Rich Diviney Is a Former Navy SEAL Commander with over 20 years of active duty under his belt, including 13 overseas deployments. In this podcast, Rich shares his unique perspective on the attributes that create elite performance. He recently published a book called The Attributes: 25 Hidden Drivers Of Optimal Performance. You can find it here | https://theattributes.com/

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AUBREY: Rich, it's good to have you here, brother. 

RICH: Thank you, Aubrey. It's really awesome to be here. So thanks for having me. 

AUBREY: Yeah, for sure. So there's a lot of different ground that you cover when you're talking about mindset, but I was hoping that we could start with a story. And I wanted to start with a story of one of your experiences, and I know probably you can't tell some of the stories that you have. But within the list of stories that you can tell, tell a story where you really had to go back to certain principles, where you found yourself actively using mindset practices, not in this kind of retroactively way, but where you had to kind of tell yourself something based on some of the training that you had to help get you out of a tough situation.

RICH: The best place to start with stories is probably SEAL training. Because you go into SEAL training and you recognize quite immediately that you are going to be taken down to below zero in terms of capability. And it's interesting, a lot of people assume and think SEAL training is all about the physical and it's decidedly not, I mean you do some very physical things. But a buddy of mine, we were talking about this just the other day and we were saying, the goal is in fact to break yourself physically so you can actually use your mindset to get you to– 

AUBREY: The physical is just an access point.

RICH: It’s an access point, right. Because you can only do so many push ups. You can only run so fast. You can only hold that damn boat on your head for so long. And so I can just say, I mean, there were many times in training where I found myself going into my head and beginning to make logical connections and assumptions and asking myself some logical questions. So here's a good example, Hell Week, which is the coup de grace of SEAL training. Fifth week, you start on a Sunday afternoon and you don't finish till the following Friday around two or three is when they secure. You only get about four hours of sleep for the entire week. And they do everything to you to include, keep you cold, wet and sandy the whole time. And I think Tuesday night is known as one of the worst nights in terms of cold. There's an evolution called steel pier. It's in Coronado. So people who aren't from Southern California don't realize how cold the water is in Southern California. But you go out to this pier right there on the base and they make you line up and it's two or three in the morning and they make you jump in. And of course, you have all your camouflage on and things like that. And then you have to tread water for quite a while. And they say, “okay, everybody get out.” And they get out. And say, “Okay, now take off all your clothes down to your underwear.” All right, so you do that. And of course the wind hits you and you're really, now you're really cold. And they say, okay, you're getting back in. And what's interesting is that when they told us that, there were immediately a bunch of people who quit. And I remember literally saying to myself, like thinking, I said, wait a second, these camouflage utilities that I just took off provided me no extra warmth in that water. None. Right? So the water is not going to be any colder when I jump in my underwear than it was when I was just in there. So I'm just going to jump in. You could almost tell that the guys were quitting because they thought it was going to be even colder when they jumped back in. But I remember being able to kind of step back mentally and do that calculus. And I think that the guys who make it through training are the ones who can do that and the question is where we all got that capability. I think we could all probably rewind our stories and pick out places in our lives where we practice that grit because really that's the essence of grit. I mean the process that grit is the result of is that mental process of being able to kind of tamp down your anxiety enough that you can bring your frontal lobe back on line and ask some questions about your environment that you can basically focus on and move towards. And so I did some rewinding and I said to myself, okay, where did the ability to kind of chunk my environment come from? And when I was a kid, my dad didn't like using the heat, the central heat. So he used to, we had a fireplace, so he used to get cords of wood delivered into our driveway. And my brother and I, it was our job to move that wood up to the front of the house and stack it, but the problem was the shortest route to the front of the house was a stone staircase and you can't take a wheelbarrow of wood up a staircase. So we had to go the long way, which was all the way around the house up a hill and to the front. And so it was just wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of wood. And I remember both of us kind of when we attacked that, Pile, we never looked at the pile holistically. In fact, we made a deliberate effort not to look at the pile because if you did, it looked like the pile was never moving.

AUBREY: Eat an elephant one bite at a time.

RICH: That's right. So we just focused on one wheelbarrow at a time and just did that and just put your head down and did it, until finally you realized, oh, okay, we're almost done. And so, I think that's one of those things that helped me train my brain to be able to chunk environments, which helped in training.

AUBREY: One of the things that I talk about and I talk about a lot, I talked about it in the second chapter of my book, Own the Day, Own Your Life, and it was involving cold therapy, interestingly enough. And doing ice baths and different cold plunges and cold immersions. And I talk about the skill I call mental override. Which is this thing where you feel the resistance within you, but there's some part of you, some essence of you that's in the captain's seat, like the team captain of your mind. It's just like, okay, I hear you everybody. I hear the part of you that doesn't wanna be cold. I hear the part of you that wants to quit, I hear the part of you that wants to make an excuse. I'm the team captain and we're going. It's the team captain of your psyche and we have that ability, all the time. And I think one of the tragedies of our time is that people don't emphasize that enough. Everything is a, well, this is a disease state. It's not your fault. This is the condition. This is how you were born. All of that may be true. And I'm not denying that there are those factors that make things. Incredibly more difficult for certain people and less difficult for other people. I'm not trying to deny that abject reality because that's the truth, but there's also the reality that we all have a team captain. And that team captain can at any point say, no, I'm going to break through this ice, go in this water and do my Wim Hof breathing and sit there and I'm going to be all right and I'm going to make it through like we have that ability to harness that, but it's something that requires training. 

RICH: It does. And it's a great analogy. It makes me think, what does a captain really do? A captain helps focus a team. And so part of the way that we can step through challenge and uncertainty and stress is to actually begin to focus on small goals. This whole eats an elephant one bite at a time. That's really what you're saying is you were focusing on a bite, and–

AUBREY: Micro progression. 

RICH: Yeah, micro progression. And so I remember, running with the boats on my head during Hell Week, okay. And it felt like it was the middle of the night. We'd been doing it forever. And I was like, oh my gosh, this sucks, right. And I said to myself at that moment, I said, okay, I'm just going to focus on the end of the berm. We were on the beach, so there's a berm, a sand berm next to us. I'm going to focus on getting to the end of this berm. And that's what I focused on. And when I got to the end of the berm, I said, okay, I'm going to focus on the next end of the berm. And what I was in fact doing, I realized, was I was actually literally, mentally, choosing steps. I was chunking my environment. And so taking that, I have an ice bath at home too. And my 16 year old likes to get into it, which is awesome. He was getting into it when he was 14 and my wife tried it too. And when they first got into it, I said, okay, before you get into it, we're going to think of a goal. That we're going to focus on as we get in, because we all know if you're in an ice bath, it's really the first minute that's the worst, right? Then you start to numb out and you can stay in there for a while. 

AUBREY: Except for the hands. 

RICH: Except for the hands, yeah.

AUBREY: Hands are annoying the whole way somehow. 

RICH: Admittedly, I had wetsuit gloves on. 

AUBREY: I get it. The value proposition to that other than psychologically just to help yourself endure.

RICH: That’s right.

AUBREY: The punishment, it's not like it's cooling core body temperature. 

RICH: It's not helping you physiologically–

AUBREY: Or creating a mammal dive reflex through your fingers. 

RICH: And I've had cold digits so often in my life that I was like, yeah, I'm not gonna do it. So booties and gloves sometimes we use, but I said to each of them, I said, okay, as we get in, I want you to focus on my hand or my finger, which I put at the other end of the tub. And I said, we're just going to count to 20. And so they get in and they say one, two, and we'd focus on that. And once we hit that wicket, we say, okay, now let's pick something else. Let's focus on it. We're going to focus on this bicycle in the garage, focus on the bicycle and count to five, and what that does is it switches your brain to actually help control and move through challenge and stress. It's kind of like engaging your captain because the captain's saying, “Hey, focus on me right now, follow me. And once we get to the end, we'll choose something else.” And this is in fact exactly how you walk through stress, challenge, and uncertainty. It's exactly how SEALs are what I call masters of uncertainty. Basically we drop into environments. We're able to manage our stress enough so that our frontal lobe is still online. Because fear, stress, and anxiety start taking that offline. And then we begin to ask questions about our environment. We say things like, okay, what about this? What about all of this that doesn't make sense? Do I understand? And we make that list however small. Okay, what can I control at this moment? And we move to that, and then we ask the question again. Okay, now what can I control at this moment? Or now what do I understand, and now what can I control? And in fact, as you step through, you find that the locus of control, or the funnel, starts to widen, because you begin to understand your environment as you move through your environment. It's kinda like that rock climber climbing up the face and it's like it starts to open up, understand more. And this is what happens. I think you get that mental training in Buds and SEAL training so that you can then apply it to the real world. 

