The Navy SEAL’s Guide To Never Being Lazy Again [MASTERCLASS] EP 1440

https://lewishowes.com/mindset - Order a copy of my new book The Greatness Mindset today! David Goggins emphasizes the importance of facing personal challenges and embracing discomfort to build confidence and find fulfillment. Nick Lavery shares the essential steps required to become a great leader. He emphasizes the transformative power of gratitude in overcoming adversity, highlighting how cultivating a mindset of appreciation can fuel resilience and perseverance. Retired US Navy SEAL Lieutenant Jason Redman shares his inspiring story of overcoming a life-threatening setback and transforming into an exceptional leader. Jocko Willink, a retired Navy SEAL officer and business consultant, discusses the true essence of leadership, emphasizing the importance of understanding human nature and taking responsibility for mistakes. In this episode you will learn,The importance of facing personal challenges and embracing discomfort as a means to build genuine confidence and find fulfillment. The essential steps to becoming a great leader, including the transformative power of gratitude in overcoming adversity. The importance of having a meaningful mission in life to provide direction, motivation, and purpose. How to avoid a victim mindset and emerge stronger in the wake of a traumatic life event. The importance of understanding human nature and taking responsibility for mistakes. For more information go to www.lewishowes.com/1440Mel 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?

  My friend, I am such a big believer that your mindset is everything. It can really dictate if your life has meaning, has value, and you feel fulfilled, or if you feel exhausted, drained, and like you're never going to be enough. Your mindset is everything. And our brand new book, The Greatness Mindset, just hit the New York Times Bestseller back-to-back weeks. And I'm so excited to hear from so many of you who've bought the book, who've read it, and finished it already, and are getting incredible results from the lessons in the book. If you haven't got a copy yet, you'll learn how to build a plan for greatness through powerful exercises and toolkits designed to propel your life forward. This is the book I wish I had when I was 20, struggling, trying to figure out life

• 0:44Lewis Howes?

  10 years ago, at 30, trying to figure out transitions in my life, and a book I'm glad I have today for myself. Make sure to get a copy at lewishouse.com/2023mindset to get your copy today. Again, lewishouse.com/2023mindset to get a copy today. Also, the book is on Audible now, so you can get it on audiobook as well over there also.

• 1:10David Goggins?

  What gives you confidence, not being afraid, is overcoming the fear. I found out the whole key to life, you have to.

• 1:18Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:42Lewis Howes?

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

• 2:00David Goggins?

  I used to take one day off a week. I used to take one day off a week.

• 2:05Lewis Howes?

  For the body to recover, right? Makes sense.

• 2:06David Goggins?

  But that one day off was an active recovery day. Where I would get on a trainer and ride for like two hours. But at a zone one heart rate. Very low heart rate. And I replaced the carbohydrates in my body while I rode. Because the best way to recover for me is to do something at a very low heart rate. Because therefore your blood's flowing through your body.

• 2:27Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 2:27David Goggins?

  As your blood's flowing through your body, refuel it with the nutrients. Because then your blood's flowing, the nutrients is going through all your cells in your body. All that glycogen is now flowing at a low heart rate. So it's not burning it, it's refueling it. So every Sunday used to be that. And it kind of snowballed into, as human beings,

• 2:49David Goggins?

  we believe, like so many people, before I give them a workout plan, they're talking about recovery. Everybody that hears me speak, they want to go straight to recovery.

• 3:00David Goggins?

  Workout first. Workout first, before you talk to me about recovery.

• 3:05Lewis Howes?

  How to recover, yeah.

• 3:06David Goggins?

  Workout first. We are always looking for, like whenever I talk to people, people take my words. And they put it in a way to where they want to feel comfortable. This guy, you know, they want to put you in a box. They want to put a title on you. No, you're putting a title on me to make yourself feel better about yourself. If you read this book of mine and you see where I came from, this person was not built. This person was not made by God. This person, sorry, this person was built. I made this person. I made this person by diving into the insecurities that life gave me. Because now they're yours. They're yours to own.

• 3:49David Goggins?

  If you're not smart, call yourself dumb. It's okay, because you are. But take that not as you're putting yourself down. If you're fat, call yourself fat. I used to be 300 pounds. We want to talk so soft to ourselves, we're looking for that recovery day. And that recovery day is everything in your life. Everything in your life is a recovery day. We're looking for it. It's not coming. It's not coming. Get over that recovery day. And that's the mentality I took with me. And what happened through that process was all the frivolous things of life started to float away. I used to tell people lies so they would like me. Cause I was so insecure.

• 4:31David Goggins?

  When you start to build yourself up and start to have the one thing that we don't have is confidence.

• 4:38Lewis Howes?

  Yep.

• 4:38David Goggins?

  Real, authentic confidence from hard work. Everything else goes away. You no longer look to other people for your self-esteem.

• 4:47Lewis Howes?

  For validation.

• 4:47David Goggins?

  That's right.

• 4:48Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 4:49David Goggins?

  You now know. I walk in a room now and I know the hours and years and decades I put into David Goggins. That's something, it's not on the wall. It's not a trophy on the wall. It's not a medal on your neck. It is actually a feeling in your heart and people, why don't you ever smile? I don't have to.

• 5:09David Goggins?

  Yeah, I do have a stoic look on my face. I'm a very focused person. But the thing I have in my soul and in my heart, that's why I need to smile. I don't need to smile. I don't need you to look at me and say, oh my God, you look happy. Cause half of us aren't happy. We're, we're giving you something that we think you wanna see. I don't do that anymore. I don't care how you perceive David Goggins. Because through my journey, I figured out the one piece I was missing. I thought it was cars. I thought it was women. I thought it was, I thought it was money. I thought it was everything. The one piece I was missing was me having the courage to face myself. And once you do that on a daily basis, it's not about the running. Where people are gonna be, you have to start working out.

• 5:52David Goggins?

  Where I got my work ethic from was the hours I had to spend learning this. When you sit down and you're not smart and you have a disability.

• 6:03Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 6:04David Goggins?

  And you still wanna be in the top of your class. I didn't wanna just get by. When I realized that I can learn through hard work and I can beat the valedictorian in school, but I got put in 10 hours more a day than he does. You know what kinda strength comes from that? When you're sitting down and that guy, that, that valedictorian studied for an hour and you know, I caught you. I caught you and I am dumb. But I have the work ethic to catch you. That's where David Goggas got really invented.

