Navy SEAL’s Guide to Mastering Uncertainty with Rich Diviney

What If You Could Train Your Brain to Thrive in Chaos? Let’s face it—life doesn’t always go according to plan. And if you’re like most people, uncertainty can feel like quicksand. That’s why I brought Rich Diviney back on the show. He’s a former Navy SEAL, a brilliant thinker, and one of the most practical minds I’ve ever met when it comes to performance under pressure. In this conversation, we don’t just talk about facing fear—we talk about how to operate at your best when everything around you is unclear. Rich breaks down what he calls the Uncertainty Method, a six-part framework designed to help you stay calm, focused, and effective when the stakes are high. We get into how your brain actually responds to stress, how to manage your energy like a pro, and why picking the right "horizon"—your next small target—is the difference between quitting and making it through. This isn’t theory. It’s real-life application that I’ve used in my own life, and I promise you, it works. There’s a moment where Rich explains the power of asking better questions—how a single shift in language can literally change your brain’s chemistry. Instead of asking, “Why does this always happen to me?” what if you asked, “What can I do right now to move forward?” These aren’t just mindset tricks. These are tactical tools that can help you lead better, parent better, and live with more clarity in uncertain times. And I loved how we ended the show—talking about identity, leadership, and why the best teams don’t follow one leader… they shift leadership based on who’s best equipped to lead in the moment. That’s how you build trust. That’s how you build results. Key Takeaways: The difference between peak and optimal performance—and why optimal wins over time A 6-part method to stay grounded and productive in uncertain, high-stress environments How to use breathing and language to rewire your nervous system on demand Why chunking your goals into manageable “horizons” helps you avoid overwhelm The four elements that create trust on any team: competence, consistency, character, and compassion This episode is loaded with wisdom you can use the moment you stop listening. Rich doesn’t just talk about resilience—he lives it. And after this conversation, you’ll be able to say the same. Max out. 👉 SUBSCRIBE TO ED'S YOUTUBE CHANNEL NOW 👈 → → → CONNECT WITH ED MYLETT ON SOCIAL MEDIA: ← ← ← ➡️ INSTAGRAM ➡️FACEBOOK ➡️ LINKEDIN ➡️ X / TWITTER ➡️ WEBSITE Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Ed Mylett?

  So hey guys, listen, we're all trying to get more productive. And the question is, how do you find a way to get an edge? I'm a big believer that if you're getting mentoring or you're in an environment that causes growth, a growth-based environment, that you're much more likely to grow and you're going to grow faster. And that's why I love Growth Day. Growth Day is an app that my friend Brendan Burchard has created that I'm a big fan of. Write this down, growthday.com/ed. So if you want to be more productive, by the way, he's asked me, I post videos in there every single Monday that gets your day off to the right start. He's got about $5,000, $10,000 worth of courses that are in there that come with the app. Also, some of the top influencers in the world are all posting content in there on a regular basis, like having the Avengers of personal development and business in one app. And I'm honored that he asked me to be a part of it as well and contribute on a weekly basis, and I do.

• 0:45Ed Mylett?

  So go over there and get signed up. You're going to get a free, tuition-free voucher to go to an event with Brendan and myself and a bunch of other influencers as well. So you get a free event out of it also. So go to growthday.com/ed. That's growthday.com/ed. I hear so many small business owners say the exact same thing. They just never have enough time in the day. Well, I measure time differently. I've compressed, condensed, heck, I've bent time. My first day is 6:00 AM to noon. My second day starts at noon and goes till 6:00 PM. And my third day, 6:00 PM to midnight. I now get 21 days a week. Stack that up over a month, over a year, over five years, and my life's completely different than it would have been otherwise. And if you want to win as an entrepreneur, you have to compress your time too.

• 1:30Ed Mylett?

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• 2:04Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Good times mean competitions between you and your friends. Like seeing who can throw some pigskin the farthest or rush the field the fastest. Winner gets an ultra because it's not just a superior light beer. It's also giving fans superior access to their favorite sporting events. Superior is worth playing for. Visit michelobultra.com/superioraccess to enter. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026 Anheuser Busch InBev Michelob Ultra Beer, St. Louis, Missouri.

• 2:38Speaker 02

  This is the Ed Meyer Show.

• 2:43Ed Mylett?

  Welcome back to the show, everybody. So to get on this show twice, I have to really be impressed with how you do. To get on the show three times means you're a Hall of Famer all time on the show. And slash, I really, really like you. And in this case, um, all of the above fits the gentleman that's on the show today. He's got a new book out. It's called Masters of Uncertainty. He's highly qualified to write it. Um, I consider him a friend. I like him very much. His background is, I'm supposed to say that he led an elite SEAL team.

• 3:19Rich Diviney?

  SEAL Team Six.

• 3:21Ed Mylett?

  Um, when he was in his former lifetime. He's one of the great leaders of all time. I think he's one of the brightest minds that I've ever had on the show before. And we're going to talk about today, a topic that is perfect for these times, which is really dealing with and thriving in uncertainty. And that's why he wrote the book Masters of Uncertainty, which I've written a blurb in, in the front of the book on his behalf, because I believe in him in the book so much. Rich Devini, welcome back. Third time's a charm.

• 3:49Rich Diviney?

  Ed, thank you so much. It's great to see you, my friend. Uh, and I'm, I'm honored to be back and honored to be, uh, be, be a friend. So thank you.

• 3:57Ed Mylett?

  Likewise, brother. You start the book, um, I don't usually even do interviews like this. By the way, you can read this book in a day if you choose to, everybody, but it's beefy enough and has enough information that it's worthy of your time as well. But he starts the book with a story that not everybody in the world would be capable of telling, but he can. So you start the book with the bin Laden raid where the book literally opens up. Why'd you do that? I guess it's illustrative of an uncertain moment, but let's talk about that raid and then the lessons from it.

• 4:24Rich Diviney?

  Yeah, it's well, it's both illustrated in as an uncertain moment, but it's also when it comes to Spec Ops missions, it's kind of the most well-known mission. So it's it's widely known, it's widely talked about. It was something I could talk about, which people kind of know the they know what happened and they know the outcome. And and it's really more of a reminder to say, hey, this was a mission that was even though it was quick in terms of time that the that the unit was tasked till time of operation. There was tremendous amount of spent time spent on rehearsals, planning. This is what we're going to do. This is the angles. These are everything's going to happen. This is what's going to happen. And as soon as they hit the target, things went out the window. Helicopter crashed and they had to now improvise.

• 5:07Rich Diviney?

  And I think it's just a testament to the fact that SEALs or Spec Ops folks, we just live in this world of uncertainty, challenge and stress. And we are, in fact, our our mantra, our our superpower is the fact that we can actually thrive in uncertainty, challenge and stress. And so that's why I felt like the the mission was a good one to open with.

• 5:27Ed Mylett?

  It's really good. There's all these terms in the book and some of them reminded me of previous conversations. So what I want to do today is kind of layer a few things conceptually because it kind of gets to the root of your work. And even something I remember way back when on one of the shows we did, I was talking about peak performance. And you, yeah, that's good. I'm using my phraseology, but what we really are looking for is optimal performance. And so before you start to answer these things, you guys, your job when you're hearing an interview, because not all of you are leading elite military teams, but you are leading a life and a family and a business. And more than ever, times are uncertain. And your ability to have some of these concepts at your disposal could literally make or break

• 6:11Ed Mylett?

  your business, your family or your life. So what's the difference between peak performance and optimal performance? Because that's that's a good place to at least lay the first foundation.

• 6:19Rich Diviney?

