Perform Like A Navy Seal - Rich Diviney | Modern Wisdom Podcast 354

1. 0:00 – 0:26

   Intro

   1. RDRich Diviney0:00

      Whenever you go to achieve a long-term objective that the external world has a say in, throw routine out the window, 'cause the world is going to hit you with punches all the time. You're going to have to break routine, right? This is why the- some of the highly, highly, highly self-disciplined people sometimes have trouble achieving long-term things, because it's hard for them to break routine, right? (wind blowing) Rich Diviney, welcome to the show. How are you, my friend? It's good to be here. Thanks for having me.

2. 0:26 – 5:36

   Doing BUD/S at 22

   1. RDRich Diviney0:26

      You are a fucking badass, man. You did BUD/S at 22 years old, the SEAL team selection. That's right. That's right. Um, but I'm not as badass as some guys. I had an 18-year-old in my class. I mean, you know, so, I mean, I went through as an officer, so I went through four years of college and then, and then went to BUD/S. And so, but we had, we had, uh, we had guys who had just gotten out of high school, they wanted to join the Navy, and, um, and they were 18. I had one 18-year-old dude who was in my class, and this guy was ... He was one of the fastest runners you've ever seen. I mean, he was a freak. And he was a smoker, like an avid smoker. And I remember he'd like be puffing a cigarette and then we would have to go for a run, and he'd beat us all on the run. I mean, but he, uh, he was just that f- at, at one point, and I don't want to get gross right at the beginning of our show here, but, um, we were running on the beach as a class, right? And he had to go to the bathroom really bad. So he figured he'd just sprint ahead as, you know, be- ahead of the class, run into the ocean, 'cause it was on the beach, go to the bathroom, and then, and then as the class passed, he caught, he, he got back with us, right? That's how fast he was. He was just ridiculous. But 18 years old, unbelievable. Is that the youngest that you can do that? Yeah, because, uh, because in the, in the States, you have to be a high- at least a high school graduate or have a high school degree or diploma. And that's usually around 17, 18 years old, and then you can go and ... And, and then, and then if you join the Navy right after high school, say you're 17, you go through your regular Navy boot camp and stuff. So by the time you hit the beaches of SEAL training, you're, you're 18. But that's still, that's just still insane, so ... You can have those kids in America, though, the ones that jump ahead a few years. You've got some child prodigy chess grandmaster that decides he wants to be in the SEALs at age 14 or something like that. That might happen in future. We'll wait- we'll see. It might. I would, I would assume if, if someone's that far ahead academically, the SEAL teams or the military- (laughs) ... is not their first choice. So, uh, I don't know if that's going to happen, but, uh ... So what's it like? You're 22 years old, so you know, you're with someone who's 18. What's that like being, going through something that grown men with hardened military experience for a lot of time, more life experience, more emotional stability, so on and so forth, what's that feel like? Were there any interesting lessons, do you think, from doing it so young? Well, you know, it's interesting. I think, I, and I'm, I don't know the exact... There's an age limit. In other words, you c- you can't be any older than, I think, 29 or 30 if you want to be a SEAL. Now, I think that has to do with some, some of the, just the physical aspects of it. I mean, it literally breaks your body down. You have to be young to do that because you're just bursting with testo- you know. I mean, there's a, in SEAL training, you do obstacle courses, right? And there's an obstacle course there with a bunch of high obstacles, you climb up and do stuff. There's one obstacle called the Slide for Life, and it's about a, it's a four-story tower that you climb up to the top of, and then connecting the, at the top of that tower, there's a rope that goes all the way down, uh, about 100 to 150 yards down to the, to the sand, right? And you're supposed to climb on top of that rope and then slide down that rope to get down off that four-story tower. It's called the Slide for Life. And of course, someone like me who hates heights, it's always, it's, it's tough to do. You just have to focus and do it. Anyway, there was a dude in my class, I remember, who jumped on the rope at the top of the tower, slid down only a co- a couple feet, and then fell off the, fell off the rope and f- fell like almost four stories into the stance, into the sand, right? And this dude's like, he, you, and we're like, "Holy, holy crap, what just happened?" And it's like 10 seconds or so. He gets up and then brushes himself off and then keeps going. You can't do that when you're (laughs) you can, you can, that can, you can only do that when you're young, because your body just is so resilient. And so, so one, so I think one piece is that you have to be young because of just the physicality of it. Um, I think, uh, you know, the SEAL teams and special operations holistically, um, thrive on members who can think through things, can, uh, can, can, um, can, uh, utilize some experience and, and some knowledge and kind of apply that to problem solutions. So, so going through the training young like that is actually, I think, necessary, 'cause you kind of get through that crucible that sees if you have these innate qualities, and then you go to a team, and then you're just a learner. I mean, you're a new guy for a while. And, and so you're surrounded now by experienced dudes who, whereas they may not be as physically, uh, resilient as you are at that age, you're still, they're the guys you're listening to. And so I think, um, I think that was the lesson. You, it was kind of do this upfront. I mean, you certainly get bonded with people. I mean, at 22 and 18, they're not too much different, uh, you know, age-wise, you know. But, um, uh, but you get bonded, you start learning about people. You get, you, you form this bond of people, uh, with people who just go through the shared experience. And of course, that experience, whether it's the people in your SEAL training class specifically or guys who've been through, you know, 20, 30 years ago, right, you all have that commonality. I'll, I'll talk to guys who went through, they were SEALs in the '50s or '60s, you know, and we can talk, and we joke about the same stuff, because we've all been through that. And even now, I'm the old guy, right, 'cause I went through in, in the mid-'90s. Now you got the new guys. I'll talk to SEALs today, you know, currently, and they've just been through training, and we can bond, because we've been through the same... That shared experience is the common denominator, which is

3. 5:36 – 10:06

   Intellectual Navy Seals

   1. RDRich Diviney5:36

      really cool. It seems to me, learning a little bit about you, that y- based on what I knew about the SEALs, I knew that the guys were really, really smart, but it seems like you were very well-read as a kid, you were doing visualization and manifestation and stuff. That didn't strike me as the sort of person whose first port of call would be to go into the SEAL team. Is that- Well, yeah. Is that wrong from me? Is that, is it, is it common for someone who's, who's got these sort of academic inclinations to do that?Well, you have a mixture. I mean, again, th- I don't think there are any dumb guys. I mean, we, we would joke. I would, you know, of course, as, as brothers in arms, we would call some of our members dumb, right? But, but you had a, you had the, you had a kind of a, a, a, a spread. I would say, though, that Spec Ops guys tend to trend towards the more intellectual, well-read kind of, uh, guys who just kind of think differently. Because again, the job of Special Operations, I, I always said that, you know, the, the Navy SEALs and that job is not like the movies and the TV shows. It's not like a bunch of door-kicking folks who just run in and shoot guns and all that stuff. They're, uh, they're masters at skydiving. The job is really to be a master of uncertainty. It's to be able to drop into an environment that's deeply uncertain, unknown, volatile. So in the military, you call it VUCA, V-U-C-A, vu- uh, volatile, volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous environments. So VUCA environments, right? The job of a SEAL is to drop into those and immediately start performing, right? And so to do that requires a level of A, uh, well, an ability to calm oneself and think through uncertainty, challenge, and stress, but also a level of, um, of knowledge and experience to be able to, uh, or open-mindedness or whatever you call it, to be able to say, okay, what can I apply to this environment? And that takes a lot of learning. I mean, I, there were, th- you know, because it's so hard to get to SEAL training in the first place, um, and the officer path is, is even more competitive than the enlisted path, I had guys in my class... There was one guy in my class, he wa- he had a, a, a college degree in rocket science, um, and he co- he, he enlisted in the Navy to become a SEAL, right? So, um, so yeah, very intelligent guys, mostly. Um, they (laughs) , there are, there are some, some of those just big dumb guys who you, you have carry the big weapons, you know, and we love them too, but, uh, and we, we, we'd tease them all the time. Um, but, uh, but for the most part, yeah, a more, a more intelligent force i- i- you'll find in, in any Spec Op- Special Operations, w- the Navy SEALs, the Army, or even in the, um, in the UK, SBS, SAS tr- uh, I mean, it's amazing. We work with those guys all the time and we're so similar, right? Because it's just, i- it attracts this type of mindset, which is, um, I think a little bit more deep, deep thinking.

   2. CWChris Williamson8:18

      What were some of the differences between you and the British Special Forces, if you noticed any?