• 6:36Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 6:36David Goggins?

  Was at a kitchen table with twenty spiral notebooks that were empty. And then, three months later.

• 6:43Lewis Howes?

  Down, yeah.

• 6:44David Goggins?

  They were full. And when you can go through that, I still have them in my storage unit. You go through these spiral notebooks of your life. And you realize, this is how I learned. This is unbelievable. There's no miles. It's not about the miles. It's that, having to discipline every day to say, for me to learn this one math problem, it's gonna take me ten hours.

• 7:04Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 7:05David Goggins?

  And that's where it, and you realize, do hard work. You can do, you can outwork anybody. No matter how badass they are. But that's the part people don't wanna dive into.

• 7:17Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. When someone's lacking confidence in themselves.

• 7:20David Goggins?

  That's right.

• 7:21Lewis Howes?

  What's the answer you would give them if they're like, how do I gain more confidence?

• 7:24David Goggins?

  It starts with yourself, man. You gotta start diving into those things that you are afraid of. You don't gain confidence by going to the spot that makes you feel good. It could be a false reality. And the second life gives you that challenge? All you wanna do is go back to what makes you confident, or, or, or, or what gave you confidence? Is that happy spot? No. What gives you confidence? What gave me confidence? Was spending years at a kitchen table, trying to learn how to read and write on my own. Realizing, I can't learn the way you learn. I can't. But I can learn. What gives you confidence, not being afraid? Is overcoming the fear.

• 8:09David Goggins?

  I used to stutter severely bad. So right now, I don't know how many people are gonna watch this. You know what gives me confidence? Is that I no longer care if I start stuttering to you.

• 8:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 8:19David Goggins?

  That's what gives me confidence, is facing these things, overcoming them. And maybe not overcoming them every day. But facing them. And facing them, and facing them pretty soon like this, you know what, man? This is where it's at. It's not in that comfort zone. It's in the discomfort zone, is where my confidence is getting built.

• 8:37Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 8:38David Goggins?

  That's where it's getting built. But people wanna, they want an easier answer.

• 8:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 8:43David Goggins?

  There has to be an easier way. There's not. I'm sorry. I searched for it my entire life.

• 8:49Lewis Howes?

  You cheated, you lied.

• 8:51David Goggins?

  I lied, I did everything. And I still felt empty. I coach a lot of people nowadays billionaires. Who call me on the phone and say, man, I'm still missing something. It's because. They did what they were good at.

• 9:07David Goggins?

  And they had this beautiful family. Two, three houses, cars, everything. Has everything to work on the outside looking in like my God, man, how can you be unhappy? I walk around with the backpack with all my stuff in here with no car.

• 9:20Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 9:21David Goggins?

  And I walk around. Happiest person in the world. Have nothing. Happy as hell. It's because. I found out the whole key to life. It's not in all that. You have to face yourself. So many people live to be a hundred years old. And they die miserable having everything. Because they never examined. I call it my live autopsy. You never examine this. Happiness, peace. Enlightenment. It's all up here, man. It's all up here. And I start talking like this, people are like, man, you know, I don't know. It's the truth, man.

• 9:59Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it is true.

• 10:00David Goggins?

  It's all up here. You just gotta be willing to go and face it. And that's the hard part.

• 10:05Lewis Howes?

  What's your biggest insecurity today?

• 10:10David Goggins?

  I'm not to be arrogant. I don't have one.

• 10:13Lewis Howes?

  What was the last one you had and when was that?

• 10:15David Goggins?

  The last one I had was probably.

• 10:21David Goggins?

  Still me. Me, still living, because I always talk about I pay rent. So we live. We used to live in a seven dollar a month place when I was growing up.

• 10:32Lewis Howes?

  This is in Buffalo or is this?

• 10:33David Goggins?

  This is in Indiana.

• 10:34Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 10:34David Goggins?

  So like we had a lot of money in Buffalo. And when my mom left my dad, we went to nothing. For a period of time before she got on her feet.

• 10:42Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 10:42David Goggins?

  And that seven dollar a month place used to be. It was my, it was who I was. I was no one. I was in the sewer. My mom went there. I had nothing. And you always feel like you have nothing. I achieved so much. I was a Navy SEAL. I've gone through Ranger School. I've gone through Delta Force Selection Training. I I done so much. I run two hundred miles, pull up records, everything. Learned to read and write, became pretty intelligent. And I still was like, man, what is wrong with me? It wasn't until I got real sick, and I talked about in the last chapter of that book. I got real sick, and I was about thirty-eight years old.

• 11:25Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 11:26David Goggins?

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

• 11:41Lewis Howes?

  Why's that?

• 11:42David Goggins?

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

• 11:55Lewis Howes?

  Now, you didn't have that.

• 11:56David Goggins?

  I didn't have anything.

• 11:56Lewis Howes?

  Now, you just had to sit alone.

• 11:57David Goggins?

  Alone.

• 11:58Lewis Howes?

  And not train.

• 11:59David Goggins?

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

• 12:09Lewis Howes?

  You hadn't reflected yet.

• 12:10David Goggins?

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

• 12:16Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 12:16David Goggins?

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

• 12:23Lewis Howes?

  You're like, on to the next.

• 12:24David Goggins?

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

• 12:25Lewis Howes?

  You wouldn't even take the medal?

• 12:26David Goggins?

  Gone. Don't care about it.

• 12:27Lewis Howes?

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

• 12:29David Goggins?

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

• 12:35Lewis Howes?

  The validation.

• 12:36David Goggins?

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

• 12:38Lewis Howes?

  I'm just getting started.

• 12:39David Goggins?

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

• 12:46Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 12:47David Goggins?

  I was leaving so much in the tank, once I realized, my God, man. I was this dumb, fat kid being bullied, and now I'm a hundred and eighty-pound person, lost a hundred and six pounds in less than three months. Learned to read, learned to do this, learned to do that. I was like, I need more.

• 13:01Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 13:02David Goggins?

  I was fueling my mind with everything. And I never took time to say, my God, you came from this hell, and you're here. So those insecurities.

• 13:12David Goggins?

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

• 13:23Lewis Howes?

  Like a boot camp for the boot camp.