  I think it's a terrific place. And then the idea is that peak and I was I was I was pressed with this question, even when I was in the teams doing work like this and and and peak. And people used to say you Navy SEALs are the ultimate peak performers. And I used to disagree with that statement. And the reason is because peak. By definition is an apex and there's only one place you can go from an apex and that's down. The other thing about peak performance is that often it has to be planned for, scheduled and prepared for. The professional football player plans and schedules his entire week so that he can peak for three hours on Sunday. Well, Navy SEALs don't get to do that. We don't get to do that as regular human beings. We have to, we have to perform with what we've got. And so I used to say we are optimal performers. Optimal performance means I'm going to do the very best in a moment, whatever the best looks like in that moment.

• 7:04Rich Diviney?

  So sometimes our best moment looks like peak and it's flow states and everything's clicking, everything's grooving and cool. Sometimes our best in the moment, however, is I am just head down slogging it out because that's all I have right now. And it's dirty and it's gritty and it's ugly and it's hard and that is still performing optimally. And so optimal performance allows us two very important things. First of all, it allows us to celebrate those times when we are not at peak, when we are slogging it out and it's gritty and it's dirty and it's ugly. And it's hard. I can't tell you, Ed, how many missions we went on and we get back from the mission and we're like, man, that was ugly. But we still got the job done, right? The other thing optimal performance allows us to do is what I call responsible energy management. In other words, I don't need to be peak when I'm driving to the grocery store. I can be at some other energy level.

• 7:46Rich Diviney?

  And a myth I'll bust about Navy SEALs, because people might have seen it in TV and movies is you might see a group of SEALs getting ready to go on a mission. And right before they do, they huddle up like a, like a sports team and they're hoo-yah-ing and high-fiving like they're getting ready to take the field. I'm telling you that never happens. Okay, never. In fact, a lot of times we'd be in helicopters flying into combat and the guys around me would be napping. They'd be asleep and there's a reason for that. We don't know what's coming. We don't know how long we're going to be out there. We don't know what's going to be required of us energetically. We don't want to waste an ounce of our energy doing things we don't need to do. So optimal performance can be thought of as this umbrella underneath which peak lives and gutting out lives and even recovery lives. And we're constantly modulating ourselves inside of that umbrella so that we're optimizing what we need in the moment.

• 8:32Ed Mylett?

  You know, guys, when you listen to people that come from a background like Rich's, you'd think that there'll be some things today that'll just sound like kind of written leadership principles, you know? That's not Rich's work. We're actually going to get into breathing. Your neurochemistry today, like this is not the guy you picture. Trust me. I've always wanted to ask you this, but I'll frame it under something that's in the book. And I didn't, I wanted to ask you the first time I interviewed you, I didn't get a chance. So first off, the question is going to fall under the predictability paradigm part of the book. Okay. But I want to ask it to you a little bit differently, then you just figure your way through it. I always wanted to ask you. The transition out of your former life in the military to a civilian life.

• 9:17Ed Mylett?

  You, you are seemingly. A normal person, like what you just said. So in the SEALs, when we have a mission and then my mind flashes, you know what I just thought of when you said that? The things this man has seen and experienced in his life. Compared to all of us listening is so different and for you to say that like. A mission, but then I know enough from knowing you and some of the other guys to know a little bit of. You have literally had a seat in life.

• 9:47Ed Mylett?

  That is, it's unbelievable, the things you've seen and done. So transitioning out of that life to now you're living in an apartment or a house and you're going to the grocery store every day. I want, can you talk about that transition and also? What the predictability paradigm is because I have to imagine even in that transition. You had some idea of what you thought it would be like and it couldn't, it must have been a little bit different anyway.

• 10:12Rich Diviney?

  It's always different and I think transition for anybody is going to be difficult. I think there's a distinct reason why. So I will say, I will say this, first of all, I think I'm very fortunate. I was able to transition fairly smoothly. And I think there are a couple of reasons for that. I think one of the reasons is because I was ready to. I mean, I, it was 21 years in the Navy. I had deployed my ass off. I had been away from my family for a long time. I had no real interest in going up in the ranks and continuing to be away. And so I was ready. I had, I had accomplished all of the goals. In the teams that I'd set out to accomplish. And I think that's a, that's a big piece. I think guys who made it out prior to be able to say that may have some, some issues. I think one of the big factors though, on, on healthy transition is.

• 10:56Rich Diviney?

  It actually gets into one of the chapters of the book, and that is identity. Identities and the identities that we collect for ourselves through a lifetime can be very powerful. And so, so one of the concepts is this idea of understanding identities and that as human beings, we actually, as we go through life, collect different identities. It could be, they could be, you know, really small to very serious. I went to this high school. I was a lacrosse player. I'm an 80's SEAL. I'm a husband, father. I'm a Metallica fan. Whatever those identities we collect, they come with them, some rules and biases that that drive our behavior because we have to behave in a certain way to to be part of that identity. All this to say is that we will tend to prioritize or behave towards those identities we prioritize, those most powerful identities.

• 11:42Rich Diviney?

  Yep. My two identities, my two most powerful identities were, as you can imagine, Navy SEAL, yes, but also husband, father. Now, for me, I always prioritized husband and father above Navy SEAL. However, often that's, a lot of times the Navy would be like, nope, you gotta prioritize Navy SEAL. Of course, when I go deploy overseas, Navy SEAL becomes a predominant identity. But there were times even in a SEAL mission where something would happen and to address that specific situation appropriately, you'd shift to your father-husband identity, right? Maybe there's some civilians you have to take care of. So you'd shift. All this to say is when I got out and when anybody gets out from a profession such as this, there is an enormous dearth

• 12:25Rich Diviney?

  in that loss of identity. And, and it's, and the SEALs, it's a little bit different. I think the Marines, the Marines are, you hear the Marines, once a Marine, always a Marine. And that's very true. I mean, you've, you can meet 90-year-old guys and they're, they still want to be called gunnery sergeant, right? And that's a beautiful way that they've managed that, the Marine Corps. The SEAL teams are different. The SEAL team mantra when you're in the teams is earn your trident every day. And it, soon as you, soon as you get out, you're not earning your trident every day. So, so you're not a Navy SEAL. All of us are former Navy SEALs and all of my buddies and some of whom you know and are close to will agree, don't call me an 80's SEAL. I am a former Navy SEAL. But I will say, I was able to, with, with the ability to put that identity, or the, I guess, the necessity of putting that identity on the shelf, I fell back on my most powerful

• 13:10Rich Diviney?

  identity, husband, father. And from that base, I was able to ask myself, okay, what's a new identity I want to build? And I set about building a new identity, author, entrepreneur, you know, businessman, whatever that is, all those things I'm working on. But I think the, I think the healthiness and transition is really very intimately tied to those identities you carry and those identities you prioritize. And I think the, some of the folks that I see who are having issues, they lose that very powerful identity and they don't have anything to fall back on. And so, so I think it's important for people who are in that situation to A, remember some of the identities they already have, because we all have a lot of them. But B, make a very conscious, deliberate decision to build a new identity. And this is something,

• 13:55Rich Diviney?

  it's going to take work, effort, but it's a, it's a, it's a mountain that someone has to climb. And most folks who are coming out of the military are used to climbing tough mountains.

• 14:02Ed Mylett?

  There's so much meat on the bone in the book, you guys, that he and I can go detailed here, and we're going to give you a 10% of the book, just so you know. So did you use the, because this is what, I sent this part of the book to my son, who just called when we were starting. But, because he's starting something new. He's a golfer, and very different than a bin Laden raid, but every time you tee off in a golf tournament, there's a ton of uncertainty, right? You don't know where that first shot's going to go. You don't know what the wind's going to start blowing. You don't know what the other guys are going to shoot. You don't know how much sand is in a sand trap when you're laying in there, if you got to lie. And so, in the book, you, you unveil the uncertainty method. So I sent it to him. And there's six steps to this method. Did you use any of that in your transition? And can you share with them what that is? Because I think this right here, if they just

• 14:47Ed Mylett?

  get this out of the interview, they walk away completely different than they started.