   3. RDRich Diviney8:25

      Um, I mean, very few. I would say that they, they, they're better drinkers, but even that-

   4. CWChris Williamson8:32

      (laughs)

   5. RDRich Diviney8:32

      ... they were... (laughs) We, we, we still went toe-to-toe with them on that. No, I mean, you know, I mean, very trans- transportable, I mean, or, or kind of similar, because again, um, you're talking about units that have incredible, incredibly tough selection criteria. Uh, the job is to do incredibly tough, dynamic, complex things and think differently. Um, and so we would, I mean, we would get on with those guys. And whether it was the, the, the, the Brits, the Germans, the Italians, the Israelis, I mean, all of us, it would always, it was cool because you just... I mean, you know, the difference was accents. That was it. (laughs) You know?

   6. CWChris Williamson9:08

      Well, the thing is, you guys, you're, no matter where you're from, the end goal is the same.

   7. RDRich Diviney9:12

      Mm-hmm.

   8. CWChris Williamson9:12

      To be able to drop in, to deal with the uncertainty, to deal with the ambiguous situation, and the... given the fact that everyone has the same genetic or almost exactly identical genetic starting points, there can't be an unlimited number of iterations that you can go from one point to the other.

   9. RDRich Diviney9:27

      That's right.

   10. CWChris Williamson9:28

       You guys need this outcome.

   11. RDRich Diviney9:29

       That's right. Yeah.

   12. CWChris Williamson9:30

       So it kind of makes sense that you're going to have a framework that everybody feels, uh, a little bit of, um, homogeneity with.

   13. RDRich Diviney9:39

       Yeah, that... Totally. And I think that, that some differences might be environmental, right? The Navy SEALs and the SBS guys, um, and the German ******, they, they're a little bit more similar because we're water, we're kind of water-focused, whereas the SAS, the Green Berets, and, um, the GSG guys in Germany, they are kind of the land guys like the Army and Navy. So you have the Army and Navy stuff, which we always tease each other about, but u- ultimately we're all friends. I mean, we all, we all think very highly of each other, so it's really

4. 10:06 – 18:22

   Lessons Learned as a Navy Seal

   1. RDRich Diviney10:06

      cool.

   2. CWChris Williamson10:06

      What were some of the big lessons that you took from dropping into these environments? So, you know, the experiences that most normal people would have going into a client pitch in an office or something-

   3. RDRich Diviney10:21

      Mm-hmm.

   4. CWChris Williamson10:21

      ... the volume is being turned up to 11 from that, right?

   5. RDRich Diviney10:25

      Yeah. Yeah.

   6. CWChris Williamson10:25

      Like everything. The stakes are higher, the pressure is higher, the immediacy of your decision-making has to be higher. What were some of the lessons and the, the learnings that you took away from that?

   7. RDRich Diviney10:34

      Yeah, I think most of those came probably after the fact or e- or maybe as I gained more experience as I got towards the, the latter part of my career and I began to have the opportunity to look back on what makes us who we are, and I think, I think the biggest, uh, the biggest lesson is our ability to deal with stress, challenge, and uncertainty, to be able to process it in a way that allows us to think logically through it. And, um, and that's born... Well, first of all, it's born of attributes, what you come to the, what you come to the game with, obviously, 'cause you can't make it through training without some of these innate qualities, but then that's hyper-developed inside of a career, especially those guys who go to combat, right? There's a, there a- there is, in fact, a difference between Spec operators who, um, spend a career and they never get the chance to go to combat, 'cause that happens. In fact, that's the majority of guys. Maybe not now because we had 9/11 happen and we have the war on terror, and the guys who've actually been to combat. And, you know, I was just having... This morning, I was just having coffee with... So Hank from the book, um, uh, you read about... Uh, I just had coffee with Hank this morning. We were just talking about this idea that, um, that the training ground, BUD/S, Basic Underwater Demolition SAS SEAL training, which is the crucible inside of which you go through to become a SEAL, that's just the ticket to get in, right? Um, and s- and then if you, if you're, if you, if you happen to have the chance, like we did, to go to combat, that's when the, a lot of the testing begins, because that's when it's real. I mean, you go to BUD/S and you can kind of say, "Well, they're not gonna kill me." I mean, you know, I, I remember saying that a couple times, like, e- because I was like, "Oh my God, I'm... This is really tough." Everybody's like, "Well, they, they can't kill me. I mean, that's not, that's not their job to kill me." So...... in combat is different. The, the, you, you are in a situation-

   8. CWChris Williamson12:11

      Gloves are off.

   9. RDRich Diviney12:11

      ... where the en- yeah, the, yeah, the gloves are off, and if you, if you do something wrong, um, death could be the result. And so I think, I think the big lesson is, um, the, the ability to hyper-develop your sense and, and kind of process by which you deal with and walk through stress, challenge, and uncertainty. And it's very similar. This is, this is, these are similar to all spec ops folks in probably, you know, regardless of country. But in my neighborhood, for example, th- a quick example, because my neighborhood, across the street from my house, there lives a SEAL. Down the road to the right, there's another SEAL. Down the road to the, to the left, there's another SEAL, right? And, um, and I remember my wife saying, "Hey, I'm really glad these guys are in the neighborhood, because if, if you're gone and something would happen, I know I could go to these guys and they'd act the same way you act." And I said, "What do you mean by that?" She's like, "I just, I tell them and they ju- immediately calm down and they start working the problem," right? Because that's our, that's what we do, and you hyper-develop that ability, and that translates to every context of life. I mean, when COVID hit and we were all quarantined, I felt myself kind of like, okay, yeah, what's next? What, how are we gonna, wh- how are we gonna step through this? There was not really a lot of stress or anxiety because it's kind of like, let's just walk through, let's, let's feel this out. And so I think, I think that's a huge lesson that everybody comes away with.

   10. CWChris Williamson13:26

       How many deployments did you do?

   11. RDRich Diviney13:29

       Oh, boy. (sighs) I did about seven to Iraq, I did about five to Afghanistan, and I did, uh, some other ones around the world I can't really talk about. So I mean, overall, I did about 13-plus, uh, deployments throughout my career. Yeah, 20-year career, so.

   12. CWChris Williamson13:47

       So after you've done that, and actually while you're doing that, you begin to reflect on some of the lessons that you've learned. And then what's, what's this MindGym thing? What happened with that?

   13. RDRich Diviney13:58

       Yeah. So that, so, so the MindGym, the reflection happened really, uh, most, a lot of the reflection began when I was doing that. So what happened was I, I was, I had the opportunity to get to, to select and, and, and be- well, be chosen to go through the selection process for one of our very specialized SEAL commands. Um, and, uh, at this particular command, we took, they took SEALs from other commands, and then you went through your own selection process and you were part of this one.

   14. CWChris Williamson14:23

       Hang on. So you've got the hardest guys-

   15. RDRich Diviney14:25

       (clears throat)

   16. CWChris Williamson14:25

       ... that have gone through one of the most difficult selections, and then you put them through another even more difficult-

   17. RDRich Diviney14:32

       A whole nother-

   18. CWChris Williamson14:32

       ... selection. Tell me about that. What's, what's that about?

   19. RDRich Diviney14:35

       Well, it's, it's to, it's, it's so that they can actually do the job required by this sp- this specific command. Um, and there's still about a 50% attrition rate. And so, and so I was there for a little while, and then they put me in charge of the selection process and the training process for that command, which is really where I began to kind of reflect, because I said, "Okay, this is cool. I get to look back and, and look at it from kind of a 50,000-foot view." So there are a couple things that happened in there. First, one of my jobs when I took over that position was to look at, um, operator resilience. Um, how, how effectively were we, were we performing on the battlefield, and how effectively were we actually being able to, um, come back, uh, you know, and, and be resilient, be antifragile, kind of, kind of heal ourselves?

   20. CWChris Williamson15:21

       Like, reintegrate back into life after that.

