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So no picture of Jordan on the wall. You're not listening to YouTube inspiration video. Those would be all your voice anyway. You're not listening to your top 10 favorite songs just to get rolling and then lace the shoes, hit the books. It's all in here. All in there. I used to do that when I was fat. Rocky, I mean, that was my thing. Round 14 was my thing. And as I got older and older and older, that started to go away.
And I started to create all these people that I used to watch. Rocky was one, Barnes, Elias from Platoon, Jack from A Few Good Men. You know, he's on the stand going crazy. I saw a lot of these characters that I looked at and I was like, man, I ain't got none of that. But they were characters. After a while, I lived a life so disciplined that everybody that I once looked to, these fake characters, I built it as a man.
And when I was younger, I had this image in my mind of what does a man look like to me? And I got all these people who were badasses characters. And in my mind, I became that. And that's what kept me going a lot was I had this pipe dream of becoming a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Because when you have no parents raising you and you have no role models growing up, you it's not daydreaming anymore.
You start to create a reality like, hmm, maybe I can be that. And after becoming this guy, that is the biggest thing I can ever do in my life is I became that guy. That I once looked at all these guys and now look at myself like, God, who the f*** can do that? I can't. But what it takes is a discipline that no one can ever even, they just don't, they don't understand it. They don't understand, but everybody has the ability to do it.
but they just don't want to. They want to keep asking questions and keep going to seminars. And the greatness is right in you. And that's why, once again, I'll say this a million times here, I do not feel sorry for you. I will not sugarcoat what I'm going to say to you because all of you know what I'm saying is the truth. Everybody knows it's the truth. This is what it looks like. And you know it too. You know it too. If you ain't got nothing, I hate to tell you what it looks like is ugly.
It's not a documentary. It's not an HBO special. You ain't gonna watch it. But hey, man, you guys gotta watch this. No, it's like, oh God, this looks like a train wreck. It's like a nightmare. This looks like this guy got, no. That's what it looks like. Hard work looks horrible. It's not motivating. It's not motivating at all. It ain't like Rocky round 14. He gets knocked down and goes like this to Apollo Creed. It looks like a man being stuck in a fucking dungeon and there's no fucking way out. But you got the fucking key, but you refuse to use it. And that's nothing motivating about that.
So yes, no documentary on David Goggins. I watched myself stagger back to the beach and lay my helmet down. Within days, I was flushed right out of the military and sent back to Indiana where I struggled through a series of low-level, low-impact jobs, which were the only ones I was qualified for. Minimum wage security guard, lifeguard at a local pool, an exterminator. That was true clarity.
All my aspirations would be vaporized if I left surf torture behind because I was a reservist. And if I snapped and quit, the Navy wouldn't even want me on one of their ships. I could not afford to lose my sh*t. SEAL training and that cold ocean were exactly where I belonged, so I needed to calm the f*ck down and meet the challenge head on. I took another breath as the next big wave swelled. It smashed the sh*t out of me too.
but I managed to scramble toward the group and lock arms with my teammates. I was done showing weakness. I was finished with fear. I would stay in that water as long as it f***ing took. When we got called back onto the sand 10 minutes later, the men of my boat crew were shivering and stiff. They were so cold, they didn't even want the edges of their soaked t-shirts to graze their skin. We needed to warm up fast, and the only way to do that during Hell Week is to go hard.
I nodded to Bill, grabbed the front of the boat, and shouted out orders. As a unit, boat crew two started putting the f*** out like Hell Week was our natural habitat. Often, it's the shock that launches the spin out.
For me, it was the snap of the cold water that triggered my fight or flight response, which comes with an adrenaline rush that spikes the heart and respiratory rates and puts your insecurities on blast. Your body and mind react that way because they want to protect you by telling you to get the f*** out. Fight or flight is exactly what Maura was experiencing in the chow hall.
His fear and panic owned him. When I was teetering on the brink, I was able to physically calm myself down with a few deep breaths, and that helped me see through the adrenaline rush. My heart rate was still elevated, and panic continued to creep in, but I'd regained enough of my composure to make a conscious one-second decision to stay in the fight. That took mental fortitude because the water hadn't suddenly warmed up.
I was still cold and miserable and staring at 130 hours of hell, but I was able to see that the life I desired was on the other side of surf torture. I did not cave into emotion and quit. When people do that, they aren't even making an actual decision to quit. It's a default reaction due to stress. I get that it's difficult not to give in to all that emotion, acute pain, and discomfort.
All you really want at that point is for it to end. You envision your bed at home and how sweet it feels to lie down with your wife or husband or partner. You know, your mom will greet you with a forgiving hug and that your family will understand because they love you no matter what. You know, for a fact that they will console and take care of you. And when you're hurting bad or scared, all of that feels way too good to pass up. But you must remember that
Those images of home aren't actually rooted in love. They are a product of your fear, disguised as love. Maura and I shared the same big dream. We'd both had our worlds rocked. I recovered by dominating Hell Week in a fashion that nobody had seen before. Maura's mind had already unraveled by the time I saw him in the chow hall. He wasn't thinking consciously at all. His emotions were controlling him instead of the other way around. I couldn't help him because by then,
He'd already lost the battle. I don't know when he officially quit.