• 14:50Rich Diviney?

  Yeah. Well, so, so the answer is absolutely. I think I absolutely used these, these techniques in everything I do, because it just was hyper-developed in my, in my career as a SEAL. So let's just go through. I mean, the, the, the six things one has to understand about oneself to master uncertainty, or even just if you can do practice it, are first, the physiology around uncertainty itself. In other words, what are those things we need to do neurologically and physiologically to step through uncertainty? How does our brain operate and, and define uncertainty? And we'll get, I know we're going to get into that. I just want to get through the six steps. The, the second one is, how do we manage our

• 15:28Rich Diviney?

  Chunks as we're moving through uncertain environments and manage our dopamine, because that's a huge, powerful neural modular that's affecting our ability to perform. Third one is to keep doing it, right? So how do we, in other words, how do we, well, maybe I'm getting a mix up. So the first one is neurology. Second one is managing our autonomic response through breath work. Third one is managing our dopamine. Okay. Fourth one is, so the next three are understanding things about ourselves. So what do we have to know about ourselves so that we can effectively know how we're going to operate when the shit hits the fan? Okay. First one is attributes and we've, you and I have gone, talked about attributes.

• 16:11Rich Diviney?

  It was the first book, but if we don't understand our, but our attributes define our performance at our most cross. We have to understand that. Second one is our identities, which I just kind of described. What identities are key to the situation? And then the third one are the objectives. What are the objectives that we hold true that we're moving towards? Because that will affect our performance. So these six factors are in fact what we have to understand about ourselves to master this. Now, getting into the neurology, I think, I think let's get into the most important part because I think for people to understand how to apply this, let's talk about this. First of all, I will say that, you know, to compare golf, golfing in a bin Laden raid is actually not that much of a stretch. And I'll tell you why.

• 16:51Rich Diviney?

  It's because human beings, we all experience fear and uncertainty differently. And specifically when our autonomic arousal, those things that allow our autonomic arousal to go up are subjective to the human being. You could have a group of Navy SEALs in a gunfight with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and they can, in that moment, literally be feeling less fear and uncertainty than the eight year old you just asked to step in front of the classroom and introduce themselves. So what we have to understand is this is all human stuff. It's not Navy SEAL stuff. It's not, so, so we never, I never judge anybody's uncertainty level. So if someone is starting a golf tournament, they are actually having to manage a level of uncertainty and fear and physiological response.

• 17:35Rich Diviney?

  That is, it could be quite, quite large and even more than I may have to manage jumping out of an airplane at 22,000 feet. So there's no judgment there. Well, we also have to understand is is what our brains are in fact doing when we enter into uncertainty. Okay, so so we're when we're when we start getting into an environment, our brains are automatically trying to figure out three factors of our environment. Those three factors are duration, how long is this thing gonna last? Pathway, what's our route in, out, or through? And then outcome, what's happening at the end? Okay, if we are in absence of one or more of those, we begin to feel uncertainty and stress. Okay, so just you and I go, I'll give a very simple example that everybody can understand. Okay, imagine I you or me, we get strep throat.

• 18:19Rich Diviney?

  Okay, strep throat is a is a known disease, right? There's a known antibiotic that you can take for it. So so we get strep throat, we're gonna get an antibiotic and we know we know people don't really die from strep throat. Right, so we are in absence of only duration. Okay, so we know the outcome, we know that you know the outcome, we know the pathway, just don't know duration. Mild uncertainty, mild stress. Imagine we get the flu. Okay, the flu is now something that's a virus. There's no real known cure for the flu. There's not, you can't take an antibiotic, right? So so now we're in absence of how long it's gonna last, duration. And we're absence of our pathway. We have some, you know, maybe I'll put a hot compress or whatever, but we don't know how long, we don't know what the route is.

• 18:59Rich Diviney?

  But we know the outcome, because unless you're, you know, elderly or have other symptoms, you're probably not gonna die from the flu, and at least not in today's environment. So we're absence of two, mild to moderate uncertainty. Now imagine we all get hit with a pandemic. Okay, and it's a virus that no one's seen before. There's no cure for it that's known, and there are people dying from it. Okay, and we don't know if we're gonna, we don't know what's happened to us. Okay, this might sound very familiar to all of us, i.e. to plenty of you. Okay, now we're in absence of all three, duration, pathway, outcome. Now we're in deep uncertainty, challenge and stress. And so so the technique becomes when we want to start to operate and move through uncertainty, challenge and stress. Can we create our own duration, pathway, outcome? And this is a concept of moving horizons.

• 19:44Ed Mylett?

  Well, here we go. And to you guys, this is why I want, this is why I want him on. Rich told me about this work he was doing the last time we talked. He said, I'm really excited about some stuff I'm doing right now. It's sort of some of my SEAL stuff with, with brand new technology as it comes to the brain, breathing, et cetera. So let's talk a little bit about that, just like, just take a continuation of where you just finished off. What, what does one do from there?

• 20:11Rich Diviney?

  Yes. So, uh, and by the way, this is so, so, and we're both, our, our mutual friend, Andrew Huberman, we, he and I, we first got together, what? Seven or eight years ago, and he was kind enough to write the foreword. We started figuring this out. He was studying Fjordnus Lab at Stanford. He wanted to understand what SEALs actually do in the field. And so what we deconstructed was, well, what happens is we actually start doing this process called moving horizons. Okay. And what that is, is essentially creating your own duration pathway outcome, or DPO. Here's a quick example, we can, and you and I can go through multiple, but here's a quick one. In SEAL training, BUDs, Basic Underwater Demolition SEAL Training, six months long, 90% attrition rate. Okay. You spend hundreds of hours running around with big, heavy boats on your head. You do this all the time, especially during Hell Week. I remember it was during Hell Week, it was, I don't know, some god awful time in the morning, two in the morning or whatever.

• 20:56Rich Diviney?

  We're on the beach, running with this damn boat on our head, and we've been doing it for hours. We don't know how long we're to be doing it. It's insane. I'm miserable. I remember at that moment saying to myself, and we're, by the way, we're on the beach, we're next to the sand berm. Okay. And I remember saying to myself, you know what? I'm just going to focus on getting to the end of the sand berm. And what I didn't realize I did unconsciously was I created, I, I picked a horizon in, in, and in essence, created my own DPO. Duration, from now until end of sand berm. Pathway, from here to end of sand berm. Outcome, end of stand berm. Okay. Soon as I did that, I created a DPO, I created a certainty in my environment, something to, to, to move towards. As soon as I hit the end of that sand berm, I in fact, received a doping reward.

• 21:39Rich Diviney?

  Cause I just accomplished something, which allowed me to come back out and pick a new horizon. Right? And so really all this is, all the, the trick, the secret, and this is a secret to making it through SEAL training, by the way, is to constantly pick horizons and move through stress and uncertainty. Couple caveat, couple caveats we have to understand is that these horizons are very subjective to both the individual and the intensity of the environment. In other words, the more intense the environment, the shorter that horizon is likely going to be. I remember being freezing, freezing in the surf zone, just, you know, surf torque or waves just hitting you, just freezing. And I remember saying to myself, I'm just gonna count five waves. That was my horizon in the moment. Okay. By picking the appropriate horizon, we

• 22:21Rich Diviney?

  get into this other concept of managing our dopamine reward system. In other words, if we pick a horizon that's too short, we're not gonna feel the reward from it. We're not gonna get the reward. If we pick a horizon that's too long, we're gonna run out of dopamine before we ever get there and we're gonna quit. This is why we have to actually pick the right horizons and it's very subjective. But what this is, Ed, is this is a neurological equivalent to eating the elephant one bite at a time. And that's where.

