be...

• 44:11Lewis Howes?

  Wants the attention.

• 44:12Rich Diviney?

  Wants some attention, right? This is biological. When we're infants, being looked at and adored by our parents, we are getting hits of serotonin and dopamine and oxytocin as that's happening. So it feels good. And so it's natural for us to want to feel that way. When I talk about, when people, you know, talk about, hey, why'd you become a Navy SEAL? And I always joke, so I'll go, you know, I'm a patriot, but it wasn't because I was a patriot. You know, most SEALs will tell you, I just wanted to be a bat. I wanted to be a bat. I wanted to see if I could do it. I wanted to see if I could do something very... Few people could do. I want to be a badass. There's nothing wrong with that if it's a driver.

• 44:43Lewis Howes?

  Want to be the best of the best.

• 44:44Rich Diviney?

  Why does someone want to be a singer, you know, a famous singer?

• 44:49Lewis Howes?

  A professional athlete.

• 44:51Rich Diviney?

  Any one of those things. So I think narcissism, when managed appropriately, is a tremendously powerful driver. And we have to recognize that. And the only, because again, we have to understand our own engines. And in the act of recognizing that, we also understand we need to manage it. The way you manage it is through your close, trusted, personal relationships. Friends and people who really love and trust you and will give you the hard truth.

• 45:16Lewis Howes?

  Bringing you back to earth.

• 45:17Rich Diviney?

  Right, grounding, like I call them our grounding wires, right? Who are our grounding wires, you know? My wife is my grounding wire. She always has been. And thank God for her, and she uses me as her grounding wire, right? Because she'll always tell me the truth. She'll always tell me, you know, if I'm leaning too far out over my skis, you know? And then you collect other people, my teammates, my brothers, you know? You know, just this group of people. If you are, if you've surrounded yourself with a circle of sycophants, you're probably guilty. Here's the problem with narcissism, it's like a vampire looking in the mirror. You can't see it in yourself. It's very, very, it's almost, it's impossible, right? It's really easy to see in another person.

• 45:57Lewis Howes?

  You see it right away, like, man, that's narcissistic.

• 45:58Rich Diviney?

  And you see it, you see it in their groups, the groups they form as well. Because the groups they form are largely sycophantic. They are temporary, right? So the loyalties are temporary because it's just tough to always be, you know, bending the knee to someone else, right? So you see people trans, they come and go. And those people who usually go are usually demonized when they do. Because the narcissist does not like that. And so, the group is an indication. Tough to see in ourselves, we have to lean in our, lean in our relationships.

• 46:27Lewis Howes?

  Ask for feedback. Hey, am I being too narcissistic?

• 46:30Rich Diviney?

  And ask yourself, I mean, if you're in a group, who is typically the one being paid attention to the most? And if you, if you're able to answer that honestly, you know, you might get a clue, okay? It's funny, my wife and son, they listen to a Podcast I did a wife several months ago and they had never heard me on a podcast and my son's 15 and I come home because I recorded in my office because it's quiet and I come home they're like they're like who who is this guy?

• 46:58Lewis Howes?

  Sounds like a narcissist, yeah.

• 46:59Rich Diviney?

  Who is this guy because we don't hear you talk like this at home because at home I don't talk a lot. You know if I do like joke if you're at home you're talking about you know what you're gonna eat next or you know.

• 47:08Lewis Howes?

  Time for bed or whatever.

• 47:09Rich Diviney?

  Yeah, whatever, you know. But but I recognize when I'm with my family, my family, we all live in the same area so we all get together a weekend and I don't talk much. I just listen and it's nice for me, you know, and but I recognize that's healthy because I'm not, I don't need to nor do I want to be the center of attention, you know, and and I have to keep that in check, right?

• 47:28Lewis Howes?

  You know, it's interesting, sometimes I've always discovered this because I was always scared to talk publicly growing up and after college I was afraid of public speaking, so I took public speaking class every week for a year. And I always felt like I was just insecure around my words when I was even in small groups.

• 47:46Rich Diviney?

  Yeah.

• 47:47Lewis Howes?

  So I'd always, I was always just kind of sit there and listen and as I got older, I started to really listen by asking intentional questions and just always ask questions.

• 47:55Rich Diviney?

  Yeah.

• 47:56Lewis Howes?

  And by the end of the night, I'd be like, everyone would be swarmed around me because I'd just be asking everyone questions and they'd be like, man, you're the most interesting person here.

• 48:02Rich Diviney?

  Yeah.

• 48:03Lewis Howes?

  So you have to kind of like make sure you're in check also that way because the quiet one is usually sometime, can be sometimes someone that always wants to learn from too. Hey, they're not saying enough.

• 48:10Rich Diviney?

  You're not saying, yeah, so.

• 48:11Lewis Howes?

  Hey, what do they know that I don't know?

• 48:12Rich Diviney?

  It could be a secret, right? You could be a little, a little bit of stealth going on there.

• 48:15Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 48:16Rich Diviney?

  But I, and I think you have a natural curiosity, which is a very healthy way to express, what you're doing is I think a healthy way to express because what you're doing, the reason why people are surrounding themselves or surrounding, surrounding you is because they love, people love hearing about themselves, right? When you ask someone questions, you know, they, they love to answer. I mean, we all love to talk.

• 48:34Lewis Howes?

  Tell me about your success.

• 48:35Rich Diviney?

  Yes.

• 48:36Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man, tell me why you're so amazing.

• 48:37Rich Diviney?

  I'd be happy to, right? I mean, so, so when someone, you know, this is one of my wife's, you know, norm, just qualities, she just, she loves asking deliberate questions. She's very curious about human beings. Well, guess what? People just flock because, yeah, because they, because she's just, she, there's a magnet, there's a magnetism, just like, you know, there was a magnetism with you when you do that, you know? So, so curiosity and it's a, and it's a, it's a genuine curiosity. It's not, it's not a, it's not one with malicious intent.

• 49:03Lewis Howes?

  Strategic curiosity.

• 49:04Rich Diviney?

  It's a strategic, yeah, that's right. So it's.

• 49:06Lewis Howes?

  So there is some power in being narcissistic for periods of time, for moments. But you want to be checking yourself most of the time.

• 49:15Rich Diviney?

  Yeah, it's a driver, I would say.

• 49:17Lewis Howes?

  Driver to help you achieve something?

• 49:18Rich Diviney?

  Sure, yeah, because again, how are you going to set and achieve audacious goals unless unless there's a little bit of narcissism in there to think that, you know, I can, you know?

• 49:29Lewis Howes?

  And what would you say is the difference between, you mentioned this, task switching versus multitasking?

• 49:34Rich Diviney?

  Yes, well, multitasking neurologically is a myth, because what happens is our forebrain or conscious mind can't really focus on anything, anything more than one thing. You know, again, guys like you would say that, hey, the brain does, there's a little, there's a little facet of being able to be, to pay attention to something else, maybe one other thing, but focus is really one, one thing. Now, people are always like, what are we talking about? I could do something and I can listen to music, or I can do something and I can drive a car.

• 50:04Lewis Howes?

  Walk and drive and talk?

• 50:05Rich Diviney?

  It doesn't count when it's, when the, when the, when the activity is being conducted unconsciously. So that when we're driving a car, a lot of that, a lot of that activity, that, that skill is being conducted unconsciously.

• 50:16Lewis Howes?

  Is that crazy?

• 50:16Rich Diviney?

  Yeah, but just think about it, if you're listening to a podcast, if I'm listening to you in my car, because I listen to podcasts while I'm driving usually, if I'm listening to you in my car and I'm driving on the highway, I'm really engaged in what you and the guest are talking about, until someone cuts me off and I have to slam on the brakes, right? And then I just, I recover and I realize I just missed the last 30 seconds of what you both just said on the podcast, because my brain switched, you know? So, so task switching is the, is the hopping between contexts of your brain. So we have, and we do this, we do this all the time, we do it automatically. So you can switch, you can switch contexts, you could switch tasks inside of a context, right? So, so driving, for example, the context of driving, inside of that, we're switching all the time. One moment we're focused on the steering wheel, then the accelerator, then the brake, and now here, the blinkers, hopefully not our phone, right?

• 51:01Rich Diviney?

  But we're doing that constantly. As soon as we park that car... And we walk out into the parking lot, we've switched contexts, right? Now we're in parking lot context, okay? And we're now we're paying attention to other things, you know, cars that might hit us. And then we walk into the supermarket and we switch contexts again. So task switching is the hopping between and we just have to recognize that that's a that's an energy expenditure every time our brain does it, okay? It's very natural.

• 51:24Lewis Howes?

  Every time it switches.

• 51:25Rich Diviney?