AUBREY: I don't think you have a chance to get any type of training like this unless you intentionally put yourself in difficult situations. In situations that challenge you. 

RICH: Yeah. You're absolutely right. 

AUBREY: This is the only way to find that access point. 

RICH: Or you can, if you're able to, every single one of us has bad shit happen to us. So you can use, I mean, everybody can–

AUBREY: Don't waste any opportunity.

RICH: Yeah. Everybody could have used COVID and quarantine as an opportunity. If we're cognizant of this stuff, we can say, okay, bad opportunity feels horrible. I can use this right now. I've done that. 

AUBREY: But without the training, you probably won't be able to. It's like trying to go into game day immediately. It'd be like, okay, SEALs, you've had no practice. It's now a live bullet firefight. Good luck or anybody–

RICH: You have to manage the anxiety too. So fear really is that combination of anxiety plus uncertainty. Because you can have one without the other and not be afraid. You can be anxious without being uncertain. I'm gonna give a presentation to my boss next week. I know what I'm presenting, I know my boss. I'm a little anxious, but it's pretty certain. No fear. You can be uncertain without being anxious. Okay, well that's every kid on Christmas Eve. So, no fear there. If you add the two, if you combine the two, fear starts to set in. When fear starts to set in, your amygdala starts to tick in. And the more fear you get, the more your frontal lobe starts to kind of take a back seat. So we can buy down our fear by buying down one or the other. But typically, buying down anxiety has to happen first so that you can buy down uncertainty. And what we have to understand is anxiety is all internal. That's a physiological response. So we can buy down on anxiety through physiological means, breathing techniques, visual techniques, so that we bring our frontal lobe back online and we can then buy down uncertainty. Uncertainty is all external. So that's when we have to start asking those questions, but they have to be asked deliberately. So part of the training, part of the preparation that you're talking about for people would be to understand first how to manage anxiety so that they can then ask those logical questions with minimal emotion and begin to step through it. So I think that's the process. 

AUBREY: Yeah, it's every different one of these things. So that's one aspect of something that's going to create anxiety or fear. Sometimes it's just actually how much suffering can you endure? Like how much grit? Like grit is another thing that is such a valuable skill to have. And I don't know any other way to do that other than hard work for a normal person, obviously there's lots of different ways, but a really hard workout where you really stick to it and you just don't bargain with yourself. Like, no, we're going to do this EMOM or AMRAP or whatever situation that we got. And we're going to go to the end or do this run or do this climb or do this sprint or this swim. I think that's one of the reasons why those are so valuable or a sweat lodge practice, where you're actually going into a lodge or even creating it in your own sauna, like I'm going to be in here for an hour. And no matter how hot it gets, obviously within reason, you don't want to kill yourself. But you're going to stick to it or this ice bath practice or this thing, like we just absolutely need to train all of those things. And not only that, then put yourself in situations where your own self judge is going to get activated. Like where you could let somebody down, we just had a Fit For Service event, which is my fellowship I was just telling you about. We created a competitive environment with the whole purpose because when we're kids, you just compete to compete and you think that's the whole point, but the whole point is to teach you about life, but nobody teaches you that the whole point of playing basketball is not to get a ball in the net. It's to teach you about life because you think it's just all about getting the best. And then you realize like, what the hell? It doesn't even matter. It's a silly game anyways, but the point is to teach you about life. So we recreated a series of events to help teach people, put people on teams and like really bonded the team together and then had the teams compete against each other with the full intention that the point of this is to watch your mind, try to be nervous, be worried that you're going to let your team down, find an excuse to pull yourself out of the event. And then if you do lose, because half of the people had to lose, it was a one on one competition, then how much are you going to judge yourself? How much are you going to beat yourself up? And then keep that awareness the whole time. But without that inciting event and us buying in to create something that mattered, then it wouldn't have mattered. Then it's like, Oh yeah, whatever. We played a silly little game. It doesn't matter. But when it matters, then all of these things activate. And then with awareness, you get the chance to work on them. 

RICH: Yeah. Well, you're so right. I mean, the lessons are everywhere. And the idea is can we extract these lessons rather than just looking at this thing for what we think it is. And I would offer that, I think you’re right. I think athletic events and really pushing yourself physically is a great way to practice some of this stuff. The only thing that's missing often in the athletic endeavors, depending on what it is, of course, is the uncertainty element. Athletic endeavors tend to be certain. So I would encourage people if they want to practice this, certainly, getting in the gym and doing things that go beyond what they think they can do is part of it, but find things that actually scare you a little bit. If you are an introvert, we just talk about introvert, extroverts. I'm an introvert. If you're an introvert maybe you sign up to give a talk in front of people. Maybe you go walk up to people and introduce yourself to strangers. What are those things that you actually think about? I don't like heights so roller coasters. I can't stand them. So when I'm with my boys, one of them does like roller coasters, I say, okay, I'm going to go on the roller coaster with you. So I can practice this idea of working through fear. Because again, these life events that happen to us are typically going to include that uncertainty portion. I mean, that first day of quarantine, COVID, none of us knew what was going on. All of us had uncertainty. And those of us who understood. What uncertainty feels like and how to deal with it, found ourselves fairly, okay. We're able to kind of move through it. 

AUBREY: Yeah, in a better position.

RICH: We have to practice. 

AUBREY: It seems like in some of the events, I 100% agree that move towards your fear, as long as the fear doesn't represent actual danger. Like there's some things that are actually dangerous. 

RICH: You need to flee from 

AUBREY: Don’t pet a rattlesnake, if you're afraid of snakes. Go to a boa constrictor or whatever, something else that's not going to cause you to lose your leg. So that's an important thing, but always moving towards your fear. There's so much growth on the other edge of that. However, some of these things that we're talking about when there's fear, even if you're public speaking. Yeah. All right. You could freeze. There is some uncertainty about how you'll respond. And I suppose that's one category of uncertainty. But as you were speaking, I was thinking to myself, like true uncertainty. Uncertainty like you guys have in the battlefield. That's like real uncertainty. I don't know how many fucking enemy are there. I don't know what weapons they have. I don't know what situation I'm going into. I have to be ready for anything, and it's going to be a surprise. We do our best intel, but we have to train and prepare for a surprise. So, that seems to be even another category, another echelon of uncertainty beyond just, I'm gonna do this thing, there'll be a microphone, there'll be me, I don't know how I'll respond. But it's like, I'm going to go to an audience and they may have super soakers, they may have BB guns, they may have tomatoes, they may be nice. I don't know what's going to happen. It’s like, there's like another level to the game. What do you think for non operators? What's a way to train that level of uncertainty? Because that's kind of life it does sometimes have that level of uncertainty. COVID is a great example of real uncertainty. 

RICH: Yeah, it's funny you should say that because I was doing a talk a few weeks ago and one of the organizers before I went on, she's like, are you nervous? I was like, well. I'm not really, I mean, no one's gonna be shooting at me, right? It's just like, no, I was like, then I don't really have anything to worry about. No, it's a great point and I think so this is where, this is where it gets somewhat subjective. And this is where danger should probably come into the mix. I mean, skydiving is something that someone can go try if they hate heights. That adds an element of danger, an element of working through fear, like true, true fear that actually, I mean, not many people die skydiving. So it's fairly safe, right? So what are those endeavors that people can choose in context with their own fear that allow them to work through it? I mean, uncertainty that at that level, you're going to feel it. You're going to feel it very physiologically, you're going to feel that your palms are going to get sweaty. You're going to feel nervous. You're going to feel that real kind of deep kind of uh-oh. And again, it's contextual. Some people love heights, and they love rollercoasters, and they like, get me on an airplane, I jump out of it in two seconds. For other people, it's being underwater. There are a lot of people who can't even think about being underwater, whereas I've fallen asleep underwater before, in the pitch black. I mean, I'm that comfortable, So, I think it's finding those contexts inside of which you have some of those really raw. 

AUBREY: Wait, I have to pause. You've literally fallen asleep.

RICH: I've literally fallen asleep. 

AUBREY: So obviously there's some physiological mechanism that the body knows not to breathe.

RICH: Well, no, I was on a regulator. We were into these little mini subs that we have, but it's a wet sub. So you're sitting in the back of those things, for hours waiting to go, you're transiting somewhere. So you're just sitting there with your regulator on and you're just pitch black and you're just like, there's nothing to do, but really sleep and visualize.

AUBREY: Yeah, it is kind of peaceful. 

RICH: Yeah, it is. 