   21. RDRich Diviney15:23

       Yeah, reint- that's a great, yeah, great way to put it. Reintegrate and, um, and grow from it. And, um, and so j- on that, on that angle, on that pathway, um, I was also, I kind of, I, m- I and a couple other guys really felt like we were, we were fine from a physical standpoint. In other words, um, benching more, bench-pressing more weights or running a mile faster wasn't going to get us any better, right? It wa- it had no, no applicability to combat. Um, where we thought the, the, the gains could be made was our, was our brain, was our mind, and how we could better, uh, we could better develop a relationship between our, our, our, our brain, our physiology, ourselves. Understand ourselves, understand our internal mechanisms, and, and develop that relationship. So the MindGym was really an exploration in some things, some techniques, some, some equipment, so that we could start exploring that relationship. You know, h- how can we more effectively, um, hack into our, our sympathetic and parasympathetic systems? How can we go from a sympathetic response to a parasympathetic res- response (snaps fingers) almost instantaneously, because that's recovery, and we- I used to call it micro-recovery. How can we r- recover between gunfights? Because when you're doing that, when you're shifting your physiology that way, um, you are changing the chemical and biochemical response in your system, right? Sympathetic response, especially high-stress ones, is going to induce cortisol, right, into our system, which again, is a necessary chemical, but also damaging to a degree if it's, if it, if it's in your system long enough, and it shuts down other kind of critical factors in your system. When you're releasing cortisol, for example, um, I mean, very simple things. Your p- your hair stops growing, your, your nails stop growing, um, your immune system starts to operate in different ways. Um, you stop creating saliva, which is why we get dry mouth when we're, when we're stressed. Um, but there are some, there are some things that your, your body basically begins to siphon energy to very critical components and elements of your system, all necessary for survival and stress, right? However, our body is also designed to shift to the parasympathetic. The parasympathetic system is the recovery, the rest and recovery. That's when we begin to make DHEA, for example, in our system. DHEA is a rebuilding chemical and, and neurotransmitter, that, that, that not only repairs the damage done by cortisol, but also starts to, it's a, it's a, it's a f- foundational element of, of testosterone and estrogen, for example. So, so we can, in fact, um, through breathing, through visualization, through, um, through certain visual techniques, we can actually hack into, we can deliberately move our systems from sympathetic to parasympathetic. And so, so we started exploring some ways that we could help operators, operators train to do that. And that was the inception of MindGym. I don't know where the MindGym...... is at this time, 'cause I was in charge of it for maybe 18 months and then I moved on. Um, but it was certainly a, a cool process to kind of think through and, and talk about, um, while we were there.

5. 18:22 – 28:01

   Recovering from Stress

   1. RDRich Diviney18:22

   2. CWChris Williamson18:23

      So, not everyone's going to need to be able to calm down in between two gunfights or between dropping out of some vehicle into a combat zone. But let's say that someone has just had an awkward conversation with a boss, or a, a really bad day at work, and they've got a, a 10-minute drive home or maybe a walk home, or maybe they sat on the bus.

   3. RDRich Diviney18:42

      Yeah.

   4. CWChris Williamson18:42

      What would be your favorite strategy that you could give someone? Or one of your favorite strategies? Like, here's something that you can do to get yourself into a mode where you're going to be able to be with your kids, to be with your, your spouse?

   5. RDRich Diviney18:52

      Yeah, yeah. Well, there, so there's two parts to that question. I'll hit the second part for, uh, first, okay? Because I think it's important. There's the recovery part, which is what you're talking about. And that's, can I kind of effectively come off of this hype, this stress, and kind of start to rebuild my system? Get myself to a different framework and reflective property. Um, I mean, visually, some... A visual tool immediately that someone can use if they're, if they're feeling this, is, is open gaze, right? This is like, when we get stressed, we start to focus, our pupils dilate. So if we l- say, for example, look at a horizon or look at something and then just open our gaze, which means we start to notice our peripheries. We're not staring at anything anymore. We start... That's been proven to start shifting ourselves into parasympathetic, you know, coming off of sympathetic. Um, breathing techniques, um, when we hold our breaths, right? Um, we start to... Uh, you know, the longer you keep your breath held, you start to feel anxious, right? (laughs) I mean, we all know this. You start to feel like, "Oh my God, I gotta breathe." That feeling of stress and anxiety is not, is not, in fact, because our body is seeking oxygen. It's because our body's getting, um, overdosed with s- uh, with carbon dioxide, right? And so, one of the ways you can start to, um, bring yourself, shift yourself, is to do what's called CO2 blowout breathing. This would be simply, uh, box breathing, but in a different style. So we say, um, inhale for two seconds, hold for two seconds, exhale for four seconds, and then hold on that bottom for four seconds, right? That's CO2 blowout. That's some ways you can do it. And then, I think one of, one of... A really important way, a cool one, especially if we're driving home or on the, on the, the, the tube or whatever, and we're on the bus and have, and have some time, is visualization. Visualization. Our brains app- apply different neurotransmitters and chemicals and biology to different situations we're in. And those situations that bring us joy and comfort and peace come with that. The reason why we feel that is 'cause we're getting a burst of really cool, powerful chemicals. Um, we can, in fact, visualize effectively, those same situations and induce that same chemical response. It's the same reason why when we, when we think about bad experiences, we get triggered and we get bad chemicals. This is the root of PTSD. The, the root of PTSD is, is folks who continually get triggered by a remem- by a, by a memory of a bad experience, right? So they're... It's almost like they're reliving it, but they almost are because physiologically they're getting that ner- the, the, those chemicals. You can do the same thing with great experiences and, and great visualizations. I... One of the things I used to do is I... You know, my boys are 16 and 14 now, but when they were little, they used to, they used to nap, take naps on my chest. I used to just let s- uh, l- lay on the couch and they'd nap on my chest. What... I mean, such a wonderful bonding feeling when you can do that with a child. Um, and so I used to visualize that, you know? And I'd start feeling what that felt like, and I'd get that chemical release, right? And, and it's a way we can start recovering. So, so in a recovery way, you can do those things. But there's another, I think, piece of this that we should talk about that's important, and that is, how do we... How can we more effectively march through an environment of stress, challenge and uncertainty? And that, you can use some of the same tools to do that, uh, because what, what we have to understand... So, so we have to kind of get into what fear is, all right? Fear, when we're afraid and our amygdala starts to kick in and we start to get that fight or flight, what happens is our, our, our frontal lobe, our conscious mind is starting to come offline a little bit, okay? Um, and it... If it... If, if the more f- afraid we get, the more our, you know, amygdala starts to get hijacked. We can actually get into what's called amygdala hijack. When we... Which means we're, we're just operating without thinking. We do something without thinking. That is, our, our frontal lobe, our conscious mind is, is almost completely offline and we're just acting, right? Um, not necessarily the best response when you are... when you, when you're... when it's your job to, you know, operate when you're scared, right? And so, so what... The way we can translate this into regular, regular life is, first, we can deconstruct fear, okay? Fear is ultimately two things combined. It's anxiety plus uncertainty, all right? Um, when you have both, you can have one or the other without being afraid, right? You can be anxious without being uncertain. That might be, "I'm giving a presentation next week to my boss and, you know, I'm anxious. I, I know my boss, he knows me, I know the presentation, um, I know what, I know what's gonna go on, so I'm not uncertain about it, I'm just a little anxious, okay? I'm not afraid, I'm just anxious." You can be uncertain without being anxious, okay? Well, that's every kid on Christmas Eve, okay? So fear does not exist there. (clears throat) When you combine the two, fear starts to exist, right? And so, the way you can begin... And when, when fear starts to enter into your system, right? That's when we start getting the amygdala, uh, response and our frontal lobe starts to want to go offline, right? So the, the way to manage that is to, is to attempt to buy down either one of those elements, either uncertainty or anxiety. The way you do that is, first, you recognize that, uh, what they are, okay? Anxiety is internally focused, okay? Um, there is crisis, which is happening outside, and uncertainty, which is all outside of us, right? The way we're processing it is stress and anxiety, okay? So that's internal. It's an internal response, and we can manage it by internal ways. Things I just talked about. We can do open gaze, we can breathe properly, we can get our breathing. That brings down our anxiety, so we're buying down when those... Starts bringing that conscious mind back online.... once we start doing that, we can begin to manage uncertainty. Now, that's a little bit different, 'cause uncertainty is all external, okay? Um, but the way you begin to manage uncertainty is you begin to ask questions about your environment, um, and process the answers to those questions. So one of the questions is, "Okay, what about this do I understand?" Okay? "Out of all of this chaos, what about it do I understand?" And that list might be really small, but then you say, "Okay, from that list, what can I focus on in the moment?" And then you decide something and you move towards that, okay? As soon as you do that, you create a dopamine reward in your system, which allows you to do it again, and ask the question again, and then move again and get another dopamine response. So, so (coughs) it's literally stepping through our challenge, stress, and uncertainty and moving through the stress. So an example would be, in SEAL training, and I remember doing this, you spend hundreds of hours running around with big, heavy boats on your head, all day, all night, right? And y- I remember being under the, one of these boats and we're on the beach, and I'm like, "Oh, my God." W- I didn't know when it was gonna end. It was miserable. Everything, every part of my body was hurting. And I said to myself, "Okay," there was this big sand berm that we were running next to. I said, "I'm just gonna focus until, I'm gonna f- I'm just gonna run until I hit the end of that berm," okay? Okay. That's w- and that's what I did. As soon as I did that, I created a dopamine reward, all right? It was a meaningful step for me. And once I got that dopamine r- reward, I was like, "Okay, now what am I gonna do? I'm gonna run to that, or I'm gonna do the... I'm gonna pick my next thing." And so we can manage uncertainty, first anxiety, and then we can manage uncertainty by constantly kind of looking at what that horizon, that next horizon is, making it as long or as short or as long as we'd like, right? 'Cause it can be like, "I'm just gonna make it to the next meal," or think about, "I'm gonna make it to the next 10 seconds." Whatever meaning, whatever provides meaning for us, hitting that, hitting that goal, getting the dopamine reward, and then doing it again, all right? This, in fact, is what almost every one of us does unconsciously if we can think back to how we've made it through a really tough experience. We've basically chunked it in meaningful pieces that mean something to us, and we've just moved through. We've d- we've just taken it step by step, w- and we've d- we've defined what those steps are. The, the per- the patient going through cancer will, will say, when they're going through chemotherapy, "I just, uh, all I wanted to do was get through the next session," right? "That was my goal," right? I talked to my buddy, Hank, who's in the book, and he said when he was first kind of going through all of his stuff as a, as a, as someone who lost both of his legs, he's like s- he's like, "Rich, sometimes I was just like, 'Just make it to the next hour.' That's it. 'Just make it to the next hour and then I'll pick the next hour.'" Right? So, but this is in fact neurologically what's happening, was we're managing it. So, so I think long answer, but those are two pieces and, and parts of those questions that I think could help people.