  Every time it switches.

• 51:26Lewis Howes?

  Costs energy.

• 51:27Rich Diviney?

  Yes, now, those who are who find task switching more difficult are those and this could be advantageous, right? Because there are those people who they get into something with deep focus and they find it very difficult to pull out, right? So this is the person who who start who's working on a project and everything else in their in their world could be burning down and they're not even they don't even notice, they're deeply focused. The other side of that is well, could probably be like ADHD where you're you're constantly switching, you're never able to focus enough. You're like bam bam bam bam bam, right? The the balance there is are you able to focus in on something, maintain an awareness of other things that are going on, such that when priorities shift, you can switch, okay?

• 52:11Rich Diviney?

  And that can be practiced and I practiced this, you know, when I'm in the city, you know, at least pre pre pandemic, you know, riding the subways in New York. I love that because it's it's an enormous mental acuity drill for me. So can you do that? The the thing that we are guilty of, most of us, is that we task switch unnecessarily throughout the day.

• 52:30Lewis Howes?

  Check the phone, this, check the phone.

• 52:32Rich Diviney?

  And it's largely because of our phone, right? Because our phone is, you know what that is? It's a collection of contexts, right? It's that game, it's that it's the Instagram, it's the email, it's the texting.

• 52:40Lewis Howes?

  It's like a different world in every app.

• 52:41Rich Diviney?

  Every app is a context, right?

• 52:43Lewis Howes?

  And what does that do to our brains when we're constantly switching contexts?

• 52:46Rich Diviney?

  It uses a tremendous amount of energy, you know? And and what it does is it shifts focus, right? So so if I'm focused on a conversation with you and my and my text goes off and I choose to address it, right? I've I've completely shifted context. It's neurologically, it's like going from a library to a soccer stadium, right? I mean, you're just you're shifting context. I'm attending to that and then now I'm trying to shift back, okay?

• 53:06Lewis Howes?

  It's so hard.

• 53:07Rich Diviney?

  And they've they've done studies on that. A lot of times it takes 15 to 20 minutes to fully reengage. And the the other thing about this is even we could decide, like you and I said, let's keep our phones upside down, okay? Even if it bings or vibrates, right?

• 53:20Lewis Howes?

  The idea of hearing it or seeing it.

• 53:22Rich Diviney?

  Is shifting a switch in our brain, right?

• 53:25Lewis Howes?

  Wow. Even if we don't act on it.

• 53:27Rich Diviney?

  Even if we don't act on it.

• 53:27Lewis Howes?

  It's still a stimulus to think about.

• 53:29Rich Diviney?

  Because we recognize it.

• 53:30Lewis Howes?

  Oh, I wonder if I need to get that. I wonder.

• 53:32Rich Diviney?

  Yeah, and it's a decision, right? It's like, okay, okay, it's vibrating, but I'm not gonna get it. I just hopped context, right? So we do this quite often, and it takes a lot of energy, you know? And I think, you know, we can practice some of these mental cognitive attributes by putting away those phones, noticing what's in our world, that's situational awareness, starting to work with, okay, what do I want to focus on? You know, how do I prioritize all this information? What I want to focus on? And then as I'm focused on it, can I switch effectively in that? And then learning from my lessons as I go.

• 54:05Lewis Howes?

  How do you develop confidence within yourself personally? And what have you seen that's worked within Navy SEALs? On when they might doubt themselves in moments of uncertainty or fear or stress, and there's a moment of doubt? How do we build up self-belief, self-confidence, self-worth, so that when challenges arise, we don't doubt ourselves?

• 54:27Rich Diviney?

  Yeah. So, the processes and tools that So Huberman and I are working on are meant to help articulate this better. But I'm gonna give you kind of an overview. And that is, confidence for me is the ability to handle uncertainty. And so I consider myself very confident because I've come from a lifestyle where we are quite literally masters of uncertainty. We've trained ourselves to deal with uncertainty very effectively. And I think if we can walk around the world and say, hey, regardless of what happens, I know I'm at least equipped to be able to handle it to a degree. Okay, I won't fall apart. I can manage it. You know, it might be ugly, it might be painful, but I can manage it, right?

• 55:11Rich Diviney?

  That's confidence, you know? The way we can practice that is to practice taking control of what we can control. It's actually, well, it's taking control of the two things, the internal, the anxiety. Can we manage our physiology through our breathing, through our vision, you know, some of those tools? And then can we manage the external uncertainty through controlling what we can control? This idea of controlling what we can control is huge because what it does is it allows you to take action and take control of some sort, and control and action builds confidence, right?

• 55:43Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 55:43Rich Diviney?

  And it could be very small. It could be like...

• 55:48Rich Diviney?

  Well, let me, let me give you an example.

• 55:49Lewis Howes?

  Internal control and external control.

• 55:51Rich Diviney?

  Internal control and external control. I mean, so an example from SEAL training would be, you know, you, you're running on the beach for hours and hours with these boats on your head. And you're doing, and especially Halloween, just miserable. Miserable. Okay, and I remember, I remember being in, running with, you know, one, it was, I can't remember what night of Halloween it was, but it was the middle of the night sometime, you know, and I had the boat on our head, we, we had the boats on our head and we were running. I was like, oh, I can't, it's just, it would seem like it had been going on forever, you know, and I said to myself, how long is this gonna last? And so immediately I said, you know what, I'm just gonna focus on the end of that berm, because you're running on that beach and there's, you know, berms. I'm gonna focus on the end of the berm, right? And so what did I do immediately, without thinking about it? I immediately took control of what I could control, right? I said, end of berm. And that's what I moved to, you know? And as soon as that, that happens, I actually, that was a reward, that's a dopamine reward

• 56:34Rich Diviney?

  that I just, that I just gave myself, and I did it again. You know, so, so, so let's, let's, let's take it all to, to a situation we can all relate to, COVID and 2020, okay?

• 56:46Lewis Howes?

  When's this gonna end? We don't know.

• 56:48Rich Diviney?

  I mean, think about, think about when we first all got locked down, you know? I mean, none of us, in the, in those first few moments, had skills that we could lean upon, right? This is where attributes start to come to the fore.

• 56:58Lewis Howes?

  Did you have the skills?

• 56:59Rich Diviney?

  No, because, because we'd never been in the situation, right? The, the, and I would say, you know, there's some caveats there, because I might have developed skills in terms of how to deal with uncertainty, right? But it's really, I developed the ability to lean on my attributes and say, okay, what do we know?

• 57:14Lewis Howes?

  Let's solve the problem.

• 57:15Rich Diviney?

  Yeah, here's what we don't know. I can't worry about what I don't know, what I, what I can't control. What do I know and what can I move towards? Okay, I know I have enough toilet paper. I know the, the family's healthy. I know we're okay, um, we, we got internet, so the kids can go to school right now.

• 57:30Lewis Howes?

  We can get outside and walk around safely.

• 57:32Rich Diviney?

  Yeah, that's pretty much it.

• 57:32Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 57:33Rich Diviney?

  Right now, let's see what tomorrow brings.

• 57:34Lewis Howes?

  We got a backyard.

• 57:35Rich Diviney?

  Yeah, right, so, yeah, so it's, um, so we all actually practiced this in 2020. We all practiced to some degree.

• 57:43Rich Diviney?

  What about this do I understand and what can I control? And at first, there was very little. And for those who got too steeped in the news, they found it much more difficult because the news was, really, all they were doing was reporting uncertainty. You know, you turn on the news and it was all about what we don't know.

• 58:00Lewis Howes?

  Fear, uncertainty, chaos.

• 58:01Rich Diviney?

  That's right. And so, and so my wife and I actually took a news diet. You know, we said, "We're not watching this."

• 58:06Lewis Howes?

  Smart. I never watched the news.

• 58:08Rich Diviney?

  Yeah. It helps because that's what happens.

• 58:11Lewis Howes?

  I mean, imagine, I think I was talking with Huberman last time. Imagine watching a train crash actually hit into a car of people every 10 minutes in real life.

• 58:23Rich Diviney?

  Yeah.

• 58:24Lewis Howes?

  It'd be traumatic. And it's almost like we're doing that by watching TV, of showing the worst moments of something over and over on repeat.

• 58:33Rich Diviney?

  Right.

• 58:34Lewis Howes?

  And I believe our brains are really being affected by that.

• 58:36Rich Diviney?

  Yeah.

• 58:37Lewis Howes?

  And, and watching more of it is not going to help us.

• 58:40Rich Diviney?

  It's not. And so, and we can't, in some cases, we could certainly blame the news organizations, right? But they are simply putting forth a model that works, okay?

• 58:49Lewis Howes?

  They're getting more attention, they're making more money.