AUBREY: But not to derail us too far. I've heard that there is a practice that I don't know how widespread it is in SEAL team training, where you actually hold a weight and walk on the bottom of a pool until you pass out. And then you get brought up from underneath it. And I'm in a men's group and we love testing ourselves. And one of the guys is a free diver and really working on his breath control. And he's suggesting this to the group and he's looking at me, expecting me to be like, hell yeah. And I'm like, man, that sounds a lot like drowning. I'm not very interested in this. So, tell me about this practice, because this seems like to me, in my mind, I'm also very comfortable in the water. I've been very comfortable in the water my whole life. But this seems like a level that actually scares the shit out of me.

RICH: Yeah, it should. It does me too. That's a myth. 

AUBREY: They don't actually do that. 

RICH: They don't drown you. 

AUBREY: He was gonna drown me. Motherfucker. 

RICH: If we just think about it logically, the US government in any capacity if they were to be conducting training that would literally drown someone and have them, you have to resuscitate them by brain. That's a no go. So, but I think there–

AUBREY: What was the group in Game of Thrones that did that from the Iron Islands. 

RICH: Yes. That was the king's ceremony. So great. I think where that comes from is in SEAL training, you have to do what's called a 50 meter underwater swim. And the pool that you do it inside of is 25 meters wide. So you basically have to drop in on one end, swim, turn around, and swim back. And there's a lot of guys who pass out doing that. And if the guys pass out, they just pull them up and get them. The instructors are really keeping an eye, there's instructors in the water. 

AUBREY: Yeah, the dive team–

RICH: Yeah, it is very safely run. And again, I didn't pass out. What you learn on that 50 meter underwater swim is the capability of your body. Because that urge to breathe when you're underwater or holding your breath is not because of a lack of oxygen, it's because of a buildup of CO2. So in other words, we still have a lot of oxygen in our system that we can utilize while we're underwater, which is what free divers do. I mean, free divers train themselves to move past that discomfort. Which can be very dangerous because once you train yourself to move past it the point at which you lose consciousness is instant. So you have to be really, really careful when you're training that way. We've had some seals die because they were doing breath holding training in a pool and you didn't have observers. And they trained themselves to go past that. We had a couple of guys die together in the pool underwater. They're just holding breath underwater and they both passed out and died. So don't do that. Don't drown yourself. 

AUBREY: My instincts were on point. 

RICH: I mean, if you want to do stuff like that, then do some underwater swims and start to feel that discomfort. And you can actually mark your positions on the pool and say, okay, last time I went this far and look, I can actually go farther type stuff. Always have safety observers. Cause again, if you have a shallow water blackout. As soon as you come up to the surface, as long as you're coming up to the surface immediately, you're likely going to start breathing. You don't even need much resuscitation per se. So definitely have observers. I tell this to my boys because my boys are water rats like me and we have a swimming pool. I'm like, hey dad, can you get us some weights? Because we want to use weights to dive down to the bottom. I was like, okay, yes. So I got him the weight. It's like the rule here, if you're diving with weights, you do not do it by yourself. There has to be someone here, right. And they get it, when I tell them that seals have died doing it, then it cues them in. But it is a reasonable endeavor to kind of test yourself. But please don't deliberately drown. 

AUBREY: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And one of the things that I can recall too is another aspect of the mindset that's really helpful. Start to go to the people that are around you. Like I imagine that when a seal in training is going to that 50 meter swim, they may be able to swim far more than they ever would on their own. Like if they're practicing alone in the pool, maybe that rare breed can perform at the same level all by themselves. They can just get up anytime they want. But most of us aren't like that. And I remember the longest breath hold in the cold that I did was when I was with Wim Hof in Poland and I was submerged under the ice. He had a frozen over little tub in his back and we cracked the ice and took the ice out and jumped in. And I had two of my brothers there who were in the water with me. And I was going to hold their legs loosely to keep me underneath the water. And then everybody else was counting the time and calling out 15, 30, 45, one.

RICH: Could you hear them counting? 

AUBREY: I could hear them. 

RICH: Okay, cool. 

AUBREY: And my goal was to get to 130, right? That was like the threshold of like, I've never gotten above 130. And so I was like getting everybody fired up. Like 130 is the number. I hit 130, but because I was like holding my brothers there and they were cheering me on and they started to go kind of nuts as I was getting close to 130, I was like, Oh, I got more in me. And then 145 to 215 and they were just, their energy was so much that I was able to do, I don't know, 45 seconds beyond my frozen underwater max, just because of the camaraderie and that kind of spirit. And I imagine that's really what you guys experience as well, is like when you're in it together as a team, that team is capable of so much more than each individual isolated.

RICH: You push yourself farther than you ever would for that reason. In fact, I talk about this in the book in terms of the attributes that work at either polarity. So most of the attributes I talk about in the book if you get a little higher, that's probably better. But there was a set of attributes that I talked about that didn't fall into, that as I was writing, I realized didn't fall into that category because I realized the opposites were both powerful. So the three were patience and impatience. So in other words, you can be highly, highly successful as a patient person and you can be highly, highly successful as an impatient person. So being high on either of those scales doesn't affect your success or performance. The other one was competitiveness. Because the idea is, many people think competitiveness is a requirement to be highly successful, which I agree with. But I don't agree with the implied corollary that non competitiveness doesn't work either. I am not competitive at all. When I used to play sports, I didn't really care if we won or lost. I loved the game, I loved the intricacy, and I thought that would hurt me when I went to SEAL training. But what I realized about SEAL training is SEAL training actually honors both polarities. In SEAL training, you have two awards at the end of training, you have the honor man, the honor man is the person who had all the top scores on the runs, all the top scores on the swims, O courses, all that stuff. So it's a competitive award. The other award is called the fire in the gut award and the fire in the gut award is voted on by the instructors and the students. And that's the person who showed the most grit during buds. And oftentimes that person has the lowest scores, right? So it has nothing that you can’t, you can't win it. You have to earn it. And what I recognized about those two is in a team, well, really in any team, but certainly SEAL teams. To have that competitive mindset can be powerful. The competitive mindset sees the world immediately, like says, okay, what are the rules and boundaries and constraints and how can I win inside this environment? That's what competitive mindset sees. My type of mind says, I don't care about the rules, I don't care about what people are doing. How can I go around and do something different? When you're looking at missions and operations overseas, getting to the enemy, rescuing hostages sometimes the up the line approach is the way to go. It's like, Hey, these are rules going right up the line. A lot of times it's, Hey, how can we think differently about that? Now this is a long answer. I'm going to get to the original thing. The last bit, the last two attributes I talk about in that category are fear of rejection versus insoucians to what other people think, or I don't care what people think. And what you'll find in the SEAL teams is most of us have a heightened sense of fear of rejection. Because we do not by any stretch of the imagination want to let down. Those people around us, or look bad. So it's a guy like me who didn't really like skydiving much. We're getting ready to go out the door at 22,000 feet. It's pitch black and the weather's not that good. I'm going, no matter how I feel, I'm going. And I'm going because the other guys are going. I'm not gonna let them down. So that fear of rejection is part of what you're talking about in terms of it pushes you to do things to go beyond things that you thought you could do, because you want to be part of that group, you want to feel that feeling of bonding with others. Now there are other people who are true, iconoclasts in the sense that they don't give a crap what anybody else thinks. And those are the people who can be hugely successful. I mean, those are people who change our world. Because they go out on their own path and say, I'm not doing that. do my own thing. I don't care if anybody likes it. I don't care what people think. Oftentimes they generate their own new group because of what they do. so you can utilize both, but I think what you're talking about is true. I think we can oftentimes, and I would say whether you're someone who trends towards that iconoclastic view or not. If you're surrounded by people you love, people you respect, and people who you really think highly of, you're gonna care at least to a small degree of what people think. And it'll help push you so that group mentality and that having that group can really help as well.

AUBREY: It seems like a lot of what your philosophy is and what you just expressed is that to really appreciate that whatever you have, it can be used to your advantage. 

RICH: Absolutely. 