   6. CWChris Williamson26:51

      What about if you wanted to turn it on its head? What about if someone is too parasympathetic and they need to get themselves into a more energized state? Have you got any strategies for that?

   7. RDRich Diviney27:01

      Well, so breathing is a, is a, is a... Well, focus and breathing, right? So you can, if you focus on something, you're, you're actually starting to, you're c- you're starting to shift a little bit. Um, but breathing is also something as well. You can, you can breathe more oxygen. So Wim Hof has some great breathing techniques where you're super oxygenating your system (coughs) and you're, and you're getting more focused, right? And, um, and so I'd have to look at some of the breath work stuff, but there's a lot of good stuff on breath work that can take you either way. You can get recharged. Um, I think deep, fa- deep breath that are fast will, um, will help you get more focused. Um, visualization, you know, in the active sense can help you get more focused. I mean, music is one thing that changes states, you know, and, um, and, um, I love Metallica. That's one of my fav- and I love heavy metal, but Metallica is one of... And Metallica, in some cases, relaxes me. It takes me off of... but sometimes it fires me up too. I can use it for both things. Um, but yeah, certainly you can use music to get yourself, you know, fired up as well. So yes, you can go reverse.

6. 28:01 – 33:05

   Preparing Mentally for Situations

   1. RDRich Diviney28:01

   2. CWChris Williamson28:01

      Have you got any idea what would be optimal for someone if they wanted to, let's say, give a presentation? I'm thinking about like a common situation that someone's about to go into that they're stepping into this, into this environment, but they need to have the right amount of energy, but they also need to be calm. It feels like a, a challenging balance to go through here.

   3. RDRich Diviney28:22

      Yeah. Yeah. Well, the, the way you define that state, um, would be alert but calm, right? Um, and so, and, and really what alert but calm is, and really the way our systems are designed, is it's a, it's almost, um, a wave. Uh, uh, it's a, it's a gentle oscillation between sympathetic and parasympathetic, right? In other words, it's not, you're not just one or the other. You're, you're almost kind of just, almost in a sine wave, you, you know, going back and forth. And I think that's, um, I think that's gonna be different. Th- that type of, that type of state is gonna, is gonna be different in terms of getting there for every person. Um, but you almost want to be just, I think excite, you know, kind of a, a calm excitement, right? I mean e- ev- the, the good news is all of us as human beings can draw upon our own experiences to figure out what this feels like for us. Every one of us has felt this. You've felt a time where like, "Oh my gosh, I'm, I'm fired up, but I'm like really calm and focused." I'm like, this is, I'm like almost in the zone. This is what Kotler talks about. That, that would be actually flow state. A flow state would in fact be that oscillation between the two, right? And so, uh, and so my advice would be think back to situations where you felt that and ask yourself, "Okay, what are those..." First of all, what was the situation, right? 'Cause you could probably get back into it. But what were those triggers that allowed you to get there and feel that way? It's almost like that, um, that feeling that you're, you're just at the edge of your capability, but it's not too much and not too little to be bored, you know? Um-

   4. CWChris Williamson29:49

      That proximal zone, man. It's a hell of a drug.

   5. RDRich Diviney29:50

      That's right. That's right. And so, uh, and so how do you get there? And I think anybody who's going, um, is, is in d- is, is kind of going down pathways for the first time, it's gonna take a while. I, I use public speaking as a, as a, an example. I, I left la- the Navy and I hate, I hated public speaking. You know, I just like, that's, I don't like the idea. I'm nervous and I said, "Well, I should probably do that. I should probably do it more because I should choose something that scares me."... and so I started doing it. And the first, first year or two I would say of public speaking, I'd feel those butterflies, I'd feel nervous, I'd be like, "Okay, I don't really..." You know? But then I... And I just kept on doing it, and it started clicking. And now, I mean, I f- you know, before going up on stage, it's almost like I'm excited to get up there. I'm not overly excited, because it's not like, "Ooh, I want the applause," but I, it's, so I l- there's a little bit of nervousness, but, um, I just feel more flowy in it. And, um, and I think it just takes practice, you know? So, so anything we want to do, it just takes practice to get to that state.

   6. CWChris Williamson30:45

      I love the suggestion of music. It's staring everybody in the face. Like, it's such an obvious solution.

   7. RDRich Diviney30:52

      Yeah.

   8. CWChris Williamson30:52

      What is a song that gets you... Th- think about anyone who's ever done a one-rep max in the gym. You shouldn't have done it to silence.

   9. RDRich Diviney30:59

      That's right.

   10. CWChris Williamson30:59

       In fact, here's a, here's a cool thing for you. So I have a buddy who's a, a British champion powerlifter, one of my f- best buddies, and he has a number of songs that he only uses for PR attempts.

   11. RDRich Diviney31:11

       Yeah.

   12. CWChris Williamson31:11

       And they're, like, sacred to him.

   13. RDRich Diviney31:13

       Yeah.

   14. CWChris Williamson31:13

       So he, he almost kind of accrues this mystical power, and if it comes on, if he's, if it's in the car, the radio goes off, if he's in a shop, he goes, "I don't think this sort of music would be played in the-"

   15. RDRich Diviney31:23

       Yeah.

   16. CWChris Williamson31:23

       ... "local supermarket." But-

   17. RDRich Diviney31:24

       For sure.

   18. CWChris Williamson31:24

       Um, yeah, and then he keeps them sacred-

   19. RDRich Diviney31:27

       Yes.

   20. CWChris Williamson31:27

       ... um, a- and, and it's because this is a- associated with a particular type of state that he wants to get in.

   21. RDRich Diviney31:32

       Yeah. They're trigger points. Um, and, and honestly, the good news is, you can actually do this with your physiology as well. I mean, you can actually, um, if you, if there's music, for example, that charges you up, 'cause again, I mean, you know, in a powerlifting environment, you're gonna have music a- accessible to you. You may not have that same music if you're going to give a talk to your-

   22. CWChris Williamson31:49

       (laughs)

   23. RDRich Diviney31:49

       ... to some people or-

   24. CWChris Williamson31:50

       Just listening to some-

   25. RDRich Diviney31:51

       ... or whatever.

   26. CWChris Williamson31:51

       ... Metallica in the, in the hallway-

   27. RDRich Diviney31:53

       (laughs)

   28. CWChris Williamson31:53

       ... outside of the meeting room, yeah.

   29. RDRich Diviney31:54

       Although one time, I did give a talk and they were like, "Hey, we're gonna play a song before you walk up. Do you have anything?" So I said, "Play Metallica," right? So they played Metallica. I was like, "Oh, that feels great," right? So, but the, the, the idea is you can actually, if you have that music that actually triggers you, gets you that way, you can actually start to do things physiologically that help with that trigger. I mean, you can... I mean, whatever it is. It can... It has to be somewhat unique, something you don't do all the time. But I mean, if it's like, you know, pound your chest three times or, or do, I mean, snap your... Whatever it is, whatever that physiological movement you can make that's a little bit unique-

   30. CWChris Williamson32:25

       Yeah.
7. 33:05 – 39:19

   Peak Vs Optimal Performance

   1. CWChris Williamson33:05

      you talked about Steven Kotler there, and we had him on earlier this year. Awesome guy. Really, really loved his book. You highlight the difference between optimal performance and peak performance. Obviously-

   2. RDRich Diviney33:14

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson33:14

      ... his was a primer on peak performance, and your new book, The Attributes, is drivers of optimal performance. How do you define the distinction between them?