• 58:51Rich Diviney?

  We are, we are neurologically and evolutionarily designed to pay attention to threats. That's what we do, okay? Because we are designed to say, "Okay, what's, what might harm me?" Okay? And so, that's why if we walk by the newsstand and we see two newspapers next to each other, and one says, "Genius eight-year-old wins world spelling bee", which is kind of a cool story. And next to us says, "Dangerous weather storm approaching." You know, we're going to focus on the weather storm, okay? Because we're designed to do that. This is biological. When we were in the caveman days, we had to pay attention to threats. This, so this is why, you know, news, bad news sells, right? So, so the, the, the threats, the fears, like, okay, what, you know, how can I protect myself? You know? The problem is when there are actually no answers, you know?

• 59:35Rich Diviney?

  And all it is, is just threats, you know? Which is really, when the 24-hour news cycle, they don't, there aren't solutions coming that fast, you know? And so, so we, it's now incumbent on us to, to take a diet, you know? And hopefully, if we, if enough of us diet from the news like that, maybe the news will change.

• 59:51Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 59:51Rich Diviney?

  So...

• 59:52Lewis Howes?

  So, it's the practicing, taking control of our internal, which would be our breathing, or our thoughts, or what's inside of us. And then also, controlling the external, turning off the news, going for a walk. What other external things can we be doing to build?

• 1:00:09Lewis Howes?

  I guess certainty and uncertainty.

• 1:00:11Rich Diviney?

  Just asking yourself the question, because it's going to be subjective. What can I control in this moment? And move towards that. It might be at that moment, taking a walk. It might be turning off the news. It might be reading a book. It might be having some family time. Whatever that might be. In a worst case, in a crisis scenario, this is exactly what kind of triaging is. In a triage situation where you're dealing with a bunch of injuries, you're saying, hey, what do I need to focus on first?

• 1:00:39Lewis Howes?

  What do you mean, a triage situation?

• 1:00:40Rich Diviney?

  So in a triage situation, when you have a mass casualty situation, so a lot of injuries, what happens is that...

• 1:00:46Lewis Howes?

  During a mission.

• 1:00:47Rich Diviney?

  Well, or first responders, right? In an accident, right? They will look at the casualty, let's say it's four or five people, and they will immediately start to prioritize who the most threatening injuries are. And they will deal with them first, right?

• 1:01:01Lewis Howes?

  And it's like, okay, I cut my leg, but this person's got an arm...

• 1:01:03Rich Diviney?

  This person has a cut, but it's going to be fine. This person's arm is off, and if we don't do something, they will bleed out. This person's neck is hurting. And it's bad, but as long as we don't move them right now, we're going to be okay. So let's do this first, right? And then we'll move to the neck. So this is called triaging. So we just need to mentally triage our situation a little bit better. Prioritize. Triage is a little bit more of a graphic word, so I'd rather say prioritize. But say, what can I control? What in this moment can I control? And it might be, it might not be a lot. Again, you talk about the, I mentioned the person working through cancer, right? Anybody who talked to you who's gone through cancer treatment and chemotherapy will say, you know what?

• 1:01:46Rich Diviney?

  During those days of chemotherapy, I was going minute by minute. Man, that was all I was doing. I was just, I was like, go through the minute by minute, and then just get through the day, and then get through tomorrow, right? That person was controlling what they could do. They were just chunking their environment in order to step through. And sometimes that's all it takes. But that person took control. Those people have survived.

• 1:02:05Lewis Howes?

  What would you say are the next steps to building belief and confidence in yourself after you've taken control of the internal, the external?

• 1:02:14Lewis Howes?

  What would you say is next?

• 1:02:15Rich Diviney?

  I would say set goals and accomplish them. There's nothing that builds more confidence, I think, than setting a goal and making it happen. And that can be anything, you know, and it can be as, it can be, well, it can be as small or as large as you want. It has to be meaningful to you. So if it is, you know, running around the block, that's great. Or if it is running the marathon, that's great. Or it could be doing the 100, you know, the triathlon or whatever, if we're in the physical sense. It could be writing the book. It could be getting the promotion. It could be, it could be changing jobs. Whatever it is, pick some goals, set your intent and move towards it.

• 1:02:52Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I've always, I think that's super smart. As an athlete, I've always had goals and for every season of life and every season of sports. And as I stopped playing sports when I was 24 and was trying to figure out the rest of my life after the dreams were over of sports days, I realized I didn't have the same confidence. I had to like get confidence from like what I'd done. And I was like, okay, I have achieved goals and I was a confident athlete, but now I'm trying something completely new.

• 1:03:19Rich Diviney?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:20Lewis Howes?

  And this is unknown and it's kind of scary. And I remember just thinking to myself, I'm living in a lot of fear and I need to go on and on these fears until they disappear.

• 1:03:30Rich Diviney?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:30Lewis Howes?

  Otherwise I'll constantly be kind of masking confidence or living off of the constant confidence of the past and trying to apply it to something unknown.

• 1:03:38Rich Diviney?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:38Lewis Howes?

  It's gonna be very inauthentic. And so that's when I was like, okay, I created a list of my biggest fears and I started doing them one at a time until I was at least comfortable with the fear, until I mastered the fear, until I was like, okay, I can do this at any time.

• 1:03:52Rich Diviney?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:53Lewis Howes?

  Without being prepared, because I've already gone through it.

• 1:03:55Rich Diviney?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:03:56Lewis Howes?

  And for me, that was something that was really powerful. And every year I'm always thinking, how can I gain more confidence and humility by? You gain humility by doing hard things because you suck at them, right? It's like, I'm doing Spanish right now, Spanish lessons, and it is challenging.

• 1:04:12Rich Diviney?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:12Lewis Howes?

  I hate not being great at something within the first day, right? It's like, I want to be the best. I wanted to be like, be able to master it and pick it up. But it's humbling me like in one area while other areas are growing and thriving.

• 1:04:27Rich Diviney?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:27Lewis Howes?

  So it's allowing me to keep that balance of. I don't know, so that's something.

• 1:04:31Rich Diviney?

  You bring up a really great point where I think has to be a hyper emphasized and that is the the the ability and the deliberacy of jumping out of the the contexts that you're comfortable in, right? So you built up confidence inside the sporting context.

• 1:04:46Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:04:47Rich Diviney?

  As soon as the sporting contest was or context was out of there.

• 1:04:50Lewis Howes?

  Yep.

• 1:04:51Rich Diviney?

  You realize, oh, wait a second, I'm not as confident as I thought. So to practice confidence, you have to deliberately continuously throw yourself into unknown, uncertain environments, right? It can't, you can't, in other words, you can practice a little bit in the physical realm, but stand by because you're you're only going to gain confidence in the physical realm, right? So you need to say, okay, what's my next thing? What do I fear? Maybe it's.

• 1:05:11Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, so it's like if I'm a CrossFit expert and I try Spartan Race, it's very similar.

• 1:05:14Rich Diviney?

  It's very similar. You know, you you start to build up, and this is what I call stress inoculation. You can you can actually stress inoculate because you are building up the the tools and the means with which you know how to move through that specific challenge, right? So I did this with my.

• 1:05:29Lewis Howes?

  What's stress inoculation?

• 1:05:30Rich Diviney?

  So you so stress inoculation is the ability to to inoculate yourself against the fear and stress of a of of a context.

• 1:05:39Lewis Howes?

  What's inoculation mean?

• 1:05:41Rich Diviney?

  It basically, you're basically, you're basically building up an immunity to it. You're, yeah, you're you're.

• 1:05:46Lewis Howes?

  Being immune to the stress.

• 1:05:47Rich Diviney?

  Right, it's not, it's not happening anymore, right? You're, it's going away, right? So I'll give you an example because I'm, I don't like heights, I never did, you know? So so skydiving was always a challenge for me. When I.

• 1:05:57Lewis Howes?

  Did you have to do a lot of skydiving?

• 1:05:58Rich Diviney?

  Yeah, a lot of it.

• 1:05:59Lewis Howes?

  A lot of it.

• 1:06:00Rich Diviney?

  So, yeah. So but like those trips, sometimes you do trips and you do like in a week, you do like 50 or 60 jumps, right?

• 1:06:05Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 1:06:06Rich Diviney?

  And by and by like day, by like Tuesday or Wednesday, we've had like 10 or 12 or 15 jumps on our belt and I feel like, okay, I'm, I'm good, I'm not, I'm not really scared anymore, you know? But I would do this, you know, there's an obstacle course at every SEAL base, you know, and you have a series of obstacles. One of the most popular ones, because it's almost on every obstacle course, is a cargo net. So it's about a 65 foot net, really simple. You climb up one side, you throw your leg over at the top and you climb down, okay? But it's really high. I mean, and if you don't like heights, that that leg hop over is actually.