• 13:24David Goggins?

  That's right.

• 13:24Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 13:25David Goggins?

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

• 13:31Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 13:32David Goggins?

  To get ready for BUDs.

• 13:32Lewis Howes?

  Eighteen, nineteen, twenty year olds.

• 13:33David Goggins?

  Yeah, young kids. So when they get to Navy SEAL training, man, they were physical studs. They were running, swimming. I mean, they were, they were hybrids.

• 13:43Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 13:44David Goggins?

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

• 13:48Lewis Howes?

  Why is that?

• 13:49David Goggins?

  This is why.

• 13:52David Goggins?

  We were training bigger, stronger, faster quitters.

• 13:56Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 13:57David Goggins?

  It's not about.

• 13:58Lewis Howes?

  Not the mind.

• 13:59David Goggins?

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

• 14:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 14:14David Goggins?

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

• 14:58Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 14:58David Goggins?

  When you were sad.

• 14:59Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 15:00David Goggins?

  When you were sick. We look for our wife or our husband. We look for comfort. It's in those moments, you must retrain your mind.

• 15:09Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 15:10David Goggins?

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

• 15:16Lewis Howes?

  Why weren't you training them?

• 15:17David Goggins?

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

• 15:21Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 15:21David Goggins?

  These guys needed to meet a standard.

• 15:23Lewis Howes?

  Physical standard.

• 15:24David Goggins?

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

• 15:40David Goggins?

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

• 15:46Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 15:47David Goggins?

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

• 16:13David Goggins?

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

• 16:22Lewis Howes?

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

• 16:24David Goggins?

  That's right. And no one saved me.

• 16:27David Goggins?

  It wasn't like someone came down here and guided me through life. When you figure this out on your own, the amount of pride and dignity and self-respect you have. That's why I walk around the streets with a backpack and just like, I don't need anything else.

• 16:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 16:44David Goggins?

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

• 17:06Lewis Howes?

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

• 17:09David Goggins?

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

• 17:14Lewis Howes?

  And live in that space?

• 17:15David Goggins?

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

• 17:24Lewis Howes?

  Have you talked to her about this?

• 17:25David Goggins?

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

• 17:35Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 17:36David Goggins?

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

• 18:13Lewis Howes?

  Do this thing.

• 18:14David Goggins?

  You must do that.

• 18:16Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 18:16David Goggins?

  You have to go that way. And most of us don't understand that mentality. We go left and we wonder why we haven't fulfilled something in our lives. It's because we continue to take the journey that is mapped out. And how I look at it is I, I, I talk in life like a lot of us in life want to take the four lane highway. That has road maps and all this other stuff on it, man. Tells you where to go, gas stations. The next 10 miles up, you're gonna see a McDonald's or Cracker Barrel.

• 18:47Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 18:48David Goggins?

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

• 18:51Lewis Howes?

  That Cracker Barrel is that Midwest life.

• 18:54David Goggins?

  That's right, that's right.

• 18:55Lewis Howes?

  I'm from Ohio.

• 18:55David Goggins?

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

• 18:59Lewis Howes?

  Dude, that's amazing. Bringing back memories.

• 19:03Lewis Howes?

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

• 19:14David Goggins?

  Right.

• 19:14Lewis Howes?

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

• 19:17David Goggins?

  Right.

• 19:17Lewis Howes?

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

• 19:19David Goggins?

  That's right.

• 19:20Lewis Howes?

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

• 19:38David Goggins?

  That's right.

• 19:38Lewis Howes?

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

• 19:43David Goggins?

  That's all it is, man.

• 19:44Lewis Howes?

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

• 19:47David Goggins?

  Yep.

• 19:47Lewis Howes?

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

• 19:49David Goggins?

  That's right.

• 19:50Lewis Howes?

  It's like you can be at such more peace.

• 19:52David Goggins?

  It's a hundred percent.

• 19:53Lewis Howes?

  In your life.

• 19:54David Goggins?

  Most of like, like for instance, I never thought in my wildest dreams I could be a Navy SEAL.

• 20:00David Goggins?

  It's until you opened your mind, open mindedness creates that. We all shut down our mind. Like for instance, when I broke the pull-up record. Everybody around me who heard the pull-up record was 4,020 pull-ups. That's the first thing they did. Oh my God.

• 20:15Lewis Howes?

  4,024 hours or was this?

• 20:16David Goggins?

  Yeah, it's 4,020 pull-ups in 24 hour period.

• 20:19Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 20:20David Goggins?

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

• 20:25David Goggins?

  I went and got a penny.

• 20:26Lewis Howes?

  And say, how many is that every minute?

• 20:27David Goggins?

  Exactly.

• 20:28Lewis Howes?

  Every hour, every second.

• 20:29David Goggins?

  Instead of taking life and making it not to be this grandiose thing, start breaking it down. Start breaking it down. And most of us, we live in a box. And we don't want to go outside that box at all, ever.

• 20:46David Goggins?

  Outside that box is all these possibilities of life. What we do is we shackle our mind. We are a prisoner in our own mind that this is all I can do. This is all I'm good at. And we, we, we take away the possibility, you could be this, you could be that.

• 21:02Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 21:03David Goggins?

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

• 21:07Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 21:07David Goggins?

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

• 21:13Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 21:13David Goggins?

  There'd be no book.

• 21:14Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 21:16David Goggins?

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

• 21:27Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 21:27David Goggins?

  By facing life, by facing yourself. And through that, I, I would die never knowing that I had the power to change millions of lives. And what haunts me the most, people ask me, what, what haunts you the most? What haunts me the most is that if I would have died at 300 pounds, let's say I was 75 years old. I got to heaven and God has a chart like that on everybody's life. God knows all, let's say that. I don't care what you believe in, doesn't matter. I'm not judging anybody. But let's say my thing is God. You get to heaven, I'm 300 pounds, I sit down, I was a cockroach, terminated my whole life. And we're sitting down just like this, you're God and I'm David. And he gives me that chart.

• 22:09David Goggins?

  And he says, look at this. Now, look at this chart, and on the chart it has all these different things, but my name's on it. But these things aren't me. I was gonna change the world. I was gonna, I was gonna set records. I was gonna be a Navy SEAL. I was gonna be all these things in the military that I accomplished. You're gonna get the VFW award. You're gonna be honored here, honored there. And I'm like, God, I was, this isn't me. Like it says, David Goggins. I was an Ecolab guy, I sprayed for cockroaches and I'm 300 pounds. Instead, here I'm 185. It says here, I got a, a bachelor's and a master's. It says all these things.