• 22:48Ed Mylett?

  Okay, guys, we're now talking about some of the most powerful stuff we've talked about on this show in a very long time. I start taking theories when people feed them to me on the show, or I've read them in my book, and I put them through my life experience meter, my BS meter, my whatever meter you wanna call it. And you all know that one of the most important decisions that ever happened in my life was my father's decision to get sober. And what he did in that program he was in was he changed the horizon. Rich, I'll never forget when my dad got sober, I said, Dad, are you never gonna drink again? My dad said, I can't promise you that. He changed the horizon. And he said, I'm not gonna drink for one more day at a time. And what that happened is he shrunk the horizon

• 23:32Ed Mylett?

  of time like that Bermuda in front of. And my father's life, he was able to get that hit at every single day, because it was the appropriate horizon, it was something he could manage, and he sustained it for 35 years of his life, eating that elephant of sobriety, one day at a time, one horizon at a time. Hard question, I guess, maybe there's an unknown answer to it. How does one know what the appropriate horizon is relative to the task at hand or the stress at hand? Is there any way of calibrating?

• 24:03Rich Diviney?

  It's a well, it's it certainly is an experimental game. However, I think if if someone's if someone's with it and under this is why I love trying to articulate this stuff. Because as soon as you articulate it, people could start thinking about it as they do it. And so I think a couple of things are going to happen. Either one, you pick a horizon that's too short. You get there, it's like, oh, I actually that was too short. You know it right away because you don't feel the reward. If however, you've accidentally picked something that's too long, then in those moments, if you start to feel yourself burning out, because that's what it's going to feel like, feel yourself kind of wavering, take a shorter horizon, immediately adjust your horizon. Okay, and and and you can start to experiment that way. Because I think it's it's one of those things that you can really play with.

• 24:44Rich Diviney?

  Because what you're doing, oh, by the way, this this this lends itself to the to the was the second concept of the three, at least in the six. Okay, and that is managing our own autonomic arousal. And what we're talking about here is when we get autonomic aroused, i.e. and then the fear, the amygdala starts to get tickled and the fear response starts to enter into our system. What happens slowly is our frontal lobe, our conscious decision making part of our brain begins to start to take a backseat. And our limbic brain starts to come to the forefront. In the most extreme cases, this is autonomic overload or amygdala hijack. And in those cases, what's happened is our frontal lobe, our decision conscious decision making part of our brain has moved all the way back and we are now limbic focused and we are acting without thinking.

• 25:29Rich Diviney?

  Okay, now, this comes in very handy for things like jumping out of the way of a moving train or, you know, pulling pulling your hand off a hot stove or something like, or running from the bear. But it doesn't come in handy for 99% of the other things that happen where we actually want to be able to make conscious decisions and thought processes as we go through it. So at the minimum, what picking horizons does, what this process does is it immediately puts your frontal lobe back in in charge. It gives you control of the environment and you're stemming this this this tendency or this process of the limbic brain trying to take over by consciously thinking through the environment. And people, once people start to actually engage their conscious thought and do this, they find a new sense

• 26:13Rich Diviney?

  Superpower in terms of their ability to manage what's going on. And I'm glad you brought up your dad because what the here's the great news. Ed is that every single one of us human beings has done this. We all do this. The idea is start to think about when you've done it. Start to put it together and now start to do it more deliberately. Because if we start to do it deliberately, that means we can practice it. You start practicing it and you do it enough. You start doing it without thinking, and this is where the Navy SEALs are. We do this stuff without thinking, and that's where you want to get. And the coolest thing about this, and the reason why I'm excited to get this out is because if one can practice and start doing this without thinking, guess what happens? You start deliberately stepping into uncertainty, and that's where growth lies. You start to grow as a human being, you start to say, I'm going to pick the next new

• 26:59Rich Diviney?

  challenge and I'm going to go for it. Because you know exactly what you need to do. And so it's an encouragement for people to just start growing as human beings. Doing the incredible, doing the the the going for their dreams that seem un surmountable. You can surmount anything, just chunk it and choose your horizons.

• 27:16Ed Mylett?

  Chunking, it's huge. You know, I it's always embarrassing when you have someone of richest caliber on the show and you do anything to compare or equate yourself. I always just feel embarrassed. I'm serious. And so to compare getting through BUDs or some raid somewhere in the middle of Afghanistan with a speech day of mine is rather hilarious, right? Having said that, though, I just want to give everybody applications of these things. When I have days where I speak, I'm doing about everything I can during that day. Especially if it's, you know, 15, 20,000 people, I'm just thinking through to to arrive at my optimal state when I hit that stage. And so I'm doing things energetically to concern myself. People probably think, do you do a lot of preparation those days? I actually don't. I don't look at my notes a lot.

• 28:01Ed Mylett?

  I don't look at too much stuff. Because I feel like it's almost depleting me cognitively to some extent. You described how that's happening. But I like to arrive to that moment.

• 28:13Ed Mylett?

  With every, all my faculties at their best in that moment. So I will create structures and move horizons around, so to speak, for that moment. Today, for example, not feeling well, I've got walking pneumonia, three podcasts. When I woke up this morning to look at a day of that is different to me. I just got ready for the first one. And then I, and then when it was done, I got that dopamine hit that you relate to. And I'm like, I'm actually ready for the next, and I recovered in between. So I just want to share the application because not all of us are doing the save the world things that Rich has done in his life.

• 28:46Rich Diviney?

  Let me add, first of all, I did the same thing when I started public speaking. I did not like public speaking and I had to do the very same. Every lesson that I learned in the battlefield and the SEAL teams, I used to public speak. So this is, this is same thing, you know? The other thing I want to make sure that people understand, because you brought it up, and I think it's important, is that Navy SEALs and those who are masters of a synergy, we never worry about that which we can't control because it's energetically very expensive. And so, so if I can't, if I can't control it, I'm not going to worry about it now. This does not preclude proper planning and preparation. Okay, proper planning and preparation is something you do for your talks, I do for my talks, we did for our missions. We don't achieve paralysis through analysis. In other words, we don't try to overplan. We just pick the couple of things, hey, I'm going to plan for this, plan for that.

• 29:31Rich Diviney?

  And then once we're in it, we don't worry about it until it happens. And that's very, very powerful in terms of hitting that stage with as much energy as possible, because you have, people don't understand how much energy they lose just by worrying about stuff that they can't control. And we have to understand anxiety is all about the future. Stress is about the now. Anxiety is all about the future. And you know, the future is fiction. The past is history, the future is fiction. We only have the now. And so if you want to really maximize your energy in the moment, worry about the moment, and that's it.

• 30:04Ed Mylett?

  It ruined my baseball career. I was a competitive college baseball player and beyond. And my worry over preparation, stress, fatigue, I would show up by the time the first pitch gone, absolutely exhausted physically, legs gassed, mentally gassed.

• 30:22Ed Mylett?