• 1:06:36Lewis Howes?

  Are you wearing a rope?

• 1:06:37Rich Diviney?

  No, no, it's all, it's all.

• 1:06:38Lewis Howes?

  65 feet up?

• 1:06:39Rich Diviney?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:40Lewis Howes?

  So if you fell over, you're in sand.

• 1:06:41Rich Diviney?

  Oh, yeah, you're done. Yeah, or you're definitely injured, right?

• 1:06:44Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:06:45Rich Diviney?

  So, yeah. So what I do, though, is is every time I go for a run, I plan my run to go past that obstacle, past that cargo net, and I climb up it. And when I got to the top, I'd sit on the top of it and I'd just breathe in the fear.

• 1:06:57Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:06:58Rich Diviney?

  And just feel it, okay? And then I go down the other side. And every time I did that, I felt great because what's happening is that you're getting a dopamine hit by stepping into that fear, right? And this is neurologically backed, right? So you're getting a reward. But what, you know, I do that every day and after, you know, a week or two of doing that, I'd get to the top of that net and I no longer felt afraid. You know, I was used to it, right? So I no longer felt afraid and I no longer was getting that dopamine hit. So it didn't feel as good anymore, okay?

• 1:07:26Lewis Howes?

  Do I have to go twice as high the next time?

• 1:07:28Rich Diviney?

  Well, yeah, they didn't have a net twice as high. But this is, it's an example of inoculating yourself in a context, right?

• 1:07:35Lewis Howes?

  So something that makes you have fear, you do it over and over again until the fear goes away or until it minimizes a lot. Maybe you have like a little bit of queasiness for a second, but you feel comfortable. But then you're not afraid anymore to do it.

• 1:07:47Rich Diviney?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:47Lewis Howes?

  So you're not getting rewarded anymore, is that what you're hearing?

• 1:07:50Rich Diviney?

  Well, so yeah, so a good friend of mine once said, uh, cause he, he knew I was into this stress inoculation stuff. He's like, you know, I have this, I have this fear of flying at night. I just, it was one, I was on air, probably one time, there was an emergency, nothing happened, but I, now I just, it's just hard for me to fly at night. I mean, how can I get over my fear of flying at night?

• 1:08:07Lewis Howes?

  Fly at night every time.

• 1:08:08Rich Diviney?

  Start flying more at night. He's like, oh, I knew you said that. It's true, though.

• 1:08:12Lewis Howes?

  It's the only way to overcome your fear is to go all in on it.

• 1:08:15Rich Diviney?

  Yeah, to inoculate yourself, yes, yeah.

• 1:08:18Lewis Howes?

  You can't think your way out of something that's scary, or can you?

• 1:08:21Rich Diviney?

  Well, you have to be experiencing it. You can, you can, you can think your way out of it when you're experiencing it, you know? But you can't, you can't, I mean, I guess.

• 1:08:29Lewis Howes?

  You can't just like be afraid of heights and think and say, I'm not afraid of heights anymore.

• 1:08:33Rich Diviney?

  No, although it's an interesting, it'd be an interesting experiment to give to the neuroscientists. I mean, visualization is a powerful tool, right? So if you, if you, and virtual reality, so if you, if you're able to simulate enough of that threat, right? Then perhaps you could do it without actually getting up high.

• 1:08:52Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 1:08:53Rich Diviney?

  But I don't know, those are, those are not questions for you.

• 1:08:55Lewis Howes?

  That's, that's challenging though.

• 1:08:56Rich Diviney?

  So.

• 1:08:57Lewis Howes?

  So what I'm hearing you say is that when you're afraid of something, you need to create an environment of stress inoculation in order to overcome that fear or to be able to. Embrace that fear without it crippling you.

• 1:09:11Rich Diviney?

  Yeah. This is what I do with public speaking, you know, as soon as I got out and I started public speaking, I was nervous every time and I didn't like it and I just started doing it. And I was doing it everywhere. I was doing it for free. I was doing it everywhere, every, as much as I could, you know, just to practice doing it and stepping into that fear.

• 1:09:26Lewis Howes?

  So you were afraid of heights, you conquered the sixty-five foot net and then it started to not be scary anymore. So what do you do next?

• 1:09:35Rich Diviney?

  Well, it depends on which, what direction you want to go, you know, and again, that, the sixty-five foot net is only in that context, right? The hundred and twenty foot roller coaster still.

• 1:09:47Rich Diviney?

  And even skydiving, if you do, you know, I haven't skydived, I haven't jumped out of an airplane in several years now, so I know if I do it again, which I plan to, because my sons want to try it, my wife wants to do it. Um, I'll be nervous again, you know, so I'll have to step through it again, yeah, because, because again, it's not, you know, if, you know, it's just. Some of us are just, you know, we just naturally don't like certain things, right? You know, put me underwater in pitch black with, with, with sea life teaming around me and I could fall asleep.

• 1:10:10Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:10:10Rich Diviney?

  Oh, my God. I'm as comfortable, I mean, I.

• 1:10:13Lewis Howes?

  Were you always that way?

• 1:10:14Rich Diviney?

  Oh, yeah. I mean, the water is, I mean, I love it.

• 1:10:18Lewis Howes?

  In the dark?

• 1:10:18Rich Diviney?

  In the dark, in the night.

• 1:10:20Lewis Howes?

  That would terrify me.

• 1:10:20Rich Diviney?

  Without, without even seeing, if I can't even see my hand from my face, I'm still okay.

• 1:10:23Lewis Howes?

  So you would go in the ocean right now in Santa Monica at midnight?

• 1:10:28Rich Diviney?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:28Lewis Howes?

  And swim around and feel comfortable?

• 1:10:30Rich Diviney?

  Willingly.

• 1:10:31Lewis Howes?

  Without, without a mask or without air oxygen or without a?

• 1:10:34Rich Diviney?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:35Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:10:35Rich Diviney?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:36Lewis Howes?

  And just swim around?

• 1:10:37Rich Diviney?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:37Lewis Howes?

  And you'd be like, I just trust there's no shark or eels or fish?

• 1:10:40Rich Diviney?

  Just for me, it's, you know, for me, it's comfortable. Heights or not.

• 1:10:44Lewis Howes?

  That's crazy.

• 1:10:45Rich Diviney?

  But again, so it's subjective, right? I mean, so, so, you know, some people, like a bunch of my friends, they love, I mean, every aspect of skydiving, they love. You know, and, you know, and some guys don't even like diving, some of them, yeah, I just dive because I have to do it, right? So it's really, I mean, I think the, um, one of, one of the things I always loved about the community that I was in was that it was a bunch of guys who. Regularly tested themselves and they never let their, their fear. Detract from what they, from the job they needed to do and what they needed to do to support their teammates, right? If, if someone was afraid of jumping or didn't like jumping, um, I'm still gonna jump because everybody else is jumping, that's part of the job. I'm not gonna cry about it, I'm gonna work through it. If I don't like diving, I'm gonna do it, right? That's just the way it is. Um, and that, that practice allows.

• 1:11:28Rich Diviney?

  And allowed us to go into some of the worst areas. In the world in combat and not and not feel trepidation.

• 1:11:35Lewis Howes?

  It's probably also nice to like doing a fear on your own is probably way scarier than if you have a team of people that are doing it with you, wouldn't you say?

• 1:11:42Rich Diviney?

  So, so, yeah, so you get into, so in the book, I talk about some attributes that I call the others, and I really, I call them the others because on most of the attributes, to have, to have more of each one is, is probably better, is probably more effective in optimal forms, other than say narcissism, right? The others are ones that I, as I thought about, that the logic wasn't lining up the same way. So one, so, so two of them were patience and impatience. And what I realized was optimal performance and high performers, like super performers, some are very patient and some are impatient. It didn't matter, right? So just because you're impatient doesn't mean you're not going to be a great performer. I happen to be patient, my wife happens to be impatient, right? It doesn't, it, it, it doesn't dictate whether or not you succeed as much as say not being adaptable, right?

• 1:12:26Rich Diviney?

  So, so I labeled that in a category. The other one was competitiveness and non-competitiveness, right? There are some, some hyper-successful people who are very, very competitive. In fact, in fact, a lot of the, a lot of the genre of like performance and things like that, really tout competitiveness as an attribute. But I've never been competitive. I can't stand it, you know? I, I played lacrosse in high school. I liked, I liked lacrosse because I liked the game, I liked the stick workout. I never really, if we won or lost, I was like, okay.

• 1:12:55Lewis Howes?

  Just having fun, yeah.

• 1:12:56Rich Diviney?