AUBREY: To a certain degree. So super competitive, great. Use that to your advantage, not competitive, use that to your advantage. There is probably a toxic expression of all of these different things. A toxic level of competitiveness or a toxic level of fear of rejection. In which case you're paralyzed because you're so afraid to do anything that you might get rejected for that, you don't do anything and you're just frozen. So that would be like –

RICH: Yeah. Peer pressure is a toxic use of fear of rejection, right? I'm going to do something, even though there's cognitive dissonance, and I don't really feel like doing it, I'm doing it because I don't want to not be part of the group. Yeah, you're absolutely right. The attributes in any extreme, even the kind of the 23 ones that, little bit higher is better. Too much is bad. I mean, too much courage is, that's like the bulldog approach. That's like you're not appropriately assessing risk, too much adaptability, you're the limp noodle. Too much of any of these things is going to be bad. So in those other ones, what I would say and what I recognize is we all, first of all, what you said is really true. I kind of talk about people like automobiles. We're all human, like we're all automobiles. Some of us are Jeeps, some of us are Ferraris, some of us are SUVs. And there's no judgment there because the Jeep can do things the Ferrari can't do, the Ferrari can do things the Jeep can't do. So the idea is, can you lift your hood and figure out what engine you're working with? Because you may be a Jeep that's been trying to run on a Ferrari track or a Ferrari that's been trying to run a Jeep track. And that's okay, too. If you're a Jeep that's running on a Ferrari track, if you choose to run on the Ferrari track, that's fine, but what you can say, hey, now I know some of those things that I can do and develop so that I can better run as a Jeep on the Ferrari track. And then you can start asking yourself, okay, wherever I fall on these attribute scales, they actually play off of each other. So if you're low on adaptability, but high on open mindedness. You're probably going to be okay. Because your high open mindedness buttresses your low adaptability. When I was writing the book, I really thought about writing about how these attributes interplay, but I realized if I started to do that, it would have been like a thousand pages.

AUBREY: It forms a spider web.

RICH: Yeah. It’s more of a spider web. I couldn't get out of it, but yeah, it's all about how we show up and using what we have to the maximum capability. 

AUBREY: If someone's going to focus on a couple, let's say, our three is arbitrary, but everybody loves three. I don't know why people love three, but we do. If you're somewhere around there, pick a couple of different attributes that you think have the biggest Delta of impact on somebody's life. If they start to work on those and also the greatest ability for us to actually change those different characteristics. So it's like both of those factors, if you're going to find like, okay, here's a couple of these attributes, you can change it. And if you do change it, it will dramatically change your life. 

RICH: Yeah. I would say hands down, it's the grid attributes and it's four of them. It's courage, adaptability, perseverance, and resilience. 

AUBREY: Courage, adaptability, perseverance, and resilience.

RICH: I believe, I try not to put any value on the attributes, I believe those are probably the most important elemental attributes for human existence. Because those speak to how we operate in the world in every capacity. And so, because the mental acuity attributes are fine, how I process information drive attributes. You don't have to be necessarily driven. You can do what you want to do. Even leadership and team ability, those aren't really have to’s. But the grit ones have to’s. And I think if people were to focus on those and look at where they stand and developing those, that's when they start learning what we were talking about at the beginning of the conversation, how to effectively move. And perform inside of these events that happen that we have not predicted that bring up our fear that are uncertain. Courage is stepping into our fear. Again, courage is, we've heard it all the time, but people forget it cannot exist in the absence of fear. And this is proved neurologically. Courage is a switch. And when we stepped into, when we chose the fight response, it's a specific switch that gets clicked in our brain, which gives us a dopamine reward. So that is fear, that is the expression, neurologically of courage. And that choice doesn't happen unless fear is present. So practicing courage is something that is always going to help perseverance. 

AUBREY: Practicing courage. I talk about this a bit and I say, in my course, go for your win, I talked about it, which is something I released five years ago. I've talked about it in a lot of different posts and commentaries. The way that I encourage people to do that is to attack some trivial fear. So find something that you're afraid of again, that doesn't have a high correlation to ridiculous danger, like don't do proximity flying base jumping when you're afraid of heights, like, oh, just go for a regular parachute, man. It's all good, but you don't need to up the stakes super high. And I think for anybody listening, who wants to practice this, one of the things that I do when I want to work on my courage and I'll test myself every now and then is during this time of year, we get tree cockroaches that find their way into my house. So they just come from the trees and then they work their way through whatever little crevices, little buggers. I don't like them at all. I don't like them. They somehow bother me more than they should, because they're not dangerous. So normally I'll let them out. Well, now we have cats and the cats destroy them. They go out hunting at night and there's little carcasses all over the house. However, before that I would see one and I would say like, all right, my choices are here. I don't like smashing them. So I like to let them out, but I can either do what I normally do and trap them and shuffle them out without having to touch them. Or I could grab them with my hand and watch them try to squirm out between the little cracks in my fingers. It elicits that fear response just in a small way, but when I'm able to successfully do that for that next four hours, I'm like, I am all that is man, like I feel different about myself. I look my lens of perception out into the world and through myself, I think of myself as a different human being. 

RICH: Yeah, that is the dopamine hit. We literally, people have to understand this when we're given that choice, fight or flight, okay and again, freeze is often talked about, but freeze is literally just an oscillation, neurologically it's an oscillation between the two, trying to decide. When we choose to fight, which means step into our fear, our brain gives us, our body gives us a dopamine hit, and dopamine, one of the most powerful chemicals on the planet, says this is good, keep doing this, it makes us feel good. It's also the root of all addictive behavior. Stepping into our fear feels good. And so this is what we have to do. And I think what you say is absolutely correct. And what the emphasis should be is the feeling afterwards. Because if people pick something small and do it. They're going to feel great, and it's because they're getting hit with dopamine because of it. And then they can step and try something else. 

AUBREY: Could be karaoke.

RICH: Could be karaoke, again, it could be speaking in front, it could be starting a conversation. It could be, I don't know, you name it. If you're afraid of the water. It could be swimming in a swimming pool. If you're afraid of open water, which most people are fine in swimming pools, but it's the open water, it might be just swimming out into the open water. 

AUBREY: Someone's blaring the Jaws soundtrack. 

RICH: But that ups it. You don't want to go into an amygdala response, right? So, yeah. 

AUBREY: Yeah. 

RICH: But yeah, you're absolutely right. Practicing those things that you're scared of. But again, it could be almost as simple as someone who has been out of shape their entire lives and they really want to get in shape. They don't know how to do this. Maybe they don't want to start running or whatever. It's like, Hey, I'm going to buy a pair of running shoes. That's my first step. And then I'm going to put the running shoes by the front door. Okay. And the next morning I'm actually going to get up with an alarm and I'm going to put on my running shoes. Okay, and then the next day I'm going to put on my running shoes. walk outside I mean you can chunk this however you want. The idea is to chunk it. You have to chunk it into sizes that are meaningful enough for you. So that when you accomplish it, you feel that feeling. If you were to just say with the cockroaches, I'm just gonna put it in a cup. That's not a meaningful enough chunk for you. So the size of the chunks to be subjective, but yes, courage can absolutely be practiced. 

AUBREY: Yeah, it's and some of these things you have to just actually do it. Like you can't just put your legs in the cold plunge. 

RICH: Unless that step is meaningful for you. 

AUBREY: Okay, yeah, so that's a good way to think about it. 

RICH: If just putting your feet is meaningful, that's cool. Would I recommend it? No, because you're just gonna feel how cold it is.

AUBREY: Yeah, exactly. 

RICH: You might as well just go in. But if it's meaningful for you, then you do that for a minute and you're like, oh my gosh, I just did that. You will feel, again, it's all subjective.

AUBREY: That's a beautiful way to look at it about how to decide, like, how much to do and not use this objective metric of what you have to do. So even if it's, let's say it's a cold shower, just turn it cold for a little bit, like just feel it. And you'll know where that meaningful moment is to you and don't cheat yourself. 

RICH: Don’t cheat yourself, yeah. Get that dopamine hit. Because you will love it, if you do it and you'll feel it and you'll say, okay. I'm going to do it again tomorrow or take the next step. And even those steps don't have to be necessarily immediately sequential, right? I mean, dipping your feet in the cold plunge every day for a week might be fine for you and then you’re going to find that dopamine hit. So here's a great example. I've said it many times, I'll say it again, I don't like heights, okay? And on every seal base, there's an obstacle course, west coast at buds east coast. And on every obstacle course, there's a cargo net climb. The cargo net climb is 65 ft. net that goes straight up and you basically climb up one side once you're at the top, you flip over and then you climb down. For people who don't like heights, it's tough, right? 

AUBREY: Yeah. 

RICH: Well, even when I was in the teams, whenever I'd go for a run, I'd plan my run that I'd go by that cargo net and when I hit it, I'd climb to the top and at the top, which is the worst part, I would just sit there. And sitting there, I basically was breathing in the fear, I would feel nervous, I'd just sit there and I'd feel the wind and the sway and all that stuff and then I'd go down. And I’d do that, over and over again. After a while, a week or maybe even two weeks, when I got to the top, I didn't feel it. I felt awesome when I finished it. After a while, I wasn't scared anymore. It's basically inoculation. It's fear of inoculation. But when you inoculate yourself, you also lose the dopamine reward. So if people are going to take these steps, they have to take them in context with the size and bite they want to take and they have to recognize, take them until you're not getting that reward anymore. And as soon as you don't get that reward, you need to up the ante and take the next step because you will inoculate yourself after a period of time. 