In Hell Week, you get so wrapped up in your crew, so engulfed in helping one another get to the other side that after several hours, you might look up and find half the class has bailed out. All I know is that at some point, he rang the bell and lived to regret it. Everything in life comes down to how we handle those crucial seconds. When psychological, physical, or emotional pressure redlines, your adrenal glands go haywire.
and you are no longer in control. What separates a true savage from everybody else is the ability to regain control of their mind in that split second despite the fact that all is still. That's what people miss. Our lives aren't built on hours, days, weeks, months, or years.
Hell week is 130 hours, but it's not the hours that kill you and it's not the pain, the exhaustion or the cold. It is the 468,000 seconds that you must win. It only takes one of those mother when it all becomes too much and you just can't take it anymore to bring you down. I had to remain vigilant and manage my mind for every single one of those seconds to make it. Life like hell week is built on seconds that you must win repeatedly.
I'm not saying you have to be hyper aware every second of your life.
But if you are pursuing something that demands all you've got and means the world to you, that is often what it takes. When you are trying to lose weight or quit drinking or using drugs, your moment of weakness can be counted in seconds and you need to be ready to win those seconds. You could be a medical student who has dreamed of being a doctor their entire life only to fail a crucial class early on. Overwhelmed with panic, you may be tempted to march straight to the admissions office and withdraw.
Maybe you are an aspiring lawyer with a job at a prestigious firm in your back pocket, yet failed the bar exam again. And in the heat of that moment, you abandon your career before it begins. All because you become convinced that you cannot walk back into that office after another humiliation or study for that bitch again and put yourself right back on the chopping block.
While school and professional exams are held in controlled environments, an F can spike the heart rate and trigger self-doubt as quickly as a six-foot wall of cold water.
Sometimes that grade looms so large, especially in a young mind, that it's easy to feel like all eyes are on you and your failure and that you've fallen so far behind that you'll never catch up. Moments of doubt are unavoidable when we take on any strenuous task.
I've used the one second decision to regain my composure and win hundreds of small battles during ultra races on the pull-up bar and in stressful work situations.
And the first step is to mentally take a knee. The best person in any combat scenario is the one who is composed enough to take a knee when the bullets are flying at them. They know they need to evaluate the situation and the landscape to find a way forward, and that it's impossible to make a conscious decision if they or their team is running around like fire ants. Taking a knee in battle is not as easy as it sounds.
But it's the only way to give yourself time to breathe through the panic and rein in your spinning mind So you are able to operate the battle hasn't stopped Gunfire is still lighting up the night and you don't have any time to waste in that one second You must take a breath and decide to bring the fight when you are in the grip of life and in danger of losing your just think It's time to take a knee
Get a couple of breaths and flash to your future. If you fold, what will happen next? What's your plan B? This is not some deep contemplation. There is no time to order a pizza and hash it out with your people.
This must happen in seconds. It helps to prepare with productive self-talk before you drop into that sufferance on your schedule. Remind yourself that nobody is great at every single aspect of any job, at least not right away. And no runner skates through a hard race unchallenged, no matter how bleak it looks or feels.
you must stay rooted to your baseline. If you're in med school, your baseline is to graduate and become a doctor. In Coronado, my baseline was becoming a Navy SEAL. Many men buckled under the log during Hell Week, but log PT was easy for me. I had to remember that every time we were ordered back into my own personal torture chamber, the Pacific Ocean. It helps to remind yourself of what you're good at and where you excel. So when you have to engage in something that is hard for you,
It doesn't become overwhelming. Tell yourself, I'm good here. I'm great there. This sucks, but it will be over in 20 minutes. Maybe it's 20 miles or 20 days or 20 weeks, but it doesn't matter. Every experience on earth is finite. It will end someday and that makes it doable. But the outcome hinges on those crucial seconds you must win. There are consequences to this. Quitting on a dream stays with you.
It can color how you see yourself and the decisions you make going forward. Several men have taken their own lives after quitting SEAL training. Others marry the first person who comes around because they are so desperate for validation. Of course, the reverse is also true. If you can withstand the suffering, take a knee, and make a conscious one-second decision in a critical juncture, you will learn perseverance and gain strength by winning the moment.
You will know what it takes and how it feels to overcome all that loud doubt and that will stay with you too. It will become a powerful skill you can use again and again to find success no matter what scenario you're in or where life takes you. It's not always the wrong move to quit. Even in battle, sometimes we must retreat. You might not be ready for whatever it is you've taken on. Perhaps your preparation wasn't as thorough as you thought. Maybe other priorities in life need your attention.
It happens, but make sure that it is a conscious decision you're making, not a reaction. Never quit when your pain and insecurity are at their peak. If you must retreat, quit when it's easy, not when it's hard. Control your thought process and get through the most difficult test first.
That way, if you do bow out, you'll know it wasn't a reaction based on panic. Instead, you've made a conscious decision based on reason and had time to devise your plan B.
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