  Just having fun, right? And what I realized was that, first of all, happily, the Navy SEALs, they, they, they, they neither touted or rejected that competitiveness.

• 1:13:09Lewis Howes?

  It wasn't like, do this to win.

• 1:13:11Rich Diviney?

  Yeah, it was always, they, they actually honored both sides, so both polarities. And you could tell because there's two awards you get, there's two awards that are given at the end of a SEAL training class. The one is the Honor Man, okay? The Honor Man is given to the person who has the highest scores in all of the, like the swims, the runs, the obstacle course time, so all those.

• 1:13:26Lewis Howes?

  Competitive person.

• 1:13:27Rich Diviney?

  Competitive person, right? The other award's called the Honor Man, okay?

• 1:13:30Lewis Howes?

  The one's called?

• 1:13:31Rich Diviney?

  No, Honor Man, and the other one's called the Fire in the Gut, okay? Fire in the Gut is the award that's given to the person who's shown the most grit and, and, and kind of. Gumshoe, I want to use a 1950 Fire in the gut. Fire in the gut award, and usually that person has the lowest scores, right? And that can't be won, it has to be earned, and it's voted upon, like the class votes on that. Wow, who has more respect? Well, it doesn't matter, because the Honor Man has a lot of respect too, because that guy really put out, right? So both awards hold the same level of respect, which shows that both the competitive gene and the non-competitive gene are both highly That's pretty interesting. But if you think about it, the dichotomy is actually quite beautiful, because if you are in a team, some games, some, most environments need both types of mindsets.

• 1:14:16Rich Diviney?

  The competitive mind looks at a situation and immediately begins to apply rules and boundaries and says, okay, how can I win this? How can I win inside of what I see, right? That is very, very powerful, right? The non-competitive mind, like myself, is said, hmm, what's going on over here? How can we go maybe do something different? Okay, what's a way we can go around? Okay, so some missions required going straight up the line. You needed the competitive mindset to do that. Some missions didn't require that, if we went straight up the line, it would be disastrous. Some missions required, no, no, we need to think about it differently, right? We need to think about what's the pack doing? And what can we do that's not in the pack? You know, so, so, so those are the two polarities. Long, long answer to the question you asked, the last one I talk about is the fear of rejection versus kind of insouciance to what people think.

• 1:15:01Rich Diviney?

  The fear of rejection is a powerful attribute, as long as it's not too much, right? Because it can be, lead into peer pressure and all that stuff. But, but oftentimes, those of us with a little bit more of a fear of rejection will do things that we'd otherwise wouldn't do, because the group is doing it. You know, I jumped out of airplanes because my buddies were jumping out of airplanes. There was no way that I was not going to jump out of the airplane, right? There was no way, because I was, I needed to be with them, right? So the fear of rejection can be effectively used and be very powerful if balanced. You know, you don't want to be, you know, you don't want to be pressured to do things that are unsafe, but can be, can be very effective, because it'll cause that person who's, who's generally not a traveler

• 1:15:45Rich Diviney?

  to go with her friends and travel, try new things, explore, explore different avenues, right? Because they don't want to be left out, okay? There's nothing wrong with that. Meanwhile, you have the person who doesn't care what anybody thinks. Has no, I mean, no bearing whatsoever. I don't give a flying, you know what, what people think, right? That person is important too, because that's where most of the econ classes come from. You know, they're like, hmm, I don't care. I'm just gonna do this.

• 1:16:09Lewis Howes?

  Do what I wanna do.

• 1:16:10Rich Diviney?

  And in fact, those people are pretty magnetic. You can see this because they're just off doing another thing. And other people are like, hey, what's that person doing, right?

• 1:16:15Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:15Rich Diviney?

  You know, and so both polarities can actually be powerful.

• 1:16:18Lewis Howes?

  It's interesting. When I've been talking to a lot of people, a lot of people are afraid of failing. A lot of people don't do something because they're afraid of failing. And I see a lot of people say that they're actually afraid of success and what the pressure that comes with success. Losing friends and family because you're higher than or whatever. And them trying to pull you back down into their circle of comfort. So the fear of failure, the fear of success, but then also the third thing is kind of the fear of being judged by other people. By taking action. What's the difference between judgment and fear of rejection?

• 1:16:55Rich Diviney?

  Fear of rejection is internally processed. It's what I think you are thinking about me. Judgment is what I'm thinking about you, right? And so all of, so everything, even judgment. So we don't know if someone's, I mean, unless someone says explicitly, I am judging you.

• 1:17:17Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, or someone's critiquing you.

• 1:17:19Rich Diviney?

  Critiquing you.

• 1:17:19Lewis Howes?

  Then it's a judgment.

• 1:17:20Rich Diviney?

  In a way, well, and it might be a healthy critique, by the way, but it's all about how you process that. And so fear of rejection is really about more the internal, the internal processing and what I am, what I am feeling that, how I am feeling about what they're feeling, right?

• 1:17:38Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:38Rich Diviney?

  Whereas judgment is what I, either what they're saying or what I think they're saying. And I think.

• 1:17:45Lewis Howes?

  Why do you think a lot of people are afraid of being judged by others for

• 1:17:51Rich Diviney?

  Well, because probably because they don't want to be rejected. Because that's why so they're so they're they're connected in that way. Because if someone feels like they're being judged negatively, they feel like they're being actively excluded from the group.

• 1:18:04Lewis Howes?

  They're not accepted.

• 1:18:05Rich Diviney?

  They're not accepted.

• 1:18:06Lewis Howes?

  And that's scary if we're not have close ties or circles.

• 1:18:09Rich Diviney?

  We're tribal species, right?

• 1:18:11Lewis Howes?

  So how do we use the fear of rejection or the fear of being judged in our favor when we say, I'm gonna go after this career, I'm gonna launch this book, I'm gonna go be a pro athlete.

• 1:18:23Rich Diviney?

  Well, I would say it's

• 1:18:24Lewis Howes?

  People say, well, you're not gonna do it or

• 1:18:27Rich Diviney?

  Yeah, I think I think it's very simple. If the the fear of rejection is used effectively if it's proactively moving towards our goals. You know, it's being used ineffectively if it's detracting from our goals.

• 1:18:37Lewis Howes?

  If we feel stuck and say, I'm not gonna do this because I don't want to be rejected.

• 1:18:40Rich Diviney?

  If I'm not doing this because I'm scared of what people will think, then that's being then that's my fear of rejection being used negatively. I'm allowing that to be used negatively. If I'm saying, you know what, I am gonna go on that roller coaster with my friends, even though it scares the crap out of me because I want to try something new and they're gonna go. That's that's proactive, you know, so so it's really about our own movement. You know, if we if if that feeling in ourselves is causing us to recede in in for silly reasons, right? You know, not safety reasons.

• 1:19:08Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, how do we overcome how do we overcome that fear then, you think, of rejection and judgment? How do we self impose movement forward as opposed to pulling back on our dreams?

• 1:19:20Rich Diviney?

  The way I do it is I try to remember that everything that I think they're thinking is what I think only. I have no clue. I mean, we don't have any clue what people are thinking. We really don't, so why try?

• 1:19:31Lewis Howes?

  And the one you said, who doesn't care what anyone thinks.

• 1:19:33Rich Diviney?

  Automatic.

• 1:19:34Lewis Howes?

  People are like drawn to them and they're

• 1:19:36Rich Diviney?

  Yeah, now, now, there are there are certain social norms, right? That we have to if we want to if we want to interact effectively with our environment, we want to make sure we care what people think. You know, we want to shower and we want to, you know, you know,

• 1:19:49Lewis Howes?

  Be kind.

• 1:19:50Rich Diviney?

  Be kind and not be, you know, an ass, you know. But but other than that, you know, we don't know.

• 1:19:57Rich Diviney?

  What people are thinking, nor really should we care unless it's going to socially impede us in a way that detracts.

• 1:20:04Lewis Howes?

  Why do you think so many people obsess over the few critical comments they get versus the abundance of positive comments when they put something online, or a post, or a book, or a piece of art? Why do you think it's in our nature to obsess over the criticism as opposed to obsess over the praise?

• 1:20:23Rich Diviney?

  Well, probably because we focus on our weaknesses because we think it's going to exclude us. We think our weaknesses might exclude us. But I think there's a, again, the inoculation against this one is kind of a neurological one. It's what I talk about in some of the facets of what I speak. I actually mention in the book too, and it's the idea of asking better questions. We are, as human beings, wired to make sense of our environment by asking questions. We do it unconsciously all the time. Our brain is asking questions about what's going on, oftentimes bouncing that off of previous things we have stored in our hippocampus and saying, "Okay, I recognize that that's a cup, that's a camera, that's a wall."