AUBREY: This is courage. Let's go through the other ones. 

RICH: Okay, perseverance. So perseverance is interesting. What was cool about writing the book is I got to dive into these things in ways I'd never thought about them before. And what I recognize with perseverance is that it, in fact, is a combination of three things. It's a combination of persistence, tenacity, and fortitude. And the reason why it's a combination of those things is because persistence and tenacity people often think are synonymous, but they're not. Persistence is I'm going to basically do something over and over again until I get a result. Okay, that's the stone cutter approach, right? The stone cutter taps the stone in the same place, 80 times, 90 times, never sees anything. And on the 100th tap, it breaks. That's persistence. Sometimes persistence is required. You have to just go head down and do it. Tenacity is I'm going to try something. And if it doesn't work, I'm going to try something else. I'm going to change and try something else. This is the car mechanic. The car mechanic will check the belts first. If it's not the belts, then they'll check the fuel injector or whatever. You don't necessarily want a persistent mechanic, right? Because the persistent mechanic is going to check the belts and then check the belts again and then check the belts again and check the belts and you just get a high bill. You don't necessarily want a tenacious stonecutter, okay, because the rock's never going to break. So you have a balance between the two and then you have fortitude. Fortitude is really my, I guess, definition of what mental toughness really is. Fortitude is the ability to kind of understand and move through either persistence and tenacity and make stuff happen. So those two are buttressed by fortitude, all that combined is perseverance. Perseverance is the ability to kind of move and step through, continue on. People think of grit as its own attribute, but the attribute that best describes what people think grit is, is actually Perseverance. And the reason why it's only one part of grit is because grit is a, total grit is much bigger than just pushing through. It's the ability to push through and do it again and do it again, which is why you also need adaptability and you need resilience. So that's perseverance. And then we get adaptability, adaptability is everything in this universe changes. Without exception. I mean, I don't think they've found anything that doesn't change over time. And so when the world and the environment–

AUBREY: You got to talk real spiritual and go, God. And if you want to talk about what does– 

RICH: Yeah, exactly. So everything other than that, I guess. But I mean, in our physical world, we have to recognize that the environment is going to change around us outside of our control and it will be impossible and futile to push against it. Sometimes we just have to adapt. This is the Dinosaur and the Frog. If you don't adapt, you go extinct. And so adaptation is something that we all need if we want to have overall total grit because grit typically is just expressing an environment of uncertainty and change and volatility and things like that. And so we have to be willing to and enable to adapt inside of that. 

AUBREY: That's why it's important to train all of these specific fears, but it's important to find new ones. Like if I mastered this cockroach thing, which despite the fact that I've done it enough times, I wouldn't quite say that I've mastered it. But if I did it enough in a row, I'm sure I could actually master that thing, but that's not the point. The point is not to make me the great cockroach whisperer of the world. 

RICH: Yeah, that’s right. And then inoculate yourself. 

AUBREY: Then I'll inoculate myself. Won't be a big deal. And then when it comes to something else. I'll just be just as squeamish.

RICH: It doesn't, unfortunately, transfer between contexts. 

AUBREY: Right. But what does transfer is the grit to push myself through–

RICH: Is the process. So yeah, it's really incumbent on us to practice the process versus repeat the environment. So that we're better prepared because that's really what moving through uncertainty is. So you have adaptability and then finally have resilience. Resilience is absolutely necessary for grit. Because grit involves the ability to kind of keep doing it. That’s true grit. If you get hit and you’re done, that’s not grit. Grit involves the ability to bounce back as well. And so resilience is that, hey, I get knocked off baseline. Can I bounce back to baseline? Either direction. Because what true grit and overall drive requires is that we keep pushing through and not get sidelined by the lows and the challenges, but also not get seduced by the highs. Sometimes those small wins, they're great in terms of getting us a little bit more of a biochemical boost, but we can't rest on our laurels. We can't stop there, and so resilience is about the ability to kind of understand that elasticity of the process. And so those four combined add up to overall grit. And again, grit speaks to this kind of ability to move through these acute challenges,  if we were going to talk about long term goal setting that we get into the drive attributes. But that grit, I think, is the most important. If anybody wanted to kind of say, Hey, I just want to focus on four. Those would be the four to focus on. 

AUBREY: So I've spent some time with some operators. David Rutherford is a good friend. I haven't seen him in a little bit. It doesn't mean that he's not still my friend, David, if you're listening–

RICH: The thing about team guys is you can call like 10 years later–

AUBREY: Like once you develop that friendship. And I still feel that a hundred percent, but as I was spending time with him, we were doing all kinds of things. We went out to Marcus's, Marcus Latrelle's ranch and we were doing some different exercises and different things. And one of the things that I noticed with him that was repeated when I went out with Jesse Itzler to Poland, who obviously trained with David Goggins. It was this concept of how they prepped their mind for everything. So David or Jesse, no matter what we were doing, they would just smile and be like, easy day. Easy day. Okay. We're climbing this frozen mountain with no clothes on, sleeting. Easy day, easy day. And it was just a kind of positive mindset that was really powerful to have. Because when you're looking at it, like, Oh God, look at this mountain. It's so long and it's so cold and I don't know how we're going to do it. You're setting yourself up for a greater likelihood of failure. But that kind of just adamant attitude of like, easy day. We got this. 

RICH: Let's deconstruct that because I think it's important. I think this speaks to this idea of optimal performance versus just peak. And I think this is what SEALs certainly, the guys who can't do this don't make it through training. There's an adage in SEAL training, especially when you get to Hell Week. If you think about Friday of hell week on Monday, you're going to quit. It's just too much, right? So part of the process is what we've already talked about. I'm not gonna think about the totality of what's in front of me, I'm not gonna think about the whole woodpile. I know that I can just take it chunk by chunk. So when you're looking at that ice mountain or whatever, that's basically what my mind or David's mind is saying. I will move through this the way I need to move through this, but there's another concept that's interesting that I talked about and explored in the book and this idea of optimal performance versus peak. Because everybody is chasing peak and wants peak and peaks kind of like the coup de gras of all performance, but peak is an apex. And it's an apex from which we can only come down. Oftentimes peak has to be trained for and prepared for and scheduled. The pro football player schedules and prepares and plans his entire week so that he may peak for three hours on Sunday. So there's nothing wrong with peak, but it's kind of incremental and it's conditional. Optimal performance is different. Optimal performance is really what SEALs are. Optimal performance says I'm going to do the very best I can at the moment. Whatever the best looks like at the moment. Okay, sometimes the best looks like a peak. I'm clicking, there's flow states, it's cool, right? Sometimes the best is I am head down, just going step by step, nugging it out, and it's dirty, and it's ugly, and it sucks, but I'm still moving. And so optimal performance allows us to A, pat ourselves on the back when we are just nugging it out. When everything feels Shitty. We're still moving. And I always joke, like, there's so many operations we've been on. We accomplish the mission, and then we finish, and we look, and he's like, boy, that was ugly. There's always gonna be times where you're just nugging it out. But we're still performing. We're still accomplishing the objective. The other thing it allows you to do is modulate your energy levels. I was training with a buddy of mine, about a year ago, he's trained a bunch of seals and I was part of this four week program where he and I were training together, and he was making me push these sleds, the weighted sleds, 50 yards or whatever, and he was timing me, and I said, hey, what are you timing? And he said, well, I'm basically timing and looking at your aerobic versus anaerobic capacity. And I said, what are you finding? He said, when you start your push, you start at the very same pace that you finish.you're the same speed the whole way through. So it's not a lot of anaerobic, it's mostly aerobic, right? I said, what do you do? He's like, I explode out usually, and then I slow. I just get slower as I get to the finish line. I said, what do you find most SEALs do? He said, well, most SEALs do it like you do it. And it made me think, this is exactly how SEALs think about almost every challenge that we face. We think aerobically. We never ever enter in like at full tilt if we don't have to. Now if you have to, I mean, we're constantly gauging. So if you have to enter at full tilt, you do. But we never know when the end is going to happen. You never know, and if you think about the end, you're screwed. So we always approach everything aerobically. And then we go anaerobic when we have to, but then we pull back immediately and go aerobic because we need to be able to go a day, two days, five days, you don't know when the mission is going to be over. You don't know what's going to be expected. You don't know what, necessarily, the next ridgeline looks like. And so first of all, I think that's what you're seeing when you see someone say easy day, all of everything I just said is all what easy day means in the mind of a SEAL. But I think, when we think about life and we think about the uncertainty of life, we can't predict necessarily. We should probably be thinking about optimal performance versus just peak. I don't need to be peaking when I'm driving to the grocery store. I can be modulating myself. I can be resting a little bit. I can be falling asleep in the back of my mini sub because I'm just collecting my energy. So that when it's time to get out and actually do something. I have some energy left. And this takes a real mind state. It takes a mind state of understanding, okay, now is the time to be calm. I have micro moments inside of which I can recover and charge my battery. Even though it doesn't feel like I should be recovering and charging my battery. Guys, we used to be going on missions, and we'd be in the helicopter, and I was the officer in charge, so I always had to be linked in, in comms with the helo pilots, and looking at the nav plan. So I was always engaged as we were flying, but I had guys who were like, listening to their iPods, falling asleep, dipping, whatever, just completely 100% relaxed. And I used to look at them, and I was like, this is so perfect, it's so beautiful. Because these guys are completely performing optimally right now. You'd think you're on the helicopter and you're like, okay, charge up, fired up, and I'm sure that, the movies, I don't watch many steel movies, but they're like, okay, everybody, it feels really tense, guys are sleeping on the way in. Until we have to get out and they have to click it on, and now they’re gonna perform. And then, depending on what we're doing, now we're walking, So now upping your energy and pulling back and even me, I'd be kind of really engaged as if I was in the helicopter because I was talking to the pilots. Well, as soon as I hit the deck. Now my recce guys, they're leading us out. So, my energy levels, I can pull back a little bit because they have it, they got it. I'm still aware, but I'm modulating. And so this type of proactive modulation and optimizing of performance is in fact, the best way to approach it.