• 22:47David Goggins?

  And God goes, no, that's who you were supposed to be.

• 22:50Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 22:52David Goggins?

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

• 23:16Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 23:16David Goggins?

  Thinking about how much I left on the table for fear. For not willing to go over the wall and over the next wall and over the next wall. So in my mind, I believe that and God knows all, at least I believe that.

• 23:32David Goggins?

  I want God to be up there right now as we're speaking, writing stuff down, saying, my God, he exceeded even my expectations. That's how I live my life. I now know that there is no cap on the human mind. There's no cap. We cap it ourselves.

• 23:52Lewis Howes?

  Wow. Is there a cap on the human body?

• 23:54David Goggins?

  That's right.

• 23:55Lewis Howes?

  Is there one?

• 23:57David Goggins?

  I.

• 24:01David Goggins?

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

• 24:10Lewis Howes?

  When you were three hundred pounds?

• 24:12David Goggins?

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

• 24:49Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 24:50David Goggins?

  I started maybe SEAL training with stress fractures. Stress fractures, not since.

• 24:57Lewis Howes?

  That's hard to finish.

• 24:58David Goggins?

  Stress fractures, starting the hardest training, arguably the hardest training in the world with stress fractures.

• 25:03David Goggins?

  And this is when I started to not put a cap on the body. If the mind is there. Every morning, I would wake up at 3:30 in the morning, 4 o'clock in the morning. Go to my dive cage. Go in there before anybody saw me. I'd get duct tape. And I would tape from my forefoot all the way up to the middle of my calf. And I would put two black socks on. And so I ran not using the pivot.

• 25:28Nick Lavery?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 25:29David Goggins?

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

• 25:55Nick Lavery?

  Wow.

• 25:56David Goggins?

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

• 26:35Lewis Howes?

  Why do you think so many people suffer in their stuckness of job, career, life, purpose? And how can they start taking full ownership as opposed to making excuses? Or blaming everything around them as opposed to being responsible for their life? How can someone learn this?

• 26:55Nick Lavery?

  Yeah.

• 26:55Lewis Howes?

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

• 27:00Nick Lavery?

  Sure.

• 27:01Lewis Howes?

  On how to overcome adversity?

• 27:02Nick Lavery?

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

• 27:36Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man.

• 27:37Nick Lavery?

  When I'm next to that individual, this is a paper cut to me.

• 27:40Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 27:41Nick Lavery?

  So like that power of perspective, because I was able to weaponize the gratitude in that scenario.

• 27:50Nick Lavery?

  That's the key, because a lot of times I think when it comes to comparison or perspective, it can drive people even deeper into a hole because they're saying, hey, man, like this person did this thing under these extreme circumstances and I'm having difficulty getting up in the morning, like what's wrong with me? And it ends up being a driving factor that makes it worse. Where, no, no, stop for a second. Be grateful for what you have, see it that way. Open up your heart and your soul a little bit, say, wow, I'm really fortunate, I got a lot of great things going right now. And use that as a tool. Those that are stuck, you know, if there is not a mission that's been identified,

• 28:35Nick Lavery?

  in my opinion, it becomes extraordinarily difficult to get past the adversity, but even oftentimes just to get moving. Like, what is it that you want to do? It sounds like a very simple question, but there's layers of difficulty built within this, like, have you begun an internal dialogue with yourself yet at all? Have you looked in the mirror at any point in your life and said, what do you want to do? Who do you want to become? And I think oftentimes, and that's how it started for me, just very simple. And letting the universe or God or your soul or call it whatever you want, communicate back to you on what do you want to do? Who do you want to become?

• 29:21Nick Lavery?

  In order to make that exercise of any kind of value, one is expectation, knowing that it's likely not gonna, the answer's not gonna come blasting through the glass and punch you in the face. More often than not, it takes repetition. You have to actually work at it. Two is if there's not a degree of self-honesty, then it's really not gonna matter. And in today's world, you can make the argument that that has never been more difficult ever in the world of immediate satisfaction and social media and where people are projecting an image because that's become the norm. It's easy for us to begin to believe our own facade.

• 30:04Nick Lavery?

  And so that internal dialogue, that level of self-awareness is important. But if you're lying to yourself, then it's not gonna matter.

• 30:12Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 30:12Nick Lavery?

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

• 30:55Nick Lavery?

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

• 31:10Lewis Howes?

  Right. I think it's beautiful. This is everything that I've been.

• 31:14Lewis Howes?

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

• 31:55Lewis Howes?

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

• 32:38Lewis Howes?

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

• 33:23Lewis Howes?

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

• 33:36Nick Lavery?

  Yes.

• 33:36Lewis Howes?

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

• 34:01Nick Lavery?

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

• 34:05Lewis Howes?

  Pretty fluent or like?

• 34:06Nick Lavery?

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

• 34:08Lewis Howes?

  Right, right, right, right.

• 34:09Nick Lavery?

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

• 34:55Nick Lavery?

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

• 35:33Lewis Howes?

  Cause you sweat a lot.

• 35:34Nick Lavery?

  Cause I sweat a lot.

• 35:35Lewis Howes?

  Me too, a big guy, you're sweating all the time. Walk out in the snow and you sweat probably, right?

• 35:39Nick Lavery?

  All the time.

• 35:39Lewis Howes?

  Me too, yeah.

• 35:40Nick Lavery?

  Right? Especially, fun fact, when you lose this many sweat pores, your other ones work in overdrive.

• 35:46Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 35:46Nick Lavery?

  To cool you off, yeah. Learned that in hospital. I was going through like multiple t-shirts a day. So, you know, I am more capable when I'm on two feet. Certainly I can be mobile, I can be in a wheelchair, I can be on crutches, but I'm not as capable as I am when I'm on two legs.

• 36:03Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, you're more efficient when you're on two legs.

• 36:05Nick Lavery?