  And I remember telling myself, this is not going to work for me when I go into business, whatever it is I do, a big sales presentation, or a speech, or a one-on-one. And not only was it debilitating physically and mentally, and a lot of you do this more than you realize, you're not at your optimal state. But also, it, it, over time, you're robbing yourself from the dopamine that Rich is describing, and eventually you convince yourself, I don't want to do this at all anymore. And then your very, your very desire to prepare is gone because you're getting no reward for doing so. So hey, guys, I want to jump in here for a second and talk about change and growth. And you know, by the way, it's no secret how people get ahead in life, or how they grow. And also taking a look at the future. If you want to change your future,

• 31:05Ed Mylett?

  you got to change the things you're doing. If you continue to do the same things, you're probably going to produce the same results. But if you get into a new environment where you're learning new things, and you're around other people that are growth oriented, you're much more likely to do that yourself. And that's why I love Growth Day. Write this down for a second, growthday.com/ed. My friend Brendon Burchard has created the most incredible personal development and business app that I've ever seen in my life. Everything from goal-setting software to personal accountability, journaling, courses, thousands of dollars worth of courses in there as well. I create content in there on Mondays where I contribute, as do a whole bunch of other influencers, like the Avengers of influencers and business minds in there. It's the Netflix for high achievers, or people that want to be high achievers. So go check it out. My friend Brendon's made it very affordable, very easy to get involved.

• 31:50Ed Mylett?

  Go to growthday.com/ed. That's growthday.com/ed. This episode is sponsored by Ro. A lot of people assume GLP-1's cost a fortune, and that assumption keeps them from even looking into treatment. Ro helps people find a more affordable path to FDA-approved GLP-1 treatment. Ro wants to help people lose weight. That's why they have more affordable GLP-1 options, whether you're paying with insurance or cash. Ro's free insurance checker makes it easy to see if you're covered for GLP-1 injections. Just submit your insurance card and Ro handles the rest. No paperwork, no waiting on hold, no confusing phone calls. And if insurance doesn't cover treatment, there are still options. Ro offers the lowest-cost cash

• 32:32Ed Mylett?

  Pay FDA approved GLP ones such as daily pills and multi-dose pens. I use products by Ro and you should too. Go to ro.co/milet to see if you qualify. That's R O dot C O slash my let to get started on Ro. For side effects of GLP one medications, including boxed warning. Go to ro dot C O forward slash safety, ro dot C O slash safety. So when I end, when I end up buying the island, we had to do all of our outdoor decorating and I spent a fortune in the first half of the place. And I'm like, I don't want to do this anymore, but I want the best stuff. And that's where Wayfair came in. My wife wanted to get this new garden bed and Wayfair was the place that offered the perfect solution. Wayfair also helps you create a home that stands up to real life with quality products, great value and trusted reviews.

• 33:15Ed Mylett?

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• 33:57Speaker 04

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• 34:00Ed Mylett?

  So let's talk about leadership because that's what I always think of when I think of you. And in the book, in segment three of the book, guys, by the way, he talks about team dynamics and leadership and obviously dynamic subordination is this term that just stands out from the book. And then you kind of flip it on its butt a little bit in the book, which surprised me. So what is dynamic subordination and what are your thoughts about it?

• 34:25Rich Diviney?

  Yeah. So dynamic subordination is, is quite literally the tax organizational structure for high performing teams. That's what it is. And, and I was, you know, this, this came to me in a moment, I was being. Asked by some executives, in front of executives, and I had a whiteboard or flip chart next to me. They said, hey, Rich, can you draw for us the task org shape that would describe a high performing team? And I was stumped because the models I had didn't tell the story. I could have done the pyramid with the leader on top and all the word goes down. I can't use that. It's too bureaucratic, too slow. I could have done the flat model, the flat line, right? We've all heard about that, you know, no one ranks anybody. We're all in this together. It's all groovy. Problem with the flat model is that, you know, sometimes it's difficult to figure out actually who's in charge. And you can have on the right side of that line that's not seen or heard by the left side of that line.

• 35:09Rich Diviney?

  In other words, information gets siloed in a flat model pretty easily. And that's not what happens in a high performing team. Finally, I had the Robert Greenleaf servant leadership model, where he flipped that pyramid upside down, put the leader on the bottom, said, I'm in service to my, the people in my span of care. That's probably the most beautiful one, if I were to pick one, at least philosophically. However, still not how a high performing team operates because in a high performing team, burden is distributed. It's not all on one person. And so really largely in frustration, I drew a blob on the, on the flip chart. And I said, where do you think the leader sits in this blob? And I got answers like front, back, top, bottom, center. I said, you are all correct. The leader is wherever the leader needs to be in the moment. And this is what we call dynamic subordination.

• 35:50Rich Diviney?

  Dynamic subordination means that a team understands challenges and issues and problems can come from any angle at any moment. And when one does, the person who's closest to that problem, the most capable, immediately steps up and takes lead. And everybody follows and supports. And then it switches, the environment switches and someone else steps up. It's a dynamic swap between leader and follower. I also call it alpha hopping, that alpha position just hops to wherever it needs to be. This is how all high performing teams operate. And I say this, I was an officer in the SEAL Teams, okay? I did hundreds of missions. I was in charge of every single one. It did not mean I was always being supported. In fact, most of the time was the opposite. I was supporting other people, my snipers, my breachers, my assaulters. Sometimes the environment shifts and they'd be in support of me.

• 36:30Rich Diviney?

  All this tells us is that very important concept that our position on a team has nothing to do with our rank or hierarchy. Our position on a team has everything to do with what we're there to contribute to the team. And as leaders, it's our job to create that dynamically subordinating environment. So that we have the highest performing, most efficient teams possible.

• 36:50Ed Mylett?

  In order to hold that together, though, you have to have trust amongst that team.

• 36:53Rich Diviney?

  Yes.

• 36:54Ed Mylett?

  And, boy, I tell you, I'm thinking of some businesses that I'm involved with where we had leaders that... Maybe not even been as dynamic or as talented, but they had really established trust and how we just flowed together as a group. And then other teams I've been on where there just wasn't that trust established by the leader. It just never got established. And no matter how talented we were, how prepared we were. Long-term, we struggled. You talk about competence, consistency, character and compassion. Of those, what do you think lacks most and why are all four important?

• 37:31Rich Diviney?

  Yeah, so uh, so competence and consistency are often what teams, especially in in the business world, focus on, uh, because confidence and consistency, confidence is do the thing right. Consistency is do the thing right over time. Okay, those are a large part visible and measurable. Okay, skill and skills based, I would even concede. The problem is you're missing two very important ones. Character is the next one and character is a big word. I'd I'd I'd break that down and maybe say integrity. Okay, so you have do the thing right in competence, do the thing right over time in consistency, do the right thing in character. And then finally, you have compassion, do the right thing because you care about me as a human being. Okay, now.

• 38:12Rich Diviney?

  You can build an environment of trust. You could at least start building an environment of trust inside of any one of those four elements. It's only when you have all four that you have the longest lasting, most durable trust. And I'll give you a quick example. Okay, imagine you and I are out having dinner somewhere. We decide, we have some drinks, we decide we're not going to go home or we're not going to drive home, so we we call a cab. The cab shows up, we jump in the cab, the cab rolls out and within a hundred meters runs into a telephone pole. We're not injured. We get out, we find, we find our way home. No, no big deal. Okay. Couple nights later, we're out again, we're having dinner, having some drinks. We decide not not to drive home. We call a cab again. Okay, the the cab shows up, it's the same driver from the night before. Are we going to get back in the car with that driver? The answer is no or not. But rewind that whole scenario. You and I were out having dinner, having drinks.

• 38:56Rich Diviney?