• 1:20:58Lewis Howes?

  That's hot, that's cold.

• 1:20:59Rich Diviney?

  That's right. But we can do this consciously. So whenever we consciously lodge a question into our forebrain, our brain immediately begins to come up with answers. So I do this experiment with people in classes I teach, and I say, "Okay, just take a moment. I'll give you 30 seconds to answer this question. How could I double my income in the next 30 days? All right? I'm going to give you 30 seconds. Anything that pops into your head, write down on a piece of paper." Right? So I start writing it down. Okay? Give them 30 seconds. They generate a little list. And I say, "Okay, I don't care what the answers are, and I don't care how ridiculous the answers are. How many answers did you come up with?" And usually I get answers like, you know, five, four, three, sometimes eight, seven, or eight. The reason why that happens is because they lodged a question in their forebrain.

• 1:21:42Rich Diviney?

  Whatever question we lodge into our forebrain, our brains will begin to answer. Now, oftentimes, we do this the wrong way. We say, "Why am I so bad at this? Why does this stuff always happen to me? Why are these people out to get me?" Our brains begin to answer that question. And some of those answers are as ridiculous as the answers that someone writes down in doubling their income. Okay? But our brains will answer them. But if we shift that question, that context, and we ask ourselves better questions, and we flip it, and we say... What are some of the things I'm great at? You know, what are some of the things I can learn? What are the mistakes I can learn from and how can get better later? How can I more effectively be part of this group of people? Or how can I help this person? Our brains will answer that one too, you know?

• 1:22:27Rich Diviney?

  So this is, I think is a really powerful concept. I had learned this when I was in high school and I began to use it. And it's drastically changed the quality of my life. And I would submit to you, just through experience, this. I would say that the, the quality of our lives are directly proportional to the quality of questions we ask ourselves on a consistent basis. You know, if we ask ourselves consistently negative questions, our quality of life is probably going to suffer. You know, in fact, I would guarantee it is, you know, versus if we ask ourselves better questions. And so, and we do this all the time.

• 1:22:58Lewis Howes?

  What are the better questions we should be asking?

• 1:22:59Rich Diviney?

  Well, I mean, again, this becomes so subjective. I mean, so the first question is, what's the better question? You know, and then funny because my wife and I, you know, during this pandemic, we, we, you know, we have a German shepherd, so we just take walks around the neighborhood with the dog. Because it was a way for us to release and just be together and the dog got exercise. We were at this point, and as most people were at many points, and the kids were having trouble in school. We were just in a, we were just upset. We were all upset. And we were kind of lamenting this. And we did, we do two laps around our neighborhood. That's usually the standard. And we had done one lap and we had, the first lap had been largely lamenting on this, the negativity. And at one point, we're both like, you know what? Let's stop here. What's the better question right now?

• 1:23:42Rich Diviney?

  And we literally began to start thinking about what the better question is. And it took us a while, but we came up with a better question. And that question led us down a pathway of getting out of, you know, the funk we were in and actually moving forward. So, so I think without being able to tell you what that exact question is, the first question you should ask is, what's the better question here? When you find yourself in that situation.

• 1:24:02Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, that's important. We were talking about this beforehand a little bit, about the law of attraction. And you mentioned you have an interesting story about the law of attraction. That you believe in the law of attraction for yourself and that it's worked for your life. What is your relationship with the law of attraction?

• 1:24:17Rich Diviney?

  So when I was in high school, my mom gave me a book called The Key to Yourself. It was by Venice Bloodworth, and I still have a couple of copies of this book. It was written in the 50s. And this book was all about the law of attraction. You know, she basically was talking about, and she was, it was, it had a, there was a religious tone to it. So there was, it was, there was a religious slant to it as well. But ultimately, it was, you know, about this idea that if you, if you intend and if you set your mind frame and if you think positively and all this stuff, you will start heading down. You know, you reap what you sow, basically. And I began to, I began to get fascinated with this stuff. And I really began to go, I wouldn't say obsessed, because that's a strong word, but I started reading books on psychology, you know, positive thinking, psychology, things like that.

• 1:25:01Rich Diviney?

  All, everything I could get my hands on. And began to really try to implement this. And I tried to do visualization and start to really think. And it started working, you know. And one of the first things that, that kind of I was able to quote manifest was, you know, my brother and I always wanted a Jeep, you know, as a car when we were in high school. And so we just began to visualize a Jeep. And, you know, senior year, we got a Jeep in 84, 1984 Jeep CJ7. And I still have that car today. It's parked at the airport right now. I still have that car because it's a very first thing. And it just, every time I had a goal, I would basically set by intent and move towards it. Now, I, I'm not here to either prove or promote the efficacy of metaphysics, right?

• 1:25:45Rich Diviney?

  But I do think, so I'm, so you are as interested in the neuroscience behind this as I am. And I don't know if we've figured that out yet. I know it works. One of the things that, one of the, one of the aspects that I think, or one of the reasons why I think it works is because of this idea of just attention in general, right? We have, and I talk about this in the situation awareness chapter. We have about 11 million bits of information coming into our systems at every second, right? From all of our five senses. And the thing is, we do massive amount of de-selection. There's things happening to us that we don't know, like, you know, the bottom of your shoes, right? You just started noticing that because I told you about it, right? But that's, this is kind of happening constantly. So we, we are, we are inputting 11 million bits.

• 1:26:27Rich Diviney?

  Our frontal lobe is only processing about 2,500 or so, from what I understand.

• 1:26:34Rich Diviney?

  So when we actively lodge something into our frontal lobe.

• 1:26:39Lewis Howes?

  Intentionally saying this is something I'm going to.

• 1:26:41Rich Diviney?

  Say, hey, out of that 11 million bits, I want you to notice everything.

• 1:26:44Lewis Howes?

  Focus on this.

• 1:26:44Rich Diviney?

  I want you to notice everything that has to do with this, okay? So we, all of us have had this experience. Anytime we buy a car, or we want a car, okay? Suddenly, we see that car everywhere, everywhere. And it's not because that car suddenly upped in sales and it's on the streets more. It's because we lodged that into our frontal lobe and now we're noticing it. It was always there, right? And so I think part of the neurological reason why the law of attraction works is because we are, when you, when you set an intent, especially when you write down a goal, I think I'm a big believer in writing it down. You set an intent, you write down a goal, you are literally lodging into your frontal lobe, an intent to say, anything that happens in that 11 million bits per second that has anything to do with this or accomplishing this, I want to notice, you know? And so it starts, so we start to notice things.

• 1:27:28Rich Diviney?

  And it seems like things are just happening magically. But what's really happening is we're noticing things that we're, we're noticing opportunities. We're noticing conversations, we're noticing people that we have.

• 1:27:37Lewis Howes?

  Serendipity is.

• 1:27:38Rich Diviney?

  Serendipity is actually explained because we're, so I think there's, that admittedly is maybe a small facet of the neurological reason why I think it works. But I, I'm a, I'm a believer in it, especially by, about setting intent, writing down goals and, and moving forward.

• 1:27:53Lewis Howes?

  Was there anything that happened while you were a Navy SEAL that you use the law of attraction for that happened?

• 1:27:58Rich Diviney?

  I mean, even training, you know, I remember just in training, I was, I was constantly saying to myself, hey, I'm supposed to be here. I, I see myself as a Navy SEAL. I see myself as this, this is what I'm supposed to be, you know? I would go to the extent of saying, I am a Navy SEAL, I'd say it to myself, you know, but.

• 1:28:11Lewis Howes?

  Internally, yeah.

• 1:28:12Rich Diviney?

  Internally, yeah. But I think that's, yeah, so, yeah, I, I used it constantly, you know?

• 1:28:18Lewis Howes?

  What's the greatest mantra you used when you were under the most stress or fear or uncertainty or sketchy situations that a civilian could use today when they're facing stress? What's the mantra you said to yourself?

• 1:28:31Rich Diviney?

  What can I control? What is the kind of control right now? Because you're taking control. You're taking yourself out of out of an uncontrollable, a seemingly uncontrollable situation, and you're grasping the steering wheel. And you're grasping the, you're putting your foot on the brake or the accelerator, and you're saying, "I have control of this, at least this small part." That's right. That's my, that is my, if there's something I do the most, and now probably unconsciously, is I'm always saying, "What kind of control right now?" Especially if the situation begins to deteriorate. You know?

• 1:29:04Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:29:05Rich Diviney?

  That's what I do.

• 1:29:05Lewis Howes?

  Did they teach you guys about mantras or self-talk?

• 1:29:08Rich Diviney?

  No.

• 1:29:09Lewis Howes?

  Or focusing on the next step as opposed to the end result?