  Absolutely. I'm more productive when I'm on two legs. So that clock begins to tick. So I knew I needed to maximize every single moment that I was on two legs. And it got a little OCD, which my wife eventually kinda got cool with because it got to the point where if I, for example, were leaving my house for the day and I grabbed my stuff and I took, you know, eight steps and I realized I had forgotten something. Well, that's 16 steps that I'm not getting back. Eight to go back to my thing, eight to get back to where I was. And it started to drive me more and more crazy. So I began...

• 36:45Lewis Howes?

  Every step needs to matter.

• 36:47Nick Lavery?

  Every step, every minute, every second needs to matter. And this is, I get, I understand this is the extreme and some of your viewers may be like, this is insanity, but you know, again, I had set my sights on something so ambitious that I needed to maximize every single moment. And therefore, I began just modifying, creating or modifying these different systems to minimize the likelihood of me missing those 16 steps again. So it's like, okay, I forgot my, you know, wallet. So now it's wallet, phone, like at the end of every day, like this is where everything goes, so that...

• 37:23Lewis Howes?

  Everything you need to leave the next day is in one place.

• 37:25Nick Lavery?

  Everything is streamlined.

• 37:26Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 37:27Nick Lavery?

  So just day to day, I began just kinda instinctually creating these different systems throughout my day to maximize my level of efficiency, just so I could do more things better on two feet. And for longer. So that's just kind of a process in which I likely would not have learned if I had not gone through this. And it's one that I've maintained really to this day.

• 37:53Lewis Howes?

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

• 37:56Nick Lavery?

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

• 38:03Lewis Howes?

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

• 38:37Nick Lavery?

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

• 39:19Nick Lavery?

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

• 39:38Nick Lavery?

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

• 39:56Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 39:56Nick Lavery?

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

• 39:59Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 40:00Nick Lavery?

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

• 40:12Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 40:13Nick Lavery?

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

• 40:44Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 40:44Nick Lavery?

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

• 41:08Lewis Howes?

  How do you modify your relationship with fear and pain?

• 41:11Nick Lavery?

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

• 41:23Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 41:23Nick Lavery?

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

• 42:06Nick Lavery?

  And let's just keep things all nice and calm here when it comes to even a heartbeat, our red blood cell count, like it doesn't want change. Recognizing that and then knowing that if we've set our sights on something righteous, something of ambition, something that is unlikely, unprecedented, there are going to be times when we have to ignore our brain and listen to our heart and our soul. And one of the greater challenges of life really is knowing when to take that risk and asking yourself in that moment, in real time, like right now, are you willing to

• 42:47Nick Lavery?

  take the risk of doing this particular thing, knowing the potential hazards, but then also knowing the potential effects? Like, are you willing to do it?

• 43:01Lewis Howes?

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

• 43:27Nick Lavery?

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

• 43:49Nick Lavery?

  I think generally speaking, the hard comes from a willingness to accept that you don't know how to do something right now. And that's okay. And not letting my pride and ego get in the way of that.

• 44:04Lewis Howes?

  Man.

• 44:05Nick Lavery?

  Slicing off a massive serving of humility. Be willing to take that risk of embarrassment. You know, and when it comes to fear, sure, we're fear of physical damage. But I would argue fear mostly comes through the lens of emotional damage. Fear of failure, fear of embarrassment, you know.

• 44:24Lewis Howes?

  Being judged by other people.

• 44:25Nick Lavery?

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

• 44:46Lewis Howes?

  What's, what's easier or better? If that's.

• 44:50Nick Lavery?

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

• 45:06Lewis Howes?

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

• 45:09Nick Lavery?

  But I look at the life I have now, man, and you know, particularly my family and my boys and my wife. And it's just amazing. I would not undo a single thing.

• 45:18Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 45:19Nick Lavery?

  If, because there's just a chance that I don't end up where I am here right now. Like talking to you with my family at home. I lived such a fulfilling and loved life that I would, I wouldn't change a thing about this. That's like up in the clouds, but it's important, you know, note, I think. I'll go into the, into the, into the tactical realm. So I'm big into jiu jitsu and I started as a two-legged guy and, and competed. And uh, jiu jitsu was a huge part of my recovery, which began in the hospital. Certainly physically, range of motion, flexibility, humility.

• 45:57Lewis Howes?

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

• 46:01Nick Lavery?

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

• 46:16Lewis Howes?

  A big, strong guy, man.

• 46:17Nick Lavery?

  I'm missing about 45 pounds of lift.

• 46:19Lewis Howes?

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

• 46:23Nick Lavery?

  Right.

• 46:23Lewis Howes?

  against guys, you know, my size.

• 46:25Nick Lavery?

  Absolutely.

• 46:26Lewis Howes?

  And you're friggin' just bare hugging them.

• 46:28Nick Lavery?

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

• 46:40Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure.

• 46:40Nick Lavery?

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

• 46:52Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 46:53Nick Lavery?

  It's impossible.

• 46:53Lewis Howes?

  Well, he was like a beast next to them. Yeah.

• 46:55Nick Lavery?

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

• 47:05Lewis Howes?

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

• 47:18Nick Lavery?

  Yeah.

• 47:18Lewis Howes?

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

• 47:25Nick Lavery?

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

• 47:32Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 47:33Nick Lavery?

  as a two-legged guy.

• 47:34Lewis Howes?

  Wow. Wow. Why? How?

• 47:36Nick Lavery?

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

• 48:17Lewis Howes?

  Physical training or like?

• 48:18Nick Lavery?

  Oh, yeah.

• 48:19Lewis Howes?

  Workout training to get back?

• 48:20Nick Lavery?

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

• 49:05Nick Lavery?

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

• 49:15Lewis Howes?

  Why?

• 49:15Nick Lavery?

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

• 49:48Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 49:49Nick Lavery?

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

• 49:58Lewis Howes?

  No one cared.

• 49:58Nick Lavery?

  No one cared.

• 49:59Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Getting comfortable with the uncomfortable.

• 50:01Nick Lavery?

  Absolutely.

• 50:02Lewis Howes?

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

• 50:05Nick Lavery?

  Yeah.

• 50:06Lewis Howes?

  No one cared.

• 50:06Nick Lavery?

  No one cared.

• 50:07Lewis Howes?

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

• 50:10Nick Lavery?

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

• 50:28Lewis Howes?

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

• 50:30Nick Lavery?