AUBREY: Reducing adrenaline load, reducing the amount of energy that you're burning. When your brain is active like that, people underestimate how much energy the brain is burning. 

RICH: Oh my gosh, yeah. 

AUBREY: And how much that'll work. I remember, I've been into MMA for a long time. I've trained myself, but I had a lot of fighter friends and some of the fighters who were  amateurs and working their way up, they would create amateur coaches and they would really kind of create this environment in the locker room. That was all intense all the time. I was like, come on. All for like hours before. And the performance was far from peak and when they actually got out there, cause they were burned. And then I saw like champions, like real champions, and it got to be in the locker room with them as they were preparing and wrapping their hands. All the coaches, everybody around them geared everything towards humor and relaxation. Like how much pressure can we take off? Can we tell a funny story and laugh a little bit. And then right beforeW when it was time, it was like, it's go time, but it's not an ounce more intensity than necessary. Knowing that when you're in there and you're about to fight somebody, you're not going to be too relaxed. That's not going to happen at all. 

RICH: Not at all. 

AUBREY: So the more relaxation you can bring in, the more energy, energetic reserves you'll have for when you need to turn it on. 

RICH: I love MMA as an example because it's one sport. Sports holistically, I think, often provides boundaries and rules and things that are often conditional, and there's a lot of certainty in there, but I think MMA and a lot of really combat sports are the anomaly. And I don't do much of it at all, but just looking at it and having a bunch of friends in it. The fighter has to modulate,prior to, because there's gonna be a lot of energy that's needed in the ring. But even during the fight, all of the grid attributes are exercised during an MMA contest. There's courage. Because, hell, you're gonna be trading blows with someone who's gonna really hurt you if they hit you. So there's courage that has to be executed. There's perseverance. Because in the mix, sometimes you have to be tenacious. Something's working, you have to switch. Sometimes you just have to be persistent. I'm just gonna do this because I know it's gonna work. And there's fortitude there. There's adaptability because you don't know. You can go in with a plan. I'm gonna do Move A, move B, move C, but you don't know what the other guy is going to do. So you're going to have to be adaptable, and you have to find places to be resilient. There are going to be times inside of that match where you have to really actualize recovery as best you can, charge your battery, and then times you're going to have to explode. So you're constantly kind of moving in between aerobic and anaerobic. So people have asked me, hey, do you think there's any sports that are the best in terms of this stuff? And I think fighting is a sport that is probably the best at exercising these great attributes because you have it all there. I mean, all of it is necessary. All of it's required. So I think it's a great example. 

AUBREY: You can see it in, it's not just in MMA, I've seen it in Jiu Jitsu all the time. Like the black belts, man, they look like they're half asleep when they can rest, when they're on the bottom and they're not doing anything. They're just sometimes eyes closed, sometimes just feel and just relax. And then when they need to burst, they burst and other times they relax. Whereas when you're a white belt and just trying to figure stuff out and just getting in there and you're nervous, you're wasting so much energy thrashing around. And then a lot of times you lose just out of pure exhaustion. 

RICH: I would imagine that the masters of this sometimes just let their opponents exhaust themselves, if they understand. I mean, it's a fascinating environment. My boys, I probably here soon get my boys and I into it a little bit more, because I didn't do a lot of it, but I think, A, it's cool. But B, there's just so much mental training that's going on. And life training that can go on in that environment because you're dealing with other human beings and other human beings are inherently unpredictable, regardless of whether you're in jiu jitsu or MMA or whatever it is, it is an unpredictable relationship. So there's uncertainty automatically thrown in the mix. Yeah, that's cool. 

AUBREY: I see it the same,I've gotten into kendo recently and you can see over there, I have some of the gear and so the way that I do it is. A lot of times the full gear set up that they use. First of all, I can't hardly find sizes that fit me because it's a Japanese sport and the sizes just don't tend to work out. I haven't figured that out yet. But ultimately, I like the way that I do it with hockey helmets, which are really safe helmets, and then you have the bamboo shinai, and then we have hockey gloves. So the hands are protected, the face and head are protected, but a lot of times the body will just go with no shirt or go with a t-shirt. So when you get slapped with the bamboo, it stings, but it's also combat at the same time,you're moving your sword and working on different strikes. And I’ll see the same thing. And I'll see the people who I'm training. They could be top athletes or different people, but they'll come in tense. I'll be holding the sword hard and then there'll be not managing their breath and when someone's good and what I've learned through my own practice of initially being on tense, I just stay relaxed. So as the match goes longer, I have t tons of energy at the end. And even when I'm with somebody who's really, really good, like really has, good intuition about strategy, oftentimes, if I'm more relaxed, I'll catch up on my score,later on, like, it's all right, like, all right, I see you're super fast and you're super intense,but are you managing? Are you calibrating yourself? 

RICH: Interesting enough, the other thing that happens, and so , one of my good friends, mutual friend Andrew Huberman,friend Andrew Huberman, we talk about this quite a bit, but  I'm kind of a neuroscience geek, so I love kind of diving into this. We talk about open gaze as a means by which you can actually shift from sympathetic into a parasympathetic system. It begins to bring down your anxiety and begins to relax you a little bit. One of the things he told me is that, when we're in open gaze, in fact, our reaction time is faster. And anybody who wants to try this out, they don't have to get in the ring to do it. When you're running or riding your bike and that fly hits you in the eye and you blink. You're like, oh my gosh, I'm so lucky I blinked. But that was your body seeing it, your unconscious seeing it before you did. Because you're in open gaze, a good way to test how this works is if you're at a stoplight. And if you focus on that red light and you're saying, I'm going to hit the accelerator as soon as it turns green and you do that and then try next time just have the red light in your periphery, open gaze, you just have in your periphery, you will actually hit that accelerator faster when it turns green than when it turns red. Cause we're taking that focus off. We're going open gaze. So I think when you're talking about fighting, I think those masters understand this, whether kind of innately or intuitively, or they understand the neurology, you learn it. Hey, if the more relaxed I am, the more I have awareness of my periphery in this open gaze. In fact, my reaction time is faster. 

AUBREY: Yeah, absolutely. Speaking of speed, there's something that I've heard repeated that they give credit to the SEAL teams for. And it's the saying that slow is smooth, smooth is fast. Does that actually come from the team?

RICH: It does. And so, part of this speaks to this idea that if it's just skills training, basically, I mean, so part of it's the skills training of it. As you're learning new skills, usually we talk about this in the close quarter combat environment, which is really–

AUBREY: Ammo loading?