  We decide we're not going to drive home. We don't call a cab. We call our mother, father, sister, spouse, brother, best friend. That person shows up, we jump in the car with that person. That person with a hundred meters runs into a telephone pole. A few days later, we need to get back in the car. With that with that person. And now the answer is likely yes. Some people are like, nope, still not getting the car. But we also, we probably will. And the reason is because with that second person, we had all four. With the first person, the cab driver, we only had the first two. We had the consistency of the cab company. We had the perceived competence of the driver. As soon as competence took a hit, trust went away. With that second person, when competence took a hit, we had something to fall back on. And so, so what we need to focus on is building all four elements through our behaviors. Okay, behavior, trust is a belief, trust is a

• 39:40Rich Diviney?

  trust is a feeling that's been rationally justified by that person. So in other words, you cannot make anybody trust you. All you can do is behave in a way that allows someone to choose to make a decision to trust you. And so all this nonsense about someone coming is like, oh, I'll, I'll trust that person when they earn it, or whatever that is. That's nonsense. We as leaders have to go first in these behaviors and build that environment.

• 40:02Ed Mylett?

  Gosh, this is so good, you guys. This every time Rich is on. So there's two things you're always doing. See how I go, guys? Like, we just keep going with him. There's two things you're always doing, even if you don't realize it. You're always breathing. And you're asking, you're actually also always thinking. And thinking is the process of asking and answering questions to yourself. That's really what a thought is. And so when we last talked, I'm like, this is gonna be good. Because now I doubt, maybe I'm wrong, I doubt when you were a SEAL, you were into, maybe, well, probably not true in the water you were, but overall, I doubt breathing techniques were the number one thing you were focusing on every single day.

• 40:40Rich Diviney?

  No, not at all.

• 40:40Ed Mylett?

  So, yeah, good. So that assumption is accurate. So talk to us about activating our optimal neurology through either questions or breathing or both, and take as long as you want on it. Because this is, guys, this is almost like pull the car over stuff right here.

• 40:57Rich Diviney?

  Yeah, yeah. So the breathing, so one of our, one of our pathways into our autonomic response, our autonomic nervous system, if you will, is the respiratory system. We have a visual and respiratory system connected directly to the vagus nerve. And we can quite literally shift our, our physiology from sympathetic, which is our action state, to parasympathetic, which is rest and digest. Just through breathing alone or through visual tools. Breathing is very interesting because breathing you can actually use to modulate your. Autonomic response up, down, or even, or even keep it neutral. So the couple, couple of ways to do that. So, so if you want to up your autonomic response, you want to get more excited, get more engaged. Okay. That's, you know, Wim Hof does this type of reading, Breath of Fire, things like that.

• 41:42Rich Diviney?

  You, you are, you are inducing some autonomic response and there, there's some techniques in the book, you can do that. That's typically not what we're talking about when we're dealing with people in stress, challenge, or uncertainty, because in stress, challenge, or uncertainty, what's usually happening is our autonomic response is starting to go up too far and we want to get it back down so we can actually make conscious thoughts and, and then ask better questions, which we'll talk about here in a second.

• 42:05Ed Mylett?

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• 42:50Ed Mylett?

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• 43:26Ed Mylett?

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• 44:05Rich Diviney?

  So a couple of ways, well, one of the ways you can do that is you can do what's called CO2 blowout breathing. Okay, in other words, you're breathing, you're blowing out carbon dioxide. Why does this matter? One of the things that people don't recognize is that when we're, say, underwater or holding our breath, okay, that that discomfort, that stress that we feel is not because of a lack of oxygen. It's actually in fact a because of a buildup of CO2. Now, people like freedivers and some seals understand this. In other words, you can push past that discomfort because you have different oxygen reserves in your system. This is what freedivers do. That's how they can hold their breath for nine minutes is they know how to push past that discomfort and start accessing the oxygen reserves in other part of their body. I do not recommend this.

• 44:47Rich Diviney?

  This is very dangerous because what happens is as soon as you push past that first warning sign, you don't get another warning sign. In other words, you'll just go out. Okay, so I don't want anybody to try this at home. All right, unless you're a freediver, you do it right. But all this to say is that buildup of CO2 is what's causing the stress. And so what we can do is we can literally begin to blow out our CO2 and begin to de-stress just through breath. One of the best ways to do this is called the physiological sigh. All it is, is a deep inhale and then up our top and then a really slow exhale for, you know, eight to 10 seconds. So deepen.

• 45:21Ed Mylett?

  So is that a breathe in and then another one?

• 45:23Rich Diviney?

  Yeah, breathe in and then a top off breathe in. So a nice fast breathing, top off. Nice, slow exhale. You do that two, three, four, five times, you will literally feel yourself calm down. You're bringing your autonomic arousal down, you're bringing your frontal lobe back online in a position where you can start moving and picking horizons, okay? The other breathing technique I talk about, and many people have heard about this, is box breathing. Okay, box breathing is in fact a technique that if you are at a perfect level of autonomic arousal, we might be like, maybe you and I, we just got on stage, you're like, look, I'm right here. I don't want to get any more nervous, but I don't want to get any less. I'm really, I'm charged, I'm right where I want. Box breathing is a great way to do this.

• 46:05Rich Diviney?

  Box breathing is simply, you're gonna breathe in for a period, so say four or five seconds, I say five seconds, you're gonna hold on top for five seconds, you're gonna exhale for five seconds, and then you're gonna hold on the bottom for five seconds. It's literally just a square box. You can pick whatever timing you want in any of those lanes, whatever's comfortable for you. But if you do box breathing, it actually keeps you at your autonomic level and allows you to actually engage at the state you're in. You breathe through the mouth, do you breathe through the mouth or the nose, or both? Usually, usually it's breathe in, breathe in through the nose, out through the mouth, but it doesn't really matter, okay? To the extent possible, in through the nose, out through the mouth, but it doesn't matter. Okay. So this is the way we can actually start to manage and manipulate our autonomic arousal.

• 46:47Rich Diviney?

  Once we do that, once we are able to do that, and our frontal lobe comes back online, and now we're in business, because now we can start asking better questions. As you and I talk about this technique of asking better questions when we first talked, and like you said, our brains are question answering machines. All we're doing all day long is just asking questions about our environment, often unconsciously. It's picking out, okay, what do I mean? What's the duration pathway outcome? Do I understand it? If you understand, if you're getting answers, you feel great. If you're not getting answers, you're confused, you might feel uncertain, alright? All this to say is if we, if we were, whenever we consciously place a question into our conscious mind, whatever that question is, our brain begins to come up with answers. A lot of times, we do this the wrong way. We say things like, why am I so bad at this? Why does this always happen to me? Why are these people out to get me?

• 47:31Rich Diviney?

  As soon as you place that question in your brain, you're gonna come up with some spectacular answers as to why you're so bad at this, or why people are out to get you. It's inevitable. To say, why am I so pissed off? You're gonna come up with some spectacular answers as to why you're pissed off. Yeah. All my performers do is they flip the script on the questions. They ask better questions, they get better answers, they say things like... What am I good at? Who's out there that can help me? You know, how can I make it through this? What can I focus on in this moment? What horizon can I pick? And you will begin to get answers to that question. This is the, um, you know, it's funny because we are, are, you know, physically, we do this all the time. We go where we pay attention to, you know? I think you and I at one point, in fact, I think when we were together at one point, when I gave a talk, we were talking about driving.

• 48:15Rich Diviney?

  I love, I think I love everything about driving. It'd be anything to drive, motorcycles, boats, cars, whatever. So I, you know, in the teams, you get to go to driving and racing schools. And I signed up for every racing school I possibly could. When you go to a racing school, they, the first thing they teach you is how to get out of a spin or how to get out of when your car starts to lose control. And the first thing they tell you is never look at the wall. Because if you look at the wall, you're going to hit the wall, you know? So, or can literally be facing the wall, but you have to be looking where you want to go because your body will start, you start steering towards that. So all we're doing neurologically with, with asking better questions is we're neurologically steering our focus. And once you steer your focus, man, you're in business so you can do really anything.