  Didn't matter. Like my teammates, my family, my loved ones, they loved me regardless. Um, so I just began to build up, you know, a greater sense of, of confidence because I was callousing my mind to a degree where like,

• 50:46Jason Redman?

  No, I can do this. I can be vulnerable. I can mess things up. And it's, not only is it okay, but it actually inspires people around me. And makes them want to dig a little bit deeper.

• 51:01Lewis Howes?

  What would you say would be the biggest lesson you learned from being a SEAL then? That, that, just about life in general, from your entire time there?

• 51:10Jason Redman?

  So I summarize that in one phrase, get off the X.

• 51:13Lewis Howes?

  Get off the X.

• 51:14Jason Redman?

  Yeah, so, and, and the X is any point of attack, any point of crisis, any, and that now that's one of the big things I talk about to companies and individuals. It is the sticking point. In SEAL training and special operations lingo, the X was the point of the attack. It was the ambush point. So, for one side of my career, I had trained to try and put the enemy on the X. And, and that X is a specific point that usually we pick ahead of time that will channelize them into an area that it makes it very difficult for them to get out of. And then we rein as much firepower and explosives to try and A, destroy their will to fight, and B, destroy them, or equipment, or whatever else.

• 51:58Jason Redman?

  And what I had learned also was if you're ever on the X, you have to get off the X as quickly as possible. Because the longer you sit on it, the harder it is to get out of an ambush. So, 2007, my gunfight, uh, we survived because my teammates fought back and we were able to get off that X. I mean, it took a little while. We had to use the air assets. My teammates fought back, but that's what enabled me to be successful. Out of that gunfight, when we got to the hospital, or when I got to the hospital, I kind of realized that I had stepped out of one ambush into another ambush.

• 52:37Lewis Howes?

  An emotional, psychological ambush.

• 52:39Jason Redman?

  Absolutely. And this journey that I was facing. And, and I remember when the doctors were telling me, you know, we're thinking about an int hitting your arm and it's going to take years to put together. I felt like, man, I'm, I'm, it's no longer the bombs and bullets of battle, it's the bombs and bullets of life.

• 52:53Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 52:54Jason Redman?

  And everybody gets hit by those bombs and bullets. So, it took a couple of years for that all to come into. Clarity, but it made me realize, everybody gets ambushed in life. Everyone. And everybody gets stuck on that X. And that X is insidious. It's like quicksand. And the more you want to feel sorry for yourself, and that's what happens. When people get on the X, three things happen. Number one, we will look back at what we've lost. And we waste a lot of time at, well, you know, I mean, a little bit like I did. Well, what if I had moved this way? What if I had moved that way? Or I want back my life before I got wounded because it was so much better. And we waste a lot of time doing that. We also look forward.

• 53:39Jason Redman?

  Well, I was supposed to be this, or I was supposed to be that. And this was supposed to be my most successful year. You know, I was gonna play in the NFL. This was my launch point. And then we get bitter about that. And then the last one is we look for someone or something to blame. You know, it was their fault. They did this, or they didn't do this. And that, that is the victim mindset. That pins us to the X. And what happens is, I mean, in a gunfight, you literally can physically die. But in life, I watch people who mentally and emotionally die.

• 54:11Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 54:11Jason Redman?

  And they, and I write this in the book, Overcome, that there are people who, that life ambush that hits them becomes the excuse for everything in their life.

• 54:23Lewis Howes?

  For decades.

• 54:25Jason Redman?

  And they become lesser individuals than they ever were before. Like alcohol, drugs, whatever it is, every bad behavior is justified because of what happened to them. And they just lay on the X and they're just a dead person walking.

• 54:42Lewis Howes?

  So when you made that conscious decision to make that sign and kind of create a mission statement for yourself to recover in a more positive state, what shifted for you and what shifted for the people around you? That you weren't claiming to be a victim?

• 54:57Jason Redman?

  Yeah, I mean, it was just nothing but positivity that. And don't get me wrong, I had hard times. I mean, there were definitely days that were hard. I mean, it was not, you know, it's not blue skies and rainbows every day. But it is a choice. It doesn't mean that. It's a choice to keep driving forward and my wife, who I call the long-haired Admiral, is amazing, but I, um, yeah, she's trying to raise three young kids and really I felt like this fourth kid because you know who was cleaning my wounds, you know who was grinding up my medicine, who was feeding me through, um, you know, grinding up food so that I could eat through a stomach too, was my wife. I was in a wheelchair when they

• 55:39Jason Redman?

  brought me home. I had all this metal and hardware, you know, helping me clean this trach that I wore for seven months and two days. So the last thing I was gonna do was add additional stress to her by complaining or by, you know, and not only that, I want to set the example to my kids, like, hey, bad things happen to good people, but by complaining and being negative, you are not helping the situation in any way whatsoever. And this is something I talk to people about, this idea of leading always. When it sucks the worst, nobody needs to hear about it because all you're doing is pulling others down. And, and that's, and it is a virus. It is a cancer when it occurs because usually when a team is at a point in time where people are starting to turn inward and feel

• 56:23Jason Redman?

  sorry and eat themselves, you're at a tipping point. And this is when a great leader can step up and step out of his own misery to try and lead others forward, to push you in the right direction, or you will fall in the other direction. And, and that's, I wanted to show my kids and others that I wasn't gonna be that guy. I was gonna continue to drive forward no matter what.

• 56:47Lewis Howes?

  That's powerful. Lead yourself, lead others, lead always. For those who are looking to accomplish their goals, but they feel stuck in life, what would you say were the strategies of the SEALs in accomplishing your goals at the highest level? What are some of the things that you guys did, strategy-wise, um, to make that happen?

• 57:11Jason Redman?

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

• 57:40Jason Redman?

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

• 58:24Jason Redman?

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

• 58:26Lewis Howes?

  To make it even more worse.

• 58:27Jason Redman?

  To make it even worse.

• 58:28Lewis Howes?

  And then train from that.

• 58:30Jason Redman?

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

• 59:15Jason Redman?

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

• 59:57Jason Redman?

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

• 1:00:37Jason Redman?