RICH: Yeah, ammo loading, anything. But just take close quarter combat which is the art and act of moving through a building and clearing it, whether you're going to find the bad guy or rescue hostages, it's a very dynamic ever changing, fast paced environment that has lethal consequences because you're training how to shoot fast and hit the bad guy, not the good guy. The techniques and the skills that you need to do that. You basically encourage people to start slow, okay? You just take it slow because if you start slow, you begin to absorb those skills a lot more kind of viscerally. Versus try to rush through everything.. And so if you slow down, if you go open gaze, if you kind of just take in your environment, you actually tend to move faster. I think this speaks to that speed. But that is absolutely an adage is, hey, slow it down because even if you're slowing it down,I've thought about this before and we used to talk about this,the whole back in the old west when they used to do the gunfights. And if I ever had to do a gunfight, I would just basically focus only on just pulling my pistol and pointing and shooting. And that act might be way slower than someone else across from me, but the faster I try to do that without obviously being trained the more likely I'm going to just get out there and pull the trigger. But it's that kind of understanding the movements and just making sure the movements are tight and doing it that way over and over again. And then, speed comes because guys will become really super fast at this, but the training is always slow first.I'm going to make sure that I'm coming out of my holster, the way I want to come out of my holster. As I’m putting my pistol, my pistol is always lowering in the same place at eye level, so my eyes are always down the scope, even if you're with a rifle. And that act, those movements are things that you practice slow first. And then as you just continue to do it, it gets faster 

AUBREY: Yeah, let the speed become a natural consequence. Also, I heard someone else express another adage that I really liked, which is that it's far too urgent to hurry. Which was something else that I was like, Oh, that makes a lot of sense because hurrying, you make a lot of mistakes. You get sloppy. You leave a lot, that's open and you think like, Oh, this is urgent. I got to rush it. But in the rushing of it, you end up, oftentimes, failing the objective. 

RICH: Yeah. Oh, totally. I have not heard that. I do like it though. And I would imagine, it has to do with this idea that rush and hurry. It implicates some sort of fear or stress. Honestly, when we're hurried or rushed, there's stress and anxiety involved, versus urgency doesn't necessarily have to involve anxiety and stress if you just kind of move through it. , paste, right? Again, aerobically versus anaerobically. Go aerobic, go anaerobic when you need to, but if you approach everything aerobically first, you're paste. And then you get this idea of when exactly you need to be anaerobic. Okay, I need to explode here, and I need to explode here. OOther than that, I can paste myself, but yeah, I do like the saying, so. 

AUBREY: Yeah. We started with some stories that went into training and do you have a story from combat that you're allowed to tell that really exemplifies any of these different categories that you can kind of anchor to some of your own experience.

RICH: It's a great question. I don't think about war stories very often, but I would say, let's see, my pace just indicates my working through how to tell it in a class way. So we had a target and this was actually an operation we were gonna go out on with the guys who were coming in to replace us. So it was kind of our last op. These guys were gonna come out and it was their first op. We sometimes did that. A, 'cause it was cool just to work with our buddies who were in the other team. And B, it was just said, Hey, let's just show you the ropes a little bit. Show you how everything moves. Not that they hadn't been there before, but it was just that. So there was one of these ops, we were gonna go out and do kind of this joint thing together. And the particular place we were looking at was kind of an isolated compound building that seemed fairly reasonable in terms of being able to take it down. But there was a field just north of it, and I say north, it was adjacent, but north that was a large kind of corn whatever, I can't remember the crop, but I'd say corn. 

AUBREY: Some kind of high vegetation. 

RICH: Yeah, high vegetation. And while we were looking at it, we could see that there were signatures in there and just based on what we could see we knew that they were armed  and so–

AUBREY: Visually, or did you guys have some technology?

RICH: It was a little bit of both. But we had that intel and it was good enough that we could make that assumption. So we basically wanted to design a plan where we could allow some time and space to see if they could, maybe filter away or whatever, which starts to go into the aerobic mindset. Let's not rush out the door. But let's also start to look at this in a way that we might be able to address it regardless of what happens. And so we got together with a couple of different plans. There was this simple, straightforward plan. We go and we take down the building and we do that. But what if they're still there? We don't want to necessarily take down that building and have them kind of ambush us. And so we began to generate a plan that we could then adapt on the fly. And one of the things we kind of talked about was like, okay, if we find that they're not moving, they're still there as we get there. We're just going to basically adjust and what we'll do is we'll basically set up a scenario where we can kind of get at them before we ever attack the building. And we want to basically see what their intentions are. Because we don't, we don't want to necessarily just fire into this. 

AUBREY: Your objective was to clear the building.

RICH: Clear the building. And if we can get prisoners so we can get some intelligence back. So, it's never kill capture. It's always capture kill. S. So we thought about maybe how we could do this. So as we moved in, got closer, we realized, they weren't moving, didn't really know their intentions. It seemed like they were armed. And so we said, okay, let's do this. We're going to set up an ambush on this thing. And I'll basically create a distraction to see what they do. And in this case, I was going to basically just bring a helicopter in, kind of close, which is weird because the whole point was to walk in and we always want to maintain the element of surprise. So that people didn't know we're coming. But the idea would be if people hear an American helicopter. Then if they're good, they're going to have an entirely different set of actions than if they're bad. These are actions we can now observe if we put ourselves in the right positions. And so that's what we did. We set up this thing and I brought in this helicopter to a safe distance, but enough so that it was apparent that. And sure enough, these guys grabbed their guns and started moving out to try to do something and we were able to affect that, pretty rapidly, which is good. And then of course, once we did that affected the target and in fact got the person we were looking for that was good too. But it was an example of kind of having to adjust on the fly. First of all, we didn't say no to the op. Just because we had this contingency that looked dangerous. Can we make some plans that we can then adapt around or move in flux to? Do we have contingencies involved so that, if things aren't going the way they need to go, can we call it off? And this is a good point, actually, that should be said, cause I just finished writing up a paper on this idea of quitting versus giving up. Because the belief is that SEALs especially are like, hey, I'd rather die than quit. Which is an incorrect and actually ludicrous way to think. I've done hundreds of combat missions and I've quit on three of them. And when I say quit, I've been in charge, that means I've stopped the mission and we've turned around and gone back to base. And the idea is you are consistently reading the environment. And in your head ticking off those things that aren't going right. Because every single time something goes wrong, and this is a military mission, you can see it in the after reports after aviation disasters, it's almost always a series of small things that add up to the big thing.One of the things we do, and especially one of my jobs as the officer in charge, was to constantly keep track of those little things. And I always had a ticker going on my head. I was like, okay, that, that, that. And there's no magic number for when it goes over. It's more of a kind of a feeling but like on those three occasions, I hit that feeling. I hit that boundary. I said, okay, enough, we are quitting. And people say we have tactically withdrawn or  we're going back to base. But when you stop that, it feels like quitting. And some of the guys were not happy because they didn't see it like I did. But it's a good point. It's like, even when we're operating aerobically, even in life. I would maintain that the ability to succeed in any goal is in fact not about not quitting. It's in fact quitting when you need to, so that you never have to give up. If you're on the wrong path, you need to quit that path and try a new path. It's kind of that tenacity.

AUBREY: It seems to me that, in my own experience, the consequences aren't nearly as high, but if I haven't premeditated the potential scenarios, I'm far more likely to make a mistake. TThere is obviously the radically unknown. I'm far more likely to make a mistake where I haven't thought it through. And so I can think about it in improv theater, I had a massive wardrobe malfunction. as I was playing the captain of the guards, and my fucking sword belt fell off and I was like, Oh, this is opening night. I was like, ah, what do I do? I hadn't been in enough plays to know, like, okay, one of the things that could happen is that your wardrobe malfunction or this could. So I just panicked at that moment on stage. I regretted that moment forever, but ultimately this idea, this happened recently. This thing happened. That's a surprise. You do something and something happens that's out of the ordinary. If you've thought through it, then that kind of track. As the pressure of the moment is there, a big audience or people watching the stakes are high. It seems like for you, as you go on this mission, you gotta think through all of the possibilities to the greatest degree that you can. 

RICH: You can, but you can never think through all of them and you never want to suffer from paralysis through analysis, right? So you typically think through a few contingencies. 

AUBREY: And lump them into categories. 

RICH: You phase out operations. There's the part where you're flying in the helo, then there's the part where you might be walking in, there's the part where you're actually doing the target, then there's the part where you're coming off. So you phase it out, and then in each phase you say, okay, what are some things that could happen in these phases? And those contingencies you think through enough so that, especially if you're doing Op after op, after op, it becomes kind of like a parachute malfunction. 

AUBREY: And that's also experience. Like what I'm talking about. I didn't really have a great chance to think through it. 'cause that was my first improv play and the first time I wore a sword belt in an acting thing. But if you would be damn sure that if I was in another play where I had a sword belt, I'd be like, yeah, this fucking thing. That they rigged up here. This could fail. 