• 1:29:13Rich Diviney?

  No, nothing implicit. Excuse me, nothing explicit. It was probably implicit in just the... But this is where, this is where challenge and strive, this is where these environments, especially physical ones, can teach us so much about ourselves, you know? And most of us can think of a situation in our lives where we can say to ourselves, "You know what? I, uh, that was horrible. I'd never want to relive that." Okay?

• 1:29:37Lewis Howes?

  But...

• 1:29:38Rich Diviney?

  But I'm glad it happened.

• 1:29:39Lewis Howes?

  Isn't that interesting?

• 1:29:40Rich Diviney?

  Because this is what I learned, this is what I met, this is what I...

• 1:29:42Lewis Howes?

  This is what I became.

• 1:29:43Rich Diviney?

  This is what I became, you know? And so, just take those, so I would offer, take those experiences and start deconstructing them. Do some autopsy on that, because there's lessons in there. There are things that you did, probably unconsciously, that walked you through that, that you can take and you extrapolate and say, "Hey, I can do the same thing next time, or now." You know? Because I've done it before, I can do it again, you know?

• 1:30:07Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:30:07Rich Diviney?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:07Lewis Howes?

  And going through adversity builds confidence. And getting out the other side and being alive and thriving builds confidence.

• 1:30:14Rich Diviney?

  And it's growth. I mean, that's the key to growth. I mean, this is what we, we all know this in the gym, right? You go in, you lift weights, you tear muscles. You are tearing the muscles. You'll rip your muscles apart, okay? That's what you're doing. And then you rest, and the muscles grow, and they become smaller. So you cannot grow muscle unless you rip them first. This is the...

• 1:30:32Lewis Howes?

  Unless you apply pressure.

• 1:30:34Rich Diviney?

  Yeah. Yeah. So that is growth, you know? And that's why it's important, I think, just in anybody's...

• 1:30:43Rich Diviney?

  Pathway or their evolution to continually test themselves. And I'm not, I mean, some people are like, hey, I'm fine where I am. I respect that. In fact, in some cases, I'm envious of it. It's hard for me to say that because I'm always like, okay. I always say to myself, I'm someone who's always extraordinarily grateful, but never satisfied. Because I think you can be both, you know? I'm so grateful for where I am, everything I've done. But I'm always kind of saying, okay, what's next? You know, what's next? There are some people who are like, hey, I'm good with where I am. There's nothing wrong with that. But, you know, but active growth for me has been to actively walk to my edges. And then, and then look at the next one.

• 1:31:19Lewis Howes?

  I wanted to ask you about this. One of the attributes is cunning. And you talk about the princess and the dragon. I was curious, what does that actually mean to be cunning? And what is this story about the princess and the dragon?

• 1:31:30Rich Diviney?

  Yeah, I relate it to the Navy SEALs in terms of one of the, one of the, one of the most predominant traits in Navy SEALs is the cunning. So cunning is the ability to really think outside the box. Or to put it very simply, is to, is to understand that in any problem. So any problem has two conditions or two elements, right? Element one is that has a, there's a solution. There's some sort of outcome that needs to happen. The other element is that has variables or conditions that, that in some ways outline the problem. Because if you have one without the other, you don't have a problem, right? If you, if you're given a, if you're given a group, a set of materials, of clay molding materials and say, hey, you know, build something, you know?

• 1:32:15Rich Diviney?

  Then, okay, that's good. If I say, okay, make a bust of Beethoven, but I didn't give you no materials. Okay, I'm just gonna make a bust. If I give you a bunch of materials, like scissors and noodles and things like that, it's like, now make a bust of Beethoven, now you have a problem. Okay, because you have, you have an outcome that you have to achieve. And you have a set of variables, okay? Cunning is the ability to look beyond those variables and shake off what's called functional fixedness. And this is this idea that when you see something, you immediately begin to imply biases and imply rules that are surrounding this. So one of the examples I use is the nine dot problem. I know you have heard this, but nine dots in a grid, and this was like the whole think outside the box in the 80s, right?

• 1:32:57Rich Diviney?

  Draw a line, draw four lines that connect without ever leaving the page in that, you know, with that, that has to hit every dot, right? And most people couldn't do it until they realized that they had to go outside the box to do it, right? Think outside the box. So cunning is able to do that. The reason why I talk about the princes of the dragon, so I say, hey, listen, the way I describe this in the SEAL teams is this. If we were to think about a medieval kingdom, you know, and the princess, there's a princess in a tower guarded by a dragon, and the king who wants to save the princess has sent, you know, his best knights to go slay the dragons to save this princess. And every night, night after night, has been slain, has been burned to death by this dragon, right? Drop a special operator in there, whether it be a SEAL or a Green Beret or whatever.

• 1:33:42Rich Diviney?

  And the first question they say is, what's the mission? Say, save the princess. And they say, well, who gives a crap about the dragon, right? I'm going to find a way to get to the princess without going through the dragon.

• 1:33:51Lewis Howes?

  Don't slay the dragon.

• 1:33:52Rich Diviney?

  I don't need to slay the dragon, I need to save the princess, right? So the functional fixedness is, I need to slay the dragon to save the princess. But what cunning says is, what's the mission? Save the princess. I don't need to, I don't.

• 1:34:03Lewis Howes?

  Just get in the tower and bring it down.

• 1:34:05Rich Diviney?

  This is Shrek, right? So that's why I call it the princes and the princes of the dragon.

• 1:34:10Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. It's thinking outside of the functional elements that are available for you, thinking outside of that. It's interesting. What's the, what's the thing you feel like you need the most work on to improve to get to the next level with all your years of training?

• 1:34:26Rich Diviney?

  Self-discipline. Yeah, I'm constantly working on my self-discipline.

• 1:34:29Lewis Howes?

  And there's a difference between discipline and self-discipline.

• 1:34:31Rich Diviney?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:32Lewis Howes?

  So self-discipline again is.

• 1:34:34Rich Diviney?

  Is not drinking beer at night.

• 1:34:37Lewis Howes?

  It's not picking up the candy bar. It's not eating ice cream.

• 1:34:39Rich Diviney?

  It's internal control. You know, again, I'm, I, I had, you know, most of us, most, most human beings can say we don't like to be told what to do. Okay, so most of us are guilty of not being, not liking to be told what to do. Some of us are extreme about not being.

• 1:34:55Lewis Howes?

  Time what to do, I'm the opposite.

• 1:34:56Rich Diviney?

  Yeah, and some of us don't even like to be told by ourselves what to do, right? You know, that's kind of.

• 1:35:00Lewis Howes?

  We're repelling against ourselves.

• 1:35:01Rich Diviney?

  Repelling against ourselves, so I think, I think self-discipline is something I'll, I'll continue to work on. And empathy, I think we, I think we're, I think especially in today's world, empathy is something we all could do well with trying to, trying to gain more, develop more of.

• 1:35:19Lewis Howes?

  With the time this comes out, 2020 will be behind us. What do you think could be a game plan for someone for moving forward in their life? On how to gain control of what they can control, on how to set goals that are manageable?

• 1:35:35Rich Diviney?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:35Lewis Howes?

  If they still feel overwhelmed and stressed? What would a Navy SEAL do after 2020 to have a more joyful, happy, fulfilled life?

• 1:35:45Rich Diviney?

  Yeah, well, it's, it's interesting how, how things happen and they, they become congruent with the timeframe. You know, I wrote this book because I was interested in, in helping people understand their own engines. Because I was, because, because like you, I'm also fascinated with, with the, you know, how to, how to better ourselves and all these tools and techniques. And people are out there saying, hey, do this, do that. But what I realized is much like any car engine, if you start slapping stuff onto a car engine and you don't understand the actual engine, you're going to break something or blow something up, right? So the key to self-improvement is to first know thyself. And so the, so the reason why I wanted to write this book was because it, the reader will help to understand themselves. What are they showing up to the game with in terms of their own palette of attributes and where they stand?

• 1:36:31Rich Diviney?

  Couple of things, so, so reading the book will help someone learn that. And then they can start to look at 2020 and recognize that 2020.

• 1:36:41Rich Diviney?

  Taught them a lot about their own attributes because we were all thrown into challenge, stress, and uncertainty. So with the context of the stuff you read in the book, you'll be able to look back in 2020 and say, "Oh, you know what? I can see, actually, I'm more adaptable than I thought. I'm less resilient than I actually want to be. I need to develop that. I need to be a little bit more disciplined, or I need to be a little bit more open-minded. Or, you know, maybe because of the political landscape, I need to be more empathetic. You know, who knows? So, someone should be able to read the book and start to understand more about these internal hidden drivers, look back at 2020 and index that. And then on the website, we have a free assessment tool. So you can actually take an assessment for grit, for mental acuity, and for drive.