• 48:55Ed Mylett?

  So good. But guys, one thing I love about Rich is that I think he humanizes elite performance. And obviously he has an unusually high IQ. He would not admit that himself, but he does. And his temperament is really, really special. Um, but you're behind the scenes now. If you've ever wondered how these special operator guys think and work and navigate through their lives, they have similar fears or anxieties, just like you do. Maybe they're not similar, but they have them. And I'm just curious, as an aside, just as a aside, I'm, you and I are both sort of doing a lot of work in our lives on this parasympathetic sympathetic state stuff, right? It's, it's kind of like the new frontier in performance and happiness and longevity

• 49:40Ed Mylett?

  and heart rate variability and all this stuff that you and I are learning and growing into. Do you do any other hack stuff with it? I'm curious, do you use like a pulsetto or one of those Nuvana devices? Do you, and most people don't even know what I'm describing. I'm not endorsing a device. I'm just curious, beyond breathing and questions and meditation, are you doing any, any of these hack devices? Do you believe in any of them? Use them?

• 50:01Rich Diviney?

  Experiment with some of them, the bio stuff that I'm using, I have the Oura ring, which I love because I want to monitor my sleep. I have a GPS watch that kind of shows how far I run. I have gotten very good at controlling my own levels of, I just don't get stressed out. I just know, and I think obviously I got, you know, was hyper developed again as a team guy. So, so, um, so I don't find myself needing to defer to some of these more conscious techniques. Because I just automatically, it's funny, we just, we automatically calm down. Here's a funny story, you know, I live in, I live in, I'm in Virgin Beach. I've been in the same house for 23 years, my wife and I, and we've been married the whole time, right? And, um, and across, across the street from us, a SEAL lives, a Navy SEAL lives.

• 50:45Rich Diviney?

  Down the street to the left, there's a Navy SEAL, and down the street to the right, there's a Navy SEAL. And so I, I remember Kristen saying, um, you know, I love that these guys are in the neighborhood. And I said, why? She said, because if anything, if you weren't here, anything went wrong, I know I could go to them and they'd act like you act. And I said, what do you mean by that? It's like, as soon as something happens, as soon as the shit hits the fan, all you guys do is you immediately calm down. And you start solving the problem, you take it step by step. And so, so all this to say, I don't, I've experimented with some of that stuff. I very highly recommend, there's breathing apps. I mean, the more people can practice this consciously, the more you create the unconscious competence and you do it in times without even thinking. And so, so if you're, if it's something new to you, then go make conscious effort to practice some of the stuff.

• 51:28Rich Diviney?

  Whether it be breathing, whether it be DPO-ing and shifting horizons. Because the more you do it, you'll, you'll begin to achieve an unconscious competence. And so you'll start hitting uncertainty, or uncertainty will hit you and you'll just start moving the way you need to. And of course, like you said, that the collateral of that is you'll start picking deliberate steps into your discomfort, your uncomfortable zone and start growing as a human being.

• 51:51Ed Mylett?

  You really believe your language can override your thought? In other words, in the book, you put forward this I am statement stuff.

• 51:57Rich Diviney?

  Yeah.

• 51:57Ed Mylett?

  And, um, so I wanted to ask you about that. It's the part of the book where I've struggled in my own life believing my own language.

• 52:07Rich Diviney?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 52:08Ed Mylett?

  I wanted, I wanted to ask you about this so you can help me with it. But you push in the book, push, suggest, I am statements and how that that can begin to create the identity. And maybe, by the way, I do more of that to my benefit unconsciously than I realize. You know, maybe I, maybe I, I must have, I guess, because it works. So talk about I am statements and how it correlates with identity. Cause we, we moved off identity earlier, but I want to give everybody the tool as well.

• 52:35Rich Diviney?

  Yeah, well, so at a minimum, what an am statement does is it focuses you, it focuses your attention. Anything we put, I always kind of say that the two most powerful words in the human language are I am. Because whatever you put after those two words is where you focus your behavior. I am a father, I am a Navy SEAL, I am whatever, I'm a smoker, right? I mean, we've heard about people quitting habits like this by just saying, I am not a smoker. So, so at a minimum, what an I am statement does is it focuses your attention appropriately. However, neurologically, this is also true. And you know, like Andrew Huberman will talk about this, this, this part of the brain is called the, um, the anterior mid-singulate cortex. Okay, it's a.

• 53:15Ed Mylett?

  I just saw him talking about this. Go. This is great.

• 53:18Rich Diviney?

  It's a part of the brain that, that allows human beings to do hard stuff. And if we're not doing hard stuff, it actually shrinks. If we're doing hard stuff, it actually grows. But one of the things, one of the techniques that he talks about is that you can literally be doing hard stuff and say to yourself, I love this stuff. I love this stuff and be lying to yourself. And if you do it enough, your brain will start to believe that you actually love it. So, so I am a hundred percent believer in the fact that our words and our thoughts focus our attention and can in fact change the outcome by, by, uh, by even neurologically.

• 53:53Ed Mylett?

  I believe the reverse is also true, guys. When you're doing something that didn't work out or doesn't serve you to use your language to separate yourself from it. So that it doesn't become a part of your identity, just to kick in here a little bit. So like with my golfers that I work with, I'll just share this in front of Rich and I'll ask another question. But when they putt, if you've ever played golf, usually when you miss a putt, what do you say? I suck. I can't putt, blah, blah, blah. And believe it or not, even elite professional players do this and they'll miss a putt. Shit, I suck. And they're actually reinforcing this part of their identity with their language. And so if you just simply say when you miss the putt, that's not like me. That's not like me. That's not like me. You bang a drive to the left out of bounds. That's not like me. And believe it or not, if you repetitively do this with your language,

• 54:38Ed Mylett?

  it's that powerful. I am or I am not are powerful language statements. Now, obviously, your brain is accepting the I am statement much easier if you understand how the mind works than it is an I am not statement. But when you separate from something with your language as well, and even when you have a disagreement with your spouse, that's not like me. I shouldn't talk like that. I don't talk like that. It's a, there's a separator. Let me ask you this, bro, because we're gonna run out of time and it, there's, there's way too much stuff in the book.

• 55:05Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Good times mean competitions between you and your friends, like seeing who can throw some pigskin the farthest or rush the field the fastest. Winner gets an ultra because it's not just a superior light beer. It's also giving fans superior access to their favorite sporting events. Superior is worth playing for. Visit michelobultra.com/superioraccess to enter. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026 Anheuser Busch InBev Michelob Ultra Beer, St. Louis, Missouri.

• 55:35Ed Mylett?

  What's some, what's a practical application of something we've covered here so far? Someone walks into, I mean, I think almost everyday life is uncertain for most people. What is one thing, someone listening to this right now goes, I heard everything these guys said. I got breathing stuff. I've got moving my horizons. I've got my language. I've got all these different things. What's something I didn't ask you that should be in here? And we had a great, we, we've messed the conversation up if we didn't cover it.

• 56:04Rich Diviney?

  Well, yeah, that's a great, here's what I would say is, is uncertainty by definition cannot be predicted. So, so it'd be, it'd be impossible for you or I to give examples that people could lean upon in terms of using this. The great news is you can start using in practice this stuff in fairly certain environments. We do this, by the way, when we work out. Okay. I was, I was this morning, on Mondays, I go, there's a huge hill here in Virginia Beach. And I basically put on a 40 pound weight vest and I run up the hill. I do sprints up the hill. I was deep on, I was, I was, I was picking horizons as I go up that hill, you know, because I, because it's, it really is. When you're working out, you could pick horizons. If you want to get healthy and you want to eat right, you know, don't talk about, you know what, I'm gonna start Monday, I'm gonna eat healthy for the next six months. No, no, no, no. Start Monday and eat healthy for breakfast. That's your first horizon.