   4. RDRich Diviney33:22

      Yeah. He and I, he's a good friend. He and I, in fact, he and I met while I was running The Mind Gym. Uh, that's when I first met him-

   5. CWChris Williamson33:27

      No way.

   6. RDRich Diviney33:27

      ... and brought him in. Yeah. In fact, uh, his, his previous book, Stealing Fire, is, uh, that, if you read that first chapter, it's about me. Um, he and I wrote, he and I wrote that.

   7. CWChris Williamson33:35

      No fucking way.

   8. RDRich Diviney33:36

      Yeah. We wrote that chapter together. So, um, so, so we've talked a lot about this. And I think he, he would, um, he would say, he defines peak a little bit more broadly than I do, um, which is fair, and he does some awesome work. The way I define peak, I just, I try to think about elemental human performance, who are we at our most raw, and try to get down to some very simple semantics, because I think that helps people. Peak, if you define it, is simply an apex, right? And it's an apex from which you can only come down. And the professional athlete, and it has to be scheduled and prepared for and planned for, right? The, the professional athlete plans and s- and, and conducts himself or herself their whole week to peak for their event at the end of the week, right? The American football player does that all week so they can peak for the game on Sunday, okay? Nothing wrong with it. Uh, not practical in everyday life, and certainly special operations life, because in special operations, you never know when the end is coming, okay? Or when the end is, uh, or when the end is even near. So we perform optimally, optimally. Optimal performance is how can I do the very best I can in the moment whatever the best looks like in the moment, okay? Sometimes that best looks like peak. It looks like flow states and everything's clicking, it's awesome, right? Sometimes my very best in the moment, I'm going step by step, I'm head down, it's gritty, it's dirty, it's hard, it's ugly, right? Um, that is also performing optimally, right? And I think what optimal performance allows us to do is a couple things. First, (clears throat) it allows us to pat ourselves on the back for performing through challenge and stress, okay? Even though I just did that and it was ugly as hell, I'm s- we still did it, right? Uh, uh, we, we used to joke, sometimes we'd do missions like, "Man, that was not pretty at all," right? But we did the mission. I mean, we got it accomplished. We did the best we could with what we had, right? So it allows us to pat ourselves on the back when things don't feel clicky and flowy and pretty. But more importantly, it allows us to approach performance in a much more, um, I think responsible and healthy way, right? Um, I don't need to be peaking when I'm driving to the grocery store, okay? I can, I can basically manage my energy states so that, um, I'm using exactly the amount of energy I need to in the moment, not too much, not too li- little, um, but, but conserving, because when I need to peak, I have it. I can peak on demand. I can go up to a 10, you know? But then once I stay there for a while, I know I can come back down, and in some cases, have to come back down to a two or three, so I start to recover inside of my, inside of my day, right? And I think if, if we think about our days this way, we can start understanding where we can actually inf- inflict some of those micro-recovery moments, right? If you're at work all day and you know, "Hey, my afternoon meeting's usually a bear, or this morning thing's usually pretty, uh, pretty hard, but there's usually a mellow period in the morning," or whatever, or in the, in the, um, lunchtime or whatever, you can start saying, "Hey, I'm gonna modulate myself as I go."... so that I, I, I know when I have to be on and peak, and then I know when I can, I can actually... And then you, you, if you get good at this, if you practice it, you don't even have to plan it ahead, right? You say, "Hey, I got a moment here. I'm gonna take, I'm gonna take five minutes." You know, "I'm gonna, I'm gonna take two minutes at my desk to visualize before I walk into my next meeting. I'm gonna take 10 minutes on my drive home to listen to some really great music to get me in a great state, so that when I get home, and I can be right there with my kids, and I, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not bringing what I have home with me." And so I think if we looked at performa- if we, if we look at performance from an optimal standpoint, it allows us to be more human (laughs) for the duration of our, of, of, of life, which is inherently unpredicted.

   9. CWChris Williamson37:01

      Yeah, smearing that peak performance across time.

   10. RDRich Diviney37:04

       Right.

   11. CWChris Williamson37:05

       Right?

   12. RDRich Diviney37:05

       Right.

   13. CWChris Williamson37:05

       Because you, you're totally correct, like the ability to move in and move out, to speed up and to slow down, that is where the difference is going to be made, because it's going to permit you, you d- you, you, you need to match the output to the demands.

   14. RDRich Diviney37:20

       Yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson37:20

       That's precisely what the analogies to work out to fairly obvious here, but-

   16. RDRich Diviney37:23

       Yeah.

   17. CWChris Williamson37:24

       ... you know, if you're running a marathon, you don't go out at a sprint.

   18. RDRich Diviney37:26

       That's right.

   19. CWChris Williamson37:27

       And-

   20. RDRich Diviney37:27

       Or you, you sprint in certain moments, right?

   21. CWChris Williamson37:29

       Yes.

   22. RDRich Diviney37:29

       You know when it... And so I was working out with a buddy of mine. He was, he actually is a trainer. And this was about a year ago, and he was making me push these sleds, you know, these weighted sleds, and, um, and I was over about, of course, like 50 yards or something.

   23. CWChris Williamson37:42

       (laughs)

   24. RDRich Diviney37:42

       And he was timing me, and I said to my, I said to him, "What are you timing?" He said, "Well, I'm timing your... I'm, I'm basically measuring aerobic versus anaerobic capacity. So I'm timing how fast, how much power you have when you start your push and comparing that to, well that, your power state as you get to the end of the 50 yards." And I said, "Okay, what are you, well, what are you, um, what are you finding? What am I doing?" He said, "Well, interestingly enough, you, you come out, when you, when you push out initially, you basically start at the same pace that you finish, right? It's even the whole way." Um, I said, "What, well, how do you do it?" He's like, "I always start, and I'm like, I, like, start really powerfully, and then I slow down as I go." And I said to him, he had worked with a few, a d- a bunch of SEALs. I said, "What do you find SEALs usually do?" He said, "SEALs usually are like you. Um, they're much more aerobic in their approach." And it made sense to me, because the Navy SEAL, what you train yourself to do is you never look at a situation anaerobically. You s- you look at a situation aerobically because you never know how long you're going to be going. You know, when you start a mission, you have an idea, and you hope that the mission will have a certain duration, but you don't know what's gonna happen. It could go, it could go for days, you know, so, so you, you train yourself to always think aerobically, um, and then that gives you the capacity to go anaerobic when you, you know, on demand. And I think we can think about life the same way.

   25. CWChris Williamson38:59

       I did that today. I had a workout this morning and I pushed it far, far too hard. And anyone that's done the acid bath CrossFit workout, you know what happens. You cross that anaerobic threshold-

   26. RDRich Diviney39:08

       Mm-hmm.

   27. CWChris Williamson39:09

       ... and it's just a ticking, it's just a ticking clock.

   28. RDRich Diviney39:11

       Right.

   29. CWChris Williamson39:11

       It's like, it's like watching an asteroid very quickly come for you. And you're like-

   30. RDRich Diviney39:17

       Yeah.
8. 39:19 – 47:24

   Why Attributes & Skills Are Different

   1. CWChris Williamson39:19

      here. Okay, so we've distinguished between optimum and peak performance, and then there's also a distinction to be made between attributes and skills.