RICH: That's right. But I think, this speaks to what we've been talking about, practicing grit prepares you for the unknown. So it prepares you for those moments where something happens that you never anticipated and what you've practiced doing is thinking through that in the moment. And again, you can't think through that in the moment if you're panicking. One of the things that SEALs and any special operations do very well is we understand uncertainty. We don't panic in uncertainty. It's funny. In my neighborhood where I live, I have a SEAL that lives across the street from me. I have a SEAL that lives to the right. I have a SEAL that lives to the left–

AUBREY: Bad neighborhood. No wonder you love your house so much.

RICH: That's right. Totally. Well, it's funny. My wife at one point said, she said, I'm so glad these guys are in the neighborhood because if anything ever happens, I could go to any one of them and you weren't around, and they would act just like you act. And I said, well, what does that mean? Explain that. She said, basically, as soon as something happens that's bad, or out of the ordinary, you guys all immediately calm down. You all calm down and you begin to work on the problem. You think. And so we've trained ourselves to when the situation starts to get really bad, we calm down. And when you calm down you can actually think, you can make logical decisions, and I think you can do this in any context, in any environment. I think those people, those actors and actresses who are very experienced. Something like that happens, they see it as an opportunity. Like, oh, I can make a joke now. That's cool, right? 

AUBREY: Yeah, totally. Exactly. I thought about a million of those.

RICH: Yeah, yeah. But I would have been like, listen, as calm as I am in many situations, I probably would have been the same as you because I'm just not used to that context. So I think these types of things that we've talked about, one can practice, prepares you for those moments where, gosh, this is something I did not anticipate, now I have to think on my feet..

AUBREY: So, you almost rely on the process rather than the specifics

RICH: Absolutely rely on the process. And I think Masters of Uncertainty are literally, that means you're Masters of the process. That's what it is. You're masters of your ability to be able to think through. Now you buy down that uncertainty with preparation and with contingency planning, as much as you possibly can. This is when you parachute, there's like at least 10 different parachute malfunctions that can happen. So you understand and you practice all of them. YYou just understand all of them and you say, okay, if this happens, this happens. But then there's going to be those that might happen that you never planned. And you say, okay, now what do I do? And you have to be able to kind of work that problem. So yeah, it's grit training. That's what it is. 

AUBREY: As we wrap this up here. If you were going to say anything else outside of the scope of what we mentioned so far that would be really helpful just for someone tuning in, listening to this, something that they could apply to their life that you found meaningful when you've been speaking and coaching and talking to people, what would that be?

RICH: I'll give you two. First is this idea of asking better questions. We're neurologically designed to answer questions. That's what our brains do about our environment constantly. And a lot of times it's done without us even knowing it. We're bouncing what we see off of our occipital lobe and going to that library and saying, have I seen this before? What people don't realize is that whenever you consciously lodge a question into your frontal lobe, our brain has no choice but to begin to answer that question. We just start coming up with answers. Now, oftentimes we do this, and 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? As soon as you ask yourself that question, you will begin to get answers to that question. And I guarantee you they won't be very empowering or helpful. And a lot of them will be assumptions and suppositions and all that stuff. Every single high performing person I've ever met, every single high performing team I've ever experienced, all understand the power of asking better questions. Changing those questions to a better one. What can I learn here? What can be done? Who's out there that can help me? Because as soon as you lodge your question into your brain, whether or not know the answers, your brain's gonna start coming up with answers. Now, some of them might not be very helpful, but if you keep on digging and asking yourself that question, you will come to some gems that allow you to perform, or at least to move, take a step, is all you need to do. And if you don't know what question to ask, because people will say, hey, what question do I ask? But that's completely entirely subjective, I can't tell people that. If you don't know what question to ask, the one question you can ask is, what's a better question right now? I remember my wife and I during COVID, we were getting this second story put on our house during COVID. We were living with our neighbor during quarantine. And of course, we had bad days. And we have a German shepherd. We just walk around the neighborhood. We use those walks as a kind of catharsis.. And so I remember one of these times we were walking and the first lap we were kind of using the vent a little bit, but then it was the second lap and we both said, okay. Stop. What's the better question we should be asking ourselves right now . And we began to talk about it and ask and come up with questions that we could then ask ourselves. And we moved towards solutions. So asking better questions is absolutely something someone can do every single day when they find themselves in a pit, if they're mad, if they're depressed, whatever, just take control of the questions you're asking yourself. That's a huge one. The other one I'll just share with you is–

AUBREY: Let me comment on that real quickly. I think in my experience in helping lead people through different situations, it's so much about just asking the right question. Probably the best thing that I can do is to pose another question. So somebody recently had performance issues based on  smoking too much cannabis. And I'm the last person to tell anybody what different substances they should put in their own body. That's their personal choice. However, these performance issues were arising. And so the question wasn't, why are you doing this?L The question was, which is very broad and can go to a lot of self judgment and whatever, why can't you stop or what's wrong with you? These questions are very simple questions. But the question was, okay, so what is the underlying state that you're trying to mask or you're trying to escape from? What is that thing that's really painful or what’s that thing that's uncomfortable and goes there. Like, don't even worry about cannabis, what's the thing underneath it, is important. And that's the moment. It's like, oh yeah, well it's this stress and this anxiety. And okay, well, where does that come from? Oh, well it's this different change that's happened there. And then all of a sudden there's like. Oh, I see, I see the whole picture. I didn't do anything. I just asked the right question.

RICH: It's amazing that you should say, let me just hit on this because you're obviously really good at asking the right questions too, because there's a difference in the questions we ask. There's what's called a closed question. There's a leading question. There's an open ended question. A closed question is a question you ask that there's only a yes or no answer to. And oftentimes we do that to people because we're kind of data mining. There's the leading question, which means we're asking a question, leading them down a road. So I could say a closed question would be like, you could say, “Rich, did you enjoy this podcast?” All I got is yes or no. Ano. A leading question. You say, “Hey, Rich, how did you enjoy this podcast?” You're basically assuming I did and you're leading me down that road. Or you could say, “Hey, Rich, what'd you think about the podcast?” That's an open ended question. And what open ended questions do is it keeps all of that availability to the person you just asked. If you're helping someone with this, those are the questions you should be asking, just like you did. Because then that person's mind just said, Oh, wait a second, okay. Now I'm gonna be able to pull out from my mind what I have and give it to you. And then you just keep on asking open ended questions. I believe that the quality of our lives is directly proportional to the quality of questions we ask ourselves on a consistent basis. I mean, if we consistently ask ourselves better questions, which is also part of reframing we find a better quality of life. It's an amazingly powerful and simple tool. 

AUBREY: Yeah. I love that. All right. What's number two? 

RICH: Number two is resilience. Resilience. One of my favorite COs used to say, talk to us about the two minute rule, which is what his grandfather taught him. And basically he said, okay, if anything bad happens, all right, just take two minutes, kick the dirt, mourn, swear, curse, whatever, and after 120 seconds, get back to what you're doing. If anything great happens, okay? Take two minutes, rest on your laurels, pat yourself on the back, be king of the world, and then get back to work, get back to what you're doing. And so the two minute rule is literally just resilience practice, it's for our little tragedies, okay? I am perfectly aware. And cognizant of the fact that people have things that happen to them that take a lot more than two minutes to get over. I mean, and we have great things that happen to us that we want to celebrate for a little bit longer than two minutes, but we can actually, in those little tragedies, the spat with the spouse or the flat tire or the bad day at work. We can practice the two minute rule. And what that does is that exercises the resiliency muscle both ways. And the more we exercise that resiliency muscle, the better off we are, when big tragedies happen and we need more time. We understand, okay, I actually have to agree for the amount of grief, get the emotions out of it and then get back on track. But there's always a sense that, come back to baseline as soon as possible. So you can move forward. 

AUBREY: Beautiful man. Thanks for coming, thanks for sharing, thanks for your service prior to that. 

RICH: Absolutely. Thank you. It’s been great talking to you. Great to meet you finally.

AUBREY: Likewise. And your book, you want to tell people about that? Tell people anywhere else they can find you. 

RICH: Yeah. So the attibutes.com, can find the book. And you can find also, we created a free assessment tool. So you can go on the website and get an assessment on your grid attributes, your mental acuity attributes and your drive attributes and get a score as to where you fall on each attribute that you can use really as a snapshot to say, okay, how do I show up? And then you can kind of index that against your performance, say, which are the ones I want to develop. So that's all free. We also have some workbooks there. If people wanted to develop attributes, which is different than developing a skill. If they wanna develop a specific attribute, there's workbooks there to guide people to that. So the attributes.com, and then the book is, you can get the book there, but also anywhere books are sold. 

AUBREY: Beautiful. Thank you so much Rich. Thank you everybody for tuning in. Much love. Goodbye.