• 56:49Rich Diviney?

  And then you say, you know what, my next horizon might be lunch. My next horizon might, start experimenting with some of the distances on these things and getting good at. This idea of picking horizons and creating DPOs and it becomes habitual. You'll start doing it everywhere. And so you'll begin to, at a minimum, take some of that mundane stuff and actually start to make it more palatable and in some cases more fun, just by using this technique. And the collateral effect of that is when uncertainty in fact hits, you'll start to do it. You'll say, okay, what do I know, can I control? Here's where I'm focused on. I'm going to move to that and then do that and you're moving to the next thing. So, so the, the reason why I get jazzed about articulating this, some of the stuff, even though I, you know, you know me now, I just love doing it. I love figuring the stuff I'm putting words behind it is again, once you can say it,

• 57:34Rich Diviney?

  you can practice it. And once you can practice it, you can get good at it. And once you can get good at it, you can, you can master it. And so in there, become a master of uncertainty.

• 57:43Ed Mylett?

  The, uh, I was thinking when you were talking earlier, I was, um, this year's Super Bowl. Everyone knows I'm sort of a Brady fan. We were neighbors for quite a while and, and, um, he broadcasted a Super Bowl this year, Rich, where the Chiefs were getting beat really, really bad. And there was this ongoing conversation, hey, is Mahomes the goaters? You know, which was ridiculous, of course. Sorry, Chiefs fans. But having said that, um, that game got away from the Chiefs and I thought this is such a great analogy of horizons and moving the horizons. Brady was asked afterwards, what do you think happened? Cause Brady was down 28 to three in a Super Bowl and came back and won it. And he said, I, he usually, he literally used the word horizon. He said, I think they tried to score all 20 points back on one possession. He said, and we were down 28 to three.

• 58:28Ed Mylett?

  I changed the horizon. I just wanted to get a first down. It's okay to throw a screen pass and just move the ball three yards. Now it's second and seven. Now it's a lot more manageable and to begin to chunk the game or to bite the elephant one at a time. If you look at almost anything you guys that you admire, someone who's come back or someone's overcome something, they do exactly what Rich is describing. My dad's sobriety, Brady in a Super Bowl, someone preparing for a, a big test they've gotten, seventh grade to get into eighth grade. These are the things you do that Rich has described here. So I just want to acknowledge the power of your work. Masters of Uncertainty, guys. That's the title of the book. Let me ask you outside of the book. You've had, I said earlier, I referenced, I want to just get into you here.

• 59:13Ed Mylett?

  The book is so good. He sold it to you guys today. If you didn't even read the book, your life's a thousand times better. You've you've had a view of life, though, of leadership, of people you've led, of the world in general.

• 59:28Ed Mylett?

  The very few people have had. I always love your opinion, especially when the world is chaotic and stressed and uncertain, as it is, I guess, every day. But sometimes the light shines brighter on the uncertainty than other times.

• 59:39Rich Diviney?

  Yeah.

• 59:39Ed Mylett?

  So whether you look at the economy right now with tariffs, or you look at, you know, the geopolitical environment in the US. You look at the border, you look at Gaza, and you look at Ukraine and Russia and Iran and China and the world. What is your view? Are you optimistic? Are you bullish on the world and the future? AI coming, all of this uncertainty, right? Like, I could keep going, right?

• 1:00:11Rich Diviney?

  Oh, you're right.

• 1:00:11Ed Mylett?

  AI coming. What is your overall worldview right now? And is it different than it was 10 years ago?

• 1:00:19Rich Diviney?

  Well, okay, so this is the second part of that question. I'm not sure if I know that. It likely is different. I think I think we change as we as we mature and we grow older. So I would be tough to say how it's different, but it certainly is different. Here's what I'll say, and regardless of anybody's politics, or your or mine, you and I share a lot of the same views. I am someone who, once we have someone running our country or an administration, I root for them. I want them to do great. I really, I think that's what patriotism is. Patriotism also, though, is taking a hard look and being honest with your assessment of what's going on. And I will say that I want to, I'm remaining optimistic because I think that I think that there are some initiatives and directives

• 1:01:01Rich Diviney?

  that I think are worthwhile and are meaningful.

• 1:01:07Rich Diviney?

  I want to make sure that we, as a nation, are making sure, are looking at what's going on, both in our country and with geopolitically and all that stuff, and the way we're responding, and constantly asking ourselves, are we still doing the right thing? Are we still doing the right thing? Because because the beauty of this country is we get, every two years, we get a chance to to vote our our vote our opinion or vote our conscience on this stuff. And what I what I fear. In today's society, in today's politics is the polarization to the degree that some people are like, "Hey, that's my team. And even though I believe these two issues, I'm gonna go all in on this side." And none of us should go all in on any side. As Americans, it's our responsibility to not go all in

• 1:01:53Rich Diviney?

  on just one side. It's a responsibility as Americans to look at things holistically and ask ourselves some really honest questions about how things are running. And I think if we do that, I'm optimistic about the fact that I think we will get some good stuff done, and some good stuff will be done. And if we start to see that it's overspill, or things are starting to go in a direction we don't want to, let's make a stand and let's vote a different direction. And let's find a different way to do it. If we find things are going great, let's keep doing what we're doing. But overall, Ed, I remain optimistic because I think pessimism, in my mind, is energy expensive. There's not a lot of

• 1:02:32Rich Diviney?

  value I can derive from pessimism. I can still, as an optimist, be skeptical. I don't think skepticism and pessimism are the same thing. I think skepticism is an honest look at questioning what's going on, and thinking about answers, and thinking about solutions. I think pessimism just veers towards negativity, and is less valuable. So I will remain optimistic, but I will also remain a skeptic, a healthy skeptic, and be looking at things very carefully as we move forward, staying engaged, staying positive, and also making sure I'm not getting drawn into either of the polarities. Because if you're in those polarities, man, you're, just know you're lost. You are a sheep. If you're one of those polarities,

• 1:03:16Rich Diviney?

  you're a sheep. Even though you're accusing other people of being a sheep, you are a sheep. So stay out of the polarities.

• 1:03:21Ed Mylett?

  C Y is one of my favorite people. You guys, I just get a sense of humans. And the minute that I met Rich, I liked him instantly. I mean it instantly. And every time I'm around him, it's confirmed. It's one of the things that, as life gets busy and you get older, when you initially meet somebody, you think, "I'm gonna know them and be a lot closer to them." And then eight years goes by, and you're like, "I've only seen him a couple times." You know, "I enjoy his company very much, and you can tell why."

• 1:03:47Ed Mylett?

  I just think he's a bright mind, and a good mind, and a good man. And by the way, I've only written, I've probably been asked four, 500 times, I've only written an endorsement or a blurb in, I think, eight books. Ever. And when he called and asked me to, it was just, yes, I hadn't even seen the book. I'll be honest with you at the time. It was just because he had asked me to. And so I was honored to do it. And after reading the book, I'm really glad my name's in it. I'm honored that I'm in it. And so masters of uncertainty, everybody with Rich Devini. You don't hear conversations like this every day, everybody. You get to hear them here and I'm very grateful for our friendship, brother. Thank you for being here today. Thank you. I'm grateful and honored as well. So I, I, I look forward to the, to all the future conversations. So thank you.

• 1:04:29Ed Mylett?

  10 out of 10. God bless everybody. Share today's episode. Max out.

• 1:04:35Speaker 02

  This is the Ed Marlin Show.