   2. RDRich Diviney39:25

      Yeah, yeah. So this was the other part of when I was in, running that training and selection. I had to, um, I, I was tasked with more effectively articulating why guys weren't making it through, why we were losing 50% of these top guys, because we had, the excuses we had, the, the explanations we had were unsatisfactory. There are things like, "Well, they couldn't shoot very well, they couldn't do this." And these were experienced SEALs. Obviously, they could shoot, obviously, they could do this stuff. This is when I began to separate these things, because there's a difference. When we look at performance, we often focus on skills, and the reason why we focus on skills is because skills are highly visible and they're highly measurable. So skills, just to break it down, are not inherent to our nature, right? We, we're not born with the ability to shoot a gun or, or ride a bike or throw a ball. We learn to do those things, we're taught to do those things, and they direct our behavior in known situations and environments, right? Here's how and when to shoot a gun. Here's how and when to throw a ball or ride a bike. As such, they're very easy to assess, measure, and test. You can see how well anybody does any one of those things. What they don't tell us is how we operate when the environment becomes unknown and uncertain, when, when we, when we're, when we're deep in un- in challenge, uncertainty and stress, because it's very difficult, if not impossible, to apply a known skill to an unknown environment, right? This is where we lean on our attributes. Attributes are more innate, or they are innate, right? All of us are born with levels of situational awareness, so adaptability and patience. And of course, they develop over time and experience, certainly, but we can see levels of this stuff in small children, elemental human performance, who are we at w- at our most raw, which is what I'm i- interested in. And attributes don't dictate our performance. Attributes inform our performance, right? So my son's levels of resilience and perseverance, for example, informed the way he showed up when he was learning how to ride a bike. He's learning that skill, and he was falling off a dozen times, okay? So they inform how we show up. And then because they're hidden in the background, they're hard to assess, see, they're hard to see and assess and measure. Um, you can't necessarily sit across the table in an interview process when someone's trying to hire someone and assess someone's level of resilience or patience, right? Um, they show up the most visurably (sic) - visibly during challenge, uncertainty and stress, which is why the laboratory I had was such a good one, because everything about SEAL training is throwing guys in stress, right? So, so what I did, in the book, was I said, "Well, this is..." You know, I p- I kept on getting questions from teams and businesses, "Hey, we keep on putting together these dream teams." Um, (coughs) best salesperson, best marketing person, best lawyer, but whatever, best, best, best, put them all together, and it works for a little bit, but as soon as the plan changes or there's a turn or things don't go as planned or are uncertain, the team start to fall apart. They start turning toxic. And they said, "What's going on?" I said, "Well, it's quite simple. You're, you're, you're picking your team based on the wrong things. You're picking your team based on skills versus thinking about attributes." These attributes are what tell us or, or, or, or what indicate our performance in uncertainty, challenge and stress. And so, um, and so w- the good news is we have all the attributes, okay? But the difference in each one of us are the levels to which we have each. So adaptability is the one I usually use as an example.... if 10 is high and one is low, I'm probably a level eight on adaptability. What does that mean? That means when the environment changes around me outside of my control, it's fairly easy for me to go with the flow and roll with it. Okay? I just adapt. Someone else might be a level three, okay, which means the same thing happens to them, it's difficult for them to go with the flow. It's hard-

   3. CWChris Williamson42:43

      Much less tolerance. Yeah.

   4. RDRich Diviney42:44

      Yeah. Much less tolerance. Again, no judgment on where we show up. All of us, if we were to line up all the attributes like a row of dimmer switches on the wall, we'd all have different levels. Our lines would look different. No judgment there. Okay? Because, you know, it'd be like judging our hair color. Um, the, the idea is can we figure out where we stand on some of this stuff so, A, it can, it can give us information on how we perform, and B, we can start making some decisions as to whether or not we want to improve and develop certain attributes that we might not have a lot on but we want more of.

   5. CWChris Williamson43:15

      I had James Clear's Atomic Habits in my head while I was reading it, and I thought of you don't rise to the level of your skills, you fall to the level of your attributes.

   6. RDRich Diviney43:24

      Yeah. I would, I would, uh, I would... And so I would say, I would say, I would add something because there's a saying in the teams, you don't rise to the level of your, uh... In stress, you don't rise to the, to... You don't rise up. You basically fall to the, to the base level. Right? So, so this is why training and skills is important, but, but we have to not overemphasize it. If, if you can do something at a very unconscious level, if you train so much that you can do it without thinking about it, it's, it's probably a good bet that when things get rough and ugly, you'll still be able to do that. Right? And that's why you train.

   7. CWChris Williamson43:55

      That's almost like making a skill an attribute, in a way. It's internalizing-

   8. RDRich Diviney43:59

      Almost.

   9. CWChris Williamson43:59

      ... it so much that it becomes second nature. The boxer that's slipping punches without consciously thinking of it.

   10. RDRich Diviney44:05

       That's right. But we have to understand that if someone is, for example, inherently, um, uh, unadaptable, okay, um, they can train a skill in a known environment all they want and become really good at, uh, at it in a known environment. As soon as the environment changes, though, that low adaptability is going to, going to kick in. So they may, in fact, not be able to execute that skill as, as deftly as they could in that known environment. Right? So, so there... It's all interrelated. And I thought about it writing the book. I, I, I could talk about how these all interrelate and interplay, but it would have been a thousand-page book, and it wouldn't have been published yet. So, um, so it's really just a basic intro on the reader saying, "Okay, how does this show up for me in my life?" And then if you're a business owner or inside of a team, "How does this show up for my team?" Because the best teams are made up of attributes that mesh, right? And, and, and, and balance each other and support, mutually support each other. That's the best team. So to, to know this stuff is actually really good.

   11. CWChris Williamson45:03

       Were you tempted to create a hierarchy at all, or are there some that you think are fundamental and enable others to come out of them? You've mentioned adaptability a fair bit. It seems like-

   12. RDRich Diviney45:13

       Yeah.

   13. CWChris Williamson45:13

       ... that would be more of a foundational type of attribute than perhaps some of the others.

   14. RDRich Diviney45:20

       Yeah. Uh, yeah, I did. I thought about, um, uh, creating a hierarchy. But, uh, what I recognized is that it was probably irresponsible for me to do that. Um, A, I don't have any psychological background, and B, I just think everybody's so different and so subjective. And the attributes play off of each other in very unique ways. Right? So, so someone who is, um, who has low adaptability, for example, but might be high on open-mindedness, they might be perfectly okay. That, that... Those balanced well, because the open-mindedness helps the adaptability, right? Um, someone who is, um... Let's think of another example. Someone who is, uh, low on, um, say, situational awareness, okay, um, but high on, um, uh... Well, what's another one? Let's see. High on cunning or something like that, you know, that, that could play off of it. Um, someone who's, uh, a little bit higher on, uh, narcissism, but also high on humility. Wonderful combination there. You know? So, so again, the problem with-

   15. CWChris Williamson46:23

       They're not just seen in isolation, right?

   16. RDRich Diviney46:24

       (laughs) That's right. That's right.

   17. CWChris Williamson46:24

       They're all very interrelated.

   18. RDRich Diviney46:26

       That's right. Now, I don't want to dodge your question, so I won't. Uh, because I... Because if you put my back to a wall and said, "Rich, what are the most important..." I would say, from a human aspect and in life, I would say the grit attributes probably are, are... Probably edge out the other ones in importance. In other words, just to be a human in this world takes some courage, takes some adaptability, takes some perseverance, takes some resilience. Okay? Um, the world changes. Everything changes over time. So that means we need to be adap-... If you're not adaptable, you'll be a, you'll be a dinosaur, right, not a frog. Um, there's going to be stuff that scares us all the time, right? If we're not... If we can't, if we can't be a little bit courageous, we're going to be sitting in our houses, you know, for the rest of our lives, right? So I think the grit attributes, if I were to place them, if I were to eke one or a set of (laughs) of attributes above the rest, I would eke that first set, that grit set, above the rest. But that's, that's the, that's the best I'll do.

   19. CWChris Williamson47:19

       Just a little bit more scalable, right?

   20. RDRich Diviney47:21

       That's right.

   21. CWChris Williamson47:21

       It's just able to be a little bit more sort of diverse like that.

9. 47:24 – 54:49

   Developing Resilience

   1. CWChris Williamson47:24

      Is there someone from your experience, have you met someone that comes to mind as, like, the most gritty human or some of the most gritty humans that you've met? Any stories from back in the day?

   2. RDRich Diviney47:33

      Well, so again, H- uh, Hank and I were talking about this, uh, when we were having coffee. Um, grit is also subjective. And we both, I mean, we both would say, I mean, you know, there are people who are very gritty in certain situations who in other situations, you know, fall into puddles. Right? Um, and who's to, who's to, uh, who's to kind of place value on someone's ability to move through che- challenge and stress? I mean, there's, there are kids in the children's hospitals who, who are fighting cancer who have more grit in their little finger than most Navy SEALs I've ever met in my life. Right? I mean, so, um, so yeah, I don't know. I think... I've certainly met tons of people with tons of grit. But I mean, there... Grit is everywhere. I think every human being has, has some of it in them. Um, and there are stories abound of people who you're like, "Oh my gosh, how the heck did that person get through that?" And, um, and you look at their ability to kind of gut it out, and you're like, "I, I don't know if I could have done that. I, you really admire and respect that." So, so, uh, so the answer is yes, I've met those people. But-... but they're all around us, and it's inside of us too.