  It's a story, it's my story of a young punk kid who did well enough to become an officer or a leader and then totally failed because of ego and arrogance, got a second chance and then redeemed himself and then got wounded and kind of realized there was another level of leadership. And when people would read that, people would say, how'd you do that? And I couldn't definitively answer that question. So, Overcome became, I mean, it took, Overcome came out in, um, I think five years after I wrote The Trident because it took that long to kind of think about what enabled that. And a lot of that had to do with when I got out of the military, I missed that structure and discipline.

• 1:01:22Jason Redman?

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

• 1:01:37Jason Redman?

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

• 1:01:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:42Jason Redman?

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

• 1:01:53Lewis Howes?

  You gotta figure out your own mission.

• 1:01:55Jason Redman?

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

• 1:02:31Lewis Howes?

  When you were wounded?

• 1:02:31Jason Redman?

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

• 1:02:35Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:02:36Jason Redman?

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

• 1:02:42Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:02:48Jason Redman?

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

• 1:03:17Lewis Howes?

  It's going harder and.

• 1:03:19Jason Redman?

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

• 1:03:53Jason Redman?

  My physical leadership saved my life when I was wounded. Now, for most people, hopefully, you're never at that level. But in some ways, right now, you look at today,

• 1:04:04Jason Redman?

  you know, COVID is kind of a strange thing. But for the most part, you know, it is individuals who are not healthy that are having the greatest problems. Right. And those with a stronger immune system seem to be doing better. And it's like that with other diseases. Right, right. So, once again, physical leadership, to have the energy and the ability, we manage stress better. So, that's the foundational level. Number two was mental leadership. And when I became a junior officer, and I was super arrogant, I really thought I knew everything. And I didn't challenge my beliefs. I didn't question my own capabilities. You know, do as I say, not as I do. I didn't do things to get out of my comfort zone.

• 1:04:52Jason Redman?

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

• 1:05:32Jason Redman?

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

• 1:06:14Jason Redman?

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

• 1:06:55Jason Redman?

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

• 1:07:33Jason Redman?

  And then, the last point, well, the last part of emotional leadership is managing our mouths, because Our mouth? Our mouth. Yes. Yeah, because so many people So true. So many people, and I was guilty of this, and I'm not, I'm not impervious to this. Like I said, this is my weakest area, but I'm really aware of myself now. Because when we let that zinger fly, 90% of the time, it doesn't do anything to further what we're trying to accomplish as a leader. All it does is massages our ego, you know? Well, I was angry in the moment, so I wanted to say this. I see this in relationships all the time.

• 1:08:17Jason Redman?

  Husband and wife that let these zingers fly, it does nothing to further that situation in a positive way. No. Other than maybe making you feel good to attack people who disagreed with. And that's, that's part of being a leader also. Right. That people are gonna disagree with you. So what?

• 1:08:37Jocko Willink?

  You can't be extreme in one direction or the other, right? You can't be... If you're in a leadership position, you can't talk all the time, right? Obviously, as a boss, you need to communicate, you need to talk to your people. But if you talk too much, guess what happens? People start to stop listening to you. You're putting out too much information. They don't know what's important and what's not. So that's bad. You can't go too far in that direction. The other direction is you can't not talk enough. And now no one knows what's going on, no one knows what's happening. So you have to be balanced, and that's the whole idea of the dichotomy of leadership. But probably the first dichotomy in leadership that I had to say to myself, "You know what, there's another side to this." Is I used to tell the young SEAL officers that you have to be aggressive. You've got to be default aggressive, that's how you've got to be.

• 1:09:23Jocko Willink?

  Because when something's going on, you've got to be aggressive to make that, get that problem solved. And if you're not being aggressive, then you're hesitating. Well, then you can get killed. Okay, so there you go. And that's what I used to tell guys. That's extreme, that's an extreme. Yes, that's the problem with it. And so the question is, can you be too aggressive? Yes. Absolutely. You can, "Hey, there's a machine gun nest over there, let's attack it." So you charge up the hill and everyone dies. You've been too aggressive. So what you have to do is you have to be balanced. And that's probably, so even as I had these kind of mantras, like default aggressive, can you do too much of that? Yes, you can. So you end up with this, what do you end up? Can you be too passive? Absolutely. Oh yeah, absolutely. Well, now we're not making any progress. Now we're getting crushed by the enemy because we didn't maneuver. Okay, so that's bad.

• 1:10:09Jocko Willink?

  So where do you want to be? You want to be balanced. Even the idea of extreme ownership. Can you take too much ownership? Yes. Yes, you can. Really? Yes, you can. I thought you said you need to take ownership of everything. Two different things. Listen to this. If you're working for me, and I say, "Okay, here's the mission that I want you to accomplish tonight. Here's the people I want you to take. Here's the weapons I want you to bring. Here's the vehicles I want you to bring. Here's the route I want you to use to get to the target. Here's the method I want you to use to secure the target. Here's the route I want you to do to get back." So that's the plan. Now you take ownership and go execute. Now, can you really take ownership of that plan? If someone else gave you the whole thing? I mean, I gave you the whole thing, right? Is that your plan? No. No, it's your plan. It's my plan.

• 1:10:54Jocko Willink?

  So when you go in the field, and now you come up against an obstacle and you're executing my plan, what's your attitude?

• 1:11:01Lewis Howes?

  Well, it's not my plan.

• 1:11:02Jocko Willink?

  And you're at an obstacle now and you're like, hey, Jaco didn't think of this.

• 1:11:05Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 1:11:06Jocko Willink?

  So now you just back away and you come back and you say, hey, we failed the mission because you didn't think of this.

• 1:11:11Lewis Howes?

  You didn't think of this option.

• 1:11:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, right. So that's me taking too much ownership. So what I need to do is I say, hey, here's the plan, or here's the mission. How do you want to do it? And now if you're a good leader, you'll go get with your people and you'll say, oh, hey, guys, here's the plan, or here's the mission that we have to accomplish. How do you guys want to do it? Now you all come up with a good plan. And you come back to me and you say, here's the plan. And I say, that looks pretty good. Go execute. And now when you've hit an obstacle in the field, what's your attitude?

• 1:11:39Lewis Howes?

  I need to adapt and adjust.

• 1:11:40Jocko Willink?

  It's your plan. You'll make it win.

• 1:11:42Lewis Howes?

  Came up with this, yeah.

• 1:11:43Jocko Willink?