• 1:37:25Lewis Howes?

  That's good.

• 1:37:25Rich Diviney?

  And you can see where you stand on these attributes. Now, it's going to be a snapshot as to where you stand, because it's really, it's really as compared to a survey set of about 1,000 people we got around the globe, data we got from. So it's kind of like, okay, as compared to these 1,000 people, here's where I stand on adaptability. So it's really, okay, it's a snapshot, and then you have to kind of say to yourself, in looking at the snapshot, and looking at how I've dealt with 2020, and how I've dealt with other environments, where do I think I stand? And then I'm also offering on the website, there'll be some workbooks that you can get to help guide you in developing any attribute you want to develop. You can develop any attribute you want. It just has to be self-directed, has to be self-motivated. You can't learn it like you learn a skill. Because I can't, if you want to, if you're naturally impatient, I can't sit down and teach you a class on

• 1:38:08Rich Diviney?

  patience. It doesn't work that way. I can teach you typing, or shooting, which is a skill. I can't teach you patience. So you can't teach an attribute that way. You can develop an attribute, it has to be self-directed. So I've put together some guides on how to develop your, develop each attribute that you want to.

• 1:38:24Lewis Howes?

  Where do we go for the website?

• 1:38:26Rich Diviney?

  Theattributes.com. Pretty simple.

• 1:38:28Lewis Howes?

  Theattributes.com. And you're, I only found you on LinkedIn. Is that true? Do you have social media?

• 1:38:33Rich Diviney?

  No, I have LinkedIn, I have Instagram, I have Facebook, and The Attributes has Facebook as well. So if you go to Theattributes.com, all of my stuff is up there. But I am on LinkedIn and Instagram as well.

• 1:38:42Lewis Howes?

  What's your Instagram?

• 1:38:42Rich Diviney?

  Rich Devini.

• 1:38:44Lewis Howes?

  Okay, cool. Awesome. There you go. This is powerful, man. Theattributes.com and the book. Make sure you guys check this out. 25 Hidden Drivers of Optimal Performance. I like the idea of optimal performance as opposed to peak performance. I think it's good to be able to get to peak performance in moments, but it's hard to sustain that, obviously. So getting optimal performance would be great. I'm a big fan of... Assessments and reflecting back, you know, as an athlete, we watch game films. We would always get scored and assess how we did on every play. In the whole game, what was our performance?

• 1:39:17Rich Diviney?

  Right.

• 1:39:17Lewis Howes?

  What was the skill you need to develop to get a higher score in the next game?

• 1:39:21Rich Diviney?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:21Lewis Howes?

  So for me, it's important to look at and assess your life or assess the year of what worked, what didn't work, so you know where you want to move into. So I think it's really powerful. Go to theattributes.com for the assessment. And the book, the book is out.

• 1:39:37Rich Diviney?

  January 26th.

• 1:39:38Lewis Howes?

  January 26th. So you can either preorder this, this is out before then, or get it right now. A couple of final questions for you. This is called the three truths. So I like you to imagine hypothetically, it's your last day on earth.

• 1:39:50Rich Diviney?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:51Lewis Howes?

  And you've accomplished every dream you have set out. Every mission, you've written more books, you've lived the exact life that you could imagine. But for whatever reason, you have to take all of your work with you. So your content, this interview, any interview you've done, any book, video, the assessments, they all go with you to the next place, wherever it is.

• 1:40:10Rich Diviney?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:11Lewis Howes?

  But you get to leave behind three things you know to be true. Three lessons you would share with the world that if anyone wanted to understand who you are and the lessons that you would leave them, this is what they would have and that's it.

• 1:40:23Rich Diviney?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:24Lewis Howes?

  What would you say are those lessons or those three truths?

• 1:40:27Rich Diviney?

  Well, we'll see. Let me tell you what I probably tell my kids.

• 1:40:31Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:40:32Rich Diviney?

  The first is you are entitled to nothing. And I say that in a kind way. It's really more of a mindset versus a judgment. It's this idea that if you approach the world with a sense of doing the work to earn, you know, versus you show up and you're entitled to something, you are going to understand and be willing to do the hard stuff. You know, you're not going to worry about getting your hands and feet muddy and dirty. You know, you're going to be okay, you're going to be humble enough to go and do the hard stuff, right? So I think that's number one. Number two is that knowledge is not power. Knowledge is potential power.

• 1:41:16Rich Diviney?

  Because we can all have, we can all know exactly what has to be done and what we need to do to do something, but unless we act, nothing happens. You know, you and I can, you and I can have the perfect plan to, you know, bench 300 pounds at the end of the, you know, three month training cycle or whatever, and take us three months to bench whatever. If we don't do it, it's not going to happen. So, so knowledge, just knowledge on its own is not power. You have to, you have to apply, you have to apply it. And the third one is, is the idea that, first of all, set goals, but divorce yourself from the pathway that you need to take to reach it.

• 1:42:01Rich Diviney?

  Because, because you don't know what the best pathway is. You have to start, you have to start moving, you have to start moving towards that goal and then just figure it as we go. So, rock climbers could teach us a lot in this venue, because the rock climber that's climbing a face for the very first time, certainly the goal is the, is the, is the top, right? But that, no rock climber is going to say, I'm, I'm going there, there, there, there the whole way up. That rock climber's going to start climbing, and that rock climber's going to climb and find the, find the knot hole that he or she likes and move to that one. Sometimes, and this is tricky, okay, sometimes the best knot hole is going to be down, right? So sometimes you have to move away from your goal to actually get closer to it.

• 1:42:42Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:42:43Rich Diviney?

  To find the right knot hole, right? So, so oftentimes people get, I think, tied up and discouraged because the, the pathway that they thought would lead them to the goal that they've written down or the one they're trying to achieve, it's not working out for them. It's like, this is not, well, sometimes it doesn't. You know, if you, if you stay steadfast, you'll get there, and just understand that the pathway, don't dictate the pathway, dictate the outcome.

• 1:43:04Lewis Howes?

  Those are good. I like those a lot. Again, the attributes, make sure you guys get this. I want to acknowledge you, Rich, for, for constantly showing up after your service for the country. You're constantly showing up in service to share lessons for us to understand them in a way that works for us, so that we can have practical tools and Ideas to really move forward in our lives. So I really acknowledge you for using your service of 20 plus years to then say, how can I serve in a different way for human beings on self improvement and optimal performance? So I appreciate and acknowledge your, your efforts, your work and your constant desire to grow and learn to share this with all of us.

• 1:43:44Rich Diviney?

  And I think this book is going to be helpful for a lot of people.

• 1:43:48Lewis Howes?

  Final question for you is what's your definition of greatness?

• 1:43:52Rich Diviney?

  Yes. What my definition of greatness? My definition of greatness is the ability to recognize the power of two words that I think actually are the most powerful words in the human language and that those two words are I am. Because whatever we put after those two words is what we define ourselves as and the pathway we begin to move towards both consciously and unconsciously. And I think we have to be very, very careful about what we put after those two words because there's a power. So, so greatness is be able to understand that and use it.

• 1:44:22Lewis Howes?

  My man, thank you, sir.

• 1:44:23Rich Diviney?

  Appreciate it.

• 1:44:26Lewis Howes?

  My friend, thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you found it powerful and inspiring, make sure to share this with a friend. LewisHowes.com/1058. You can text people that link. You can post it on social media or just copy and paste the link where you're listening to this podcast right now. Share it with a friend, post it on your Instagram stories, on LinkedIn, Twitter, all those places online. If this is your first time here, please click the subscribe button over on Apple Podcasts right now and leave us a rating and review. Every time a new person subscribes or people leave ratings and reviews, it allows us to reach more people in that ecosystem.

• 1:45:03Lewis Howes?

  So each time you do that, you're actually helping change more lives. So let's impact more people together and spread the message of greatness to the world. If you want inspirational messages from me every single week, then make sure to text the word podcast right now to my number. 614-350-3960. So you can get up to date messages to keep you inspired and motivated throughout the week. Also, if you are a successful entrepreneur already and you want a coach to take you to the next level, you want a mastermind group, you want a year-long experience to support you on Getting clear and staying on track on your vision and your goals. Check out LewisHowes.com/MyCoach right now. Check out the page and see if you think you're the right fit for this program.

• 1:45:48Lewis Howes?

  Again, check it out at LewisHowes.com/MyCoach to see if you're the right fit and apply to Greatness Coaching. And I want to leave you with a quote from Ernest Hemingway, who said, "When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen." And I want to remind you, if no one's told you lately, you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. I'm so grateful for you, and you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.