   3. CWChris Williamson48:35

      I got some buddies that are going through, a couple of different fellas that, and mates that are going through, like, some challenges at the moment, and I'm watching it unfold. So, I get the benefit almost of being able to iterate on these learning, strategic learning experiences each time I have a phone call or a text message or whatever.

   4. RDRich Diviney48:51

      Mm-hmm.

   5. CWChris Williamson48:51

      And, um, it's insane, man. Like the-

   6. RDRich Diviney48:55

      Yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson48:55

      ... the level of resiliency that they're showing is just like, it blows my mind. But-

   8. RDRich Diviney49:01

      Yeah.

   9. CWChris Williamson49:01

      ... on the flip side, it's very domain specific.

   10. RDRich Diviney49:05

       Mm-hmm.

   11. CWChris Williamson49:06

       You can imagine a guy who is absolute, a- a- an animal on the- the field of battle, but really struggles when him and his missus have an argument, you know? So you-

   12. RDRich Diviney49:16

       Yeah.

   13. CWChris Williamson49:16

       Not only are the attributes themselves also interdependent, but within different domains-

   14. RDRich Diviney49:22

       Context.

   15. CWChris Williamson49:22

       ... some of them interact in a different way.

   16. RDRich Diviney49:24

       Right.

   17. CWChris Williamson49:24

       I got to, I've had this in my head ever since, uh, we started talking. Have you looked into behavioral genetics much?

   18. RDRich Diviney49:31

       I haven't much. I've heard of it. Yeah.

   19. CWChris Williamson49:32

       Dude.

   20. RDRich Diviney49:33

       But, uh, but I, yeah, it's one of those things I have on my notepad to, uh, to look into, yeah.

   21. CWChris Williamson49:37

       So, I think there's so much crossover between what you're talking about here. So, the heritability of particular traits, right?

   22. RDRich Diviney49:45

       Right. Right.

   23. CWChris Williamson49:45

       That manifests. So, how much is your height dependent on your parents' height?

   24. RDRich Diviney49:50

       Mm-hmm.

   25. CWChris Williamson49:50

       How much is your dep- likelihood for depression or schizophrenia or penis length or, uh, like marital, um, instability-

   26. RDRich Diviney49:58

       Yeah.

   27. CWChris Williamson49:58

       ... how much is this heritable?

   28. RDRich Diviney50:00

       Yeah.

   29. CWChris Williamson50:00

       And it- it maps so nicely onto the attributes and the skills model, that-

   30. RDRich Diviney50:08

       Yeah.
10. 54:49 – 1:00:29

    Keys to Self-Improvement

    1. CWChris Williamson54:49

       to dig into, 'cause you know, people are listening and they think, "I want some more compartmentalization or situational awareness or whatever."

    2. RDRich Diviney54:54

       Yeah.

    3. CWChris Williamson54:55

       Um-Can you just dig into those principles of somebody looks under the hood, they've done the self-inquiry. Everyone that's listening is radically sensible. They're unbelievably keen to do this sort of stuff. What are the principles? I want an attribute, or if- if I find a deficiency or there is a lack that I really think my life would be better if I was able to improve in this particular area-

    4. RDRich Diviney55:18

       Yeah.

    5. CWChris Williamson55:18

       ... what- what are those three principles again? Can you give us some examples?

    6. RDRich Diviney55:21

       (clears throat) Yeah. In fact, I... So- so I'll- I'll give you a general. I actually put workbooks on the website that someone can get, and they can actually-

    7. CWChris Williamson55:28

       Which is?

    8. RDRich Diviney55:29

       ... it's, uh, theattributes.com. Yeah. And you can go, and there are workbooks for the grit attributes, the mental acuity attributes, and the drive attributes. And- and it goes through each individual attribute and- and gives you some tips and clues on how to develop that specific one. The overarching thing is to- is to say to yourself, "Okay, I have an attribute that I'm low on and I want to develop." Okay, first of all, let's- let's do some self-examination and ask, okay, what is it... What are those environments and situations that I'm most uncomfortable in? Okay. So take something like, um, uh, take something like... Well, let's- let's just, let's just use adaptability, okay? Um, I- I want to develop my adaptability, all right? So I need to understand what that looks like in my life. Okay. Um, maybe I'm traveling, and when the plane is delayed or something, I get very anxious, you know. I, you know, I just... It doesn't sit well with me. Um, (coughs) you may want to then... This is, this is radical. You may want to then say, "Okay, I'm going to develop this. So I'm just gonna, I'm gonna go to the airport and buy a ticket somewhere, okay? And I'm gonna go to a new place, and I'm not gonna do any... I'm just gonna, I'm gonna drop onto the ground and then figure it out. I'm gonna just decide to do that. I'm gonna go find a place to stay, I'm gonna go get..." Whatever it is. Um, put yourself into situations that actually test and tease that and develop that. Now, I want to, um, warn people, like, you know, even courage. I want to warn people, you don't have to be extreme on this stuff. You can start small. If you are someone who, um... So courage is a, is usually a common one. If you're someone who finds fear, you know, feels fear, uh, in talking to people, you're an introvert, um, it might be as simple as, like you said that guy did. You know, you- you just start startup conversations with strangers, you know. That is going to feel very scary to you. Um, here's the cool thing about fear though, and, um, and this is something we can all use. When we, um, when the, when the fear response gets- gets an issue, when the amygdala begins to, uh, to kick in, okay, we are, we are given two choices, and we both... we all know the choices. Fight or flight, okay? We've often heard of a third choice called freeze, but really what they found neurologically is freeze is simply an oscillation between the two. You're basically just sitting there trying to decide, all right? So it's really just fight or flight. Um, when we decide to step into our fear, to fight, okay, that means step into our fear. Um, as soon as we do that, we're... our bodies give us a dopamine reward, okay? Our bodies are designed to do that because we had to, the nature had to give us a reason to go find new food, go find shelter.

    9. CWChris Williamson57:59

       Or else we would always flee.

    10. RDRich Diviney58:01

        Or- or else we'd always... Or we'd waste away, right? I mean, so- so what we have to understand about fear and anxiety and all this stuff is it's- it's designed to get our systems moving, okay? When we are hungry, our body begins to feel stressed and anxious. That is designed to get us to go out and feel... you know, and find food. Um, same thing when we're lonely. It's designed to get us stressed to go find o- find companionship, all right? So- so we can begin... And so, so our bodies began to give us reward systems when we actually decided to do that. So if you are afraid, if you find yourself afra- afraid of things, um, all you need to do is just start testing yourself and- and stepping, you know, stepping into those, into those fears, and you'll feel a dopamine reward after it. I'm not saying that the act is gonna be... feel good, right? I- I don't like roller coasters, okay? When I decide to do a roller coaster, I'm not gonna... I'm not saying that the roller coaster feels good doing it, but I am saying once I'm done with it, I feel great for having done it, okay? I remember in college, there was this girl I had a crush on, and I had a crush on her for a long time, and she seemed so unattainable. And I said to myself one day, I s- you know, I said, "I need to do something," right? And I saw her one night out, and so I went up to her and I asked her out, okay? And she said, "No, I'm so sorry. You know, thanks so much for asking, but I have a boyfriend." Right? So I didn't get... You know, th- th- that's not a happy ending in terms of me getting the girl, but I still, to this day, am so happy I did it, right? Because I actually tried, I actually stepped into my fear, and so-

    11. CWChris Williamson59:17

        But think about how meaningful that situation is, that-

    12. RDRich Diviney59:22

        Yeah.

    13. CWChris Williamson59:23

        ... decades later, you're still able to recall it.

    14. RDRich Diviney59:27

        Yeah, but I... but here's the thing, Chris. I think every human probably listening to this can think of a time where they actually stepped into their fear, they did something that a little scared of, and they probably still feel good about it, okay? They probably do, um, because that's how powerful. That's a dopamine hit that we're getting. And so, and so now (clears throat) I want to say, fear is also designed to allow human beings to appropriately risk mitigate or assess risk, right? Sometimes the appropriate thing to do is flee, (laughs) okay? Or flight, right? Because it's never a good idea to fight a bear, right? So- so but the idea is, can you get yourself into a position, um, when you start feeling that fear, where you can actually make that decision, "Okay, is this something I want to step into? Or is this something, no kidding, I need to flee?" Right? So, um, but if you do decide to step in, you'll get that reward, you'll get that- that, uh, that hit, and you'll feel good, and you just practice that. Just like this guy you just said, um, uh, did. He was basically... He was practicing this stuff, and I'm sure that he was able to continue to do it as he did it more because he was feeling the effects of that dopamine reward system.