  Yes. So can you take too much ownership? The answer is yes, you can. So with just about every, you can name a trait, right? You can name a trait from a leadership perspective that you think is a positive trait. And you'll immediately see that if you go too far with it, it'll become bad. It'll become bad. So you have to be balanced. So even as I came up with a dichotomy of leadership, I had to be humble enough to say to myself, you know what? Being aggressive is really, really good most of the time. But if you're too aggressive, that's not good.

• 1:12:12Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:12Jocko Willink?

  So like you said earlier, you're constantly questioning everything. And to me, what that is, that's humility. That's you being humble enough to say, you know what? I really don't understand this that well. And, and there's some things in my life that I don't get. Whereas as opposed to you walking around saying, I already got this figured out. I already know what I'm doing. I already know where I'm going. I already know what God is specifically. I already know what's going to happen to me when I die. All those things. But instead you're questioning everything, which in my mind is a positive thing.

• 1:12:42Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:12:53Jocko Willink?

  I know, I feel like I'm living a pretty good life right now. I mean, I'm totally blessed. I mean, I got a great family. I got great kids. I got a great company. I got, working with great people.

• 1:13:03Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:04Jocko Willink?

  No, healthy, you know, I get to work out, train. I'm feeling good.

• 1:13:11Lewis Howes?

  Living the dream, man.

• 1:13:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, living the dream.

• 1:13:13Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:13:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, there's a difference between something missing and am I satisfied?

• 1:13:23Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:23Jocko Willink?

  Right? Cause I'm not satisfied. I mean, I always wanna go, like, I never, I never get done with the end of the day and go, "Cool, mission accomplished." Like, it's like, gotta be close, yeah.

• 1:13:33Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:13:37Jocko Willink?

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

• 1:13:40Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:13:45Jocko Willink?

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

• 1:13:55Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:56Jocko Willink?

  You know, and I, and I train jiu-jitsu and that, that's very fun. And surf, that's fun.

• 1:14:03Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:03Jocko Willink?

  Play guitar, that's fun.

• 1:14:04Lewis Howes?

  How old are your kids again?

• 1:14:05Jocko Willink?

  Eight, twenty, eighteen, sixteen, and ten.

• 1:14:10Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:14:16Jocko Willink?

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

• 1:14:19Lewis Howes?

  You can't train them to be.

• 1:14:21Jocko Willink?

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

• 1:14:38Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:14:39Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:14:40Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:14:42Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:14:43Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:14:45Jocko Willink?

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

• 1:15:30Jocko Willink?

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

• 1:16:16Jocko Willink?

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

• 1:17:01Jocko Willink?

  And let me hear, let me give you some objections that you might hear from them. And all of a sudden, I'll let you come up with the solutions. Even though I'm sitting there going, yeah, what he needs to say is this. No, I'll let you come up with a solution. So then you're kind of going in there like you got this dialed. And then you're gonna feel like you won, which you did. That's great. Which is great. Gives you more ownership, more respect in yourself, confidence, belief.

• 1:17:22Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:17:30Jocko Willink?

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

• 1:17:44Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:44Jocko Willink?

  So, feedback is is built upon being humble.

• 1:17:48Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:17:59Jocko Willink?

  I mean, the weird thing about me is, even though you might think, look at me and think, oh, who's gonna tell this guy anything, right? The reality is, if anyone of my friends, my team, anyone that works for me up and down the chain of command, if they think I'm wrong, everyone will say, hey, I don't know if that's a good plan. So, even, you know, when I was a task unit commander, and so I'm in charge, and I'm the head seal for this 40 seals, I'm the main guy.

• 1:18:26Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:26Jocko Willink?

  Anyone in that chain of command, those guys would all come to me and say, hey, I don't know if this is a good way to do it. And you know what I'd say? Why not? What do you think? What are you thinking? How do you think we should do it? My mind is open. If my plan is bad, please tell me, they would know that. So, my, my, my friends, my family, they'll tell me when I'm doing something wrong all day long.

• 1:18:47Lewis Howes?

  They're not intimidated or scared of you?

• 1:18:49Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 1:18:50Lewis Howes?

  That's good.

• 1:18:50Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 1:18:51Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:18:58Jocko Willink?

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

• 1:19:40Jocko Willink?

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

• 1:19:51Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:20:08Jocko Willink?

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

• 1:20:53Jocko Willink?

  And in the 39th minute, I say, hey, here's what I think we should do.

• 1:20:59Jocko Willink?

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

• 1:21:20Jocko Willink?

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

• 1:22:04Jocko Willink?

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

• 1:22:47Jocko Willink?

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

• 1:23:30Jocko Willink?

  Right? I don't get it. And so now it's me and the supply department against you. No one understands. No one understands. So I do a little technique. What is that? I call, I call it reflect and diminish. So I'm going to reflect your emotions back to you, but I'm going to diminish them a little bit so that we're not escalating the situation. How would you do this with your wife? So if you, well, if you come to me and you go, the supply department's been late. They're two weeks late on this stuff. I don't say calm down. I say, I say, oh, you gotta be kidding me. Two weeks? And you go, yeah, can you believe it? Ah, that's horrible. We gotta put a solution. We gotta get that figured out. In the meantime, what do we need to do right now to get the problem solved? Right? So we already, now we're on the same team so we can work together to find a solution. We bonded on the pain. Yes.

• 1:24:15Jocko Willink?

  You felt the pain. Yes. We're on the same team. Okay, my wife, what's going to make my wife mad? The ice machine's not working. Right? The ice machine's not working. It's your fault. Whether it's my fault, but we don't know. The ice machine's not working. By the way, this is a real story. This is happening today. The ice machine's not working. And she didn't get mad about it, but the ice machine's not working. If I go, hey. Chill out. You have a refrigerator and a house and you know. Just calm down, right? How's that gonna go? It's not gonna go good. Now she's gonna get mad. Now it's me against her. You know, so instead, the ice machine's not working. Ah, man, that thing is junk. Have you called the, the repair guy? You know what I mean?

• 1:24:58Jocko Willink?

  And then all of a sudden, we're on the same team and she's like, well, no, I haven't, but I'm about to. Okay, cool. Or as opposed to the ice machine's not working. Well, okay, do you want me to have ice shipped in from Alaska there, princess? Right? That's not gonna go over well.

• 1:25:11Lewis Howes?

  I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately, that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter.

• 1:25:55Lewis Howes?

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