11. 1:00:29 – 1:06:21

    Mental Impacts of Fear & Humour

    1. CWChris Williamson1:00:29

       Does that mean that fear increases our vigilance? Is that, is that reflected in the, in the brain at all?

    2. RDRich Diviney1:00:37

       (clears throat) So- so it's a, it's a interesting question that's a little bit complex because, um, uh, and again, I'm gonna, I'm gonna... I'm a fan of neuroscience, but I'm not a neuroscientist. When we are, when we're afraid, when our, when our body goes into fear response, what typically happens is we f- we narrow our focus, okay? So, in fact, our, our vigilance goes away because we're focused on a threat.... um, this is why the alert but calm state is so important. When we're alert and calm, we are actually in a state where we actually have more vigilance because we're able to neurologically notice different things. Um, (coughs) we, our brains, in fact, react faster when we are actually in that state. Um, a- a- an example would be, if you're stan- if you're at a stoplight, okay? And it's red and you're staring at it waiting it to- to- you're staring at the light waiting for it to go green. If you're staring at it and it goes green, you're gonna respond and go. You'll actually respond faster, you'll actually hit that accelerator faster if you're actually not staring at it. You're actually just, it's in your periphery, okay? And you, you, you see it go green in your periphery, you're actually response is faster. Now, I'm not, I'm not, uh, advising anybody to go drag race, by the way, okay? But this is also why when we're riding our bike or running or something and we're- and a bug hits our eye and it's like, "Oh my God, that bug hit my-"

    3. CWChris Williamson1:01:52

       (laughs)

    4. RDRich Diviney1:01:53

       ... you know, we blink. And we're like, "Oh my God, I can't believe I blinked right when that bug hit my eye." Well, we- our body actually did that. You know, we were, we were in a, uh, open state and our body saw... Before our brain saw our body said, "Oh, bug coming. Close the eyes," so that, you know, so it didn't hit us in the eye. So, so we are actually... The alert calm state is the best for vigilance. Um, when we were, when we were in a fear state and we're, w- we, it, we tend to narrow focus because our bodies are designed to focus on that threat and, and address it and then, and then get out of it. So, so it's a little bit of a complex answer.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:02:23

       I understand. One of my favorite attributes that you go into is humor, actually.

    6. RDRich Diviney1:02:28

       Yeah.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:02:28

       Which I, I think-

    8. RDRich Diviney1:02:29

       Yeah.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:02:30

       ... would have been a surprise maybe to some people. It makes sense, but you wouldn't... When you're talking about optimal performance, humor-

    10. RDRich Diviney1:02:36

        Yeah.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:02:37

        ... perhaps doesn't come up as one of those. Can you dig into that for me?

    12. RDRich Diviney1:02:40

        Well, yeah. Again, we're talking about neuroscience again and, and neurobiology because what laughing does... First of all, laughing is involuntary. It's like sneezing, okay? If you laugh, it's not, it's because you just, you're, you did, all right? N- you know, that's why comedians are such a gift, right? Um, when we laugh, we get three powerful chemicals, uh, injected into our system. Two neurotransmitters and one hormone, okay? Uh, first neurotransmitter is dopamine. Just talked about that. That's a hugely powerful and says, "Hey, this is good. Keep doing this." Um, the next one, uh, is, uh, endorphins, okay? Endorphins are the human body's equivalent of opiates, okay? So they mask our pain. Runner's high and things like that, that's endorphins. Designed by nature to make us the endurance creatures that we are, okay? That's why endorphins exist. Um, so we get dopamine, we get endorphins, and then we get oxytocin, which is a hormone. Oxytocin is known as the love hormone, okay? It's, um, it's a bonding, binding chemical between human beings. We get bursts of it when we, when we embrace, when we, you know, human touch, when we have a great conversation, when we shake hands, when we act so physical kindn- acts of kindness between human beings induce oxytocin. It's a bonding chemical. So when we laugh, we get all three of those involuntarily, right? (clears throat) Laughing makes us feel g- feel better, okay? Um, because it's involuntary, because we get bursts of these chemicals, this is why, um, sense of humor is one of the most desire- desirable qualities when you're looking for mates. Uh, yeah, either male or female, right? Because, because it's a, it's a signal between humans that, "Hey, when things get tough, I will, I will bring you up, I will lift you up." Neurobiologically, I'll make you laugh, okay? I've never seen a high performing team, a successful one, that hasn't had at least a couple class clowns. You know, that, that, the, the people who make jokes right when things are bad, right? And bring everybody up. And again, humor as an attribute doesn't mean you have to be that class clown. You don't have to be the person making the jokes. You just have to be someone who's able to laugh, right? Because if you're able to laugh, it will get you through. And oh, by the way, we just talked about courage. Hu- this is why laughing, this is why humor is also a hack into courage, because when you laugh, you're getting dopamine. Well, dopamine is the same reward you get when you execute a step into what, what scares you. So this is why anybody, and anybody could have this exa- uh, might have an, uh, an example in their own lives. If they had, if they were, if they could think of a time they were scared of something and then someone made them laugh, like really made them laugh, not like a (imitates laugh) , like a fake laugh, but really, like, a laugh, they, they felt braver automatically. You know, they felt, they felt better. That fear started to dissipate because they got that reward system. So laughter can also be a hack into courage as well.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:05:13

        Did you guys use morbid humor a lot in the ?

    14. RDRich Diviney1:05:16

        I tell you, Chris, I, people ask me what I miss the most about the teams, and it's the humor. I mean, I remember... I mean, we laugh, uh, but you, you, that starts in BUD/S. I mean, in BUD/S, it's, there were some of the most miserable times and we were laughing until we were crying. I mean, it was that funny. Um, so yeah, we... All the time. I mean, this is where, um, the, I think these teams that do really... You know, people always, they think, you know, these firefighters, cops, spec ops, military folks, they have this dark humor. Um, it's, it exists for a reason because when you do dark stuff, you need things that help you get through it properly. Yeah.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:05:50

        Well, it's a performance enhancer and a coping mechanism in one, and a-

    16. RDRich Diviney1:05:54

        Right.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:05:54

        ... team building exercise.

    18. RDRich Diviney1:05:56

        That's right. That's right. And I know, I mean, I, unfortunately, I've been, uh, I've been to far too many funerals in my day. Um, but, uh, but even at funerals, when, when you're, when you're honoring someone and remembering someone, those people who can remember them in a funny way and make people laugh, you, you feel so good. You know, you feel great about it. You, it, it helps you cope because this is... And this is, again, this is neurobiological, which is cool.

12. 1:06:21 – 1:14:29

    How to Be More Efficient

    1. RDRich Diviney1:06:21

    2. CWChris Williamson1:06:21

       What about decisiveness? I think this is something that a lot of people want. We have a paradox of choice at the moment. Far too much stimulation.

    3. RDRich Diviney1:06:28

       (laughs) .

    4. CWChris Williamson1:06:28

       Far too much information to work out what it is. I don't know what I want to do.

    5. RDRich Diviney1:06:31

       Yeah.

    6. CWChris Williamson1:06:31

       How can someone develop their decisiveness?

    7. RDRich Diviney1:06:34

       Decisiveness is really all about understanding, um, how you're, how, how effectively you're bringing in information, and then to what level, to what, to what extent you're comfortable deciding to do something with a certain level. Decisiveness is the, uh, the ability to make an effective decision with efficiency and speed, okay? And those two last words are actually, are actually the most important part of decisiveness, 'cause someone can be good at making decisions, but it's like a long process, all right?... decisiveness really kind of, kind of almost bridges into this thing we call in the military the 80/20 rule, where you, you are never going to get 100% of the information that you need to make an appropriate decision. It's almost impossible, especially in a military environment. But most life, uh, situations, you're not going to get 100% of the information. So, the idea is to get as much information as you can in the moment, okay, whatever that percentage looks like, um, and then make a decision and, and move... And again, when you make a decision, what people have to understand is, is, um, it's final, but not- but might not necessarily be permanent, okay? Um, so in other words, we're going to make a decision and we're going to move into that decision, we're going to execute, but I'm also going to buttress that with some accountability and ask myself after I make that decision, "Is this working? Is this not?" We may have to change, right? So it's n- so, so final is not the same as permanent. So you can be decisive, you can make decisions that are final, and then you buttress that with accountability, so that it might not be permanent. No leader, no true leader that any of us think of as leaders aren't such... are, are, are people who are, are, are long, protracted decision makers. You know, that, you know, decisiveness is a leadership characteristic that most human beings really honor and, and look for.

Episode duration: 1:17:34